What do you think about piracy? - I'd see no problem with it depending on the source.

I've been pirating since Limewire but slowed down when Netflix was in their prime but ever since they removed the ratings system and produced nothing but crap I cancelled it again months back, I also found Amazon Prime to be complete shit also due to their limited library.

Another issue is I have a hard time actually finding some TV series available for streaming in the UK due to bullshit licensing agreements e.g Queen of the South, you can't even watch it with a US VPN due to needing a cable account therefore my only option is to torrent it.

Another reason is that many older TV series simply aren't on any streaming platforms and I refuse to pay $15-$20 for each season which would end up costing like $100+ just to watch 7 seasons of an old TV show.

Not to mention all these companies creating their own platforms which means you'll have to sign up and pay for 3 or 4 different subscriptions.

And lastly, if I was forced to pay for everything that I have ever watched then I doubt that I would have paid for 95% of the content as I only watched it because it was free and just kind of stuck it on for background noise while I did other stuff.
 
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I've been pirating games and movies until 2011.

Because I'm stingy and some movies are that I watch are unavailable on television. Also back then, I can't watch a good stream due to those annoying pop-ups and ads until I discovered AdBlock.
 
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I pirate things for several reasons.

1. Archival. I do not trust the rights holder to actually vault everything they produce, or even keep masters, and why should I? Metal Gear Solid hasn't been available nearly anywhere since it was remade on the Gamecube in 2004, MGS2 hasn't been re-released anywhere since 2003, and it was re-released on the same console it made its debut on. The unedited version of the Star Wars Trilogy was nearly memory-holed by its own studio. There are literal dozens of films that Disney refuse to release, to appease the SJW crowd, like Song of the South. I don't give a zippity doo-dah about Song of the South, but plenty of people put a lot of time and effort into filming and animating it, and all of the other things that we'll never see with a higher quality release. It's better to at least make sure it's not lost forever.
Think of the THOUSANDS of MSDoS programs and games that would be lost to time, if not for archival. Think of the LITERAL ANYTHING that was backed up with tape storage, floppy disk, or even old platter hard disks. If there weren't people copying that floppy to a more stable medium, we wouldn't have damn near any software or digital information prior to 1984.

2. Intellectual Property laws are fraudulent, and so long as Disney continues to exist, you can be damn sure that nothing will enter the public domain again. They'll keep bribing the government to extend copyright, ad infinitum, I do not respect IP law, I don't see it as legitimate. We've missed out on remakes to Metroid II, Streets of Rage, a demake of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and several hundred other fan games, simply because someone used characters belonging to an extant franchise in a free game, and that made some lawyers upsetti spaghetti.

3. I used to support things like Netflix and Hulu, that is, until they started removing everything that gave me a reason to have a Netflix subscription. Hulu remains pretty stagnant, and their originals are even worse than Netflix's. Also, looking into the political narratives that Netflix tries to shill in their original programming, it's something that I just can't justify giving money to. None of the alternatives to Netflix are as good as Netflix was around 2014. I don't watch enough anime to justify Crunchyroll. The only good thing Amazon has is The Grand Tour, Crackle is fucking garbage, and the rest are just literally whos. Plex is the wave of the future.

4. Because I want to and I can, go fuck yourself.
 
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ArnoldPalmer said:
2. Intellectual Property laws are fraudulent, and so long as Disney continues to exist, you can be damn sure that nothing will enter the public domain again. They'll keep bribing the government to extend copyright, ad infinitum, I do not respect IP law, I don't see it as legitimate.
Click to expand...
Intellectual property is an outdated social construct.
 
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Piracy creates competition even if there is none, because the firm would always have to compete with piracy. The only reason you can pay money over the internet and instantly start downloading is because you could just as easily look it up on a torrent site and do the same thing. If they implement DRM, they can't make it so inconvenient/malware-like that the pirated version is better than the paid version.
 
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I pirate mostly because of DRM. I don't want to be tracked in how and when and how much I used the content I paid for and I don't want to pay to access that can be rescinded when the platform feels like it. Also DRM usually works like ass on linux-based systems, especially video streaming platforms and the people that run these platforms don't give a shit about linux so I don't give a shit about their wallet. I just do not feel like supporting that entire concept. Give me drm-free downloads I can do whatever I want with and I might consider paying.
 
With games I have a set of standards
Anything from 1st to sixth gen is fair game (when the ninth gen rolls around then the seventh will become fair game

If it wasn't released in the US (Mother 3 for example) then its fair game

If I already own a copy then its fair game

If the DRM is shit then its fair game
 
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Piracy is a wonderful tool at best and a necessary evil at worst. It's your best way of advertising a product and it's your best way of preserving what was done.

Let's take Emulators for example. People consider them to be piracy because laws in some countries dictate that you should delete any copy of a game you don't own in 24 hours, but there's a few problems in that regard:
- Certain media formats (Usually, Arcade boards) have suicide batteries on them. Which means they end up dying no matter what.

- Consoles or media often go out of production, and there's all the issues with the formats (Oxidation in cartridge chips, lifespan of console decks fading away, scratches on CDs/DVDs/Blu-Ray) and online purchases being pulled off.

- And here's my favorite: There's an entire layer of hell in terms of Copyright issues. Say you want to play Super Mario World. You could afford a decent PC and broadband to get the game, but the site that offered Super Mario World without viruses or trojans is now shutdown because Nintendo supposedly wants to protect their IP; SEGA wants you to enjoy the new Sanic game, gotta go fast while snooping as usual and all that jazz, but SEGA (Either them or the Outsourced devs) demands the use of some DRM that hinders your performance and may be harmful to your hardware.

And that's not even counting the C&D letters that fangame makers often get, SEGA did it once when they realized Streets of Rage had such a following when they took Bombergames' remake down, and even hired ROM hackers themselves to work on Sonic Mania.
 
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Back in the old days of torrenting I used to do a fair bit of pirating, though that said it was often films or audio books and the occasional older game that wasn't easily available anymore.

GOG/Abandonia took care of most of the older games stuff and Steam as well.

The quality of most of the modern music scene in my opinion is shit, so I circled the wagons and only listen to a few different play lists that are free to download. (Small indy bands, etc)

Most new releases and TV series, anime, manga, and if I could afford it I'd buy a copy.

I only resort to pirating now days if it something that.

a) I'm potentially interested in, but not 100% sure if it's going to be good. (If it is I will buy a copy)

b) TV series and movies that aren't commonly available anymore or tend to be more obscure.

c) Cinema releases that I think are going to likely be shit, and therefore want to preview before I waste my ticket money/evening.

d) The Sims, because fuck EA for making a game that was at one point as addictive as crack and then longing it out in shitty add-ons, and making the consequent releases extremely vanilla, because they want to cash in again on the same group of people, buying the same old add-ons for a new edition.
 
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Piracy is obviously stealing, but I've got letters of marque for any foreign media which is most media as a Dutchie.

Netherlands is one of the few countries where it is legal to download copyrighted material, but not upload it (putting torrents in gray area).

Copyright fatcats dealt with this by legally forcing largest ISPs to IP block the most common piracy sites.
 
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I will steal epub versions of books that I have hard copies of. Don't have much to say about piracy other than this...
 
I use legit sources when possible. But I'm not paying 20-60$ for a game without playing it first.
 
I don't pirate books, as I prefer the feel of holding one in my hands. The only games I pirate are stuff like gameboy advance games, since Nintendo have still not made any kind of Switch emulator to be able to play a lot of their older games (and the batteries in GBA games seem to die over time and I am not sure how to replace mine). Movies, TV shows and anime I download/watch on free streaming sites purely because I do not have the disposable income to pay for something and find out its terrible (that and the increase in so many different streaming sites is just becoming too much to pay for, I already pay for three of them). I will buy merch/DVDs/Blu rays etc if I do like the media I pirated, so I give money back eventually in some shape or form.
 
My logic for video games:
- If I bought or legally received the game in any form before, I'm not paying for it again.
- I have the implied right, despite what your EULA says, to archive my own games for personal use.

Finally, I have to ask three questions to myself and others, with the answers all to be YES.

1. Is the game still available new in your country or has a digital release?
2. Is the original developer still around, and if so, is it a supported title?
3. Can it run on a current system without emulation? (This includes titles needing SCUMM)

This marks a clear line between the modern games on Steam/similar services/Nintendo Switch and everything else (all Nintendo games prior to the Wii, games that haven't seen official updates in more than a decade, re-selling emulated/DOSBox titles, etc.)

For movies and TV shows, I only refrain myself from new stuff (newest TV shows, movies still in Redbox) or limited items that I'll never be able to legitimately reach otherwise (HBO miniseries, anime). If already subscribe to the service that has or had it, go for it. Anything else has generally run its course.
 
Torrenting and emulating things on the Internet will end up being the possibility for the most of us.

Considering things are getting censored/removed, and streaming services getting expensive, I do hold sympathy for those that can’t be able to afford the things they want, while not wanting to give their money to corporations that don’t think that highly of them.
 
piracy has always been so natural to me that I've never really "thought" about it
my parents had stacks of reel-to-reel tapes of music so the idea of "just make a copy and keep the copy" has literally been around me all my life, then the internet came along and made it a lot easier
 
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