Asklemmy

Tv and movies: streaming services have buggy and badly developed apps, random connection issues and sometimes shitty quality because of browsers DRM madness (looking at you Prime Video). Regular televion has too much ads. If I want to see something comfortably sometimes it's just better to browse your folder of .mp4, in full quality and with no interruptions.

Games: either 2000s era games you literally cannot buy anymore or games that keep releasing broken and unfinished remasters and enhanced versions and that pump up so many DLCs you would end up broke to have a somewhat complete experience. Or games you can buy but with the original price and that are more maintaned by the community than the developers (looking at you 25€+DLC codMW2 full of hackers with iw4x servers working perfctly)

It's capitalism, the free market at work.

I live outside the US market. As a rule I'll pay for whatever content is legally available in my country (netflix, disney+, steam etc) however there are certain publishers and/or content which is simply not offered through any channel. At that point they aren't going to see $ from me in any case, so I may as well pirate.

It's the ease of use for me. Arrs + usenet + plex is an unbeatable combo.

If its region locked i pirate it. I just cant be bothered to look for a vpn that's not blocked by this site. Alao if site is a shit i pirate it ,in my case crunchyroll . I really tried using it but Its just not working with my shitty internet and the buffer size is too small to load whole wideo while i do other stuff. YouTube and Netflix somehow works on my internet.

I pay for music because it is easy. I don't pay for video because there is no avenue like spotify for video

Yes, I pirate, and I pirate alot. Games, books, shows, software, I do it all. But I also buy stuff, mainly games, occasionally books. I'm am not in a position where I have the sort of money to buy everything I want.

My piracy philosophy is mainly to almost always pirate it first. If I like the game enough, I'll buy the game when I have the money. I have done this alot, A Hat in Time, Hollow Knight, and recently Baldurs Gate 3.

With books it's alot more difficult, as they tend to be alot more expensive than games, especially for the series I read. (Manga and Light Novels). As there will fairly often be around 30$ per volume where I live, and close to 12 volumes total. And that's if you can even buy them in the country, or if they have even been translated officially, which if they haven't, then piracy is your only choice to read it.

Regarding shows, I basically only watch Anime, and the only way to really stream Anime is crunchyroll, which region locks alot of the shows, gives hardly any money back to the actual creators of the shows, then uses the money they get to make awful shows. Pirating anime is realistically the only way to enjoy it hassle free.

For software, everything is license based now, I'm willing to do one off purchases at a reasonable price (something like steam wallpaper engine), but I hate recurring fees. I pirate software like photoshop.

Ultimately piracy isn't really as bad as people tend to think it is, it's largely just people enjoying the stuff that they would never have been able to pay to enjoy anyway. It's especially good for people with less disposable income in helping them find where they can spend the money on things they enjoy, such as with me with the games I mentioned earlier.

1. It's copying and not stealing, and honestly current copyright law is stupid and broken
2. Decreasing the profits of big corporations like Hollywood movie studios is not immoral and shouldn't be illegal
3. There are some shows or movies I can't find in my country legally
4. With increased competition in the streaming market, it costs as much as a cable subscription to get all the content I used to be able to get from one streaming service

I used to pirate quite a bit, but I’ve since pulled back and I’ll even buy stuff that I had formerly pirated, because I appreciated it so well and wanted to get a “clean” copy. Alot of the pirated stuff just sort of sits there most of the time, I’m kind of more a data hoarder than an active pirate. I “justify” my pirating by considering myself more of an archivist, as a big chunk of the stuff I pirate is old out-of-print RPGs that would have long ago disappeared completely were it not for piracy.

Just big companies and because they will screw people over for a profit.

Something fun I listened to today about tpb and free access to information/cultural peices of art. Kinda.. https://youtu.be/eFQFW5JgUjE?si=50BXG19ey8pVEYfv

Across everyone in the house, we have Hulu, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Disney/ESPN. Sailing the high seas means all the shows and movies available from those servicea can be accessed via one media server interface.

Every once in a while I log into Amazon Video to see if their interface is as hot trash as I remember. It always is.

I started pirating because it was the default for me. I was a young child and I had access to the family computer I had no money so I learned how to pirate before I learned how to buy games also piracy is real popular in my country because its poor af. Later on I became political and relized mega corps didn't need my money, lots of other people were throwing their money into these bottomless pits anyway. About indie games I try to buy them but since I now am a teenager with no money and in a lot poorer country I tend to pirate them anyway even though its wrong

I will pirate it if it's old (tv series from the 80's, for example) or if I can't get it legally. I live in a country that falls through distribution loopholes moderately often. Like right now, I can't watch the latest season of Lower Decks on prime even though I could the previous ones. Some kind of licensing thing. If it's not resolved soon, I'll be taking to the high seas for it.

I used to pirate anything. Music, movies, softwares, games...

Since I have a developer job and a stable income, I don't really pirate much stuff anymore, only movies and series, but then the whole piracy thing is not even illegal here where I live.

Maybe softwares, too, if I can't find any free and/or open source alternative of it.

For games and music, I like to pay, if I can. If it's expensive, I wait to some sale.

And also, with pirated stuff, you always end up something doesn't work or missing or you just have to make compromises. Fuck that, I'm too old for that.

One aspect of pirating is appealing to me tho - preservation. Anything you can't go and just buy because of dead services or just time going by needs to be preserved. It applies for hardwares, too. Liberating closed hardware and software is a noble thing in my eyes, and it justifies piracy.

I pirate. I don't justify pirating. I just do it, because I want things and have the ability to get them for free, so I do that.

I've been emulating for years, but the first and only game I've pirated is Starfield, because I was certain the game wasn't worth the asking price and I wasn't going to shell out $70 and risk a 2 hour time limit on the refund with a studio that's infamous for long intros.

Turns out I was right, and I've already deleted it. If at some point in the far future the modders make something good of it, I will buy it at a heavily discounted 'GOTY Starborn splappy boom blappy edition Mk VII' price.

If its not multiplayer, why care.

I pirate the odd bit of music and the ocassional film if I cant find it on streaming services, or if I need music in MP3 format for swimming with, vast bulk of what I pirate is music though. And probably less than 10% of all the media I have is pirated. Make something easily available in the format I need at a reasonable price and I'll happily pay for it

I just don't earn enough money to justify paying for movies, games and books, i can use those money to pay my bills and what little left after paying my bills, i save it for future

I usually don't pirate, if something is overpriced then I'll wait until it's on sale. I have a set budget every month that I pay for entertainment, if something like a new video game is more expensive I'll just wait a month.

I'm especially against pirating products of asshole companies like Adobe. That's because even if you don't pay for them you're still popularizing their products, helping it stay an industry standard. I'm not in a profession where they're a necessity so I use their competitors like Affinity, which is good enough for my purposes, and I'm ok with supporting them.

I sometimes watch movies or series on non-legal streaming sites if they're not available elsewhere, but that's about it.

i'm on basic welfare (400 dollars per month to afford everything i need) so yeah, i don't exactly have a choice..

Me? No! I wouldn't...

I did when I was young and broke. now I don't. 🤷‍♂️