What's up with people on the piracy subreddit always talking about how they pay for stuff. your on a piracy community and they talk about purchasing digital goods? I don't get it. New piracy gen ?
I don’t pirate because I’m opposed to paying for things. I pirate stuff because I don’t want to support scumbag corporations that don’t give a shit about me. In fact, I buy most of the media and games I consume, in order to support the devs behind it.
And that’s not a “new piracy gen”, that’s how piracy has always been for most people. You’re the odd one out here.
I’m a bit astonished how often I see this kind of thread, even here. It’s like when people complain about FOSS apps charging subscriptions or standalone fees. How many times does it have to be pointed out that piracy as an activity does not define piracy as a movement or a collective?
I’m certain this simplistic “piracy = not paying for stuff” take can only come from a kind of ignorant individualism, one that lacks any structural analysis of why, when, and for what content people turn to piracy (and why, when, etc, they stop).
piracy = not paying for stuff - in many countries around the world, that’s more like a cultural thing. I know because I’ve in both sides. I come from a 3rd world country but now live in Europe.
There are times when I just but the app/service to support the devs (mostly small devs). Eg for Apps I have bought: Nova Launcher (long back and don’t use), PowerAmp, MiXplorer Silver & Pano Scrobbler.
Could I get them for free? Definitely yes. Did I ever used Pirated version of them? Yes, of course.
Pirating gives me the option not to support shit corporations that fuck over consumers with no business ethics. I can pirate the content I choose and pay for it when I want to support creators.
Historically, pirating and underground markets for good and services begin to proliferate in a society as a sign that their economic system is failing. IMHO, unbridled capitalism and corporate shitification in the US is turning the Internet into a hellscape with 5 companies basically controlling the entire Internet with so much lobbying muscle behind them they remain untouchable through what remains of the democratic system.
It’s a convenience thing. Remember when Apple Music and Spotify used to be $5.99 a few years ago? It was really hard to justify pirating then, for example. Like I’d have to find what I was looking for, close a million pop ups to get the torrent, download it, then upload the files onto whatever device I was using. And I would have to do it over again for the car, and over again for my wife if she asked for it, etc.
Or I could just type it into a search bar, and bam. All for $5.99, and I didn’t have to worry about storage? Sign me up.
The convenience of Spotify is still sort of worth the price, but it’s getting pretty marginal. The other streaming services we use brought us the same level of convenience, but they are getting way too greedy and creating way too many of them. Netflix and the media streamers turned into Cable. Which is going to inevitably turn us all back to pirating as they start cracking down on password sharing and keep creating new services with bloated fees.
The dumb fuckers literally figured out how to defeat piracy. And then drove us back to piracy with their greed. So when they inevitably start crying about it again, tell them all to eat shit.
And digital games being the same price as the physical copy. I remember when they were trying to say the uptick in price was due to the box and stuff inside, then digital came along and it was the same price, proving they lied and are simply greedy. Even if it was only $10 less I could justify the ridiculous price. Games should cost more. A lot of work went into them. But not $70. That’s over a days worth of work for those poor folk who make minimum wage.
Between power, hardware depreciation, Usenet/indexer fees and VPN I probably pay somewhere like €50/month to curate my own media collection.
I’d be happy to pay the same for a legal platform that has all the content I want in the same place, like Spotify for music (which I use and pay for).
Right now the piracy experience for movies/series is simply superior to the legal experience , so there is absolutely no incentive for me to switch things up.
I would say there are levels to pirates. Not everyone here wants or needs to be a pirate 100% of the time. Sure, everyone could download all their music but why bother if you have a streaming service that you consider cheap and you prefer streaming over storage. Like anything, they’re levels to it.
Sometimes if I pirate a game and the game was actually pretty good, I will go ahead and buy the game after. I do it less often now that we have steam. As an example I pirated ghost trick years ago as it was only for the ds and I didn’t want to buy a ds. Later the game became available on steam so I bought it.
Depends on what it is? I pirated music for years when I couldn’t afford to buy albums. When I finally could afford to support the artists I liked by buying their stuff I did. It’s part of the reason I find the move to streaming services so frustrating. I want to pay once for access to an album. Not 100 times.
People generally will fairly buy content when it’s available and fairly priced if they want to support the creators. There’s a huge difference between wanting to help your favorite content producer VS companies that fart out mult-hundred dollar box sets of old content
When I was younger I pirated because I didn’t have any money to spare for digital media. Today I have a stable income and can afford all these things but I still pirate because it’s just more convenient in many ways.
Whenever I consume something that I really like I 100% support the artist / developers mostly by buying this exact product and / or some merch or by going to their concerts (if it’s music related)
To me piracy is just a way of freedom. Which includes to respect other people if they like or dislike spending money on certain things. In my eyes we should not split this community in such a way because this would kill the essence of freedom to make your own choices
At least for me it’s a matter of convenience. It’s not that I can’t afford Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. It’s more a question of why would I try to remember when they come out of my account and who has what shows when TPB has it all in one spot?
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