Asklemmy

I used to pirate anything. Music, movies, softwares, games...

Since I have a developer job and a stable income, I don't really pirate much stuff anymore, only movies and series, but then the whole piracy thing is not even illegal here where I live.

Maybe softwares, too, if I can't find any free and/or open source alternative of it.

For games and music, I like to pay, if I can. If it's expensive, I wait to some sale.

And also, with pirated stuff, you always end up something doesn't work or missing or you just have to make compromises. Fuck that, I'm too old for that.

One aspect of pirating is appealing to me tho - preservation. Anything you can't go and just buy because of dead services or just time going by needs to be preserved. It applies for hardwares, too. Liberating closed hardware and software is a noble thing in my eyes, and it justifies piracy.

When there's no legitimate way for me to rent something. I recently downloaded Joe vs the Volcano and Counterpart because there's no streaming service that has them on offer.

Piracy leaves creators worse off when it deprives them of a sale, as in you would have paid for something but instead just pirated it because not paying was an option. So I pirate stuff I think is worth my time, but not my money. I then consider it victimless. Maybe that movie is interesting enough to watch but not enough to rent/buy, so I would pirate it. I'm now at a point where money isn't as scarce as it used to be, so the prices of entertainment seem reasonable and I am much more willing to pay.

There are a couple of exceptions to the above. I pirated almost every textbook I could since the fact that a student requires one specific product puts the customer in an exploitable position that allows the seller to charge unreasonable amounts (and used books have none of their proceeds go back to the creator anyway). Also, there is no issue with pirating content no longer being sold, since the creators aren't being deprived of anything. This is mostly relevant for me with old video games on emulators.

I live by the rules established by the founding fathers. Copyright is 15 years and if the creator of the work gets paid for it. Anything else can hit the bricks. Corporations? Not people. Classic movies? Thry are part of thr public conscious now.

i enjoy stealing

You cannot steal what is not physical. Theft implies removing a physical object from somewhere, creating a loss of an item.

Digital information is 1s and 0s, and you just create a copy. You do not remove the original one. There is no theft taking place.

The value of a product does not go down because I didn't pay for it. If anything, if it's a quality product, the value goes up. If I pirate something and enjoy it, chances are I will pay for it when I can afford to. If I pirate something and don't enjoy it, well, I wasn't going to buy the product anyway so there's no loss. Let's say I watch a movie at a friend's house and absolutely hate it. I do not buy the movie. How is that different than pirating it and coming to the same conclusion? I see the movie without paying money.

I feel good seeing how the corpos squirm when trying their damndest to get rid of any pirating method (which is fair and what everyone in the world deserves free of charge by birth) only to be met with impossible tasks and fall flat on their faces. It's one of the better feelings in this world. I pirate everything, everywhere, unless I know I can help a talented (and actual) human out.

Depends.

Sometimes I just can't find the actual thing by legal means. Go try listening to Bruce Woolley's version of "Video Killed The Radio Star" sometime. I can either try to hunt down a physical copy or I can just pirate it. See also: most video game soundtracks.

Usually though it's more about convenience. If I can just stream something on Spotify, I'll just do that.

If there's a movie I kinda wanna see but I'm not sure if it's going to be good I'll pirate it

After going through many phases of why i should and or want to pirate, i honestly just stopped giving a shit entirely about any of those and i ended with "who gives a shit, fuck em"

those that deserve my money get it directly

I usually don't pirate, if something is overpriced then I'll wait until it's on sale. I have a set budget every month that I pay for entertainment, if something like a new video game is more expensive I'll just wait a month.

I'm especially against pirating products of asshole companies like Adobe. That's because even if you don't pay for them you're still popularizing their products, helping it stay an industry standard. I'm not in a profession where they're a necessity so I use their competitors like Affinity, which is good enough for my purposes, and I'm ok with supporting them.

I sometimes watch movies or series on non-legal streaming sites if they're not available elsewhere, but that's about it.

I pirate almost all american media, movies, tv shows, games, etc because often there's no legal way to get it in my country until months after release, if at all. Which is bullshit considering it's japan, not some backwater 3rd world hell hole, so you'd think there'd be more options, but if it's not on Netflix or Disney+, you're shit outta luck.

About the only thing I pirate these days is stuff that isn't available to legally pay for in my country.

I'm not gonna pay $200 just to play an old pokemon game. I do buy other games at my local shop though.

I pirate things because it's free and easy. My actions are not intended to serve any greater cause. There are some things I pay for out of convenience: pirated video games typically mean no official servers; Android apps are better managed automatically by the Google Play store.

I pirate the odd bit of music and the ocassional film if I cant find it on streaming services, or if I need music in MP3 format for swimming with, vast bulk of what I pirate is music though. And probably less than 10% of all the media I have is pirated. Make something easily available in the format I need at a reasonable price and I'll happily pay for it

I used to quite a bit, for random, hard to find songs. I also did it to get in digital format, what I owned on vinyl. A few older classic movies here and there. I can’t remember the last time I pirated anything, but I still use torrents for bootleg concerts.

I was 14 and just got a cable modem when Napster came out. I just got introduced to modern music, had no way to pay for it other than asking my folks. Let's jump on the pirate ship!

Now I'll let you do the math on my age, I have very stable income, and a fair amount of disposable savings, and I still pirate pretty much my ears will be hearing. Plex has equal or better tools for watching/listening than every other service I've tried (shuffling episodes is my favorite)

I go to concerts, watch movies in the theatre, read physical books and support creatives in other ways.. so I feel different about that..

I also started noticing this when itunes came out. You could only listen to music YOU PAID FOR on devices you've authorized. Then soon after I saw this, a friend was down on his luck but had a very good and varied cd collection. He started selling them to second hand shops and his friends.

I ended up seeing this dichotomy and thought to myself.... this sucks. Let's just pirate it..

I should note the amount of physical unread books I have on my shell are similarly rationed to the amount of music I haven't listened to or movies I haven't watched yet that I've also pirated

I pirate a ton of stuff, but I also see more movies in theaters than most people I know. I'm lucky enough to live in a place that still has an awesome local video store that has a ton of hard to find, obacure films. Like shaw brothers kung fu films, or documentaries like Jefftowne.

I tend to pirate and then buy later, when cheaper. Or for streaming services, I'll download a show as it airs but then purchase the service and background the series later to add viewership.

I think of it as time shifting the sale price.

People that pirate shows and movies don't do it necessarily because they can't afford to pay for it or want to "stick it" to the corporations. They pirate because they're human and humans get a level of joy from not getting caught doing something they're not supposed to be doing. I may be experiencing a level of joy right now but won't confirm nor deny it here.

I pirate a lot of movies and series and also a few books.

I also sometimes pirate games but not as often

I don't justify it. I think it's a bad thing but I like cheap.

I just started pirating again in the last couple of months after basically not pirating for years. Now fuck corporations lol.

I pirate books for a few reasons, first is because knowledge should be free, second is because buying books gets expensive real quick and third because I can't find everything I want to buy, sometimes pirating is the only way to get it. I like to have it physically when possible, tho.

Entertainment (Series, Anime, Cartoons, Movies) I pirate because I'm sick of being a second class citizen of nearly every streaming service just because I'm a Linux user. I can watch netflix at 1080p with an extension on Firefox, and Crunchyroll doesn't limit me in any way, but everything else is 720p or lower. By pirating, I even have 4k available. Also, fuck streaming prices and fuck netflix for charging extra for sharing an account.

Software I don't pirate because I prefer to use FOSS and in the case of games I don't really wanna gamble if I'll get a malware or not. Besides, I have a huge respect for the medium and I buy a game whenever I can.

For music Spotify and Youtube is too convenient, I only pay for Spotify, tho. Revanced for Youtube on mobile and ublock origin + sponsorblock + return youtube deslikes on desktop is great.

Besides all that, everyone should have access to knowledge and entertainment, it's 100% justified for people to pirate, specially those that can't afford it.

Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn't pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it? i.e., had you paid for the book, you would have more likely read that book.

When I used to pirate heavily a decade ago yeah, today not really, buying or not my ADHD is so bad I can't get through easily anyway lol.

If something is not for sale, I have no qualms about pirating it. Disney vault, abandonware, obsolete versions, etc.