Piracy is not theft
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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and now you've just made it like 30% less cool. fuck, I may as well sign up for netflix now.
Thanks for taking away my enjoyment. Now I need to find something I can enjoy that does count as theft.
Might I suggest taking a pistachio and eating it while you're shopping?
Don't do it if you are black in the US, cops will hospitalize or kill you, even if you are trying to pay for the eaten one.
https://www.theroot.com/police-send-black-man-to-the-hospital-over-a-piece-of-d-1851209458
You monster
sometimes when I buy water I drink it before paying for it. Its coomon in Germany but apparently illegal!!!!!
My grandmother allowed us to eat ice cream in the shop before paying because the lives in a small village (also Germany) and know the shopkeepers
You wouldn’t download a gold ingot
I do love me a good heist, but piracy is so pedestrian. Suitable only for novices and the lazy.
I make sure to properly steal hard drives from the developers' computers on launch day.
For a very long time, I was one of the people who kep saying:
"I used to pirate until Netflix came along; now I pirate because of the fragmentation of services; should a good service become available at a reasonable price again, I will be happy to switch back."
But at some point, that stopped being true. More precisely, my *arr-Stack + Jellyfin setup become so stable, I do no longer really think about it, while also getting better quality content, and often faster than I would due to global licensing shennanigans.
Another factor also is that at some point, we crossed the "enough content to mindlessly scroll until we find something to watch" barrier, which my GF actually kinda missed from Netflix.
The crazy thing though, is that we pay actual money for this: hardware cost; electricity; access to usenet trackers and two usenet backbones. All in all, I do not think it's cheaper than getting Netflix+Prime+Disney.
It's just better. And we will not be switching back, ever.
Netflix+prime+Disney is a solid $60 a month, getting more expensive all the time, and you'll probably still wind up wanting shows that aren't on any of them. Idk how crazy your hardware is or how much power you're using but it's hard for me to imagine your home setup could be more expensive than that over more than a year or two
Hmm, it's a bit cheaper here (I think - it's been a while!), but yeah.
Electricity is expensive here, I think the server setup draws 40€/month, but that is for the entire setup of course, not just pirating-related stuff; plus ~9€/month for the two usenet backbones, and a couple bucks for trackers.
I think the main thing these pirate services don't have is a good recommendation system tailored to your watch history like Netflix or Spotify has.
FYI Spotify says their recommendations take into account how much money they make from you listening to a particular song, and if they make any at all. It may recommend songs based on your listening history, but that's not the only thing picking the songs and deciding what order to suggest them. Their playlists and recommendations are a pay to play system, like commercial radio stations.
What is a comparable service?
In my opinion, Spotify isn't an end all be all. It's the entry fee to the music industry.
Here is an actual example. I love pop music. Spotify recommended a singer name CL and then showed me her concert in the local area. I bought tickets to her concert. Spent money on her merch. Enjoyed the concert.
Without Spotify, there is little chance I would have even know she existed.
That's mostly true, although you usually (in my case at least) I am aware of all shows I have available on Jellyfin, and it's only ones I like.
For discovering new shows to download, things like Jellyseerr actually do give recommendations... No idea how good they are though.
But frankly, Netflix used to recommend a lot of things that sounded interesting on the surface-level, and then turned out to be utter shit. Probably not an entirely bad thing to be lacking recommendations :D
I share a Netflix account with my brother(we use wireguard site to site so it looks like we are on the same network).
The recommendation engine is great for Animes.
It's hard to know which new anime is out unless you see an ad or hear it from a friend.
My GF is VERY up to date on this (unfortunately? 😆)
Very fortunate!
last.fm has one for music. But I actually prefer talking to people and getting actual recommendations
I've been a Spotify subscriber since the US launch. There are some other options
Listenbrainz or last.fm can offer recommendations, but there won't be the instant gratification. Last.fm does support music playback on its website, which sources from YouTube. Either platforms are going to require some work to build up an account.
If you're comfortable with Plex, I'd advocate for its sonic analysis tool. It looks at the waveform of newly added music and then offers recommendations. Coming from a massive streaming service, it's been refreshing to use Plexamp. The curation aspect of my library is fun compared to the sprawling library on Spotify. I like the fact that I control with artists and albums are in my library. It's led to me finding more deep cuts with my favorite groups rather. The hard part is finding/ripping the music you'd like to listen to.
Most work days, I use Plexamp because the curated library leads to less skipping and I stay more focused. I still have Spotify for home because the library is unbeatable and other family members use our group account. Either platform will scrobble my listens to last.fm while Listenbrainz will update itself from my last.fm account. I can search for new music on Last.fm or Listenbrainz and add it to my Plex library.
I have a Plex Lifetime account but have never tried the Plexamp.
I wanna be real with you. Finding music and ripping it myself is a chore. I still have Spotify for this reason.
Along with a recommendation engine they provide, if I hear a song in a store that I like, I can scan it with Google and it pops up the artist and then I click Spotify and it's there.
Because of Spotify and Steam, I don't pirate songs or pirate games(much) anymore.
I think the only time I pirate games now is if games require an online connection.
We're currently paying for Mubi, mainly far the curated content and because some of the movies shown there are really hard to find anywhere else (international movies specially)
Ya, same here in Taiwan. Localized content is very difficult to come by.
Why the fuck are you paying for access to trackers
For Non-English ones in my native language. There isn't a lot of them. AFAICT the one I mostly use is free for a handful of requests/day, but generously lifts that limit in exchange for a "donation" 😄
(It's only around 20/year)
Edit: and just to be clear, that one Tracker took us from "basically nothing is available in our language" to "literally everything is", so it's money well spent.
Quality control.
why choose when you can be both