Fuck Empress, however she’s right on this specific matter.

I felt the Adobe part. I bought Photoshop CS2 back in the day then sadly lost the license key a few years later. I never felt bad for pirating the latest version.

Another example of ethical piracy would be when offline games force you to be online all the time. Minecraft forces me to be online to play through the official launcher. Since I also play with mods that are still a few versions behind, I downloaded a cracked launcher so I can play even when I don’t have internet access.

To you perhaps, I’m perfectly fine with it.

Like segmentation isn’t an issue…

Because they realized people are willing to pay for extra subscriptions. Production studios created their own services while keeping their IPs exclusive rather than licensing it to third parties. They make more money this way until people stop subscribing to every new service that comes out each month.

Music has the potential of undergoing the same path. I wouldn’t be surprised if major labels like UMG, Warner and Sony pulled content from Spotify and other services and creating their own. Let’s just hope people smarten up so this doesn’t happen anytime soon.

I did the math, subscribing to every major streaming service is about $100. I got an offer to subscribe to Cable with my ISP for $29 a month. Obviously years ago Cable was more expensive but it doesn’t feel like we necessarily improved on convenience which streaming services are supposed to provide.

Content gets pulled constantly from these services and they often require dedicated hardware to stream HD content, Prime and Apple TV being an example. By the time I switch between 4 apps to find what I want to watch I’ve already fallen asleep.

In 2023 it’s just stupid having to rely on so many different subscription services to only have access to a portion of the available content (which gets constantly removed). All considering how anti-consumer these big corporations are I wouldn’t say things are WAY better. A few years ago Netflix alone had much more diverse content, was generally enough for most people and was cheaper overall.

Music services offer 99% of the available content in one app, if you switch to a different service you don’t miss out on content availability. If we had that for videos it would be perfect.

Copyright infringement laws vary but even though simply downloading copyrighted material is against policies, it’s hard to enforce and most copyright holders don’t always find grounds for a lawsuit or it’s straight up not worth pursuing. You downloading a movie off a website is the same as a friend of yours sharing the same movie with you on a USB stick.

Actions against unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials (especially if it’s for profit) on the other hand are much more easily enforceable.

Piracy is absolutely self interest, nobody is arguing against it. Pirates have the choice not to purchase and leave it at that.

ViMusic looks a well put together app, I’m gonna check it out!

I don’t know why people even feel the need to justify themselves here where anonymity is a thing.

I just don’t find it constructive to assume everyone does something for the same reason, it just doesn’t seem to make sense to me, that as well as defeating the point of any conventional structure.

At least with cable TV you can get the highest tear subscription with all the channels. With streaming services you have to subscribe to a decent bunch just to have a broad variety of content, resulting in a much higher price than any cable TV subscription.

It’s a disaster.

Thanks a lot, I’ll check them out!

I’ve been using flixhq.to which is add-free and I’ve been pretty happy with it!

There’s people on both sides of the scale here.

I used to pirate stuff because I couldn’t afford it or because I prioritized spending my money elsewhere since I could get stuff for free. Then as I got a job, I could afford to pay for lots of things and legal options became more convenient than piracy, so I just stopped pirating.

Now I’m back on the ship because pirating has become more convenient than subscribing to a bunch of different fragnented and anti-consumer services just to access a handful of content.

Some people just want shit for free (which is ok, been there), some others value service and convenience first and foremost.

And there’s no other way to play those games. They’re pretty much gone forever alongside the money spent to purchase them.

I’m not judging you for that, I’ve downloaded stuff because I couldn’t afford also.

There are different type of pirates all doing the same thing for different reasons, which are all very valid.

The one thing to keep in mind is that piracy is by no means “stealing”, not even close. When you pirate stuff you’re not depriving the creator or other buying customers of their products because you’re essentially just sharing/downloading a digital, replicable copy.

If anything it’s copyright infringement, we should start calling it for what it actually is.

No, I’m so sorry, your low quality response doesn’t disprove any of my points. You didn’t even try because you know you can’t.

In your case choosing to pirate = choosing not to buy. If you chose not to buy without pirating it would’ve been the same thing. You were never forced to buy anything, don’t convince yourself otherwise.

You’re just mad with that fact that other people might have different reasons to pirate content other than just being a cheapskate lol

If pirating wasn’t illegal a lot of industries would die. So let’s keep it illegal and unethical, so people actually purchase the products that keep these industries alive and thriving.

You fail to realize that piracy is what is actually contributing the most behind the scenes. Artists gain more from exposure than to direct purchases of their products. If piracy was illegal many musicians wouldn’t be so famous/well known because not so many people can/are willing to make a purchase in order to discover something. Actually going to concerts and buying merch contributes to musicians much more than buying their songs for $2 on the Apple Store or whatever. Music labels and distributors keep the majority of the revenue anyway.

Also what you actually call “stealing” is actually just sharing digital data. Nobody is taking away anything from anybody. It’s not a physical good with limited availability. The people who pirate digital products wouldn’t be buying it regardless (for whatever reason that might be, it doesn’t matter), essentially it doesn’t make any difference to the creators. The difference between purchasing a game for example and the difference between pirating is the same as the difference between purchasing the game and NOT purchasing the game. Let’s not even get into DRMs where they make the experience worse for paying customers by tanking game performance. Or forcing to always be online to play single player games. The list can go on and on.

Pirating in 2023 is the only ethical way of consuming media. I’m done paying greedy corporations for a ridiculously fragmented entertainment industry where an individual has to subscribe to different services just to watch different seasons of the same show because they somehow decided to remove content I wasn’t done watching. Or renting a movie on Prime Video just to find out I need to purchase a specific device to watch it in HD when my machine is more than capable of playing 4k.

The only way I’d pay for digital content again is if they provide some sort of convenience over piracy. I happily pay for my Spotify subscription because it is actually a good service, at a good price and most importantly it’s convenient! I can listen to whatever song I want from one single subscription using only one app on my phone.

I used to pay for YouTube premium, I downloaded a bunch of videos to watch offline while on a trip where I knew I didn’t have internet access only to find out that in order to watch the videos I downloaded I needed to be online in the past 3 days. So I couldn’t even watch them because of some nonsensical, anti-consumer policies. So I downloaded a third party app that gives me premium features (and more) that allows me to actually watch videos offline.

I came here expecting to get tips on piracy and instead I saw a bunch of people claiming they were doing God’s work. Insane.

You came here looking for tips but you’re getting a reality check instead. I think it’s awesome.

Not to mention the fact that oftentimes pirated content is just better. DRM free games run better and some work people have put into remastering media in general is outstanding.

I found a collection of the DBZ anime which is color corrected, proper aspect ratio, higher resolution, improved audio (from a different home release with better audio) made by fans for no profit. Even if you wanted to you couldn’t purchase that but piracy made it possible.

Unofficial remasters of some old, poorly mastered songs have made a difference for me and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy them without resorting to piracy.