Asklemmy

I pirate a ton of stuff, but I also see more movies in theaters than most people I know. I'm lucky enough to live in a place that still has an awesome local video store that has a ton of hard to find, obacure films. Like shaw brothers kung fu films, or documentaries like Jefftowne.

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.

If something is not for sale, I have no qualms about pirating it. Disney vault, abandonware, obsolete versions, etc.

When i was younger, physical copies pf games and the used market were common things. Now pc games get no physical release, or if they do these are tied to steam or epic games, and consoles are pushing towards going all digital.

All while raising the prices even though there is no logistics involved anymore.

So i should pay more for something that i can't resell and can get taken away from me for one of several reasons (account gets banned, game gets delisted, service eol...)?

So that's why if it can get pirated, i will pirate it.

1. yes
2. yes

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

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.

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.

It's only piracy if you grab a cutlass and storm the local shops. It's time to call it what it is = digital theft / running unlicensed software / whatever. If someone hacks into your accounts, I doubt you'd call them a pirate for stealing all you personal videos and pictures, taking over your steam account, 'borrowing' your netflix, and so on. The whole thing is deeply uncool.

Personally I wish the laws would change to make copyright non-transferable from the original artists, who deserve reward for their efforts but shouldn't be a meal ticket for others. I'd also like to see abandonware legitimised - if folk can't buy it then it should be fair game.

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.

Yes to movies and shows that aren't available on Netflix, Disney, or Amazon. My kids watch a lot of shows on those, so they're worth it, but I refuse to pay for others.

No to everything else.

My self justifications are thusly...

I typically don't try to "keep up with the latest or greatest" of things. So I feel zero guilt at finding ROMs of all the video games from my childhood and emulators. Neither do I feel bad about hunting down old PC games that are abandonware instead of trying to find some Steam version (which will stop working soon with my ancient computer anyways soon so... pppfffttttt).

Most of the books (comic, fiction, nonfiction) are of old stuff that has been out for years so whomever was going to make money off the sales has already made their money. The only people who are being denied any potential income are the resellers.

Most streaming services, whether I pay for them or not, run adds that had about a 90% chance of freezing my old entertainment computer to the point of requiring a restart. This dropped to practically zero after moving from windows to linux. Also, most of my devices are so old that the services I had been paying for wouldn't work on them anyways... so... :shrug: ... fuckem.

I've never felt that something "wasn't worth it" because I got it for free as far as media. Usually when I go on a download spree of video games its because I've gone a bit manic and decided that I want to try to play every Final Fantasy game up to FF9 or all the MegaMan games or something and I'll just burn myself out after playing the crap out of them.

I have, however, purchased books because I kept reading/hearing them referenced as being worthwhile or interesting and found myself thinking... "wow... that's 25 bucks and a week's worth of reading I can't get back." I also, have had a bad habit in the past of just purchasing books because they looked halfway interesting on impulse, tossing them into one of several trunks full of books, and they'll sit there for 10 years before I even realize that I had the book.

Another thing that I have considered after years of thinking about it. These items were never going to be purchased by me, so me reading a scanned copy of a comic book from 20 years ago or me not reading it effectively results in the same amount of money leaving my pockets to go... somewhere. I say "somewhere" because I'm not paying the comic book writer/artists/inkers or the actual development teams of video games, I would be paying some other intermediary who pays their intermediary who pays their intermediary who might be required to pay some sliver of their revenue to the people who actually made the thing I'm playing/reading.

It also doesn't hurt that I'm middle aged and barely make enough money to make ends meet on a good month even though I live a pretty frugal life. I've come to accept that its not worth beating myself up too much about.

for legal reasons, I don't pirate anything.. but a friend told me that piracy is more convenient, and that it has more benefits (like, retain 'ownership' of content without annoying DRM)

train of thought (legal): what streaming service do I need to subscribe to to watch this? okay lemme go grab my wallet and sign up for an account

train of thought (piracy): click download

if companies don't want you to pirate their media, they should make it more convenient and flexible to purchase legally. adding DRM and making things subscription-only will push more people towards piracy.

I don't believe in intellectual property. I will pirate anything I want to use and release everything I make for free.

I pirate media only, not games. Simply because I don't want to risk getting malware. Also too cheap to bother with streaming services; I want to own my media.

Sometimes he buys books he likes a lot out of loyalty to the author

Your friend is pretty damn cool. I personally pirate whatever I feel like and then buy the stuff I like and want to support. I used to avoid pirating indie games then I realized I bought more indie games when I pirated them first to see if I enjoyed them.

I pretty much only pirate content that's not readily available in my countrys streaming services.

I'm not the pirate I once was when it comes to gaming but there's always EGS exclusives, games whose lack of regional pricing make them impossible to reasonably buy here, things like that. I'm a patient gamer for the most part so most of the time I can just get it a few years down the line but sometimes even that doesn't cut it. I avoid doing it to indie developers, but those are usually the few that follow Steam's recommended pricing guidelines so they tend to be fine anyway.
I pirate unbelievable amounts of tv and movies on a regular basis though through the *arr apps and whatnot, mostly because I refuse to pay for a dozen different streaming services with their rotating content and usually terrible apps. I self host whatever I can to avoid relying on the whims of a few corporations, and the one surviving service so far is Spotify.

I don't care about copyrights, and although I'd agree that I'm not entitled to someone else's work, I'll counterfeit it without a single qualm. I'm poor and would rather not have to choose between being well fed but bored as death, or hungry but entertained/educated. As much as possible, I try to support the little guys though; concretely, I'll eventually buy a game made by Octavi Navarro or Unspeakable Pixels, but Activision won't ever receive a kopeck from me.