Software. 99% of the time there is some Free Software alternative that either somehow does the job for my personal tasks, or is better anyways.
FOSS for the win 😁
Or you have to run a shady crack or keygen to get it to work, and I don’t trust those.
* cries in Adobe *
i refuse to pirate indie games. i will always buy games that are independently released or from small publishers because 1. they're just trying to break even (unlike publishers like EA and Activision who have millions of fans lining up to buy their repetitive junk) and 2. they almost never have DRM. i'll also buy my music for similar reasons; 99% of artists can barely make a living and i really do not want to contribute to that statistic
We've been buying stuff on bandcamp friday, it is pretty neat
Apps. I prefer foss apps. I donate, report, contribute and spread the word.
Even if I would pirate an app it wouldn't become open source. I couldn't contribute. I couldn't report bugs, suggest ideas, fork and apply my own stuff.
I only pirate apps with no alternatives and very aggressive monetization like 100€/year subscriptions....
We've had a no piracy rule over in the Android subs/communities for years and the funny thing is, by time we ever got to someone trying to post a pirated APK the community themselves tore them a new arsehole.
Easiest rule to enforce when the community will absolutely hiss at you. Love em.
edit: a fun talking point I suppose is YouTube, and its app. We got a lot of people arguing that Newpipe 'was piracy' and I even had many debates with other members/mods about is it, or isn't it piracy?
My view it's a website that you can parse even with other tools like yt-dl, and if Youtube.com wanted to stop use of Newpipe / Revanced whatever they could in the blink of an eye.
It's not that I won't but I do try to go out of my way to support smaller artists I enjoy, especially nowadays.
Lucky it's gotten a lot easier with sites like Bandcamp, but it's better if I can buy directly from the bands own store.
Pretty much anything that I can buy easily without going to second-hand or stupid subscriptions. For me, it's really a service problem, not a cost problem.
As long as they participate in Steam sales, assuming they're on Steam to begin with, PC games are more convenient to have in a library where I don't have to manually update each game. Valve's not perfect, with its 30% cut of sales being arguably too high (as is the case for all other platforms that defend its use as being an "industry standard"), but given Nintendo's monetization of online gameplay and replacing the Virtual Console system with what is essentially console library rentals, I don't mind putting up with updating Switch ROMs once in a blue moon if it means not supporting anti-consumer practices. Any games I had in my Switch library that are also on Steam I simply repurchased for the sake of convenience, however.
30% allowing to use: Steam servers, Steam Workshop, Steam Cloud, Steamworks, Steam API
All of this is free for the players and developers they got to find a way to pay for all of this.
So there is a thing I kind of pirate, but not entirely – e-books.
But thing is, our public library page has e-books and some of them are available to be read online. Now I cannot officially download them, however opening a network tab on browser console shows me a request to download the whole .epub file. So what I do is copy that request as curl and just download it via terminal.
Is it piracy, probably, is this resource publicly available for me to read, definetly yes.
Other than that I don't really pirate much else.
Usually music made by artists from my country, if they have a website where I can pay for their music directly to them I do it that way.
🙌🏻 I buy CDs and newer unseal them, but pirate the songs because it’s more convenient.
I can't recall the last time I pirated anything executable (games and other software). There are legitimate free options for everything I've wanted, and executable code is just too risky.
well gog games can be safely pirated because the executables you're getting are signed with their digital signature.
it's much less morally correct tho, especially because most of the games published on gog are indie games, but if you have literally no money to spend (like I used to) there aren't any better options
DRM-free ebooks. I make a point of buying them, of thanking the publisher... And not sharing it on the usual piracy channels.
i try to pay indie devs whenever i can
I refuse to pirate a car, just because I don't know how
It's a bit easier to pirate a boat, seeing as cars didn't exist in 1600s
I extremely rarely pirate games and software. It's just far too easy an attack vector for malware. The games I want to play are usually worth buying regardless, and free software is good enough for my needs. It isn't a flat out refusal, I've definitely pirated these things, but it's in niche situations where I need to see something specific, and I always check run it under a vm
Nothing.
Not refusing, but lately I basically don't pirate games anymore. Steam made it so easy to buy games... + pirating games is always a pita with the required hacks etc. (or at least it was way back when I did it).
Software I don't pirate, I just use foss stuff wherever I can.
I also don't pirate books in general. Just get them on Kindle and support the author (and unfortunately also Jeff bezos)
I pay for Netflix (mainly for kids) and go to the theater for big movies, but aside from that I pirate all screen content.
I also pirate comics, but that's 90% because it's almost impossible to get them legally where I live. I would pay for DC unlimited if it was available in my neck of the woods.
Video games, because it's easier to do it legally. If it was as easy for other media, I would do it that way.
I wouldn't download a car.
Antivirus softwere. i cant even began to describe how horribly wrong can that go
I mean who the fuck pirate that, you went out of your way to pirate a software from a shady website just to protect yourself from other files u download from other shady websites
Nothing nowadays.
I’ll pirate indie games, see if it like it and if I do - I buy them to support the developer.
Similar with ebooks, I pirate them, read and if I like it. I will buy the physical book to support the author.
Not so much refuse, but I don't currently pirate games or music. The systems available to me are too convenient for me to waste time fucking around with piracy.
I used to pirated everything and left no survivors, now I bought Terraria one of my favorite game of all time with actually nice community and developers and it's felt wrong to pirate it, for softwares I just use open source alternatives or abuse free trial
Pornography. You never know what could be inside a folder!
Fuck that x100.
Also, I don't need porn that badly.
i think the concept of "donation" is a relevant piece of this puzzle.
Any sort of program, because I don't trust anonymous people enough to not end up with a virus.
Stuff that I can buy for a fair price and use without many restrictions. For example DRM-free games on GOG or itch.io
My main ones are:
Pretty much any software or games. Not really for moral reasons especially, but I mostly run Linux so most of them aren't available anyway, and if I do get something it's usually such a pain in the ass to actually get it working (and keep it working whenever there's an update) that it's usually not worth it when there's often a FOSS alternative. Also no pirating indie games.
Books, with a few exceptions. I don't want to screw over authors so I don't download books, but there have been a couple of old ones where the author is long dead and I already paid for a paper copy, so I snagged the eBook just for convenience. I figure that's not hurting anyone except the publishing company so whatever.
Also with games I'm one of those extremely patient people who can wait years for something to go on sale, so what I usually do is set a price in my head for what I think something's worth, and then ignore it until it ends up at that price. So like: Baldur's Gate 3 - they did a good job and released a proper working game = full price. Cyberpunk - looks alright but it was a big mess on release and had a bunch of stuff missing = wait until it's all fixed and has all the add-ons in a bundle, $25. Last Of Us PC = it's one of my favourite games but it's 10+ years old now and was also a bit of a mess on release so they can fuck off with the $70 price tag = $10 tops. No Man's Sky - Might be decent now but they really bullshitted that one on release = wait until it shows up for free on Epic or PSPlus. And so on. There's a lot of them lol.
PC games. Too much of a worry about malware for that nonsense.
I pirate everything. If they gain my respect, I then buy it. For example I bought a copy of Witcher 3 I never actually played (because I pirated it).
Only the content that i don't care about.
Anything I would actually buy if I couldn't pirate it.
I buy GOG copies of games when I can.
Nothing I'm just pirate to the bone..
My wife likes to watch Disney +. Thus anything that comes out on Hulu / Disney + / ESPN bundle we will watch through traditional means. If I can purchase a show or movie legally and retain ownership I will watch through traditional means. On the flip side anything that was once on Hulu/ Netflix but is not anymore we are gonna pirate. Anything that airs on a streaming service that forces you watch within an app with ads we are gonna pirate. Anything that airs on Netflix after its password sharing crackdown we are gonna pirate. Any show that airs on streaming service that did not before but now has ads (I am calling you out Amazon) we are gonna pirate.
Pretty much nothing. I get pretty much whatever I want. I still buy stuff before-hand though, I just like having backup copies so I don't have to rely on some server that will go away some day.
Do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate.
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