Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I buy most of my content, steam mostly for games, have spotify, buy music from bandcamp for DJ sets, at least my favorites, have family netflix, HBO, disney +, although I don't use those as much since they are mostly full of crap. Sometimes I even buy/rent a movie if it is not available in those and I can't find any torrent, or just out of convenience. I produce music and buy all my audio software (ableton and fuckton of plugins) because I don't want to deal with the hassle of using pirated versions. I buy ebooks every now and then too, although with that I also admittely pirate some, especially when the author is dead, in which case I really don't feel any guilt for pirating it. I also use patreon often and support creators that way.

I still think piracy needs to be an option, so streaming services can't have their way and we are just forced to use their enshittified platforms. I avoid it, because I understand not everything can be open source, and nothing get's done without revenue. I don't pirate from small authors/creators.

All the while musicians get basically fucking nothing from huge streaming services profiting from their labor. Series get cancelled left and right despite good reception because they were not profitable enough, although still profitable, because netflix is only interested making next big hit. Games are filled with microtransactions and kernel level tracking (anti cheat), forced online features in single player game and sometimes games one bought are just made unavailable, like with old mobile games (case in point, dead space mobile). Professional software is often moved to predatory subscription models and paywalled updates to the software, like Avid, Waves.

And people still cirlejerk about piracy being the worst thing to intellectual property ever. Problem isn't piracy, problem is small creators are payed so little from listens/views/whatever that the can barely get by, and have to make alternate source of income via patreon or some other stuff. Piracy won't even make a dent in that.

Luckily in every category some people/companies are pushing back but all of this is just case in point why we need piracy. When I get around releasing music/games, I don't mind piracy at all, might even put my own tunes on pirate sites out of spite. Current intellectual property laws are fucking joke and only benefit the largest creators in their respective fields.