Inspired by a post since deleted, I feel bad for probably coming off judgemental about the poster’s taste in the movie that drove him to consider sailing.
The earliest desired media I can remember that drove me to figure out sailing was DC Talk, a Christian rock band. Pop music was not allowed in my house, so a Christian group was tantalizing and scandalous to a rebellious, young Vanth. Things escalated from there.
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When I was a poor student I pirated everything. Music, software, games, you name it.
Now that I have a good stable income, I pay for the things I want because I want to encourage artists and developers. But corporations and capitalism are ruining it all.
So, I’m changing my habits. Paying money where it actually has a significant impact on the creators, (like going to live concerts and shows, buying albums directly from the artist or from their own site, buying indie games from small studios, going to watch movies from studios that respect their employees and artists and unions) and pirating the ever loving shit out of everything else coming out of a large corporation.
This seems the most ethical to me. Don’t pirate smaller stuff. I would say it’s ethical to also pirate where the artist has passed away and it’s just their estate who get the money, but I’d take that on a case by case basis.
First time, it was because I was a kid that couldn’t pay for the movies/music/games I wanted. The high seas provided me with a solution for that.
Then I started making money and Netflix streaming came along making it both cheap and convenient. I docked my ship and forgot about my pirate life for a long time. Everything was good, living a quiet life…
But then the corporate greed caught up and ruined everything. Streaming prices became absurd, content got fragmented to way too many services and they fucking started introducing ads.
So here I am, setting sail once again. I didn’t need or want this, but they have forced my hand with their infinite greed.
Same for me - I got fed up of using JustWatch to check which (if any) of my subscribed streaming platforms had the film I wanted, open said platform, search for the film, find out it’s not actually available (or I have to pay on top of my subscription), and rage quit.
I even looked for a way to use lots of streaming platforms from the same interface, but of course you can’t do that cause DRM/lockin/etc.
Yeah they’re fighting really hard to combat piracy, but at the same time all their decisions are what is actively pushing their customers (back) to piracy.
Don’t forget deleting things you “bought” from right out under your nose.
Seriously, I did the same thing, early times pirating, only for my whole family. And when Netflix was good, requests for TV shows and movies went way down. I only had to pirate really obscure stuff that wasn’t easily accessible.
But now I’m back in full swing, more than ever before honestly, out of necessity. And I don’t see it slowing down.
I’ve never “bought” digital streaming media for that exact reason, so that happened impacted me personally. I didn’t trust them to begin with and I was right in not doing so. But yeah, that’s definitely also a shitty move and valid reason to pirate IMO.
I paid over $1k about 10 years ago for music software. My computer killed itself, so I made a new one and redownloaded the software…but the company said I’m an imposter. After years of fighting with them, they refused to activate my paid software despite proving my identity and showing proof of purchase. I didn’t choose to pirate, the system chose for me
“You merely adopted piracy, I was born in it, molded by it”
Sounds like a new Netflix movie plot.
lol imagine if Netflix made a show glorifying piracy
And we pirate it.
Corporate greed.
Subscriptions, subscriptions everywhere
Yes. And also ease of use plus much better quality.
Wanted a game. Was too expensive. said “fuck it” and set sail.
Funny story the other way around: the year is 2002 and I live in Laos. Bootlegs Everything Galore, all movies games music cost $1 or about. I discover a game, and then begins a quest to buy The Real Version because it’s a small studio and I really like it all, the storytelling, the modding tools, the community… A quest that would end up in Bangkok looking like the proverbial insane foreigner looking for the most stupid way to spend his money.
I found it eventually, in a shop that didn’t look any different among all its brothers in Pantip Plaza. Took me a while lol.
Wanted a game, back then wasn’t available in my country unless I travelled 3 hours to a city that had one store that had the game, also was too expensive and no way I would’ve convinced parents to spend it on game. Shores of high sea are always at your doorstep.
Convenience. Well, nowadays that is. And I only started again after the enshittification of streaming services started. I buy all my games legally, just motion picture that I get from the seas.
As a kid/teenager it was more about the money. We cracked games to play on LAN parties without everyone having to have a (retail) copy etc.
Yeah steam is where it’s at. I’m sure it won’t last, and they have their own problems. But for now? It really is a service problem with TV and movies.
I can easily buy and own a game from steam, play it on my deck and get updates, no muss no fuss.
Exactly the same here too. As a teenager we also all pitched in on a CD burner when they first came out and kept it at the BBS’s owners place, I just remember a single CD took forever back then when it was 1x and 2x recording speed. That allowed us to share a ton more without everyone having to get together on the LAN.
Absolutely. I was thinking of the CD/DVD burning speeds back then. For example, I learned through trial and error that burning at 52x speed for a PS2 game often made it impossible for the console to read the disc. So I had to resort to slower burn speeds like 4x and it worked like a charm. Never got around to actually understanding the reason behind this.
Cable installer guy came to the house one time… Hooked up internet and asked me if I was going to Torrent or not. I had no idea what he was talking about as this was 2005.
Did some googling canceled my cable subscription and I never looked back.
Got off the The seas when Netflix was big… And then all that changed again…
So here we are again.
I remember feeling liberated when streaming became big. Dealing with potential fake files, low quality, or having something stuck on 95% with no seeders was something I wasn’t going to miss when I ditched piracy for Netflix… then the streaming wars began and here I come crawling back.
I’m on Usenet now. With the arr applications it makes it a lot easier and I rarely am unable to find something. Not to mention maxing out bandwidth and downloading the entire file.
The first time or the second time?
The first time was because I was sick of paying the “Australia tax” for new releases that took longer to reach us than most of the rest of the world. The second time was due to subscription fee hikes with associated reduction in quality & range of content.
I was sick of paying the “Australia tax” for new releases that took longer to reach us than most of the rest of the world.
Exactly this, except I actually stopped for a long time when Netflix first came out and wasn’t geo-restricted… then the enshittification started.
In the early 00s I pirated a lot of music, but now I buy records and pay for streaming because it’s affordable and good.
I used to pirate software but now I just use FOSS because it’s free and good.
I used to pirate games but now I just wait for steam sales, which is cheap and good.
I used to pirate lots of movies and tv shows but then got a Netflix account and it was reasonably priced and good… until it wasn’t. Then I set up a full stack of usenet/ sonarr/ radarr/ overseer/ Jellyfin and boy oh boy is that good.
But now I have a baby and don’t watch tv anymore so I pirate pretty much nothing.
Congratulations!
That Baby will want some Peppa Pig (mine are over a decade old now so yes I’m out of date) in the future so your stack will come in useful again!
My Babies want Anime now
Crazy prices for movies and software like Photoshop. I’m still subscribed to YT Music, but I have to pirate music as silly wars between labels and artists result in music being removed from streaming services from time to time. For the same reason I don’t want to buy movies online - we don’t own shit.
I went back to it recently. It’s mostly down to Amazon deciding that paying them was no longer enough, you had to watch their ads as well.
Well now I don’t. I installed Jellyfin, paid up for two years of VPN, and got another HDD. I’m set. I’m all done with asking nicely for a better service so I got my own.
I sub to Spotify because it’s easier than pirating. I’m a creature of convenience. If there was one streaming service that had all movies that have already had their cinema run, and all TV shows, and was all in one UI, and nothing ever got taken off it, and it was a reasonable price (say the price of two current streaming services), I’d probably pay up for it.
But there isn’t. They don’t want to offer it. They all want to be king of their little corner.
I’m honest so I will tell the truth: I like cheap stuff.
I was poor. Pirates selling copied disks on the street was all I could afford
My mom showed me what Limewire was when I was a kid. She didn’t know what piracy was.
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My dad had a Raspberry Pi running Kodi, complete with a bunch of Totally Legit plugins which allowed him to watch anything he wanted. Thought it was legal and above board because… wait for it… it’s open-source
