I'm not going to speak about my personal practices, but I find the current landscape of streaming services unusable and unsustainable from a customer perspective. I share a Netflix and Prime account with my parents, and support for that is soon going to end. I don't feel like either of those services provide enough value to me to consider paying for them entirely by myself. The content is mediocre at best, finding anything good to watch is like going through a haystack, and once you find something remotely interesting you feel so exhausted that you'd rather turn off the tv and go to bed.

Don't even get me started on "there's this movie I heard about and I want to watch, but I need a subscription to this obscure random service and then also pay a rental fee on top to even get to watch it". It's just absurd.

> “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.” -- Gabe Newell

There have been many times where I've found DRM encumbered products inferior: trying to stream anime on Crunchyroll during primetime only to experience slowdowns; trying to screenshot something for a wallpaper only to get it blacked out; trying to download offline shows with subtitles, only to find subtitles didn't get downloaded with the video. Compound that with The Streaming Wars, I can't help but feel like a lot of people will turn to piracy out of necessity. It isn't enough that there are like 10 subscriptions to get all of the content you might want. It's also that each provider reinvents the wheel and each version is slightly jagged in different ways and doesn't work like a wheel. It's like 10 inferior clones of a wheel. Piracy, much to the chagrin of all of these services, usually fixes this: an H.265 .mkv file usually "just works" without problems in your favorite media player.

It's just a mess right now.

The incentives are misaligned.

Netflix, Amazon, Disney et al, aren't interested in showing me what I want to watch for a purchase price, they are after my attention, and to divert me to their most profitable revenue stream (Netflix in house creations etc).

My attention is not for sale, I'll buy content if it is sold in a manner that is attractive to me in a consumer friendly model, Louis CK selling his standup specials on his own website come to mind, otherwise I won't bother.

The problem is there's no end game for these companies, if you agree to buy something, they'll stop selling it and sell you a subscription instead. If you buy the subscription, they'll chuck ads in front of the subscribed service, and then periodically cut off access to certain content in an effort to maximize their own profit. There's no way to manage you're own library, you're subject to whatever the shareholders think they can keep squeezing out of you. On top of that, even if I yield to them completely, I still have to run their DRM blobs on my computing devices for the priviledge.

It's "amoral" to pirate in my worldview, but these companies are equally amoral. I still want to participate in the collective modern culture of tv, movies, etc, so somethings got to give.

It’s funny, I’m more sympathetic than ever to pirates, given how frequently creative works are disappeared or moved these days - pulled from streaming for political/social norms reasons (1984 style), “purchased” items removed from libraries for licensing reasons or because a platform outright closes, and then the garden variety shuffling of content between platforms in what seems like a hypermodern version of IP musical chairs (“who has 30 rock this week”).

But at the same time I engage in piracy less than ever before. For me it seems like the hard part used to be obtaining the content — “why can’t I buy or rent the new Sopranos online” — but now the hard part is choosing something worth my time in the oceans of available titles.

This past week I watched a Norwegian miniseries about people stuck in an airport at Christmas (Netflix). Prior week I watched videos from a London Clojure conference (YouTube premium). Prior to that I rewatched an old Jim Jarmusch movie (Criterion). A couple months ago I was on a Hulu binge (The Bear, Only Murderers) before cancelling. I bought a comedy special from Louis CK’s own website. I only used a couple months of a free year of Apple TV, to watch Ted Lasso.

My default is to watch old Anthony Bourdain, either streaming (back when I had Hulu, or when I had HBO Now for Curb Your Enthusiasm) or buy a copy on Apple’s store.

But just as often I look around and give up. Most nights there’s nothing I want to watch. If I can, I make myself read a book or do some coding or maybe a podcast. I subscribe to streaming platforms then cancel. It’s so easy to sign up and then leave.

My point is, if I can find something I want watch it’s only a few clicks to watch it legally for a decent price (helps that I am not in my 20s, income wise). But it’s hard to find anything I want to watch. Piracy is almost a non sequitir these days, most of the time. But sure, if you find something you love, make sure to torrent a copy, because it will disappear eventually for one reason or another.

I pirate everything. Haven't subscribed to a service like Spotify, Netflix, etc. in many years. I can listen to my music in CD-quality and bring it anywhere. Same with any movie, TV show, etc. And I know that no one is selling what I find interesting as analytics data.

At the same time, I want to support creators, and I'll donate/use services like Bandcamp to directly support folks I appreciate. I have a $100/mo "donation" fund.

Has nothing to do with the price as I'm more than happy to support creators. Just not through centralized platform that doesn't respect my freedom.

A few weeks ago I rented the Alien: Covenant movie on youtube because I didn't even know it existed. About 2 minutes in I noticed it was playing at 480p. I paid the extra dollar for HD rental. Lo and behold, if you want to watch rented youtube movies in HD (which you paid for) you can't do it in chrome browser on mac but hilariously safari did let me watch it in HD on the same computer... Those 15 minutes of debugging added about 3 cuts to the 10000 caused by silly restrictions that exist.

No, but we are at the point where we are going to start cancelling subscriptions. There is more content than we will ever watch. First of the chopping block is Netflix, there just isn't enough really good content to justify it anymore. What we are considering is subscribing for maybe 1-2 months a year, bundle the things we want to see on it then.

From our perspective the two most valuable subscriptions are AppleTV+ and Disney Plus. Apple are making by far the best "prestige" TV, and that seems to be their strategy. Quality over quantity, much like their other product ranges.

My wife and I watch slightly less on Disney, but the value it brings us as a family (8yo + 4yo) is enormous. If we could only have one subscription it would be that one.

Amazon Prime Video is just a value add on a subscription we have anyway, although we increasingly shop less on Amazon, without the free shipping we probably would cancel the video subscription.

I have more disposable income than in my teenage years, so when it comes to convinience/money tradeoffs I'll natually choose differently than my teenage self.

Where the streaming services are getting in trouble is if they are less convinient than piracy. Steam's success is largly built on being more convinient than pirating games, and similarly early Netflix was more convinient than pirating movies. Netflix and Amazon Prime still are on the "more convinient than piracy" side for me, the plethora of other streaming services not so much.

And then there's the question whether watchin Youtube with adblocker and SponsorBlock is equivalent to piracy. It is damn convienient.

I disagree that we're at peak monetization (see what the price of a premium cable package used to be)

Since you mention Spotify I'm super happy with it. It's basically everything I ever wanted consistently. Can recommend new music better than any person I know, and I can feed it any song that I and somebody else like as a radio station and get a pretty decent list of songs we both don't mind. Granted I don't listen to music as many hours as I did when I was young, but that's just me changing I think.

I feel like video games are actually often underpriced if you wait for a steam sale. I think child me would be blown away by the fact I can buy a game 10x better than mario 3 for 1/10th the price of Mario 3 ($50). I'm talking Baba is You, or Hollow Knight is 7.49 right now, or Slay The Spire is 8.49 right now. When I grew up I had "Gauntlet" which had some traits/bugs that made it nearly unwinnable without a guide, even by old standards.

In TV I think there's more of an argument to be had, and if you had only said TV I think this would be an interesting discussion, but if you think it's everything I think the more likely explanation is it's a you thing (maybe just not as easy to please anymore and upset at the media for not giving you that same magical feeling).

I see no moral problem with file sharing. Personally it's rarely worth the hassle, though I occasionally convert a youtube video to and mp3 for niche songs I can't find on spotify. I'd say it depends on how you value your time and how difficult it is to find what you want.

"Piracy" is the legitimate competitor of streaming services. It seems like we have had a period where streaming offered a better product, but having a credible threat of competition is important to keep the streaming offerings competitive and relevant.

It depends. Games and music - no, I'm glad to pay for Spotify subscription, and I'm happy to buy a game every once in a while. Movies and TV shows - yes, if I cannot find them in Netflix. Sometimes I want to watch something, and it's not available in Netflix in my region, or not on Netflix at all. What choices do I have?

> I just feel like if we’re at peak monetization.

We're really not. If anything there's more content (for lack of a better word) available for token amounts of money than there ever has been. I don't know how old you are but back in the distant past of the 90s you had two choices if you wanted to watch a film, you could go to a shop and buy a copy, probably for more money than you'd pay for a monthly Netflix subscription now, or you could go to the video rental store and rent it for a few pounds. If you were really lucky someone you know might own a copy and would lend it to you.

Games would cost £40+ new, or you could pick up the really big older ones for £10 or so. If you happened to want a game no one else did you were out of luck. Compare that to something like Steam now, or Game Pass where for ~$15/month you can have hundreds of games to choose from.

Maybe you don't like the model of monthly subscriptions. Guess what, for almost any film you can still buy a copy, either physically on disk, or digitally and be able to watch it right now. Don't like the level of ads on YouTube (which is honestly still better than what you'd see on any TV channel)? You can pay to turn them off.

This whole thing just reeks of entitlement. You don't have a god given right to watch and play anything you choose, whenever you choose, without paying anything for that. That's not how the world works. I'm not aware that ever having been how the world works. So sure, go pirate the things you want, but don't try to justify it as anything other than "I'd rather not pay".

I just reduce consumption, because 1.) that's better for you anyway 2.) most media is drivel and always has been 3.) can't be arsed to do illegal shit for such a petty reward

I have Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Prime TV. I will search through all of those before resorting to the high seas. If I didn't have a family though, I would cancel all of those services because it takes me less overall effort to download from torrents.

It's amazing how ridiculously easy it is to pirate these days. I didn't know jack shit about anything other than a handful of torrent sites and qBittorrent until recently. Yet it took me only 15-30 minutes to set up a full media-server stack for the whole thing.

Here's my full stack:

- ProtonVPN at $120 for 2.5 years of service, approx $4/mo

- qBittorrent: torrent download client. Free

- Jellyfin Server (PC) + Jellyfin Roku Channel (Roku device): similar to Plex media server, it's like a Netflix-style UI for your local content. Free

- Sonarr: searches for TV shows and can automatically download them into qBittorrent. Free

- Radarr: searches for movies and can automatically download them into qBittorrent. Free

- Jackett: search indexer so you can search all your favorite torrent sites through one service. Integrates into Sonarr and Radarr. Free

EDIT: Oh I use Spotify for music since that one is reliable and all the music I want is there. Plus they have offline download options.

The only 3 platforms that receive my money are Bandcamp, Itch.io and Steam.

The first two are pristine from an ethical standpoint.

I'm torn on Steam because it's not run as a typical USA corporation with all the anti consumer BS. The DRM they themselves provide is more of a suggestion instead of a real challenge. It can be broken with off the shelf tools or just stepping and dumping in x64dbg. However they did their fair share of damage in eroding what it means to own digital goods.

I also bought https://everycircuit.com/ because halfway through reversing the license checks I started feeling bad for the developers :(

I unapologetically pirate everything else.

I am growing really frustrated with the legal options. Buying DVDs / Blurays is not an option. Delivering the media takes days, the DVD menus are a real pain to deal with, binge watching is a chore due to constantly having to change disks. Old TV series often cost a small fortune when the DVD box set for one season costs almost 50€ and there are 9 seasons. Streaming was fine for a few years, but it's beginning to erode really fast. I'm definitely not going to pay for a bazillion subsciptions. If it's not an in-house production, you can never rely on a specific show or movie being available just because it was yesterday. And the quality of in-house productions is constantly going down. But should you happen to actually like that new Netflix (or whatever) show, the chance that they'll leave you hanging after 2 seasons before any story arc came to conclusion is really high. So yeah, I'm growing increasingly frustrated and piracy is beginning to look really attractive again.

The documentary series I spent 10 years working finally landed 6 weeks ago on NBC Peacock. Guess how I saw the final cut? That's right. I pirated it. I pirated my own show.

Again? I never stopped. I try to find ways to fund creators directly whenever I can but I'm not going to encourage:

- the balkanization of content that we've seeing

- investment in DRM

- the strengthening of artificial-scarcity-based business models which I think harm innovation more than they help

I pirated a lot when I was younger and couldn't afford it. It's a headache I don't need anymore - worrying about VPNs or seedboxes, torrent sites moving to different domains or being shut down, maintaining ratios, letters from your ISP...

Nowadays entertainment is quite accessible through subscriptions and I just wait for decent sales on the games I want to play.

I don’t see why I should ever have stopped pirating. Advertisements are exploitation. They waste time and distract, as well as deceive. On top of that, companies track your usage, data & location, then go on to sell your info to anyone.

You never truly ‘have’ most paid media either, it can just be deleted out from under you, which I find extremely rude and contrary to ideas of ownership and archival.

I never stopped pirating and never will. Most things I want aren’t available to stream, and I’m not waiting years for some bastard streaming company to ingest the media so I can pay for the privilege of watching it in my Plato-cave.

I had an account for an unnamed streaming service and I really valued contributing to the production of the content with my small contribution. Then I moved from one country to another. After the move I have a credit card issued by a bank in the country I moved to and said streaming service will not accept it as payment. I can't find a way to actually pay them money. It seems the only way to get access is through some bundles with ISPs which sadly do not fit my situation. I find this extraordinarily stupid and I'm not even sure I would call it greedy. It's just counterproductive. I want to give them money, they just seem to have come to the conclusion that money is not fungible, the source matters.

I’ve been fortunate and really can’t bring myself to take things without paying for them. Being a movie and sports fan I pay for (deep breath) Netflix, HBO, Peacock, Disney/Hulu/ESPN, Sunday Ticket, Fubo, Paramount+, Prime, and AppleTV/Music.

I don’t mind the money, except Sunday Ticket which is insanely expensive for something that blacks out the biggest games each week.

What I mind is the complete unusability of having different UIs for each of them, and the lack of any unified schedule/guide. It is bizarre that the only way to find a live football game is to try each of the services that it might be on until found.

I don’t begrudge content creators and distributors their money. I just find it insane that the content choosing user experience is so much worse than 30 years ago.

If someone came out with a 100% pirated live+streaming solution with a unified catalog and schedule, I’d happily use it while still paying for the legit services whose various baroque UXes I wouldn’t miss at all.

I don't think I would ever resort to piracy, as a middle aged guy with a family, the reward is not worth the risk to me plus I am lucky enough to be able to afford to watch what I want if I really want it. With that said the quality of options available on streaming services has really gone down. I am subscribed to Netflix, Prime, Disney+, Apple, Hulu and HBO Max; and there is nothing to watch.

I am likely going to cancel Apple, HBO Max, Hulu and Netflix shortly. My kids like Disney+ although personally I am concerned with the channels attempts to front and center homosexuality targeted at kids. This is a personal issue I am not seeking to change anyone's opinion or mind or lead a boycott against Disney. Its just something that I don't like for my kids. So depending on if the amount of animated LGBTQ content increases on the channel I will likely cancel that as well.

I don't want to pay for DRM content.

Piracy is a better alternative. Far less hassle and better quality.

There is some very nice software out there so you can basically have your own private Netflix. Risk is minimal when setup correctly.

People say piracy is stealing. It isn't. It's the natural order of things. People support things with money that they want to see. People see plays, concerts, and movies in theaters all the time. Not letting people share a recording is ridiculous, as is the concept of eternal royalties.

Look at how much art we have that takes from prior art to turn it into something new. Piracy helps that goal. We wouldn't have people like Eminem if he hadn't pirated tapes. Piracy hurts no one, and studies show pirates spend the most on content.

A decade or so from now, no one will be talking about piracy because it will simply be the natural way of sharing, at least in free countries.

I pay for my basically all of my games and music, proving Gabe Newell's old quote about piracy being the result of lack of convenience in the legal method of acquiring things (paraphrasing). Steam is convenient and I still have all access to all the games I bought 10+ years ago. And as for music, I stream it like most people, and also buy vinyl records for albums I particularly like which gives me something tangible and sends the artist some actual money in the process.

Movies and TV shows though, I basically pirate all of it. When it was mostly all on Netflix there was a convenient legal offering to watch a lot of content, but these days I have no idea where anything I want to watch is streaming. And even then, stuff moves around because contracts expire, new deals are formed, etc. And it's even worse if you're outside of the US (Canada in my case). You look up where to watch something and all the results tell you one thing, you go check, and it's not there because there's different distribution in Canada. I don't want to subscribe to 10 services when I'm probably not gonna use most of them in a month, and I'm not spending hours managing which services I'm subscribed to every month because it's a waste of time and it's not like I plan what I'm going to watch that far in advance anyway. Some things are only streamable on some network's website where they expect you to login with your account through a cable provider. So yeah, screw that - I flick my VPN on, load a torrent into my client, refresh my Plex and I'm watching in a few minutes. And half the time it's better quality cause it's a Bluray rip instead of running through an ugly compression algorithm.

I still do what I can to support shows I enjoy so they get some of my actual money -- buying merch or physical copies of the show/movie. But even if I buy a physical copy I still usually end up just watching it through my Plex server cause it's more convenient than grabbing a disc from my shelf and loading it into the disc drive that my current PC doesn't even have.

As I've gotten older, I think my morals have gotten more defined. I no longer think that piracy is acceptable. Someone spends time and money to produce something, and I think they get the right to sell it however they like.

My choice, of course, is to pay for the content, or just not to consume it. I don't believe I have an inherent right to consume any content I want for free. The counter argument is usually that a copy of creative content doesn't take anything away from the author, but I don't really buy into that one.

I wish the UX of streaming services wasn't so horrible. That is what makes me most want to go back to a Kodi box.

I want a personal collection of movies, imagine a bookshelf of my favorites.

But all the streaming services are like having a messy Blockbuster Video in my living room, which I don't want.

Alternative viewpoint: Their (movie, song, game and book content producers) problem is not piracy, it's being ignored.

Right now there is much more competition for eyeballs than there ever was in the past (social networks, video shorts, etc). People only have so many hours in the day for entertainment, and these alternative eyeball-grabbers are can only gain eyeballs at the expense of traditional eyeball-grabbers.

For example ...

I've got Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+, and the last time I saw a movie on TV was in 2021, the last series I watched to completion was The Boys (and Umbrella Academy).

I'm literally paying for tons of stuff I am not going to see; is it reasonable to think that I am going to go out of my way to search for, then download something?

I mostly play smaller or indie games, which have less aggressive monetization.

If I were to go and play the latest AAA like Assassin's Creed or whatever, I would definitely pirate it, but the game doesn't call to me anyway. Not only due to pricing and additional monetization, but mainly to remove the invasive DRM these kinds of titles use.

YouTube Premium I do the janky family sharing thing that makes the price tolerable, but it pays creators better so that's good.

Spotify, I'm on the verge of just going and pirating all the songs I want, because their UI is optimized for entirely the opposite way I listen to music (this could be a rant by itself).

Movies, I never stopped pirating. Just figuring out where I can find a movie in the quality and language I want requires being up to date on the existence, platform support, and terms of like 10 services. And yes, justwatch exists but A) I only watch like one movie a month, but most movies can't be rented, and are only available in a subscription which is a hassle to sign up and cancel every month, not to mention the expense. Versus pirating, where I can use 1 piece of software that will aggregate all the movies and series in the world and provide with an unified access.

Open to it? I practice it when I find it the appropriate response to the market.

I will usually pirate video under one or more of the following conditions:

- I already own or owned a copy of the film at some point in my life

- The film or show isn't available for streaming or even purchase

- The streaming quality is vastly inferior to the format I can pirate

- The film or show can be streamed but with no option besides "free with ads"

- I have good reason to believe that those responsible for making the film won't receive a red cent

I've been finding myself pirating more often recently because I find the quality of streaming video to often be intolerable. It may be alright for brand spanking new shows, but I like to watch a lot of older content, and the quality of the video often totally blows. I'm talking a crapton of compression, and what I suspect to be upscaled standard def rather than actual HD or 4k.

What blows my mind is that a ~250mb mkv file I torrented in under 30 seconds usually blows streaming quality out of the water. I get that torrents are on a much smaller scale, but come on, it's peer to peer file delivery that it almost immediately ready to watch with no buffering or ads or massive disk space needed.

I'm doing a bit of both.

I think it's fair that artists are rewarded for their work, so I pay for one global service per type of content : Netflix for movies and TV shows, Youtube Premium for music.

However, I abhor the game of 'selling rights to certain platforms for certain duration only in certain countries', and I don't want to have to handle half a dozen subscription just because someone in the marketing team somewhere decided that this movie was going to be exclusive to this platform.

So my go to is, if I want to watch something, I first try to find it on my legal paid platform, and if I can't find it there, I'll pirate it.

Works pretty well so far.

There's just more content that I want to watch than I have time, or attention, to watch. I only subscribe to Netflix and Disney+; and Disney+ is because I have young children. (I also subscribe to YouTube music, but I consider that a different form of entertainment. And I subscribe to Amazon, but that's for free shipping.)

Most of the time, if I want to watch something that's not part of one of these existing subscriptions, I can rent it for a small fee. I only rent 2-4 times a year. If I think the kids will want to re-watch it, I buy the Bluray. I only buy a few a year.

So, would I go back to piracy? Well... I have to really want to watch it, it has to be missing from my streaming and rental services, and I have to "not care enough to rewatch" to not buy the Bluray. The last thing I pirated, I reminded myself that I've watched it enough to justify buying it outright.

IMO: What we need is copyright reform along with piracy. Copyright should only be protected if an asset is available online instantly at a fair price. Otherwise, if the asset isn't available at a fair price, piracy should be 100% legal.

I am. Fuck playing unfinished, unoptimized games for only 69.99 and paying for a dozen streaming services to watch shows.

Why exactly did music piracy go downhill? Because you can just pay 10 bucks (or a fiver if you're a student) per month and have pretty much everything available at high quality.

Let me share my perspective on piracy as a citizen of Russian Federation who don't think about relocation.

I was a youtube/Spotify/last.fm/[smth other I don't remember] subscriber before 2022.

Actually it was kind of pride in younger population in Russia for games: "I pay for all games I like".

My son, my friends has hundreds of games bought on Steam.

That was a big step actually.

How sanctions worked?

For me: - youtube/youtube music - I was a subscriber, so it was for me: "No advertisments, ability to support channels, ability to listen youtube videos on locked phone". Now: no advertisements for all Russia - which is great. Not able to listen on locked phone - irritating. Support channels (I'm a WH40K fan) - thru direct donations

- spotify - I still think that last.fm was the best

- netflix, amazon, etc - sorry, I have no options, except eztv, kickass, piratebay, etc. Nothing new

My POV: Piracy is not a problem. Piracy is a solution. When everything else failed.

For journal articles, absolutely. For software, never. For movies and tv shows, I'd prefer not to but some content is simply unavailable now except maybe on ebay in the form of used discs. As far as there being too many streaming services, life is short and I don't want to spend too much of it watching content so it's easy to do without if some individual show is the only thing a particular service has on it that I'm interested in.

The only real issues that have "encouraged considerations of piracy" for me are the drive toward subscription for things that don't involve recurring costs to service me, and the generally abysmal quality of everything in the absence of a free trial/sample.

Beyond that, piracy must be among the top 3 motivations for companies to senselessly subscription-ify everything, so engaging in it is at least participating in incentivizing that behavior.

Music is a non-issue with services competing on features rather than exclusive content.

I pirate games that cost more than ~$20 and don't provide a demo. If I enjoy the game then I'll usually buy it after an hour or two, especially indie games.

I'm done with movie/TV streaming services. Their business model and user experience is garbage while piracy provides a significantly better ease of use, overall UX and content quality. I'll reconsider paying for these services when they start competing on features and pricing rather than content exclusivity that varies by geographical region.

I'll buy e-books as long as the price is "reasonable", don't expect me to pay more for an e-book than a physical copy.

I already gave up and installed Plex along with the *arr apps on my home server.

I still pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube premium etc. but I find myself many of the times I want to watch something, I just use my home server rather than even checking if they exist on Netflix or Prime video.

Can’t give up YouTube premium, but probably will stop having Netflix as soon as they block password sharing.

I want to be back to piracy. Not specifically for money, but for quality subtitles :

I want translations that are close to the original content, not an adaptation that nearly destroys its meaning.

Until a decade ago, Japanese right owners were hardly interested in broadcasting content in my area. Fansub teams would provide subs for content as long as it wasn't licensed. (it was in order to make it available, but most of them didn't want to compete with companies who would actually develop the content). This resulted in a range of subs, each with a different trades-off between pure translations and adaptation. If you got a subtitle from a team that offered a close translation, you had much more meaning, but you had to understand a bit of what was going on.

We also had the opportunity to make the shows a bit of our own by discussing about its meaning and by reflecting on it, in order to write the subtitles. The we could compare subtitles and what each team understood.

Now most commercial services destroy that meaning. They take the show away : you're just a consumer/viewer without a say (don't forget to purchase a shirt to make the show your own) They adapt it with a lot of approximations, and remove the quirks and rudeness to make it ok for the most viewers. (yes, shonen characters are rude, you can ride a mamachari and it's not just a bicycle on which you're an angry cyclist, -kun / -chan / -dono have a meaning, ...)

I no longer enjoy to watch anime with commercial services, that's just bland. They just want to do a western show with a Japanese show. And since I used to be in a fansub team with the 'as long as it wasn't licensed' clause, I and don't approve of piracy, so I just no longer watch this content as much as I could. (now US shows like South Parks feel more mature)

I find it a shame that governments went all over the place to find dichotomies to break down public services on behalf of free competition (operating train isn't maintaining rails, selling power isn't maintaining lines and power plants,...), but that you can't just purchase a license for movie and its subtitles separately.

For movies I’m ditching the streaming subscriptions and back to digital rentals.

Most of the old movies are available for $2.99 from Amazon Prime Video.

A couple clicks from the smart tv is worth a few bucks to me compared to finding the torrent then finding a way to get it in the TV.

Watching classic films is more fulfilling than the latest steaming fad.

If you try to consume quality over quantity the monetization isn’t too bad IMHO.

I think piracy is born from overcoming economic inaccessibility, and sometimes convenience. In the case of a hypothetical teenager I once knew as well as myself, it was the desire to learn professional tools but they were faced with economic inaccessibility. Subscription services has made that cheaper, but with the volume of subscriptions required one might think we should go back. That hypothetical adult now though doesn't feel they need to do that because the open source ecosystem is amazing with a little technical nohow, but they wouldn't have learned that nohow without pirating professional tools early on.

The day Disney+ launched, I bought a Usenet subscription. I've since cancelled Netflix, because they kept removing shows as I was watching them, then kept increasing the price, and finally added advertisements. I've stuck with Ad-free Hulu, because my kids watch a lot of shows on it, and it's been working very well. I tried Paramount+, but it doesn't work if you have a Pi-Hole, it just refuses to play anything unless you allow ads, no matter what level you pay for. Not for me.

Piracy isn't perfect, but it never shows me ads, never removes shows, and doesn't try to recommend anything to me.

I've tested recently a very "refined" ipTV service that for the price of a single "mainstream" subscription "aggregates" all the newest content of all services + TV + Non Subscription services Movies, they provide simple to use apps for all Smart TV platforms, OS and phones, great user experience, 1 single account and app for everything. Clearly all this is illegal but in a way, removes the direct legal risk of downloading stuff yourself, I got the feeling these type of offers will start to grow a lot soon, sadly we know this type of services will never be legal.

I don't typically condone piracy because I think it's important to compensate writers/actors/artists, but I do feel angry about the state of things. Physical media is looking relatively good in many cases. Discs are a hassle but at least then you know what you have after a glance at the shelf; there have been several times I bought something a la cart on Amazon / Apple / Vudu and only later realized it was actually available on a streaming service I was subbed to. Even if I'm willing to pay up (and we usually keep 2-3 subs at a time), the UX of checking each platform to see if something is available is absurd.

There's also the issue of content just randomly disappearing off streaming services for no good reason. Even big-budget, big-name shows like Westworld have now fallen prey to this. Big parts of our culture can just get thrown in the bin if some MBA decides it's what's needed to squeeze a few more pennies out of their bottom line? To me, that is unacceptable. The cultural preservation angle is the best thing about piracy IMO.

Even with all the madness, some content doesn't seem available anywhere for any price. I recently tried to track down The Abyss (1989), a scifi classic by James Cameron. It's currently not on any digital platform and the physical discs appear to be out of print. The only way to watch this movie seems to be piracy or buying a second-hand disc on eBay.

Not speaking personally, of course, and I do not like the word piracy, but.

The tech is on the side of those who wish to share. The idea of sharing is 100% identical to the entire point of libraries.

I have no problem with shaming and otherwise encouraging people into paying things that they should pay for if they can.

I have a huge enormous problem with directing law-enforcement and other restrictive and punishing actions to individuals for consuming things they want to consume, when the marginal cost to do so is zero.

I went from full piracy as a teen to paying for everything as an adult. However, recent price hikes, password crackdowns, removed content, and fragmentation have changed my mind. It’s now easier just to rent a seedbox in another country and setup Plex, so I do that.

Funnily enough, it costs me what a couple of streaming services used to cost <$30/mo. But I don’t have these annoying restrictions.

It’s not about the money. It’s about wanting to preserve access, easily, to my favorite shows that I love to rewatch.

Never stopped, never will. Radarr and sonarr already give me superior UI/UX than the godawful streaming service UIs, plus I never have to worry about a favorite song or show or movie suddenly going poof out of existence.

Plus, y'know, free.

For me it is a convenience factor. Even when I have subscriptions with what I want to watch, I eventually found myself often just downloading it because it is easier than thinking about what service a show will be found on.

Spotify has this down since it is rare that they don't have the music I want. I happily pay for and use this subscription.

Games are also easy to find since on PC it is a quick Google that gives a direct link to the correct store. It is still annoying when things aren't on Steam but the friction of finding the game to play is minimized by using Playnite to collate all the different services after I buy the game.

Movies and TV are just a mess that is driving people to pirate. The media companies got greedy and prevented Netflix from becoming the one stop shop for all media. Watching on the TV means that even figuring out which service to use sucks and it is a terrible user experience.

Another complaint is live sports, I would happily subscribe to Dazn if they had every sports league on it. But since they don't have some sports I want to watch then the subscription just isn't worth it. Similarly, blackouts on the sport specific services make them a non-starter.

I don't agree with money being the issue. While I think copyright is far too long, most of the stuff people complain about would be well within coverage even at the original 14 years. I don't think it's wrong for creators (including companies) to set prices as they wish.

What does bother me though and I do think is genuinely against the core public bargain of copyright is when material simply isn't available at all, or when copyright holders attempt to extract rights beyond copyright via layering DRM and such on top. The whole reason the public grants copyright is to encourage the creation and availability of quality IP. If IP isn't available at all in a given market for a reasonable period of time, IMO it should lose copyright protection. I'd support a separate "credit right", whereby for a long period of time after expiration of copyright anyone making derivative works would need to reasonably prominently credit the original with links, but copyright should never be about keeping things away from the public, that's literally the polar opposite of the point. I should be able to go buy a DRM-free FLAC or the like of music or DRM-free MKV of movies I'm interested and then use them on all of my devices, and be able to do that for any content made anywhere in the world (at least within Berne convention type countries, which is most of them). With books, original music and so on, the protection was the law and that was that. That's what it was all built around. Copyright holders should not be able to have it both ways, to get legal protection and then add tons of stuff beyond legal protection (and lobby to disgustingly and retroactively extend copyright as they frequently did).

So if I go to get something and it's "not available in your region" or exclusively via DRM'd streaming then yes, I'm open to copyright infringement. Even more so and without hesitation if it's just not published at all anymore. Copyright should never, EVER be about REMOVING IP from the public sphere. But if a game is on GOG and they want $60 or $90? Or hell if someone wanted to charge $500 for the Ultra Hyper DigiGigi Polkadot Edition? Then I'll respect that. If it seems worth it I'll get it, if it doesn't I won't, but "monetization" isn't wrong for luxury goods. There is lots of choice, including doing stuff ourselves more easily than ever. What I do think is absolutely wrong is not putting things up for honest direct sale.

For new music (as in recorded and released recently), no. Most of the music I buy is made by artists who probably tour in a van. So, every little sale matters to these folks. And, I'm happy to support them! In regards to some hit record from the 60's that already went 10x platinum (or whatever), I'll grab the free version in a heartbeat.

For movies / tv series, I don't want to bother. I really don't. But, the streaming landscape is just out of control (for lack of a better phrase). Even with just a few services, the signal to noise ratio is heavily noise. Who knew there were so many Christmas movies?! I just want to watch Elf. Oh, it's on the other streaming service? That's weird, it was on here last year!

I just want to buy some of this stuff digitally, so I can watch it without having to Google what service it's on. Or, after Googling it's location, come to find it's been removed recently (looking at you, Netflix). But, a lot of the newer shows are streaming only. Which, leaves one option if you want it on a hard drive.

I just dont understand how media companies cant figure out that its QUALITY over Quantity. I dont want bullshit C list actors coming up with sharknado 3. Ok, maybe I do want that to some degree, but not all the time and everywhere. We get it, its cheap and easy to make. cool. no one wants to watch it and especially no one wants to pay AND watch ads to watch it.

I've been trying to stream/rent Dead Poet's Society in English in Germany for over a month now. It's nowhere to be found. It's like I don't even have a choice here. But I also don't particularly enjoy hunting for pirated content while trying to ensure that it's not full of unconsumable garbage.

It is still cost-benefit thing for me.

When I was young, I did it a lot with Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Movies, MP3, and etc. Because I didn't have money.

I don't pirate anymore because I make money.

In this day of age, piracy has increased risk with malware that mines bitcoin or locks your disk for ransom, so the risk is much higher and effectively lowers the benefit.

For me it is not about monetization anymore, it is about convenience. I would gladly pay netflix or any other provider to have access to movies I want to actually watch. Right now it is more about what netflix wants me to watch. So I usually pay netflix for month or two when I there is something I want to watch and cancel subscription shortly after. I think rent/buy model is more sustainable here then pure streaming services.

For games I rarely pirate something, steam/gog/xbox are just too convenient for me. Unless it is something on the platform I don't have, but I still want to play it in an emulator.

Music is sort of middle ground. I am ok with content selection major stream providers have now. So basically the only thing I care about is to platform to not mess with me with some bullshit features. I switched from spotify, because I got tired of how their android and mac apps work.

I don't see the need for priracy (yet).

To pay for all streaming services I only need to work 1 hour. This is to pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Videoland, Disney+, HBO Max and Sky

As for videogames, there's currently a sale on Steam and PSN. That's when I usually buy games. It's very easy to save money but you gotta be patient.

100%, and I have hulu, netflix, hbo max etc. I pay for YouTube premium because the amount of savings I've made from it is 10 fold higher than the cost.

It's software that has switched from pay one time per version to subscription only that causes me to feel this way too. And let's not forget what TurboTax has done to the US.

Actually, I kinda like the current way.

I can listen whatever I want via Spotify. If I like the album that much, I can buy it via iTunes or their store, however finding lossless versions are hard.

If I really love the album, I'll buy its vinyl.

If I don't plan to buy the vinyl, and can't find the lossless version or a decent priced CD, I buy the album online and find the lossless version elsewhere.

I'm a former orchestra player. I know how tedious and draining producing music is. It's unethical to just download it and let it be. Before, it was impossible to get decent music without being gouged, so I had to download some of the albums, but it's no more now. Buying prices are accessible, storage is ample, and syncing is easy.

There's no need to screw musicians over it.

I'm not a big movie buff anyway, so if I can stream it legally, I'm fine.

Games: I rarely use it as demo if I’m not sure about a game. Helped me avoid CP77 ;)

Music: I gave up on my RIAA&Co protest and nowadays just buy the albums, usually on bandcamp. Not using streaming services.

TV: Depends a lot on availability. Sometimes things are not available in English with English subs (I’m in Germany), sometimes not available at all. Don’t have much patience for either issue. Otherwise, I always have Prime and often Netflix.

Movies: I don’t watch movies.

About Amazon Prime, they are finally raising the prices in Germany, from 70€/year to 90€ a year. But besides the streaming being decent, the shipping is a nice bonus (and here Amazon has the best prices quite often, especially if shipping is free), and there’s also Twitch Prime, canceling Prime would mean I’d subscribe to one more channel, which would be almost 50€ a year anyway…

My entertainment consumption has basically moved to reading progression fantasy and litrpg on Royal Road and Kindle Unlimited. It more or less replaced everything, tv, movies, youtube, podcasts, I'd rather just read even if it's not exactly the best writing in the world.

I have never stopped pirating since I got internet. My TV provider gives me Netflix, I have HBO Max through a sweet deal, amazon because of the delivery and Disney because a friend share the account, yet I still download all the shows I want, for example, I downloaded House of the Dragon week after week while I watched it on HBO Max, I think the only episode I watched pirated was the leaked one.

Why? Because I automated this process along time ago and also because I know sooner or later I am going to stop paying for that and this way I am prepared for it, because I don't have Apple or Rakuten, or many others. Because I have my own library of stuff (paid, and pirated) that goes back decades and I can access it from anywhere in the world.

For listening music piracy isn't worth it. The streaming solutions of Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music ... are pretty good.

With a family plan it comes down to less than 3 dollars a month.

For video, the story is completely different. I would have to subscribe to 3 to 5 subscriptions and the experience varies. Netflix sucks immensely [0]. I pay for netflix and prime, but have to run my own Plex Server. When you run your own Plex Server, you also run Sonarr and Radarr. Now you don't care anymore, just add the movie, 10 minutes later i can watch it.

Setting it up maybe a little a hassle, but when it runs ... its god like.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33451725

Never stopped it in the first place. Never got into streaming. Never had a single subscription.

Every time I see someone struggle with streaming services (content not available, DRM, shitty artificial limitations, shitty players, shady business practices, things you "bought" disappearing because licensing changed), I get reminded that piracy is just so much better. Find a torrent, download it, done. After you've downloaded it, you have it forever, it's not going anywhere.

On the OP question, of course I do still watch YouTube, and of course I don't pay for it. I run uBO + SponsorBlock + some userscripts for a barely bearable experience. To be honest, the modern web is literally unusable without an ad blocker anyway.

We haven't had cable TV here in almost 20 years. But we've had some type of high-speed internet and on a business account...which never has data caps of course.

Back then, much of our TV viewing was with the old Netflix DVD-through-the-mail thing, and then various torrent sites. When more and more streaming services started popping up, I torrented less and less to being zero. But now with the shake-up with some of the streaming services (like HBO Max), you just can't get some of the shows anymore...or else you have to buy entire seasons from Amazon or wherever. I haven't resorted to it yet, but I can see how pirating will take a new upswing as the streaming services keep damaging themselves.

Havent left the seven seas since ive discovered it a decade ago. At this point the inconvenience of finding things doesnt even feel burdensome for myself and for the few i provide things. Not even in a private tracker, just a few semi private ones

Some of the problems I think I’m seeing around streaming right now is that every media conglomerate is trying to extract the most they can from consumers. Media companies are debasing cable packages and streaming cable-like packages (Sling, etc.) where their channels and on-demand content is aging and lowering in quality and availability. They increasingly seem like platforms to advertise the Plus versions of services where valued content and new original content is moving rapidly to paid streaming, e.g. Discovery+, Paramount+, HBO+, Disney+, etc.

While this extraction reality sucks but I feel like there’s a game to play here that’s still better than piracy though.

Aside from a brief (ten film) dip into piracy just so I could see how this BitTorrent thing worked about fifteen or so back, I never really pirated anything.

Now, though, I feel like I am getting gouged from one side, nickel and dimed from another. I am especially considering it for music -- chasing down out of print stuff has begun to annoy me. If they can't keep it in print, then I think they should give up copyright. I'd be willing to support legislation to that extent. We'd have to close a lot of loopholes as to what "in print" meant, mind you.

Plus, sharing my extensive music collection, which contains some rarities, might not be the worst thing.

I never stopped pirating, I watch movies once a week at most.

All my friends rely on streaming services, every few weeks we have a movie night, 50% of the time we can't find the movie we plan on watching even though they have 4 or 5 services, and when we find the movie we have another 50% chance of it not being available in OV.

Even when it works flawlessly, and even if you pay for the "Uber+ 8k topmaxi over resolution" option you have the same bitrate as when you were buying a DVD for 3 euros in 2005

Also, 90% of the created content is absolute garbage, sometimes we boot netflix just to scroll for literally 20 minutes in quest for something to watch before giving up

Where I am, there are frequent power cuts or Internet is down because of a storm. We do have a generator so we can keep on living. I hate the fact tho that I'm not able to pay for content I paid for : movies, fitness classes, music etc.

So looking to build a media server full of content, via legal means or piracy!

Another motivation is while I'm ok paying now, what about in 20 or 30 years time? Maybe there will be a time where I want to discard my credit card, but still want to be able to enjoy movies. I would have paid then thousands of dollars to streaming services. A media server with my favorite content sounds like a better bet.

For TV and Movies I'm very open to piracy because I often find that when I want to watch something it is, for some reason, only available on some obscure streaming service I don't have. Sometimes it is on Prime or Paramount Plus, but only if I pay extra.

Fuck that noise.

For games though, I have no problem with the state of things. For a while Epic exclusives were annoying, but I just refrained from buying those games until they were on Steam or GoG or something and Epic seems to have become much less aggressive about it now anyway.

Steam: still more convenient than piracy.

TV/Movie streaming: rapidly becoming less convenient than piracy.

Piracy has driven and given political cover to all all sorts of abusive technology.

This was entirely predictable, I and others pleaded decades ago that exactly this would happen, but people just wanted free stuff. And here we are.

Yes, the big media companies are often unlikeable. But US piracy gives up any high ground, and helps grease the push of further anti-consumer conventions and legislation. "Lawmakers, don't let big media do this latest anti-consumer thing (while we are taking their paid product for free)!" doesn't have a lot of credibility.

I gave up on trying to access movies and series legally anymore. There was even a website where you search for a movie and it will show you on which service/subscription its available and for which price. Last straw for me was amazon prime that forced me to buy an older movie which was in a very bad quality and ONLY in one language and NO subtitles. Few google searches away Ive found a pirated stream with full HD quality and in language of choice AND subtitles. Screw all of this. Fuck all of you, who works on this shit at making your customers life miserable.

I propose that where possible we avoid the term "piracy" and instead use the term "commons".

Honestly, I can't consume all the new media that's being created by all these services, so it's a waste to subscribe to more than one or two... I'd gladly pay $3-$4 to watch a movie once (even if it's just me watching), but when you see prices like $20 and $30 it means I need to turn it into a have friends over party to justify the expense. There's still a huge mismatch between the value consumers see and what Hollywood sees in movies - and as long as that gap persists it creates incentive for piracy.

I mean we live in a completely insane world:

Companies logic:

- subscribe to 10 different streaming services to watch all the tv and movies that you enjoy;

- you like music? They don’t care they will shove podcasts down your throat just because it’s cheaper for them to produce;

- ebooks? Let’s make customers pay the exact same for digital products as hard cover physical books just because it makes totally sense;

- games? Let’s put ridiculous drm that acts more like spyware, also let’s charge for 10 years old+ games the same or more than new games.

Yeah punish consumers and reward pirates, that’s their logic.

Definitely an insane world.

I used to download TV shows via IRC, Usenet, or other means back in the 90s because nobody would take my money. I did the same when Star Trek Discovery Season 4 came out from piratebay.

For episode 2 onwards I could buy the season of Discovery through apple tv, which I did. I assume S5 will be on Paramount Plus which is now available in my country, so I subscribe to that if I want to watch it.

As far as I'm concerned if I can't buy it, it's fair game, if I can pay for it then I will, or I won't watch it.

After some technical know how and upfront time investment, piracy is genuinely easier and presents a better UX than the legal route.

With the suite of production-quality piracy automation software out there, as well as BYO media front ends like Plex et al, those who are so inclined are a long long long way past the ‘manually rifling through Usenet or Demonoid’ of yesteryear. One can simply visit a polished web UI of a piece of software running on their home network, and that they want every season of Letterkenny in 4K and it’ll be available to them within the hour.

Those who consume media this way don’t need to keep track of which steaming service has the rights to which property at the current point in time. Nor do they need to deal with inconsistent and increasingly Byzantine UXs of steaming service apps. They can instead enjoy a consistent interface on all of their devices with a single play queue, with even the ability to build playlists and collections of media that would otherwise be across streaming services.

I am significantly visually impaired and as such find it difficult to sit back on the couch and bounce between different apps and interfaces on my Apple TV. Were I inclined to consume media by way of piracy, I imagine that I’d find the experience to all in all be much more accessible than doing things the Right Way. All completely hypothetical of course.

The one thing that paying for and using streaming services has over the modern privacy approach, for one that has the prerequisite technical knowhow and ethics to pirate in the first place, is discovery / recommendation engines. The current suite of piracy apps make attempts to recommend new media to you, but obviously they can’t hold a candle to the millions of hours and petabytes of Big Data that powers…say…Netflix’s recommendation engine.

I genuinely believe that there’s a notable portion of pirates that would stop doing it if it were easier to consume content legally. This is why you see music piracy sinking deeper and deeper into the shadows. Comparing music consumption with movie or even TV show consumption has its limits, but were there a legal way to consume such content with a Spotify level of coverage, I think that it’d be quite compelling to these people. Of course, piracy is much less of a problem than it once was, so who knows if media companies even care anymore.

Piracy is a service problem.

If I want to watch a particular movie, and it’s not on Netlix or the iTunes Store in my country, I’ll pirate it, as I don’t feel like signing up for yet another service.

Pirate movie streaming sites are better now than in the old days. The recommended content is more relevant. There are no agenda driven promotions. The related content is related to the content, not some politicized algorithm trained on other people's tastes. There's no geotargetting garbage. I've never seen, "Content not available in your country" on a piracy site. And since when did I own an entire country?

Whatever gets the most clicks generally makes it to the home page. You can also search or browse by actor, genre and other data they've imported from IMDB.

No need to sign up or sign in. Just start watching the movies you want for free. Unless you feel obligated to pay, I'm not sure why you wouldn't?

Pop-unders if you even see them on your system are still a lesser evil than ads mid stream in DRM content or dark patterns pressuring you to install some horribly bloated app. Just click and they are gone.

You can usually download the video directly over and watch it later from these streaming sites. Opening a video file in the video player of your choice and watching it whenever you like, however you like. It is almost like you own the computer and can do whatever you please with the data contained within. Imagine that.

This got really really complex these days. I subscribes to HBO Max but sometimes the connections to their server are so bad, the catalog page don’t even load, in case like these I will have no choice but to find some pirated sources and load them to my device. Netflix / YouTube doesn’t have these kinds of problems though.

I would say the dollars are for the smooth experiences, you have to make it worth the dollar; otherwise I have no choice but piracy.

Just one movie shows how the situation is nuts:

Baahubali is a very long movie that was split into two parts. It is not a normal "movie 1 + sequel", it is basically a 5 hour long movie split in two for easier production.

Netflix originally had both parts, it is where I watched it. I went to show the movie to my wife and found out now only second half is there. The first half is on HBO, that doesn't have second half.

So to watch one movie you need two subscriptions!

Again? With how fragmented the availability of TV Shows is, sometimes there was no other option except for sailing with my boat over the 7 seas.

If you are in the US, you pretty much have access to every streaming service, but outside of the US, some people like me struggle to access shows from Hulu for instance, and sometimes the only viable option is to wait until a TV Channel buys the rights of the shows one desires to watch.

I haven't got time for that!

I'm not there yet, but the fragmentation of movie and tv services is a killer.

I want to watch the latest of <series I enjoy>, which service is it on? Prime? Netflix? Great. Disney? OK, that has a lot of content we enjoy too.

But there's also Stan, Binge (or NowTV in the UK) ... and wtf? Apple tv? Not really there yet IMHO though the dinosaur thing was good. AMC or Paramount? Now you're just taking the piss. One or two services is fine, but what seems to be happening is the old-school distributors are trying to get in on the game (NowTV/Binge etc) and the production networks are trying to regain access to streaming bucks by pulling a few 'anchor' shows off the other services and putting them on their otherwise execrable offering.

I don't know what the answer is. But I do know I'm already using a VPN to log into the same services in different countries to try and watch stuff, and taking a lot of 'free trials' that I then cancel when I've watched the thing I want.

Piracy has got to be easier! And when it is, it thrives. When paying is easier (Spotify/Deezer/Whatever) then that wins.

In the early days of video streaming services, I thought Netflix would become something like Spotify, where I could eventually watch everything.

Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music and all the other offers basically have the same repertoire, minus some specials. You will mostly be happy with choosing a single one. That is what I also would to like have for movies and series. Why is it different with visual media?

YouTube Premium has been an amazing alternative to piracy IMO. A lot of music I listen to (covers, Marcus Veltri) don't even make it to MP3s and such, so just ad free is good enough. The recommendation engine is spot on, it's how I discovered Japanese city pop.

YouTube Music has everything that Spotify has, but better algorithm imo. Instead of radio/playlist stuff, I can just pick a song and it will autogenerate based on the mood of that song. So if you pick a song that's good to sing to, you get other songs to sing along to. Play something from a soundtrack, and it pulls similar soundtrack songs.

I think this is the way to beat piracy; offer something more than just the song, video, all that. Steam achievements and "skip intro" isn't enough though.

There are things that I've been to pirate though - all the Sims expansions, all the crap that goes on Netflix for 5 months then gets removed, things unique to one platform that doesn't have anything else (e.g. certain HBO stuff), things with lots of seasons but incomplete sets of them.

I never 'left' piracy. Part because third world issues, part because I couldn't get much sense of that: never went into any streaming service. At home we "still" consume cable TV (4 families with 5 tvs, via coax cable, 118 channels and a fee of around USD$6/month). I admit I pirate music though half of my catalog is stuff I downloaded from Jamendo.

I'd like all of the subscription providers to provide an API so that I can have a unified front-end, in order to improve discoverability & just save my sanity.

I preferred the old days, with just a single cable/sat set-top box. Might not have been able to stream on-demand, but at least I only had to look in 1 place to record (series link etc) or work out what was available.

I don't think it's ethical for our economic system to incentivize all these high-budget productions, so I like to "vote with my dollar," for what that's worth. Is it really good for humanity if billions of dollars are spent a year on Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 3: The Golden Spork or Top Gun: Maverick's Last Stand: The TV Show?

Various streaming apps are simply very difficult to use for me. Plus other issues: Netflix's 4K is inconsistent and has banding and artifacts that it shouldn't, for one example. There's a long, long list of dark patterns and whatnot which turn me off. You can't even screenshot in mainstream apps!

But with all these IPs being taken down and lost forever (esp. HBO), piracy and seeding feels like I'm contributing to the maintenance of a library. If we're going to spend billions of humanity's resources on these things, they should at least continue to be accessible somewhere.

The pros and cons list ends up pretty imbalanced!

The one that blows my mind are the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) pay-per-views. You have to be subscribed to one service that charges monthly, ESPN+ I believe, for the 'privilege' of buying a PPV at ~$80. Not only is it quite expensive IMO, but it is a complete pain in the rear compared to the alternative of googling a couple of stream links.

I've never abandoned it. Why pay for that crap if you can pay put.io?

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Morally, I won't go back to pirating - I stopped that around 2006. But I understand why people are so frustrated by the current landscape. It's a terrible mess that is incredibly consumer hostile, and these companies deserve to get slapped around by the "free market" (which includes being exposed to the high seas) a bit.

My process:

  1) I find a TV-show or movie I want to see
  2) I go to justwatch.com to see if any streaming services or digital stores carry it in my area
  3a) If 2 is true, I navigate there and watch it
  3b) If 2 is false, I open sonarr/radar, insert the show/movie there and wait.

Steam/GoG pretty much shut down any budding game piracy needs I had. It's just so easy and the sales are so common I've got more games in my collection than I have time to fully complete.

Same for music Spotify and Apple Music cover a good 99.99% of my music needs. There are a few rare albums or artist who go against the grain that are missing, but I can live without those.

Books I could pirate, but the Kindle is too simple to bother - or I can just grab the book from the local library.

If paying is easier than piracy, I'll always pick paying.

As I get older I feel that I care less about watching shows and movies, I would rather watch something interesting on YT, read a book, or just do some other hobby.

Music is handled by Spotify and I'm happy with that, Games through Steam which I also like just fine.

I have a netflix subscription, but I rarely use it now and I don't think my parents do either.

I don't pirate, purely because of the risk of malware. If there was no risk of malware, I would definitely pirate a lot more. Personally, the risk of getting all my accounts/PC hacked isn't worth saving the $X per month to me, and just the inconvenience of trudging through dozens of torrents/trackers/etc.

> YouTube premium

I tried YT Premium.

I found it to be unwatchable. Too bad. I was enjoying the show (Impulse).

I have no trouble paying for services I like, but find the landscape to be chaotic, and am not into paying for one marquee show.

Also, I am finding the streaming apps to be absolute bug farms. It's bad. Real bad. I'm constantly having to restart them.

I pay for music (Spotify) because it’s easiest to share with family members and I honestly don’t even listen to much anymore.

We’ve been trimming down our streaming services to just what we need for our kid at this point, and I’ve been beefing up my media server setup to support us friends and family.

I use streams for all sporting events because that whole landscape is stupid and it’s nearly impossible to simple pay per view stream the games/teams I want to watch. I would gladly pay per stream to watch any sporting event, it’s just not simple/possible, and I don’t want a package because other than nfl, I only watch other sports sporadically/during championships.

I don’t care about any live news or anything else so cable tv is useless to me. Also every time I’m in a hotel with my son and he sees commercials on tv you can see his brain warping so I avoid all ad content at all costs.

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Here in CZ, where pirating has long tradition, mainly because it's legal to download movies and copyrighted files for own use. Or at least it's in gray area now because of push from EU but still nobody is willing to prosecute it. (Uploading/uploaders are prosecuted normally, since it's illegal to upload)

Many people is buying games from Steam, because it's convenient. Not gonna mention we have same prices like US or even bigger, because it's in EUR, yet we have 4x smaller median salaries. And still we buy games from Steam.

Netflix was popular here too, but recently (me included) everybody is switching back to fileshares and torrents. It's unbearable to pay for multiple streaming services and that's just foreign movies, if you want our local movies, there are different streaming services for it.

Thanks but no thanks.

1. If anything, just do one streaming service at a time. Pay for a month, watch a few shows, and then dip.

2. Get an Ad Blocker

3. Buy games on sale.

In summary, piracy probably only makes sense in a handful of contexts. Like I’d be open to pirating the Weird Al Movie, but mostly because there’s an ad for it where he is literally advocating this.

Like many others here, I never stopped. It's not about money, but availability and overall experience.

An experience that has stuck in my mind: as a poor Eastern European who pirated everything as a student, after emigrating to the West, earning "western money" and getting a visa card and all that, I thought: "now I'll buy legally, cool, I'll be an upstanding citizen".

However, when I wanted to buy from itunes or whatever it was (10+ years ago), I was told "The content is not available in your location". Um, yes, it is available, for free, even: if you don't want my money, your loss!

Since then, I have had enough similar experiences that my default is the seven seas.

I have bought games on steam and gog, that was ok. Ebooks, however, are, even in 2023, mostly a drm-filled usability nightmare.

Again? I've never stopped pirating in last almost 30 years. Just moved from BBS and direct sharing/exchange through DC++/Napster via DDL filehostings like Napster/Mega/etc. to torrent in the end, but stil ocassionaly use DDL (Mega/Uptobox). I remember paying around 2008 maybe for Rapidshare for few months to avoid download limits and then maybe in 2018-2019 I paid for hacked Netflix account for like 5USD for year which seemed reasonable price, but anyway end up pirating everything instead watching Netflix, which I used entirely to show my kids Peppa pig and nothing else, the app experience and content was worse than my pirating experience (I can search via search plugins within qbit and I check new releases at YTS/xREL/Pahe/RlsBB).

I wouldn't put Games / Software in the same category as media. I wouldn't pirate software (can you even still pirate games with everything being online / server-side?), but I do "pirate" Spotify / Youtube (with ad-blockers). I still pay subscriptions for Netflix / Hulu / Disney+ / Amazon Prime but already cancelled HBO and Paramount+ and will consider cancelling more.

I do occasionally "pirate" old foreign content that just can't be bought anywhere but it's too much of a hassle (Docker with VPN kill-switch, finding a "legit" torrent tracker, etc.); might consider using it for mainstream content as well if the streaming services keep diluting available media or keep bumping up prices to an unreasonable level.

Internet pirates, once thought defeated, Have made a comeback, and now they're heated. No longer just about music and movies, They've found new ways to share and reuse.

They hide in the shadows of the dark web, Stealing passwords and login info, it's a fad, web. But it's not just about the money, you see, It's about the thrill of breaking the rules, can't you agree?

Streaming services are the new target, Subscription fees, they want to circumvent it. But the entertainment industry won't let them win, They'll fight back with all their kin.

So beware, internet pirates, the law is hot on your trail, Streaming services are here to stay, no need to wail. Better to pay for what you watch and listen, Than to risk it all and end up in prison.

Let's compare:

The law and order way:

- Pay $$$ for a dozen of separate services, still have a lot of content not available to you

- Be forced into using crappy apps which may or may not be available on your favorite platform

- You could pay for years, but you never own anything - the moment you stop paying, you are left with nothing at all

- Be prepared for your favorite series be yanked from the service in the middle of your watching it because some lawyers didn't agree

- Be shown long idiotic un-skippable ads 4-5 times per hour

- Be unable to share your content with family, at least legally, and often be limited in number of devices allowed to access content

- The content is available only when you are online and with good internet connection

- If the content you're interested in is old or foreign or both - sucks to be you

- Maybe you'll get subtitles. Maybe not. Roll the dice.

- If the company decides the content is "not agreeable with modern sensibilities", they'd just remove it and you have no way to access it anymore

- If you don't know which service owns a particular piece of content, maybe there's a third-party service that knows that. Maybe not. Certainly nobody among content owners cares.

The Arrgh and Jolly Roger way:

- Pay nothing

- No ads ever

- Get access to the content that is convertable to any format known to man and will play on any device

- All the content can be made available offline and ported to any device that can play a video or talk standard media player protocol

- Infinite shareablity to any devices in your household

- You get it once, you have it forever and can store it for as long as you like, for zero cost

- You can get practically any content, no matter how old and what the twitter mob thinks about it

- You can get it translated and with subtitles in many languages, in formats supported by devices from mobile phone to smart TV

- There are many specialized search engines allowing to find any piece of content that exists, and usually it takes minutes, not hours

So, am I open to piracy? Hmm... Tough question.

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Early on, I had zero compunction about piracy. It took going into business, and having a competitor insult me in a very public fashion, because I had used pirated Windows on a customer's machine - that he had previously dealt with. I was mortified.

Piracy is theft. Full stop.

When you pirate, you are stealing from someone else. Big bad corporation, or small mom-and-pop shop...

They worked to create those bits. If we're not paying, we're stealing.

The reasons why don't matter.

After getting called on it, I never did it again. If I can't afford the solution I want, I work to find something that I can afford.

As an aside - I would rather pay for a product, rather than get a free version of something and BE the product.

I used to pirate things. I still do, but I used to too.

The golden age of easy access media was 20 years ago. Its also today, too.

I like streaming services. Streaming services are great when you're into movies, and you want to watch 2000 of them.

R.I.P. Mitch Hedburg

I feel it's back to where things were with cable TV. Subscribe to 5 services and get access to the 6 series you want to watch. Or buy a "package deal" and upgrade access to services that add nothing of value. Either way, I have no time to watch all the content I want before it expires. And once expired I have the option to pay for it again while abiding by TOS to keep the now doubly paid for access open. I have yet to encounter a .MKV with such issues.

-- Audio --

I used to buy CDs back before and especially during the rise of Napster. It made discovering new bands and music so much easier than randomly finding something new on the radio.

Then they started suing customers, and I stopped, just stopped paying for media. I've got MP3s of the CDs I had, and there's YouTube for anything I care to listen to that's not in that.

-- Video --

The whole extractive "Intellectual Property" industry can go pound sand as far as I'm concerned. The only reason I have Netflix is inertia.

-- Games --

I have bought a few games through Steam, and I'm currently a big fan of Stardew Valley, previously it was Factorio

-- Software --

Open source as far as I can go, but Windows 10 as WikidPad doesn't work on Linux due to breakages in wx_python

It's too bad that Apple's Season Pass was such a failure. If it would have been successful it's possible it could have attracted almost universal participation by all the majors given its price point, and competitors with a similar model would have sprung up.

$20 or $30 just for a single season of a TV show seemed outrageous. Why pay $20 for a single season of a TV show when you can pay $10/month for unlimited?

Now most people are paying > $50/month for TV subscriptions and still don't get everything they want. So in a year that's $600. That'd buy you 20-30 season passes. How many people watch more than 20-30 shows for their $600?

I use exactly two approaches. First is I buy movies (and sometimes TV shows) on iTunes. Second, I do pirate. But for me, I only pirate when the movie I'm looking for is not available. The moment I can buy it on iTunes, I do, and ditch the pirated copy that I have. So for me it is entirely about availability. And before anyone says that if I subscribed to a half dozen steaming services I'd have that availability, I'll say that most, if not all the movies that I have pirated are very obscure things that I have never seen on any service--Baby of Macon, Meet the Feebles, Underground, and (surprisingly) most recently Spider.

I switched to purchasing one of the first among my peers, for any type of service. But I will pirate stuff which is artificially restricted for me by the location and won't feel any remorse. Regional locks should have died decade ago. As for the service fragmentation - I've picked two of each - Netflix+Prime Video, Steam+GOG, Spotify+YT, so far I simply don't have more free time to watch or play anything more. My wait lists are rather long even on these few services :) . If other companies try to create artificial scarcity by pulling content to their new silos, well, it's their loss. They won't get my money that way.

I got fed up with streaming years ago and have just been curating a small collection of physical media instead. Despite that, I still pirate digital copies because it's simply easier for actually viewing than ripping my own copies.

I think there's a better place to discuss this than here and I also see little reason to discuss this.

All I'm gonna say is that I believe it's silly to pay for subscription services and pay for spotify/youtube or endure their ads.

Streaming services subscription model is wired. I refuse to pay for something that I can barely use 2-4 hours per month (considering 4 streaming services).

Most absurd is situation, when I need to use software for business, but natively it has build in spyware and my data analyzing for AI (yes, Adobe, its you) and also there is no option to use it offline for more than one week, so piracy is only way how to have working software that I actually pay for. It absolutely ridiculous consisering that I pay for this software over 7 years.

There are no professional alternatives yet. Monopoly of Adobe with their agressive dictate needs to be broken.

I decided a while ago that I don't really need to watch TV or play video games, that it's a distraction from more fulfilling activities.

So I got rid of the lot and now spend my free time composing music and reverse engineering software that I find interesting.

I regard this as time much better spent than passively consuming media or getting lost inside virtual worlds adversely designed to be addictive.

And there's no need to even consider piracy, as I don't require these products. Though I'd pay for these items if I did desire them, just like I'll pay to watch something in the cinema now and again.

I never wanted to subscribe to multiple streaming services. Netflix was a great solution but having more than one is a deal breaker for me. Password sharing with friends with other services alleviates that but the industry is trending against that practice.

This alone is a dealbreaker for me. Pricing is ridiculous for third world countries.

The competition and drying up of licenses has also diminished a lot of netflix's value. If you think of a random movie, chances are you wont find it there and said chances are steadily diminishing every year.

I think these trends make piracy more and more palatable each day.

Piracy takes too much work. I have limited time outside of work,study and self-care stuff, for that netflix and prime are more than adequate.

LOTR and Peripheral on prime were top-notch, just watched cowboy bebop (sad they are not making more) on netflix. I simply am never in a situation where I can't find watchable content. There is nothing I can pirate where the quality improvement is worth finding a torrent/magnet, waiting for it to download (and hope it has subs, I like subs) transfer it to TV or connect my laptop or run a plesk server or something like that.

How many of you are open to the piracy of your work product, by people who work for your company's competitors? Or by someone else on your team pirating your code and claiming it as their own?

I oppose piracy because I recognize that I am not entitled to things produced by others, even if there is literally no cost to reproduce them. (Unless the author him/herself supports said piracy!) The fact that I make enough money to afford these things (when/where they are available), as I suspect many of you do, makes the idea of piracy, frankly, ridiculous.

Such entitlement!

It might just be that I haven't really been pirating the last 5+ years, but it seems harder to find things now. TPB isn't a great source anymore. I'd join a private one and seed my fair share (I have a seedbox), but I don't really know what the good ones with good collections are. I'd go back to piracy for certain things like Portlandia, which I pay $7 a month for with AMC+. There's no other programming I care about with AMC+, but I can't find a good source for all the seasons of Portlandia.

I find it immoral to give money to (c)opywrong companies who support Intellectual Slavery.

Their products are also strictly inferior to simply downloading movie files.

I'm older now so am not pirating myself like I used to, but I fight each and every day to try and get momentum going for a Constitutional Amendment in the USA to abolish (c)opywrong and patents laws once and for all: https://breckyunits.com/the-intellectual-freedom-amendment.h...

To each their own, but I am not. I feel obliged to pay for the work of others that I consume where I can. Whether or not the creators of the content are getting paid a fair share is certainly up for debate. I understand that spotify rates are exceedingly poor for the artists. But it isn't my place to negotiate for them.

And when it comes to movies and TV that aren't available on a streaming platform, I'll just rent it on Apple TV. I think it's like $4 for a movie rental. A much better deal than going to the theater.

Or neither streaming subscriptions nor piracy. I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t need or want to be entertained enough to justify either the financial or ethical cost.

> at peak monetization

That and peak attention saturation.

Around the time that Metallica started suing their biggest fans rather than trying to work with emerging distribution models, I just gave up on the music industry entirely. The Sony rootkit added injury to insult, and I was done. The whole fiasco left such a bad taste in my mouth, I felt physical revulsion if I even thought about buying a CD, and I didn't feel like pirating anything either. Commercial music had its Bill Cosby moment, basically, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I had a big collection of MP3s but they lost their appeal. They were all tainted, the whole industry was dirty. I felt dirty listening to any of it, no matter how I acquired it.

I still went to concerts on occasion, but the smaller the better. And the only time I'd buy new CDs was in the lobby after the show. My cash went directly into the artist's hand, that was the only way I could see supporting the art form. If I listened to anything casually, it was radio, and I got so annoyed with top-40 and robo-rock stations that I installed a better antenna on my roof so I could pick up the little high-school LPFM station a few towns over, where real deejays still existed.

(They are still excellent, by the way. A fresh batch of optimism every semester, passion for the music, pride in the technical aspects of the broadcast. I've learned to accept REM being referred to as "oldies".)

After over a decade of this, Spotify finally made sense. It seemed like things had settled down enough, the industry had made it easy to go legit. I paid my money, got my music, I knew at least some tiny fraction of that was theoretically going to the artists (though the more I learn about this, the more disgusted I become), life was good. I could enjoy music again.

Then Spotify had its Joe Rogan moment, and I went back to feeling dirty about everything.

There's a parallel story about movies and TV, though I was never much into either. Never signed up for Netflix even in its golden era, but I can see plain as day that that era is dead and buried.

Will I pirate again? Likely not; it's simply easier to do without. I have a big shelf of dead-tree books that I've been meaning to read, and I'm finally starting to get through them. They're DRM-free, low-power, and the display contrast ratio is second-to-none.

Piracy seems like an easy way to get something for nothing but it becomes a time sink and you get crappy video long term. You end up filling your life with digital clutter.

It's so much easier to buy/rent the video and get it over with. There are so many and better ways to use your time than to waste it filling up a hard drive with videos you will never see.

I knew of a guy that spent his free time gathering videos. He had hard drives full of them. He spent so much time on it that he rarely watched any of them. All wasted time.

I am open to piracy when there is like 10 different streaming services offering exclusive movies. Sure, I can afford having one or two subscriptions but I can't have 10 different subscriptions.

Piracy have also become incredibly easy for everyone, popcorn time, fmovies & webtorrent have made it extremely user friendly, almost to the point that the user is unaware of the fact that they are pirating a movie.

I do have one rule though, if there is a book or movie etc I REALLY enjoy, then I buy it just to support the creator.

Yeah I started seriously considering piracy once again a few months ago. Partly because I've started worrying that we will see some major failure in AWS/Azure/GCP at some point in the near future leading to cascading failures, taking a long time to recover from. So, sudden failure of service is one thing. Another is that it is sometimes hard to find a show or movie you are looking for in any of the streaming services I subscribe to. Third, I want more freedom, piracy gives some back.

Regarding youtube and ads, I feel like they've issued an ultimatum. Either you pay us or you effectively can't use the service.

It's entirely within their rights, it's their business. Personally I question that tactic since I'd think it drives people away. The size of youtube is worth a lot.

I'm sure it's working temporarily at least and some staff are getting massive bonuses for driving up revenue. But does youtube's long term goals and staff member 5 year goals go hand in hand?

I'm paying for YoutubeTV / YT Premium / Netflix / Prime / D+. We're getting AppleTV as part of some free bundle but can't remember why.

Despite all that. The thing I watch the most is content loaded on to my Plex server. It's just easier than dealing with trying to track down shows at all the places.

IMO what stopped music piracy was having all the content under one easy to access service. It's a lesson that TV / Movies studios haven't figured out yet.

I'll stand out here, because I work for a major sports streaming service. So let me be heard about live streaming at least:

1) Content needs to get paid for, if you're watching an illegally restreamed match then you're not rewarding people like me for the hard work we've done to get that game to you. It's not just faceless corporations, we're people and it's really hard to make a profit in the streaming world, so every viewer counts.

2) We don't decide how much the rights cost and on top of that we spend millions getting it to our subscribers (e.g. cloud providers, CDNs, developers). We've got to pay our bills, again, no streaming service is scalping right now. Delivering Tbps of streams is hard!

3) Many live sports re-streaming services really are run by organised crime gangs. I have involvement in some revenue protection work, there's not just hacking, there's also money laundering, we've even encountered links to people trafficking in the same organisations. I'm sure you think it's an exaggeration, but it's real and it's not just some guy in his basement doing this stuff.

4) The companies that invest in technology for this stuff often invest in things like AV1, FFMPEG, Exoplayer, stuff that's available to the wider open-source community. We, as organisations, contribute back to the world in other less obvious ways. Hurting us hurts the community as well.

5) Lastly, I presume that most people here get paid for their work, or at least would like to be paid for what they do in the future. Put yourself in my shoes: how would you feel to have your work ripped off? Oh, and then someone else profits from it? Hmm, not cool. That app you work on? That website you support? Maybe you hate your employer enough that you don't care if they get ripped off, but most of the people I work with love their work, so consider that as well.

I am sure people will argue against all my points, but they stand none the less.

What I will say, unofficially, I sympathise with people who cannot watch our content because it's not available in their market and I also have some sympathy for those who are too poor to pay. But I'd assert that 99% of the people who pirate our content are not too poor and have ways of watching legally, they just choose to go to the dark side.

I love how when you want to watch something specific, you proceed to search all 5 services I subscribe to and none of them have it.. what am I supposed to do if not pirate..

I use Soulseek. It’s actually a better discovery layer if you find someone with the same tastes. I find Netflix flashy and diluted. So much content but most isn’t quality.

Yes, I pirate everything now. As always, it comes down to usability. If you make the paid version way more difficult than torrenting, my decision is very easy.

I really don't understand this perspective. Media is both incredibly accessible and cheap.

If you want to steal, stop looking for justification. The choice is wholly yours.

I'm really tired of all the streaming services and their various flaws. I've been tired of cable TV for decades now.

But I'm not about to jump to piracy.

I've started looking at setting up a personal Jellyfin server in my home network and buying DVDs and CDs again, and loading their contents into Jellyfin. That way I legally own all these things, they can't be taken away, and I have full control over my streaming experience.

honestly I never stopped pirating video content (either series or movies), but as I rarely watch anything (like an handful of movies each year), any kind of subscription is a pretty bad deal and I never tried buying movies anyway.

I (nearly) stopped with video games, since I've gotten way more used to buying games (mostly on Steam) and there's enough added value in buying game vs piracy that I'm willing to pay.

I used to subscribe to Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video. The other day I wanted to watch Harry Potter (so not some obscure movie) and couldn't watch it anywhere in my country.

I bought a Plex lifetime pass the day after and cancelled all my subscriptions, except for Apple Music and Crunchyroll (for animes) who both fit their role for now. I can't justify paying +30€ per month for not being able to watch what I want.

I’ll always pay for Spotify or something like it because the UX is 1000x better than pirating everything and trying to sync up my collection to the cloud across devices. Not gonna bother with that. The ease of discovering new music and sharing it with friends is also unparalleled.

For movies, I usually just pay $4 to rent it from iTunes on my Apple TV. If it’s something I love and want to keep forever I might pirate it.

Nah, too much work.

I subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime maybe once a year for a month each. That's more than enough time to watch everything worth watching.

I have generally been against piracy. My one carve out has been live sporting events like NFL games. Due to the local games being chosen by networks, it's difficult to get specific games. Maybe I could get direct TV but it seems excessively expensive.

For everything else, like music, movies, tv shows, etc., I hope people at least try to see if a local library system near you has access to the material.

Never stopped, but I'm from the library and archives side of things and value copies completely under my control for long term preservation.

I read today something I am not sure I believe, that Adobe opts you in by default for all of your photoshop art to be samples for their ML products. (It was a reddit post so I would need to see something more official before I really give this more thought)

If that were true it would definitely get me thinking about whether I want to keep using that product at all, let alone whether I am paying for it.

To be entirely honest I was never against pirating, I just found it to be more convenient to use streaming services in the early days. Now with the proliferation of services and the balkanization of content, sharing logins with friends is the only reasonable way to get access to a decent spread of stuff.

If these password sharing crackdowns get going in earnest, its back to torrents for me.

I’m seriously considering piracy because streaming services don’t offer subtitles in my mothertoungue. I come from a non-english speaking country and I live in a foreign country. Some movie offerings provide my mother tongue, but others don’t, and this is super annoying :’( I really wish content providers would just add on all subtitle languages :(

I don't pirate things anymore. I subscribe to Spotify Premium for music. For movies/shows I subscribe to Netflix/Disney+ when there's something I want to watch and after a couple of weeks/months I unsubscribe when I'm done. If you can't afford 12$ or whatever it is for a Netflix subscription, I think you have other problems.

I'm open to owning the media I buy.

How else do you expect to fight against the greed that exists on the other end...? By buying their products?

I’m far less inclined than I used to be. I’ve reached the equilibrium of not being interested in what I can’t afford or don’t need. I have two streaming services and I don’t need any commercial software at the moment, and I limit my software exploration to what’s freely available. I’m kinda over the whole piracy, information-wants-to-be-free thing.

I think the golden age of piracy ended when it became impractical for individuals to collect digital media. The streaming services deliver a convenience to consume anything, anywhere which is cost prohibitative for laypersons to replicate by other means.

So no - while I'm not opposed ethically, my family would be very frustrated with such a transition.

I'm willing to pay a lot to have all the content I care about in one place. I do that with Steam, for example. I'm lucky that I don't have to pay a lot for all the music I care about in Spotify. For movies and shows, unless the industry can figure out how to be more convenient than Plex, I'll be sticking with Plex.

Nope not open to piracy. I'm not going to pirate a movie just because I can't afford the streaming service.

Regarding music, we are in a golden age, in which nearly every song I want is available from either an affordable Amazon music subscription or Spotify. I fear some day it will become segmented, and that you will need multiple services to get all the bands you want. Maybe I should be preparing with MP3s backups.

I have Prime as an Amazon subscriber and beyond that I tend to cycle through film subscriptions every few months. Just closed off Disney+ and now back in Netflix, had Mubi last summer, and prior to that Netflix.

This seems to be a sensible approach, provided you're not frothing at the mouth for new film releases.

I’m not playing the "which service is this show or movie on" game. The alternatives are still a better user experience than buying legit. I have one place where I go for everything and there are no ads anywhere, I'll pay for content but I’m not going to compromise on experience.

For me,

Netflix is heavily subsidized via my TMobile bill.

Amazon Prime Video is bundled with Amazon Prime. I would have that anyway.

AppleTV+ is bundled with Apple One

Paramount+ is bundled with Walmart+ which is free with the Amex Platinum

I am grandfathered in with free HBO Max because I have internet with AT&T.

The only thing I pay full price for is the Disney/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle.

I'm open to piracy whenever product I need is either unavailable (like some old or lesser known works, or works issues in limited pressings) or isn't served properly (like 3 decade old games on Steam, which I own anyway but can't even use and have to pirate from archive.org)

I don't really mind paying. What I mind is geo-limiting content.

And yeah, when Netflix starts enforcing these multiple accounts; my wife and myself often work in different locations (different countries) so if they start enforcing that, it's definitely a cancel as we are not abusing anything.

Related discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34146126

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34172506

What's the scene like for music piracy nowadays? It seems like it was mostly gone. I've looked in a few different places and finding music released in the last 10 years is somewhat difficult. Do you just have to know where to look or is music piracy just dead/dying?

I buy cds and dvds and rip them still. Archive.org is mostly where I find new things to watch online.

I'm really not interested in modern media anymore. It will take my whole life to get through what was produced in 10 years or so that I was interested before I had children.

No, I'm just cutting out my consumption. I have a simple philosophy - if I don't want to pay for it I'm cool with not having it. I have prime, will probably be getting rid of that soon, at which point I'll only have Youtube Music/Premium.

I do it all the time but I pay for all the services too. Everything about the quality of streaming is worse, but it’s convenient for the rest of the family and occasionally me. I’d gladly buy full quality DRM free stuff directly if anyone would make it available.

DRM problems are very different depending on the medium.

I do buy many games, mainstream and not, and actually play them. In the big picture, DRM is not as not as bad as depicted; the vast majority of games rely only on Steam DRM, which isn't problematic.

Vocal game DRM opponents actually refer to a small section of the games landscape (AAA with Denuvo, mostly), so it's really something players love to hate.

I definitely had DRM problems a couple of times I can remember of. Definitely gave me problems, but it was a small percentage of the games I've played. If there's a problem, I don't disagree with getting a refund and pirate it.

Books are another story. In that case, I think that DRM is evil without exception, because it's important for me to use my own tools on books, which DRM prevents. Differently from games though, there are multiple distribution channels for books, and one may find more expensive non-DRM'ed versions.

(movies a different matter as well, which has been discussed quite extensively)

I wish there was less subscription model for movies. I like gog & steam, where I can precisely buy something. This gives incentive for the company to produce good content. Where subscription model does not incentivize company to create a good product.

Pricing doesn't make me think about piracy.

But when streaming services own rights to stuff and refuse to make it available, it definitely makes me value real physical ownership again. DVD/Bluray, etc.

It's concerning that the power to just remove works is available.

As far as games and music are concerned, my needs are fulfilled by Steam and Spotify. I have basically just stopped consuming TV-style content because I just don't care enough about it to pay the price or pirate.

I don't know what all these companies were thinking when they started splitting up content into different services like this. Piracy only really arises when there's a service problem, and right now that's the case.

Tried to get some high quality flac music, found a site to buy, made an account, added to cart. Oh we can't sell to you because you are from this or that country. Yea, well I want the song so I go pirate it instead.

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all in again, i left alternative methods for getting my media years ago. but now im fed up with the poor user experience of the multiple services with synthetic border blockades, so i have set up a signal group shared for a group of friends, it has a bot and you can ask him for a movie or series and the bots download it from private trackers with a VPN and it shares an streaming url in the same group or privately with subtitles and everything. all the people share the cost of the infrastructure, which is like 50 USD /month. also it has a nice unexpected social aspect.

What I do for music is that I switch continuously between platforms and take up on the 3month promo offers.

It's a bit of a chore, but I really don't feel like paying for a streming service I only use when driving the car.

Never have been and doubt I ever will be. I wish this was as easy to prosecute as any other kind of theft. What the streaming services do or don't do isn't going to have any effects on my ethics.

I like buying physical discs and then bringing the media I'm bored of watching to a friend swap. I get rid of movies/music I won't watch again soon, and I get movies/music I want to try!

I just got back into Usenet.

There is so so much content out there that I'm content just to watch the little bit that's available via Netflix, Amazon Prime, and YouTube. I don't watch multiple hours per day though.

Streaming is really convenient.

I really don’t want to manage files more than I already do.

Paid streaming services are intentionally bad/broken on Linux.

Open source, free alternatives aren't just not broken on Linux (and every other possible platform); they're actually very good.

I think a lot of people's first reaction was "what do you mean, again?"

Personally I was always open to it, no matter all great services along the lines of Netflix and Spotify etc.

What do people use these days? I just had a check and I cannot really find anything anymore. Nothing but the most popular stuff. Which I actually can get legally easily usually.

Piracy is illegal.

Before I proceed, I have to say that in my personal opinion piracy makes sense when it comes to media, as in music, movies, shows. I feel like application piracy is a different thing. Mainly because with an application you use it a lot, while media, you own a CD, you can listen to it, but it won't be daily for years (like Windows for example). I'm also against book piracy, with the exception of university books because it's predatory.

If I did pirate stuff it would for the exact same reasons why I would have had a pirate FTP server in the 90s.

In the 90s it was because you had to pay multiple fees (or had to buy multiple CDs etc) to get access to media. If you lacked the money, you had no access. As a poor college student, it made sense to use piracy bridged that gap financially.

In the mid 2000s you basically had to use Netflix and Pandora/Spotify/Internet Radio, I have to pay a few fees, and have access, or watch small advertisements and get it for free. At that point piracy would be doing more work to get the same result.

Nowadays you have multiple services, they each have tiny niches which is exactly how Cable TV works in the States, and why piracy made sense in the 90s to begin with. If you like 4 TV shows, there are probably in 4 different streaming apps you need to use. All with their own fees. To make things worse services like Hulu, and others are still going to have advertisements. Essentially you are paying the services to watch a show, and they make money a second time by forcing advertisements down your throat.

That's BS. Maybe I just don't like spending money.

There is another problem about ownership. Anything in the cloud, you don't own, even if you paid for it. $4.99 to get this movie online annoys me. I have no control of it. I can't resell it. Sometimes it's hard to even tell what you own. I rather have it in my hard drive, then I can do what I want to it.

Ultimately though, piracy is about greed and money, both for the pirate and the services that get affected. In the 90s it was about freedom of access. That's not as much an issue case anymore.

Piracy always seems kinda stupid to me. If you don't want to put in the effort to get some content legit, just don't consume it. If you do want to consume some content, then put in the effort to do it legitimately.

Like if Spotify is too much of a bother, just don't listen to it. Go to Bandcamp or 7Digital or whatever and buy whatever you're into. "Oh, but they don't have this one album I want," is crap. If you really wanted it you'd jump through the hoops. Wanting it badly enough that you can't settle for anything else but not so bad that you don't want to put in the effort is just you making excuses.

I think the best user experience has been the same for about 15 years or so. Automatic downloads from private trackers onto a local network server that’s connected to TVs around the house and devices outside the house.

The front end has changed from xbmc to kodi to plex, but it’s been the same recipe.

It’s easier to see what’s available. New shows and movies are presented to me based on my real interests rather than what Netflix is promoting, etc.

Interestingly, this isn’t always from pirating as content may come from ripped purchased dvds or even sideloaded from subscribed services (eg, subscribe to hbo, download content from tracker).

I feel like the product is known, but it’s hard to get a business model working that’s legal. Kind of like a Napster moment. I thought Netflix would be Spotify, but that didn’t workout.

Tl:dr; never stopped pirating as non-pirated hasn’t been as good for almost 20 years.

Uninterested in piracy. I’m sure there is plenty of great content not covered by my current streaming subscriptions but I am fine not to experience those at all.

As long as Hollywood keeps producing stuff that is barely watchable I'm all for piracy. This is largely not stuff I want to vote for with my wallet.

"again" ¦-D

Just torrented Unreal Tournament '99. Indended to buy it, but Epic apparently wants to erase all traces of their old games from the web ...

I never stopped.

Private torrent sites FTW

I also stream twitch with streamlink (stream scraper that pipes to vlc, blocks ads) and watch YouTube with NewPipe on my shield TV.

Software (games included) and music: never

TV Shows and Movies: Yes, if they are not on the platforms I'm subscribed to (currently Netflix and Disney)

I've found it to be easier to 'pay the piper' than deal with warez pups and risk potential criminal and civil penalties.

Totally pro. Because nowadays you don't own any of your digital media. Piracy is the only way to "own" any digital media

It's interesting to watch all of the moralizing and rationalization in here. I would expect this crowd of (mostly) very smart adults to just accept that piracy benefits them, hurts the content producer, doesn't hurt anyone they know, and has a very low probability of negative consequences.

The tendency to compress an uncontroversial description of costs and benefits as they affect multiple parties into a unique point on a moral continuum to be observed by all parties is age appropriate for a teenager.

We are right back to the 90's and early 2000's with cable. Replace the word "channel" with "platform."

Sir, it never went away. The new geenration of kids continued it, not all of them can afford these multiple streaming services.

I can neither confirm or deny intents and means planned to plant seeds or swarm in this direction.

I'm on the caribbean, call me Jack Sparrow

You are assuming I was ever not open to piracy.

I'm generally against but I had to for the FIFA world cup as I couldn't figure out a way to legally pay for it.

I pay $0.60 per month, per connection for an iptv/vod service that has everything....so, I'm all in on piracy.

I pay for more or less all the streaming services. Still I end up pirating. Why! It’s just too damn cumbersome otherwise

I pay for indie films/music/games.

I pirate AAA/Giant corporation films/music

Digital piracy is not the same as theft, nothing was lost.

I've cancelled everything but YouTube Premium and Apple TV and share for everything else I'm interested in.

Yar har fiddely-dee Being a pirate is alright with me Do what you want, cause a pirate is free You are a pirate!

I just stopped consumption of TV and streaming formats.

Music that im interested in gets bought (eg. Bandcamp) or yt-dl'ed.

Never stopped pirating.

I've used friends logins for a few streaming services, but I prefer to just torrent the content.

I pirate games in two situations 1. As a demo. If I think they're worth the money, I buy them (like Elden Ring and DOOM Eternal recently). 2. As a way of archiving my favorite games. For example, I “own” the original Prince of Persia collection in Steam, but I also downloaded the games and have them stored, in case for whatever reason Steam one day decides to terminate my account.

Paying for various services (spotify, netflix, prime, nebula) but not opposed to supplementing things

VPN + BitTorrent client + ThePirateBay has pretty much any current or recent movie or TV series.

It is more sensible to pay mullvad 5 USD a month than pay all these companies. Never again.

I just don't watch any streaming content. Simple. A bit boring maybe. But simple.

Piracy groups compete for clout. That seems to be just as good of a motivator of quality.

Netflix broke everything by producing own content, essentially ending their neutrality.

I never wasn't open to it!?

Hmm. It helps that as an old guy, I can afford multiple streaming services, but, quite frankly, were it not for my wife, I would have none at this point. Beyond that, with few exceptions, there are few memorable items that make me reconsider ( or even bother to think of pirating it ).

To me it is just like gaming and it serves as a good example. Steam made it so easy, accessible and hassle-free that I accepted their online 'DRM' despite initially being staunchly against it. I have no reason to pirate. Just about ANY game I can think of is there. This is what the content owners need to create. They don't want to cuz they don't want to share, but to that I say, tough noodles.

I don't really want to go back to the old days, but oddly I clearly could if things got sufficiently annoying. The last time I wanted something that was locked behind another paywall was new Dexter. I ended up just skipping it ( I am not gonna subscribe to another subscription within Hulu ). I don't need it. I don't need any of it and this brings me to my main point.

It is a luxury item. It is entertainment. It is hardly a necessity.

I'm done with music streaming but I still have Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime

you guys ever been against ? "Oh let's be the good guy I serve a higher purpose by giving even more money to one of the most succesfull industry in the history while it produces decreasing quality of movies"

I have never not been open to Piracy, so I cannot contribute to this thread.

I don't even know how - what's the best torrent sites nowadays?

Completely open to piracy.

It surprises me that anybody that knew how to do it would ever stop.

Can't be open to it "again" if you never stopped...

lets just say, sea shantys are becoming more popular by the minute

Arrrr, I never stopped.

I never stopped being.

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I think free-trial periods are mostly good enough.

I'm not the target audience -- I consider most commercial content to be pollution, and piracy as free marketing for/perpetuation of such pollution -- so of course I don't subscribe to any of it, or have any interest in pirating it. My time and attention is too valuable to be spent on motivated addictive mass drivel.

Though I might have a way above average disgust reaction to popular culture, the relevance/tldr is that some reaction to high prices and uncertain availability and other friction of subscriptions will be to consume less, rather than pirate. I wonder what the proportions are, and how they've changed over time?

Why pay when you can take for free, is the idea?

What do you mean "again?"

Never been closed to it.

Discover a book at your public library:)

Nice try cops

Nice try DMCA

Again??? Was there a pause?

“Again”?

Again? Always was.

I never stopped.

yup, qbittorrent search tab never fails me

again? Who said I was ever against it lol

again?

For years I've been saying the era of every company thinking they can get $20 per month from everyone has to come to an end in some form. There's a real limit to how many $20/month payments people can or are willing to make. At some point budgetary limits come into play. There's also payment exhaustion (where you start feeling like you are bleeding money every month and ask yourself "Is it really worth it?".

This isn't true just for streaming services. Software is another good example. MS Office, CAD and EDA tools, online tools/SaaS, email, etc.

My simple example is what used to be called the Adobe Creative Suite. We used to buy full suites for everyone who needed it in the company and update them with every release. That worked well until CS6, the last time we sent money to Adobe. The subscription-only approach put an end to that. While we still use CS6 (we own a bunch of licenses), this has caused us to look into alternatives. One remarkable example of this is GIMP. It's a fantastic tool. It has as much, if not more, depth as Photoshop. It does everything we need to do and more (Python scripting is incredibly useful). And so, by pushing subscriptions, Adobe pretty much lost a loyal customer forever.

The business equation is, at the core, simple. You have inputs and outputs. If you want to remain viable and grow you have to increase one and decrease the other. Subscriptions force you to bleed money every month just to be able to keep working. In many cases you don't have the option to take a break. Imagine 2020, 2021 pandemic timeline when, for lots of companies, the music stopped (the inputs).

There are companies like JetBrains who get it. If you take a break you are entitled to use the product without updates (I think it reverts to the last full years' version. That's acceptable. If I remember correctly, with products like Office 360 and Fusion 360, you stop paying and you are done until you send more money. That simply isn't acceptable. I think of files and projects I have dating back to early 1980's AutoCAD and other tools.

Another example is Altium Designer. Altium has been trying really hard to shove people into a cloud-based paradigm. They spent a tremendous amount of time and money adding a whole cloud layer to their product. The strategy was to try to sell the company. AutoDesk almost bought them. The problem, in my opinion, was that they devoted so much time and effort to the cloud paradigm that they caused serious damage to the product. Every time they touched it they introduced ten new bugs. It got to the point where you almost could not trust the product. We certainly got there. After over twenty years of supporting this company with multiple licenses and annual maintenance payments, we decided to pull the plug. Last year we begun a transition to KiCAD and could not be happier. We are also happy to support the effort financially by sending a portion of what was our annual maintenance fees to the KiCAD foundation. This is very similar to what happened with Photoshop and GIMP.

That said, I do understand companies liking the subscription model. You get to shift into a consistent revenue stream and can focus on upgrading software over time. I get it. The issues is that I just don't think this is the best model for the customer. If you are going to constantly demand money there need to be non-trivial benefits to someone spending that money. Objectively speaking, there are no major benefits between Excel 2016 and whatever you get with an Office 360 subscription. Sure, a few things here and there and some collaboration benefits. Guess what, the world ran just fine before all of that.

... again?

never stopped

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Nah I'm pretty content with Netflix + Prime + Disney + YouTube premium. Still save a ton over traditional cable prices and still pretty convenient.

Also game prices are fine IMO, I don't buy the overpriced AAA stuff (that still has microtransactions SMH), indie games are pretty reasonably priced IMO.

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