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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Subject6051@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

Well, my friend, he's kinda poor he can't afford some books and some streaming services, so he pirates. He pirate books, audiobook and videos and other stuff. Sometimes he buys books he likes a lot out of loyalty to the author (yeah, I don't understand it either), he likes to read physical books, but yeah, if he hates the author or just wants to skim through it, he will download the book.

He usually doesn't like to pirate from small companies or professors who are trying to make a living by selling books, but from millionaires & plenty of mega corps which already have loads of money, he feels like it's the right move to pirate

Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn't pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it? i.e., had you paid for the book, you would have more likely read that book.

He says he will buy stuff when his time is more valuable than money, let's all hope that day is soon.

What are your piracy habits?

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[-] stagen@feddit.dk 2 points 1 year ago

I pretty much only pirate content that's not readily available in my countrys streaming services.

[-] lupec@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm not the pirate I once was when it comes to gaming but there's always EGS exclusives, games whose lack of regional pricing make them impossible to reasonably buy here, things like that. I'm a patient gamer for the most part so most of the time I can just get it a few years down the line but sometimes even that doesn't cut it. I avoid doing it to indie developers, but those are usually the few that follow Steam's recommended pricing guidelines so they tend to be fine anyway.
I pirate unbelievable amounts of tv and movies on a regular basis though through the *arr apps and whatnot, mostly because I refuse to pay for a dozen different streaming services with their rotating content and usually terrible apps. I self host whatever I can to avoid relying on the whims of a few corporations, and the one surviving service so far is Spotify.

[-] Defthani@jlai.lu 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't care about copyrights, and although I'd agree that I'm not entitled to someone else's work, I'll counterfeit it without a single qualm. I'm poor and would rather not have to choose between being well fed but bored as death, or hungry but entertained/educated. As much as possible, I try to support the little guys though; concretely, I'll eventually buy a game made by Octavi Navarro or Unspeakable Pixels, but Activision won't ever receive a kopeck from me.

[-] denissimo@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

Working minimum wage or struggling with money for any reason shall not mean you cannot have nice things in life, never. So I do the thing. Sometimes. Normalizing spending money into things you physically cannot touch is one thing i could get over with, like buying GOG (DRM free) games i'll actually end up playing, but licenses to play a dang video game that is valid for god knows how long? This is where I draw the line.

Your friend is right: when them corpos suck us dry, we gotta suck em back. It is easy as that.

Furthermore: It's not piracy when paying for it is not owning it.

[-] psychothumbs@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I pirate and I think doing so should be legal and accepted. It's one thing to have a copyright for profitable uses of some content, a whole other much crazier thing to say copyright forbids sharing that content for free. File sharing should be thought of the same way as letting your friend borrow your book - just a normal and uncontroversial nice thing to do, that you shouldn't avoid based on some concern it will lead to lower book sales.

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't pirate video games. Steam, Gog, or even epic are easy and not too expensive. Steam's refund policy isnt terrible.

I don't pirate music. I buy stuff from smaller artists on Bandcamp, and use free Spotify/YouTube/old stuff I ripped myself from CDs (I'm old). Though honestly I don't have a problem with pirating music that's like 10+ years old. Copyright law is too long.

I don't pirate books. I get them from the library.

I may have downloaded some RPG books because I wanted more of a skim than I could find online, didn't really trust reviewers to have my exact set of preferences, and didn't want to pay the whole amount for a game I wasn't sure I'd like. The ones I did like and use I bought.

I don't really watch anything so it didn't even occur to me to list it.

[-] dan1101@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I used to pirate like crazy in my youth. Now since Steam and Netflix I don't pirate, recognizing that creators deserve to get paid and also by paying them that supports making more content.

[-] choco_polus@mujico.org 1 points 1 year ago

Yes.

When I feel like doing it.

Even assuming I were a billionaire, my guideline is: Company acts nice? Take my bucks. Scummy practices, fragmentation, region locking, etc? Sail the seas

[-] Destraight@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I think pirates are cool but the download links they put to make you download viruses are not cool

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't really pirate much anymore, because I don't consume much paid media anymore. Occasionally, if I really, really want to watch something on a platform that I don't have a free subscription to (through a phone plan or isp), I will find a stream of it, but that is rare.

I justify it by generally not being on favor of modern IP laws. On a less ideological basis, fuck'em for making their content inaccessible. And from the current strikes, it looks like most of their talent doesn't get much of a cut anyways.

I haven't pirated a game in years, just because Steam is so convenient, and I can pay for more games than I have time to play. In the past, when I couldn't afford all the games I had time to play, I would pirate them. I couldn't afford them, so it was no "potential loss" for them anyways.

For software other than games, there is usually an adequate Free Software alternative, so I just use those. I am a developer, so sometimes I make small contributions on software I use a lot, and have a good understanding of.

Haven't pirated music since big streaming services became available (first, Play Music, now Spotify). I do kinda feel bad that Spotify pays shit though. I would happily pay the artists directly if it was convenient.

[-] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

I pirate to try things, if I like it I pay for it. I have games on Steam with less than an hour played but most achievements unlocked because after finishing the game I purchased it.

[-] lauha@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

I pay for my audiobook streaming because it doesn't cost so much and you cannot pirate the books I listen to anyway

[-] RVMWSN@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

People who say piracy is theft are wrong, actually holders of intellectual property are thieves that are stealing that what should belong to the public domain. When you pirate you make a copy of something, you don't take anything away from the other person. That's fundamentally different from theft. When you force people to pay for a free resource (copying data) you are creating artificial scarcity. To think that construction is helping society in any way is fooling yourself. It's very clearly limiting human creativity and freedom. Allowing people to do with it as they please free of charge would allow for better ideas and applications to emerge. When someone comes up with an idea (a medicine, product, song, whatever) they claim it as theirs and no-one can touch it. Look at it this way: someone invents the wheel. The wheel is a concept that is out their, waiting to be discovered by someone. Before it was discovered it was readily available for anyone to discover, but than someone finally invents it and suddenly he can claim it as his? Is the first one to discover the moon, the one who owns it? Ultimately songs and books and such are not fundamentally different. Also, no-one writes a songs out of nothing, you build upon the ideas of others. You walk the path, use all the stepping stones laid down by others, it brings you to a point and suddenly it's all yours? It doesn't make any sense at all, but we're so used to it that we can't see it for what it is. It's a scam. It's a monopoly and it doesn't belong in a free society. You should support creators and be thankful for their efforts, that's why trademarks should exist, if you want to buy the copy from the author himself you should know which product to buy through the trademark, which one is by the original creator and which copies are from third-parties. But all other intellectual property is theft from the public domain.

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this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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