Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Or, pirate because it’s what Jesus would do.

Jesus 2024 gets sent straight to jail for just copy pasting everything for everybody, completely ruining the economy. You wouldn’t just download food for the hungry? Think about the corpo farms.

I can afford Crunchyroll at this point, but I still watch exclusively from Aniwave (formerly 9anime)

I don’t pirate games because Steam just makes it more convenient, and sites like IsThereAnyDeal make it easy to find sales.

However, as someone that’s been a hobbyist developer for 15 years, and never really been able to overcome the imposter syndrome to be able to publish anything, I’d be happy if someone thought my game was even worth the time to pirate, much less be paid for.

Piracy is whatever. Using an old school ass MP3 player in 2023 is unhinged though. I'm sure their phone can do whatever that MP3 player can do just as easily.

The RIAA drove me to piracy in the early days.

Then stuff like Google Play music came along and I stopped because I can actually pay for basically any song I want to listen to, all at my fingertips and that is still true. It makes me happy to support the artists and their music though I know they don't get very much of the cut.

The MPAA was much of the same story.

Then Netflix happened and I was all set for the same thing to happen, but it didn't. Now streaming is almost as fractured as cable TV packages, and I went right back to piracy.

Screw it. I don't feel bad about it because they haven't shown any regard for the people they continually exploit, namely their customers. They don't give any shits if I financially sink while trying to afford to enjoy the things that they make, so I won't give any shits about their financial situation while I enjoy it anyways. Fuck them.

From Limewire to QBitorrent, I've been sailing since I've had a computer.
It's crazy that people aren't aware of the alternatives out there, when all it takes is a little googling. But I guess that's just a sign that the likes of Netflix and Spotify have a stranglehold on mainstream consumers though

I pay for netflix, prime, disney+, paramount+, youtube premium, nebula, and a few more services. I buy music and movies, if available, on bluray and rip them to my own jellyfin server.

And yet, about 20% of what I watch, I've got to pirate because there's no reasonable way to actually watch it. Legal ways often only have the German dub, or are lower quality.

(When I was younger, my family was relatively poor, so back then I obviously pirated everything, but once I could afford it I wiped my entire collection and bought the exact same content properly again, for moral reasons obviously but also because I prefer to do rips myself so they've got proper quality).

I personally don't believe in copyright. Nobody should be able to own an idea or data and be able to tell me what i can and cannot do with said 1s and 0s, which is what digital media is. I will find other ways to support artists and creators like going to concerts, donating or buying merchandise etc... You can't steal data because nobody owns it to begin with in my view.

Anything confidential should be kept encrypted or offline of course.

It just makes sense.

All I see is people putting on clown makeup when they try to defend paying for a profitable product they could otherwise get for free.

Mark Twain was right. It's easier to fool someone than to convince them they'd been fooled. This generation is full of proud idiots. It gives them a sense of belonging.

At least they're easy to take advantage of.

Just a few days ago I pulled an old Sony's NWZ player as they still have superior audio quality compared to phones. I had to throw it away after 10+ years as the battery died.

As long as a company is making a profit all costs have been covered, all employees, suppliers, and producers have been paid. Those in society who have the means and the will have ensured this product exists and has been paid for and I thank them for their contribution. That allows the rest of humanity to enjoy the socialisation of their contribution to the masses, who have not the means or the will, but who ensure the rest of the system is available and working to support everyone's ability to contribute.

If you want to argue that employees, suppliers, or producers aren't adequately paid, then why is there a profit margin?

Ironically piracy actually costs more than streaming if you intend to preserve media.

I've been pirating since I was a child. That being said, I don't think it's particularly healthy to pin 'media pirating' as a personality trait.