Well, my friend, he’s kinda poor he can’t afford some books and some streaming services, so he pirates. He pirate books, audiobook and videos and other stuff. Sometimes he buys books he likes a lot out of loyalty to the author (yeah, I don’t understand it either), he likes to read physical books, but yeah, if he hates the author or just wants to skim through it, he will download the book.

He usually doesn’t like to pirate from small companies or professors who are trying to make a living by selling books, but from millionaires & plenty of mega corps which already have loads of money, he feels like it’s the right move to pirate

Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn’t pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it? i.e., had you paid for the book, you would have more likely read that book.

He says he will buy stuff when his time is more valuable than money, let’s all hope that day is soon.

What are your piracy habits?

  • drcouzelis@lemmy.zip
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    10 months ago

    I don’t have an answer to your exact question but I want to emphasize…

    NOTHING in the history of humankind has ever existed like computer data. A 100% identical copy of videos, pictures, and music can be made almost instantly at what is essentially zero cost to the original holder of the data. Any comparison to “stealing” or to a physical object (a car lol) just falls flat because the situation is just so different.

    Practically speaking, the world we live in, with computers everywhere, cheap storage, and easy fast internet access for so much of the world, has only been around for about two decades, maybe three. NOTHING like this has ever existed before, and businesses, culture, and laws have been very slow to catch up.

    I’m not saying pirating is right or wrong, just that the whole idea is still so new that society hasn’t caught up to it yet.

  • TrismegistusMx@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Even if I pay for a product I love some asshole suit is going to get a bigger cut than the artists who did the work.

    • Hanabie@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      I’m an indie author, and all my novels ended up on PDFdrive.

      Not that I’d be mad about it. If someone pirates my books and likes them, maybe they’ll support me in the future.

      Just saying, I’m not wearing suits. I’m working full-time and write when I have off and got the time and energy.

      For us Indies, getting eyeballs on our books is next to impossible anyways, so I already gave up on the idea that writing will ever be more than an expensive hobby.

  • Stuka@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    Give me a reasonably priced, accessible way to enjoy the content and I will happily pay for it.

    Streaming has become untenable and now it’s neither affordable nor convenient to watch what I want to watch. And with how frequently shows and movies bounce around platforms, who knows if the show I want to watch this weekend will be still available on one if the many platforms I’ve been paying for.

    I’m just done with it.

  • Joe Bidet@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    All culture belongs to everyone, therefore should be accessible to everyone.

    The sale of goods only concerns those who can and want to afford it.

    Sharing is not theft.

    Pirates are cool.

  • JasSmith@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    I don’t pirate music or games because there are reasonable platforms and pricing models which make pirating more hassle than it’s worth. Shows and movies, on the other hand, are an absolute shitshow to purchase legally.

    • Outrageous pricing.

    • Declining quality. Especially writing. See Rings of Power, Wheel of Time, and Foundation.

    • Content is often unavailable to purchase. See Disney vault.

    • Competing streaming services. I’d have to subscribe to six services to access the shows I like.

    • Content disappears from services with little notice.

    • Studios and platforms have been removing and modifying older content for political reasons.

    It’s like they’re trying to make the experience as bad as possible. So fuck ‘em. Thank you Sonarr and Radarr.

  • comfisofa@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    You know how writers get paid fuck all for the movies they write? You know how animators are paid criminally low wages for the anime they produce? At the end of the day for most media it’s the companies that get all the money, not the artists. Therefore, fuck them, I am pirating your content not contributing to your profit margins.

  • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    I only pirate TVs/Movies. Streaming is in such a shitty state that I don’t want to figure out what service is on what, and I’m certainly not going to subscribe for just one thing to watch. I feel no remorse.

  • HTTP_404_NotFound@lemmyonline.com
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    10 months ago

    I cannot confirm, nor deny.

    But, I will say, once upon a time, before the days of netflix, if you wanted to watch things, you needed to spend a fuckload of money, to watch it on cable, with commercials every 10 minutes… or, you drove to a blockbuster. So, you either did that, or you obtained the movie/tv/etc, via a torrent.

    Then, netflix came along, gave you a ton of content, at a reasonable price. And- then, there wasn’t really much of an advantage to obtaining media via other alternative means. So, netflix took over by storm, and piracy went way down.

    Then, everyone wanted a piece of the action. So, then Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, HBO+, ESPN+, (And insert 50 other network-specific streaming services) jumped into the fray. Then, they all made exclusive streaming contracts. So, if you watch a handful of things, you would need a handful of streaming service subscriptions.

    And- again, the alternative option of piracy, became the better option, as you can watch whatever the f- you want, WHENever you want, without having to pay for 50 different subscriptions every month, just to watch a TV series, which they decide to cancel after the 2nd season.

    Do you justify?

    If the fucking scumbags didn’t get greedy in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this situation. But, no, everyone wanted an extremely generous piece of the pie, and now everything has went to shit again. Fuck those guys. Isn’t like the actual actors/writers staring in movies gets any of the money anyways.

  • skulkingaround@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    If there was a service I could pay like $100-200/mo for and just have every movie and TV show I’d happily pay for it. It doesn’t exist, but pirate sites do and they do have every movie and TV show, including tons completely unavailable on any streaming service

    GabeN got it right, piracy is a service issue. I haven’t pirated a PC game in probably 12 years because steam works great and has basically every PC game I could ask for.

    • Ocelot@lemmies.world
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      10 months ago

      Totally. I don’t pirate games because steam exists. Im just so sick and tired of the constantly changing content of streaming services, or companies taking away purchased content, or worse forcing ads. I would also like to watch the things I purchased without an internet connection on any device I want. Give me that and I’ll gladly pay for it.

      • Pastor Haggis@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        The last time I pirated a game was for Freelancer. Couldn’t buy it anywhere except a CD and there was no guarantee it would work so I pirated it, it wasn’t what I expected, so I removed it.

        I also downloaded a Halo CE crack for PC but I owned the physical disk and just used it to play with friends at a LAN party.

        Otherwise there’s no reason to pirate anything gaming related, short of protest or something.

        TV, movies and music are so hard to find. Lots of people will tell me “no just use Spotify”. No. Go try to listen to Turn the Page by Bob Seger, and not a live version. The only versions Spotify has are the live and the Metallica versions. Try to find Whitesnake’s Deep Purple cover album. I used to never pirate music because I could buy the few albums they didn’t have and upload them to Google music. Now, there’s no option for that. I’d rather have a smaller library with the music I want than a massive one that’s missing my favorites,

  • unfinished | 🇵🇸@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    I pirate all media I consume and seed terabytes of pirated media every month, proudly. Fuck capitalism, that’s my justification.