Asklemmy

I regularly advocate for shows I pirate so I’m a walking ad for shows.

If its not multiplayer, why care.

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

Depends.

Sometimes I just can't find the actual thing by legal means. Go try listening to Bruce Woolley's version of "Video Killed The Radio Star" sometime. I can either try to hunt down a physical copy or I can just pirate it. See also: most video game soundtracks.

Usually though it's more about convenience. If I can just stream something on Spotify, I'll just do that.

If there's a movie I kinda wanna see but I'm not sure if it's going to be good I'll pirate it

If i don't see the value i'm pirating.

Money is tight, don't expect me to pay for a play button that you'll take away the second i can't spare the money. It means there is no value delivered for my money so i don't have a reason to spend my hard earned money.

Especially when the amouny is as significant as 10/15€. Fuck i would've bought a cd for each month i could spare that money.

Only thing I've pirated was a show with no reasonable means to access it legitimately in my region. Hell, I couldn't even access it via VPN because the services it was on didn't accept my card due to region.

Normally of the mind that if it isn't worth my money it isn't worth my time, but in this case I just wasn't allowed to pay them for it. Hardly my fault when they've gone that far out of their way to block me buying it.

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

Piracy leaves creators worse off when it deprives them of a sale, as in you would have paid for something but instead just pirated it because not paying was an option. So I pirate stuff I think is worth my time, but not my money. I then consider it victimless. Maybe that movie is interesting enough to watch but not enough to rent/buy, so I would pirate it. I'm now at a point where money isn't as scarce as it used to be, so the prices of entertainment seem reasonable and I am much more willing to pay.

There are a couple of exceptions to the above. I pirated almost every textbook I could since the fact that a student requires one specific product puts the customer in an exploitable position that allows the seller to charge unreasonable amounts (and used books have none of their proceeds go back to the creator anyway). Also, there is no issue with pirating content no longer being sold, since the creators aren't being deprived of anything. This is mostly relevant for me with old video games on emulators.

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.

For me it's usually about availability. If someone suggests I try out a cool game that came out in the 80s, there's a pretty good chance piracy is the only way to play it. Sure, you can pay way too much on Ebay to get a physical copy, and I have a fair collection of retro games, but it's not like the money from Ebay sales go back to the original creators.

Same with movies. The version of Star Wars I grew up with, the one without all the digitally added stuff since the late 90s, isn't on Disney+. If Disney announced a nice blu-ray Star Wars collection that featured the copies without Jedi Rocks and the extra aliens in the cantina and whatever, I'd go out and get it. But they haven't, so I stick to the fan-made 'despecialized editions'.

I don't pirate from the little guy. I buy albums on Bandcamp and indie games on Steam all the time. I want the small creators to be able to eat. But I'm also fortunate enough to have a little disposable income. I know some people pirate as much as they can, and while I don't entirely agree with it, I don't know their financial situation (or the availability of these things in their country), so it's not really my place to judge them.

Everything not physical that can be pirated should be pirated.

You have better thing to do with your money.

Books exist to be lent out.

Games too at the time. Now you can't because of bullshit, so joke on them I won't pay.

Books & Music money is not going to the artists.

Movie world is full of shit and overpaid anyway.

I also don't wan't a single of my cents going to USA or US company.

If I like something so much I feel I should pay, which is rare, I find a more direct way without leeches.

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 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 want to support artists, but I will not pay for shit I've already pay for. I own an N64 and loads of games, I have the roms and will never pay a subscription to play worse versions in restricted conditions.

I will also not pay for the sports channels it is far too much. Where I am there are are like 3-4 different sports packages required to watch one league. Fuck that

I need the definition of pirating since it always means something different to someone else.

If I stream movies and shows using my friends library am I pirating? What if I download a show from my friends library for later viewing for personal use, then delete it a week later since I don't need it? Let's assume my friends library was all purchased legitimatly.

I tend to pirate and then buy later, when cheaper. Or for streaming services, I'll download a show as it airs but then purchase the service and background the series later to add viewership.

I think of it as time shifting the sale price.

I used to quite a bit, for random, hard to find songs. I also did it to get in digital format, what I owned on vinyl. A few older classic movies here and there. I can’t remember the last time I pirated anything, but I still use torrents for bootleg concerts.

I was 14 and just got a cable modem when Napster came out. I just got introduced to modern music, had no way to pay for it other than asking my folks. Let's jump on the pirate ship!

Now I'll let you do the math on my age, I have very stable income, and a fair amount of disposable savings, and I still pirate pretty much my ears will be hearing. Plex has equal or better tools for watching/listening than every other service I've tried (shuffling episodes is my favorite)

I go to concerts, watch movies in the theatre, read physical books and support creatives in other ways.. so I feel different about that..

I also started noticing this when itunes came out. You could only listen to music YOU PAID FOR on devices you've authorized. Then soon after I saw this, a friend was down on his luck but had a very good and varied cd collection. He started selling them to second hand shops and his friends.

I ended up seeing this dichotomy and thought to myself.... this sucks. Let's just pirate it..

I should note the amount of physical unread books I have on my shell are similarly rationed to the amount of music I haven't listened to or movies I haven't watched yet that I've also pirated

Yes. Because I can't afford either.

I'm not gonna pay $200 just to play an old pokemon game. I do buy other games at my local shop though.

You cannot steal what is not physical. Theft implies removing a physical object from somewhere, creating a loss of an item.

Digital information is 1s and 0s, and you just create a copy. You do not remove the original one. There is no theft taking place.

The value of a product does not go down because I didn't pay for it. If anything, if it's a quality product, the value goes up. If I pirate something and enjoy it, chances are I will pay for it when I can afford to. If I pirate something and don't enjoy it, well, I wasn't going to buy the product anyway so there's no loss. Let's say I watch a movie at a friend's house and absolutely hate it. I do not buy the movie. How is that different than pirating it and coming to the same conclusion? I see the movie without paying money.

I pirate things because it's free and easy. My actions are not intended to serve any greater cause. There are some things I pay for out of convenience: pirated video games typically mean no official servers; Android apps are better managed automatically by the Google Play store.

If you're gonna do it, do it, but don't pretend like you're morally right in doing it. For the vast majority of us, we're pirating something we don't need but something we want. Is it hard to acquire? Does it come tied to annoying subscriptions? Does it come from a company you don't like? Is it too expensive? None of these are valid reasons to pirate something because you could just as well enjoy other media that are available to you. Or if you are out of accessible media to you, you could just not enjoy media. Be bored. You're not entitled to access to the things you're pirating.

Don't get me wrong, I understand you, and I empathize. I pirate too, when something I want falls under the conditions I listed above, but I'm under no illusion that it's ethical in some way. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism? Well there's no ethical piracy either. People put work into something and if you use it, you should pay what they ask for it.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, because no one wants to be the bad guy. Pirate if you want to pirate, your reasons are yours, but be honest about it. You pirated something because you wanted it, and you didn't want to not get it, and you didn't want to pay the entry price either. It is what it is.

About the only thing I pirate these days is stuff that isn't available to legally pay for in my country.