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Consumer first; Citizen second
(hertig.blog)
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this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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Technology
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What you say is true and I can understand it is frustrating. But I really don't know how to convince people. Convenience is king and you need to have strong political opinions to abstain. I am a nerd, but still I often need double the time to find the "alternative" way of owning things.
I recently wanted to get the Harry Potter audio books for listening on my phone. I basically had two "official" options:
You can clearly see that in reality, the industry gives you only one option - audible. For 235€ you can have 2 years of e-book subscriptions.
Maybe you would say "hey, 235€ may seem expensive but in exchange you will get to own the stuff you pay for!". The thing is: you can get the whole audiobook collection on mp3-CD for just 70€ on Amazon?
In the end I bough an external CD-ROM drive and bought the mp3-CD box used for 40€.
It's not about that stupid Audiobook or whether the price is justified. The point I want to make is that the industry makes is so hard for individuals to own things, that I almost see this as a lost battle. The way I chose, took almost 2 weeks, days of research, a frustrated lemmy post, two online orders and 2 hours time to copy the mp3s.
And the thing is, it's the same for everything else - you want to buy a vacuum cleaner? Oh better look if it comes with special cleaner bags for 30€ per bag. Let's not talk about printers.
Every little item needs so much research, only for the aspects of planned obsolescence and true ownership. We do not even talk about social or environmental aspects...
How the fuck should I expect others to spend so much time on energy on consumption things? Honestly, sometimes I am a bit envious of the people that just do not care. But only sometimes.
Sorry, that somehow developed into a rant
A VPN subscription is 5€ / month, and qbittorrent is free.
I'm not sure if that is a sustainable model for the whole society. Pirating as a solution for everything feels like giving up to me. Also I can't pirate my vacuum cleaner.
I feel like the "pirate everything" mindset focuses on shitty corporations but ignores that paying for media also helps the creators pay their rent.
I think there's a big difference between the things you pirate. If you're pirating some very old books written by people that died a century ago, I don't think it's all that bad. If you're pirating text books made by companies that will intentionally jumble the chapters and paragraphs around just so you can't buy them second hand, piracy should be encouraged. If you're pirating from a small independent author, I think piracy is only acceptable in very few situations.
I've pirated copies or books I bought because I couldn't strip the DRM. I think that's completely fair. Sure, I helped spread the torrent to a few other people in the process, but I just wanted to open the thing I bought on Linux without running a bunch of shady tools.
I can agree with this. Or pirating old games that aren't available through GOG, Steam, etc. Like if I want to play Battletoads, I don't have many options…
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