It's capitalism, the free market at work.

If you're gonna do it, do it, but don't pretend like you're morally right in doing it. For the vast majority of us, we're pirating something we don't need but something we want. Is it hard to acquire? Does it come tied to annoying subscriptions? Does it come from a company you don't like? Is it too expensive? None of these are valid reasons to pirate something because you could just as well enjoy other media that are available to you. Or if you are out of accessible media to you, you could just not enjoy media. Be bored. You're not entitled to access to the things you're pirating.

Don't get me wrong, I understand you, and I empathize. I pirate too, when something I want falls under the conditions I listed above, but I'm under no illusion that it's ethical in some way. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism? Well there's no ethical piracy either. People put work into something and if you use it, you should pay what they ask for it.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, because no one wants to be the bad guy. Pirate if you want to pirate, your reasons are yours, but be honest about it. You pirated something because you wanted it, and you didn't want to not get it, and you didn't want to pay the entry price either. It is what it is.

Not much thought goes into it. I've never bought a copy of windows in twenty years of using it because they don't need the money. I buy small pieces of specialist software from small and independent developers. I've got a streaming video service but if it doesn't have the thing I want to watch I find it online.

I'll pirate anything I have owned but for various reasons I now can only license so all my old games I bought I'll have ROMs of as well as albums whose labels no longer exist or are not in circulation such as obscure Punk tracks.

If its region locked i pirate it. I just cant be bothered to look for a vpn that's not blocked by this site. Alao if site is a shit i pirate it ,in my case crunchyroll . I really tried using it but Its just not working with my shitty internet and the buffer size is too small to load whole wideo while i do other stuff. YouTube and Netflix somehow works on my internet.

You cannot steal what is not physical. Theft implies removing a physical object from somewhere, creating a loss of an item.

Digital information is 1s and 0s, and you just create a copy. You do not remove the original one. There is no theft taking place.

The value of a product does not go down because I didn't pay for it. If anything, if it's a quality product, the value goes up. If I pirate something and enjoy it, chances are I will pay for it when I can afford to. If I pirate something and don't enjoy it, well, I wasn't going to buy the product anyway so there's no loss. Let's say I watch a movie at a friend's house and absolutely hate it. I do not buy the movie. How is that different than pirating it and coming to the same conclusion? I see the movie without paying money.

I regularly advocate for shows I pirate so I’m a walking ad for shows.

I don't pirate because I'm an adult who makes money and respects creators.

Yes, I pirate, and I pirate alot. Games, books, shows, software, I do it all. But I also buy stuff, mainly games, occasionally books. I'm am not in a position where I have the sort of money to buy everything I want.

My piracy philosophy is mainly to almost always pirate it first. If I like the game enough, I'll buy the game when I have the money. I have done this alot, A Hat in Time, Hollow Knight, and recently Baldurs Gate 3.

With books it's alot more difficult, as they tend to be alot more expensive than games, especially for the series I read. (Manga and Light Novels). As there will fairly often be around 30$ per volume where I live, and close to 12 volumes total. And that's if you can even buy them in the country, or if they have even been translated officially, which if they haven't, then piracy is your only choice to read it.

Regarding shows, I basically only watch Anime, and the only way to really stream Anime is crunchyroll, which region locks alot of the shows, gives hardly any money back to the actual creators of the shows, then uses the money they get to make awful shows. Pirating anime is realistically the only way to enjoy it hassle free.

For software, everything is license based now, I'm willing to do one off purchases at a reasonable price (something like steam wallpaper engine), but I hate recurring fees. I pirate software like photoshop.

Ultimately piracy isn't really as bad as people tend to think it is, it's largely just people enjoying the stuff that they would never have been able to pay to enjoy anyway. It's especially good for people with less disposable income in helping them find where they can spend the money on things they enjoy, such as with me with the games I mentioned earlier.

Just big companies and because they will screw people over for a profit.

Something fun I listened to today about tpb and free access to information/cultural peices of art. Kinda.. https://youtu.be/eFQFW5JgUjE?si=50BXG19ey8pVEYfv

I pay for music because it is easy. I don't pay for video because there is no avenue like spotify for video

I started pirating because it was the default for me. I was a young child and I had access to the family computer I had no money so I learned how to pirate before I learned how to buy games also piracy is real popular in my country because its poor af. Later on I became political and relized mega corps didn't need my money, lots of other people were throwing their money into these bottomless pits anyway. About indie games I try to buy them but since I now am a teenager with no money and in a lot poorer country I tend to pirate them anyway even though its wrong

Everything not physical that can be pirated should be pirated.

You have better thing to do with your money.

Books exist to be lent out.

Games too at the time. Now you can't because of bullshit, so joke on them I won't pay.

Books & Music money is not going to the artists.

Movie world is full of shit and overpaid anyway.

I also don't wan't a single of my cents going to USA or US company.

If I like something so much I feel I should pay, which is rare, I find a more direct way without leeches.

If i don't see the value i'm pirating.

Money is tight, don't expect me to pay for a play button that you'll take away the second i can't spare the money. It means there is no value delivered for my money so i don't have a reason to spend my hard earned money.

Especially when the amouny is as significant as 10/15€. Fuck i would've bought a cd for each month i could spare that money.

I need the definition of pirating since it always means something different to someone else.

If I stream movies and shows using my friends library am I pirating? What if I download a show from my friends library for later viewing for personal use, then delete it a week later since I don't need it? Let's assume my friends library was all purchased legitimatly.

i enjoy stealing

Across everyone in the house, we have Hulu, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Disney/ESPN. Sailing the high seas means all the shows and movies available from those servicea can be accessed via one media server interface.

Every once in a while I log into Amazon Video to see if their interface is as hot trash as I remember. It always is.

Me? No! I wouldn't...

i'm on basic welfare (400 dollars per month to afford everything i need) so yeah, i don't exactly have a choice..

Only thing I've pirated was a show with no reasonable means to access it legitimately in my region. Hell, I couldn't even access it via VPN because the services it was on didn't accept my card due to region.

Normally of the mind that if it isn't worth my money it isn't worth my time, but in this case I just wasn't allowed to pay them for it. Hardly my fault when they've gone that far out of their way to block me buying it.

For me it's usually about availability. If someone suggests I try out a cool game that came out in the 80s, there's a pretty good chance piracy is the only way to play it. Sure, you can pay way too much on Ebay to get a physical copy, and I have a fair collection of retro games, but it's not like the money from Ebay sales go back to the original creators.

Same with movies. The version of Star Wars I grew up with, the one without all the digitally added stuff since the late 90s, isn't on Disney+. If Disney announced a nice blu-ray Star Wars collection that featured the copies without Jedi Rocks and the extra aliens in the cantina and whatever, I'd go out and get it. But they haven't, so I stick to the fan-made 'despecialized editions'.

I don't pirate from the little guy. I buy albums on Bandcamp and indie games on Steam all the time. I want the small creators to be able to eat. But I'm also fortunate enough to have a little disposable income. I know some people pirate as much as they can, and while I don't entirely agree with it, I don't know their financial situation (or the availability of these things in their country), so it's not really my place to judge them.

I just don't earn enough money to justify paying for movies, games and books, i can use those money to pay my bills and what little left after paying my bills, i save it for future

I pirate metric shitloads of movies and series. I don't pirate music or games (much).

I watch maybe 5-10% of what I download. That's probably true for the games I buy as well.

The reason is part convenience. I probably listen to royalty free 95% music of the time, but for the other occasions Spotify has anything and everything I want to listen to. I can't beat that library.

I game on Linux, the Switch and old retro computers. The old retro computers have all pirated games on them, but for Linux and Switch I buy my stuff on the Nintendo shop and Steam. They have everything and it just works.

The video streaming services of today have also taught me that they will pull licenses. When Netflix had a big library I stuck mostly to that, but today it feels like all the good content has been pulled and they mostly just have Netflix originals. So Hollywood has taught me that If I want to watch something, I shouldn't rely on it being available on my streaming service of choice in the future. I'm not going to subscribe to a dozen streaming services just for the odd chance that I want to watch something particular. I'm going to have my own plex server with everything I might want to watch.

The one show that would make me consider getting a second streaming subscription just to support it is Futurama. But of course, Hulu is not available in my region.. so, yarr.

I pirate the odd bit of music and the ocassional film if I cant find it on streaming services, or if I need music in MP3 format for swimming with, vast bulk of what I pirate is music though. And probably less than 10% of all the media I have is pirated. Make something easily available in the format I need at a reasonable price and I'll happily pay for it

I was 14 and just got a cable modem when Napster came out. I just got introduced to modern music, had no way to pay for it other than asking my folks. Let's jump on the pirate ship!

Now I'll let you do the math on my age, I have very stable income, and a fair amount of disposable savings, and I still pirate pretty much my ears will be hearing. Plex has equal or better tools for watching/listening than every other service I've tried (shuffling episodes is my favorite)

I go to concerts, watch movies in the theatre, read physical books and support creatives in other ways.. so I feel different about that..

I also started noticing this when itunes came out. You could only listen to music YOU PAID FOR on devices you've authorized. Then soon after I saw this, a friend was down on his luck but had a very good and varied cd collection. He started selling them to second hand shops and his friends.

I ended up seeing this dichotomy and thought to myself.... this sucks. Let's just pirate it..

I should note the amount of physical unread books I have on my shell are similarly rationed to the amount of music I haven't listened to or movies I haven't watched yet that I've also pirated

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.

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.