When individual and corporate greed raced passed universal societal progression. Nothing counts unless it sells.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Movies? Just owning a dvd or bluray. It was filled with a bunch of trailers and other junk when I just wanted the movie itself to start and didn't care for all of the other.
TV Shows?
Right when it releases, so I don't have to see the between ads and I couldn't actually buy it until the full season released. Even then, now they moved to streaming only, where even now you can't buy the optical media if you want leaving you with only the option to download it. Even if you wanted to pay, they won't let you buy it.
Music?
Instead of a bunch of music at the time, on MP3 player, I could just rip my discs or download them. If my disc was damaged, I could download. Instead of just having all of these crappy songs, I could select just the ones I want and put on cd at the time.
Software?
When I couldn't afford it, and still refuse to pay for subscription. I usually try to use open source now other than gaming. I will buy games, on sale, on gog or steam. Provided it's on sale, and not $60 or $80. $20 or $30? Sure.
Now? One time license? Sure.
I specifically own a computer, for dedicated cracked software and cracked games that doesn't ever connect to the internet. So, no issue if it's infected. For those games, I will buy them, when they're not $80 dollars. I'll wait until it's $30. I only install trusted sources, but you never know.
Never will I pay $80 for a new game. Even if I want it bad. That's beyond ridiculous.
Well, I grew up with knowledge of cable pirating in apartment complexes, VHS recording of retals to share or rewatch or watch later, and tape and CD sharing and mixing...
So as far as Im aware pirating was always a easy, viable, and economically savvy choice.
I did explore Netflix for a brief time 15 years ago, but the quality of their service degraded heavily, and I still pirated alongside my Netflix membership, as their content was always limited. And I shared my member ship with others, then later occasionally used a membership that was shared with me, until Netflix broke that system.
I don't watch a lot of films or TV so I used to buy blu-rays and rip them myself but I really don't want to store a load of useless discs in my house. If companies offered DRM-free digital purchases of the remuxed blu-ray files then I'd pay but since that's nowhere near being the case, I guess it's piracy for me.
Maybe with the *arr suite? It was better waaaay earlier than that for other reasons.
The inverse is also a good question, as I left piracy behind for Netflix and was happy to be legit… right up until so many studios got $ signs in their eyes (envious of Netflix’s success,) and instead of building their own platforms and letting folks choose where to consume their content, the studios pulled their content and fractured the market.
The greedy fucks! So no, I don’t feel bad pirating content. Not one bit.
(Felt bad for Netflix but their oh-shit-we-need-content in house studio is doing ok, I’d say! Also I paid for Netflix for far longer than anyone else, by far.)
Oh I suppose I should say, if you’re not familiar with the *arr suite it basically makes it so you can just search for a show or movie, add it to your library, and come back later and it’ll be ready to go in jellyfin or whatever. Plus it’ll grab new versions as they come out.
Combine that ease of use with zero ads and zero bullshit and yeah, the net effect is better than paid streaming services.
The tenth time I told someone “watch X show on Netflix” and they said “it’s not on there.”
When broadband became the predominant way of using the internet and it no longer took an entire day to download a single episode of DBZ.
I started pirating so far back I cannot remember.
Soon as things started getting too expensive and shitty EULA’s that basically exempt the Software maker from any liability whatsoever. This is what started me pirating.
I would say it was in the 90’s then I got lazy as things got cheaper but now I think I may start up again. I have ton of rock FLACS and a fair number of movies (a lot of original YIFY’s with subs) I could seed etc. Just need to setup with whatever is used nowadays.
It seems to have gone back and forth a bit. I started pirating 25 years ago in no small part because of price. But then streaming came along and delivered a good and reasonably priced solution that worked well so I stopped pirating about 15 years ago. I got sick of the continuous degradation of service and ever increasing prices a few years ago and now I don't have any streaming subscriptions anymore. This time it is a combination of poor service quality and high price that caused be to ditch them.
This. Early 2000s pirating was harder and less convenient (no arr stack, no plex/jellyfin) but buying a bunch of dvd’s/cd’s was a lot more expensive, if they even were available, and personally I was pretty broke.
Then streaming came along. It was dope, for a good price you could get good enough quality and quantity, of both music and shows/movies. I stopped pirating.
When I was up to 3 or 4 video streaming services it hit me — I’m paying 40/50 a month, and I STILL don’t have everything I want to watch? This is bullshit.
Went back to pirating, now with all the new software sometimes I’ll download stuff that I have available elsewhere just because it’s all nicely integrated in my setup.
Still don’t pirate music, since music streaming is still convenient — 1 service, pretty much all the music.
I've had a similar experience, but for even longer (piracy of ZX Spectrum games was pretty common where I lived back in the 80s).
In my experience, the ebb and flow of piracy very much depends on the media - music was pretty easy to pirate from very early on the internet age as soon as decent sound compression methods were invented (most notably those used in MP3) because each track is a pretty small file then stuff like Spotify reduced it, video piracy actually took off with faster Internet and better compression methods (starting with MPEG) and then fell with cheap streaming, game piracy took increased with faster Internet (though there it was weirder - games sizes and internet speed kinda went up more or less in parallel) and then fell thanks to stores like Steam and GOG.
That said, I personally never switched from piracy to streaming because I saw it back then as "not really owning anything" with all the associated risks (which we've seen materializing with the enshittification of the last decade) plus I'm averse to subscription models since financially they tend to end up adding up to more money than just buying because you're paying subscription to access a ton of mediocre stuff and a handfull of good stuff vs just buying the handful of good stuff.
(I suspect that, because I became familiar with and started working in Tech during the transition to the Internet Era, much earlier than most here, I was more keenly aware of the risks of what you supposedly "owned" not really being in your hands and the real overall financial returns for the user of subscription models, hence I always saw it as a trap).
The funny bit is that when I could just buy the digital media in an unlocked format, I switched away from piracy, which is why I pretty much didn't pirate games during the DVD era, then games started coming with phone-home DRM and I went back to pirating again and later I discovered GOG and stopped pirating again.
Had I've been able to legally just buy and download videos in an open format, I would've gladly paid for it, but instead they've stopped getting money from me ever since locked-down region-locked Bluray became the norm.
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It has always been the case except for a short period of time when Netflix was decent but then streaming turned into cable with ads and shitty content. Now it is all the more enticing due to Jellyfin, arr stack, Seerr and faster Internet speeds. If I had to pay for streaming all the shows I liked, I'd be paying in excess of $200 per month. No, thank you. The seven seas it is for me.
Yes exactly and I always consider Steam (and to a lesser degree the Kindle ecosystem), which make it obvious to me that interoperability and convenience are something consumers are willing to pay for.
100% true. I buy games on Steam and GOG, sometimes from Epic. The convenience, the absence of enshittification, the cross-platform compatibility (or info about what's compatible and what's not), the periodic sales, etc. all add up and make people less likely to pirate games. The only barrier to entry at this point is price for those struggling to make ends meet.
Yeah, I have never pirated a game because of steam. My dad taught me about bearshare, limewire, and others from his time for music but I pay, unfortunately for YouTube, get new music from indie artists. It's so easy to just listen to anything I want. Netflix was the same way. Hell now places are uploading to YouTube for old stuff kike all of myth busters.
"Always has been."
And most pirate streaming sites have a better player (and subtitle encoding of new episodes) than HBO Max.
Seriously, there's no fucking excuse for a multiple billion dollar conglomerate with some of the highest rated entertainment programs in history in their library to care THAT little about UX!
Audible is literally the biggest pile of dogshit, completely barebones, yet somehow still immensely battery hungry pile of trash (jk I know it's because of all the telemetry shit they're using to profile my habits) with next to none of the basic QoL features you'd find on various free apps that would make listening on their app a more enjoyable experience.
Copyright gives them a monopoly over (legitimate) distribution so why spend any more than necessary when people can't go elsewhere for your content.
Because the legitimacy becomes less and less of a selling point the more you piss on your customers while other people are offering the same thing shown better for free
Always, It's just been about ability to do so. I did nothing but piracy in the 2000s but then went mostly paid in the 2010s and now I'm back to basically pirating everything but YouTube since family premium ends up being easier and cheaper than the effort to get around it.
However YouTube premium is slowly getting to a point where privacy seems inevitable in my case.
Same. They can fuck right off. It has come to a point that they are trying to see who can extort the most from their users. I cancelled everything and went back to the good old days. And if you know what you're doing things are pretty good.
It was already the case 20 years ago when I was selling burned CDs in high school for pocket money.
Probably around 1998, when you could just copy a few files on a floppy drive and play the Pokémon games for free on the library or school PCs.
People here might be interested in retrovibed. its an early stage personal media library/player with builtin tooling for distribution for artists and dead simple setup for users. its primarily built for music/podcasts, but supports video media as well.
...I seriously hope the "vibed" is about the style and NOT about it being vibecoded or using AI in any way.
The name isnt in relation to vibe coding, its a callback to early days of sharing and vibing out to music, but it certainly will use AI for the recommendation engine(s) and other areas where it makes sense.
as for the coding the AI is primarily used for generating test cases and cli functionality. areas that are incredibly useful for debugging but not worth my time directly.
so consider your hope crushed i guess. I'm more interested in building a community that works for musicians, artists, and their fans than I am in moralizing around tool usage.
Bravo. An LLM is an amazing tool in software dev.
Torrenting has been more stable than paid services for years. I have prime video, but I watch torrents of the content.
Around 1650
idk about everyone else but that was the year 2001 when my family got cable internet. I've never paid for anything streaming, I'm against subscriptions more strongly than most people admittedly, so I actively avoid them and it changes my hardware buying habits too if there's paywalled things like online play for example. Consoles are dead to me now. 360, PS4, then the Switch. Now they get none of my money, I bought used and piracy modded them.
idk about better service. I was never convinced by that idea. I was still going to video and game rental stores until they shut down to my dismay, I don't really get why everyone decided streaming was better, the quality and selection sure fucking wasn't good and now it's all fractured cross a bazillion competitor streaming services with exclusive content. Still would go to a rental shop today. I kinda do, my local library. But they have less selection/carrying capacity than my favourite gigantic Video Headquarters shop did. RIP. I despise shitty streaming bitrates even when I'm pirating I opt for an optical disc rip over a rip from a streaming site whenever possible. With Stremio and a debrid service I can stream 4K HDR bluray rips for $5 a month. Pfffff.
Music I buy vinyl and Bandcamp is convenient. I buy more than I pirate. Was the reverse when I was younger.
Games I often buy from GOG first if they have what I'm looking for, then Steam but I buy from 3rd party key shops...the legit ones like Green Man Gaming and such. For awhile barely pirated new. Then CAD dropped and prices eben in USD went way up with bullshit addons and season passes. Now I pirate more again especially if it's not multiplayer. I don't pirate anything indie (not just games) tho, personal rule.
Respect for not pirating indie stuff
It's still a pretty big exception since I play a lot of games every year and increasingly less AAA (actually, looking at my legit libraries and Faugus Launcher/pirate folder, it's been roughly 85% indie the past few years. Jesus. That's both perfectly fine with me and sad about the state of gaming corps), but my overall consumption rate hasn't slowed.
That's a tough line to draw; it's different for everyone.
In the US, it used to go:
- Parents buy kids stuff
- Kids start buying their own, but can't afford what they want to they bootleg
- Kids get decent-paying jobs that make the time needed to bootleg a bad equation.
- Kids become parents
But the coming and going of cheap music, streaming music, cheap video, and expensive video has wrecked the market.
I stopped pirating when purchasing music became cheap (apple music)
I started again when catalogs weren't what I wanted. And supported artists directly.
I stopped video piracy when Netflix was cheap and good and started again when they sucked.
If you can bring me long-form entertainment that I enjoy and own for less than a meal out, I'll buy it.
If you can bring me short-form entertainment that I can re-partake hundreds of times for less than a snack, I'll buy it.
If I can't buy it, or it encroaches on my other comforts, that's where the line is for me
Back in 1983, when my neighbor copied the Monopoly game for me to play on my C64. Cassette drive. Shit took forever to load. Fun af. At that point, the idea of paying seemed ridiculous. Then came the npd bbs era. Aye, matey. 🏴☠️
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if you wanted to support the creators you could do it separetely with merch, other proyects they have or direct donations if any of those are aviable.
Yeah, I've been getting more into Bandcamp so I can more directly support the bands that I like. I've given my wishlist to family, etc. for gifts.
Decades ago when things weren't available for purchase easily in many parts of the world but they still wanted to get their hands on that product.
I would say it reached a better service position in the early 2000s with the rise of broadband (1.5Mbps to 3.0Mbps) internet speeds.
Prior to that, you still had IRC and BBS, but there was a divide between filesize and your ability to download that filesize within reason. There also existed a divide between what was accessible to technical users vs everyone else. Non-technical users might copy 3.5 floppies or cassettes but weren't present in the internet space. Broadband opened the door for services like Napster, Kazaa, and Limewire which granted everyone access.
That service model was so successful to the point that it completely altered the music industry and how people bought music (ex. iTunes).
Has paying ever been an easier option? We used to copy each other's floppies. That was already easier than buying them in a store. With internet, we got Napster. Now torrents and streaming.
Hell, before Napster we had the usenet newsgroups
As early as companies started putting price tags on everything, more or less
Sony rootkit or before.
Piracy is always better than paying. There is no way for a product that has to pay for content and provide infra + development to be better than something you can get for free and do whatever you want with.
Now, yes. Back in the day? Ehhh maybe not. Early files and torrents were super low quality, maybe had an RSS feed. Hell, the original client was one window with one d/l going. You had to launch another instance to d/l another one. Then Netflix happened and it was like "man, this is pretty cheap and the quality is better than i'm getting online" and the hat went away for a while. Now that we are essentially back to cable, out came the hat.
Yeah but the days your comparing there was no streaming so getting a torrent via RSS was still better than paying $20 for a cd with 15 tracks half of which sucked.
I dont know when, but in my country community translations of anime are way better than those on an official streaming, if they are available at all. There is no point for paying for streaming when some random teams do better job at voicing anime while being funded by donations.
Since tape trading, for me. Don't invent the means to copy the media if you don't want the media copied.
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