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I'm expecting to hike my rate of piracy in 2024 as I continue to take a bigger bite out of overall corporate profits.
take a bigger bite out of overall corporate profits.
Don't co-adopt Corporate gaslighting. They can call it "opportunity cost", "expected return" or other bullshit. But it's all castles in the air dreamed up by profiteers.
It's never their money to begin with. It only becomes so because they want everyone to believe that making a copy of software deprives others from using it like physical goods.
The truth is that if somebody was going to pirate software, then they were never going to buy it in the first place and it's greedy and mentally ill to think otherwise.
Sorry to say, you've mistakenly made one hell of a generalisation on that last sentence. Other than that one stinky turd, the rest is spot-on.
The truth is that if somebody was going to pirate software, then they were never going to buy it in the first place and it’s greedy and mentally ill to think otherwise..
I've been on the piracy scene since 2001 and was a moderator for one of the largest dreamcast piracy forums once upon a time. The core members of that forum are still together on Discord and we all buy things wherever possible. Gabe Newell is correct in that piracy is a service problem.
Steam cut my games piracy down to zero for the longest time (501 games, 414 DLC) because it was more convenient and had frequent sales. Other companies that decided to pull away from Steam and conspire with publishers regarding timed exclusives on a platform that doesn't want me as a customer (Epic). As a result, anything that is an Epic exclusive is pirated indiscriminately and seeded for several weeks. I don't even play any of them. Download, seed for a week, delete, rinse and repeat on the next exclusive. The same goes for anything with Denuvo DRM.
GOG has DRM free games, there's a site where they are all available for download, and I've discovered quite a few gems that way. Those gems got purchased on Steam because GOG also doesn't want me as a customer, even though I had decent library and bought several games at launch on there. I'm refusing to use a third party launcher to install games from there because once again, its a service problem.
Netflix cut my video piracy to zero between 2011 and 2020. When I moved across the world, I brought only my clothes, laptop, and storage drives. Everything I wanted to watch was available on Netflix or YouTube. Once Netflix started losing shows like Futurama, Parks & Rec, and even Sons of Anarchy, I went straight back to piracy and haven't looked back. Netflix only continued to get my money because my partner insisted on doing things legally. By the time she had enough in October 2023, we were paying for Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Ziggo, YouTube, Curiosity Stream, and HBO. At the moment, only Curiosity remains.
Adding up the 3 "services" we consume content from the most (not including the ones we watch one show here and there on) added up to €497 per year. My piracy costs €472 per year not including electricity, which is used anyway since the server also hosts a boat load of microservices like NextCloud which replaces yet another subscription storage. It's costing me €72 to rent a seedbox, and €400 at the upper-end for a large NAS drive one time per year.
It's a service problem and I don't think those who refuse to contribute to the broken service problem are mentally ill. The "managers" in charge are.
What I was trying to say was that; regardless of any explanation for why piracy happens, it is not the same as stealing physical goods. Corporate executives and MPAA types are mentally sick (they can't see past money) and go to the extent of gaslighting consumers into accepting their definitions because if they control the narrative then they can do anything and spin it as normal or only solution.
It's a service problem and I don't think those who refuse to contribute to the broken service problem are mentally ill. The "managers" in charge are.
I am not blaming normal people. I am calling industry and rich oligarhs mentally ill. Because is it not sick to want to do what they are doing?
I am merely peeved by how normalized "piracy is theft" has become, when in today's world corporates plunder the earth, commit wage theft, suppress collective bargaining, and don't want to pay taxes. It's so normalized that even piracy advocates have incorporated it into their vocabulary.
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Just FYI but you can download all your GoG games through the webpage as standalone installers, only thing you’re gonna be missing out on without the GoG galaxy software is the automatic updates/cloud saves (which have been broken anyway with the latest migration they’ve been up to for the last several weeks)
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I only ever pirated music, i was to young and not knowledgeable enough to pirate movies, so i just got viruses from limewire.
Thats why i dont pirate now, i dontknow how.
Netflix is making more keen on learning everyday.
I know ... people ... who've been casually torrenting for 25 years and haven't had a virus since the 90's. They don't do games or other "cracks" as they're the easiest way to get a virus because you have to run an executable. You don't run that risk with media files. The important thing is setting your OS to always show the file extension so you don't click on any that are executable. As long as you click the .mp4 / .mkv you'll be fine.
All you have to do is set up a vpn that allows P2P traffic and enable a killswitch, set up qbittorrent, go to one of the current reputable resources, mentioned all over the place, and click the magnet link. Better yet go the arr route and it's mostly hands off after it's set up.
Awesome, I'm going to take a look at it all. Allegedly
It's become far easier than it was in the past. The piracy community is very friendly and will gladly help those who seek their guidance.
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Dude, $23 a month just to watch 4k content is already too fucking much.
I've already cancelled them, but when I have the means, I'm building a Jellyfin server. Fuck streaming services
It's worth it. The cost is ultimately much lower and the experience is leagues better.
Indeed. Investing in your own hardware is far more satisfying. And unlike steaming costs, hard drives only decrease in price.
I got an 18TB HDD for $360 and threw it in my $80 Dell Optiplex server running Ubuntu server 20.04 LTS. I continue to seed everything I've ever torrented and have only filled 4TB. I probably won't have to start deleting things for like 2 years.
Depending on the hardware you're running. I'll definitely never break even, at least in a reasonable amount of time. Doing a very rough estimation of $23/month of just Netflix, versus the 5 grand I've spent on my server over the years, it would take EIGHTEEN YEARS to break even.
I pirate because I like having everything in one place with no restrictions, not because it's cheaper and easier.
Ironically, centralizing it back when Netflix was the only company doing it made it so convenient, it was "in one place" with little restrictions other than having a good pipe.
Now with the fuckery of so many services, it's across many places, each of them enshittifying with ads or obtuse announcements.....it's not a little easier to pirate, it's a hell of a lot easier. Half the work to stream something legally now is just finding out what service hosts it, then debating burning the free trial for the one thing you really wanted to watch on there.
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I bought a NUC and 2x4TB HDDs + USB enclosure for a total of 600€, plus an easynews sub for $3/mo. Everything works great, transcoding and all.
I canceled prime and my 3 other streaming services, it should take less than 2 years to break even, and I've got access to a much larger catalog much sooner than if I subscribed to all streaming services available in my country.
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I have a pretty high electric bill every month from my rack in the garage but I'll gladly pay an extra 50 a month to self host everything
And here I am this morning sipping on coffee watching Tubi. I've been done paying more for less for a while now.
Don't need to pirate. If this gradual enshittification has done anything to me, it's been to make me lose any and all interest in keeping up with the latest shows. It's turned my TV into mere background noise while I do other things.
Maybe Tubi and Pluto and Freevee will eventually go away. Maybe then I'll just stop staring at a screen altogether.
I read a six hundred page physical paper book last weekend, cover to cover. I'd completely forgotten how pleasurable that is, and I can buy paperbacks by the pallet for next to nothing these days or attempt to borrow from the library before they become completely illegal.
I also remembered that it's entirely ok to read a book that isn't some centuries old work of ethereal literature. Run of the mill pulp fiction can be mighty entertaining even if you don't get to brag that you read the unabridged version of Beowulf in the original language at your next craft cocktail party
tl;dr fuck these streaming companies
Even if I wanted to stare at a screen: there's hardly anything worth watching coming out of the streaming world. Everything is just cheap, cliche ridden garbage, printed out of the exact same molds again and again.
Same! Pluto TV, Tubi, and live tv on Plex are all ‘good enough’ replacements for me. They’re even quickly becoming my replacement for the hours of YouTube I used to watch a week. It may be a bit ironic but YT seems to plop commercials in the middle of someone speaking and then you’re stuck. At least with Pluto, you can flip over to another channel during a commercial. It’s just like actual broadcast television, but for free; which is kind of nice. I’m at the point with YouTube where I’m unable to watch more than a third of a video.
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Tubi, Freevee, etc. show commercials. A big draw of Netflix, unless you're paying the lowest tier, is that there are no commercials.
If you want to watch commercial-free TV and you don't know how to pirate or don't feel safe doing it, paying for a streaming service makes sense.
General rule - I'll give you money or I'll watch ads. I won't do both. And as I've implied, I find myself actively watching shows less and less. So the giving money part becomes less attractive. I'm also entirely underwhelmed with Netflix offerings in present day. It's like they gave up after the success of Making a Murderer and decided that everything would just be cheap to produce true crime dramas. The actual shows categorically get cancelled when it comes time to pay the actors for their success so we never get closure. Looking at you, Santa Clarita Diet.
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Im poised to continue not paying for their service and finding it elsewhere if necessary.
With streaming services clamping down on password sharing, I’ve found that I actually don’t even care enough about the shows to pirate them. There’s great discussion on streaming services succeeding because of ease, and the resulting rise of piracy rates, but I wonder how many others like me just stopped watching TV.
It’s not even about the money for me— one of my credit cards has a monthly credit for streaming services. I chose to lose Disney+ instead of giving them Amex’s money at no cost to myself, cause fuck them.
I wonder how many others like me just stopped watching TV.
Not enough, sadly. Netflix reported an increase in both profits and subscribers since they started their crackdown. Had more subscribers punished Netflix by cancelling, then you wouldn't see other streaming services copying them.
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Basic cable prices were the absolute most people were willing to pay for home entertainment and streaming will eventually end up at the same price for the same reason.
Sounds like I'll be canceling at that point.
Just don't consume that shite anymore. Discover graphic novels for example. Thousands of stunning ones out there. Ever heard of the "Metabaron" series? Or build your own little wood workshop and enjoy Japanese hand tools. Read or hear some Lovecraft. Get a 3D printer. Anything.
I managed to find a copy of Too Much Coffee Man on ebay
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"Either you die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain"
Thanks. I’ll stick with my Plex server.
I'd strongly urge you to start looking into switching to Jellyfin. Plex is also slowly enshittifying their platform as well.
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So glad I canceled that bullshit a few months ago! Sailing the seas now, as FSM intended!
i live in a based country where netflix doesn't have any edge providers because the government here is too based. the internet connection just isn't consistent enough to watch a movie without it randomly switching to 480p or whatever. if i care at all about the film, it's completely fucked. since there's no option to pre-download a movie, it's just better to make friends with a private torrent tracker community.
And here I was, fretting about the actual cost benefit of my NAS when it likely chews up at least $10 a month in electricity and likely needs $10-15 a year in replacement components, and then I need a VPN subscription to fill it with content, and Netflix just goes and raises their prices like this and settles all my doubts for me.
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Shutout to local libraries for free DVD rental.
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum...
There is a reason why cable has a lot more trash and non-premium shows compared to streaming. The market isn't there to sustain the output.
Neat. I'll continue to watch everything they have on the high seas. I cancelled over the last price increase but really it's because anytime they make a show that is great, they cancel it after one season. Hard pass.
I hope they enjoy the extra money they make off me buying Netflix for a single month every other year, when they use to get me subscribed all the time.
Seems like a stable business decision that's absolutely not the first sign of a bubble bursting.
The high seas have never looked so good!
Streaming services over here going all Anakin to our Obi-Wan.
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this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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