Asklemmy
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
I don't believe in intellectual property. I will pirate anything I want to use and release everything I make for free.
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.
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.
I pretty much only pirate content that's not readily available in my countrys streaming services.
When i was younger, physical copies pf games and the used market were common things. Now pc games get no physical release, or if they do these are tied to steam or epic games, and consoles are pushing towards going all digital.
All while raising the prices even though there is no logistics involved anymore.
So i should pay more for something that i can't resell and can get taken away from me for one of several reasons (account gets banned, game gets delisted, service eol...)?
So that's why if it can get pirated, i will pirate it.
- yes
- yes
I pirate a lot of movies and series and also a few books.
I also sometimes pirate games but not as often
I don't justify it. I think it's a bad thing but I like cheap.
Your friend has a similar belief to me it appears. Companies don't care about piracy as long as it doesn't stop a quarterly profit. Of course don't pirate a book or video game from a small author or devs. If the game or book is hard to come by there isn't much to do any way.
I however rarely do pirate things for various reasons. Namely I don't have time for reading or playing a new video game. Maybe once in a while. If you're friend is doing it every day I would be concerned but probably not care
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.
About the only thing I pirate these days is stuff that isn't available to legally pay for in my country.
I generally pirate first and buy later if I want to support a game. I think of it as voting with my wallet.
I pirated BG3, enjoyed it even though it’s generally not the sort of game I play. Decided that I want to see more companies making games of this quality in future, so went ahead and bought it.
Same with FromSoftware games, I always buy those as I want more games like that.
Ultimately, if you never buy anything then you can’t expect companies to make the games you want.
I generally pirate first and buy later if I want to support a game. I think of it as voting with my wallet.
I agree with that
I was 14 and just got a cable modem when Napster came out. I just got introduced to modern music, had no way to pay for it other than asking my folks. Let's jump on the pirate ship!
Now I'll let you do the math on my age, I have very stable income, and a fair amount of disposable savings, and I still pirate pretty much my ears will be hearing. Plex has equal or better tools for watching/listening than every other service I've tried (shuffling episodes is my favorite)
I go to concerts, watch movies in the theatre, read physical books and support creatives in other ways.. so I feel different about that..
I also started noticing this when itunes came out. You could only listen to music YOU PAID FOR on devices you've authorized. Then soon after I saw this, a friend was down on his luck but had a very good and varied cd collection. He started selling them to second hand shops and his friends.
I ended up seeing this dichotomy and thought to myself.... this sucks. Let's just pirate it..
I should note the amount of physical unread books I have on my shell are similarly rationed to the amount of music I haven't listened to or movies I haven't watched yet that I've also pirated
My relevant philosophy, if that's the right word, is linked to on my Lemmy bio. Written more than a year ago, it's still defaulted to. Someone on Lemmy told me it's the most socialist-esque thing they've ever seen from me.
I do, movies and TV shows. Occasionally books, but I buy them much more often than I do pirate. When I was in my teens and early 20s I also pirated games, but I'm too lazy to do that anymore. Movies and TV shows are too fucking expensive for the value they provide. I also pay for a few streaming services, so I only pirate stuff that isn't there.
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.
Not really, with books and movies I only buy/download when I want to watch/read. With games I buy a lot more than I play, but I don't pirate those, so it's not relevant.
Copying is not theft. Stealing a thing leaves one less left. Copying it makes one thing more; that’s what copying’s for. Copying is not theft. If I copy yours you have it too. One for me and one for you. That’s what copies can do. If I steal your bicycle you have to take the bus, but if I just copy it there’s one for each of us! Making more of a thing, that is what we call “copying”. Sharing ideas with everyone. That’s why copying is FUN!
I used to quite a bit, for random, hard to find songs. I also did it to get in digital format, what I owned on vinyl. A few older classic movies here and there. I can’t remember the last time I pirated anything, but I still use torrents for bootleg concerts.
I pirate media only, not games. Simply because I don't want to risk getting malware. Also too cheap to bother with streaming services; I want to own my media.
I don’t pirate at the moment but my philosophy is that if something is not available to buy, it is free to pirate in my book.
Otherwise, every company that makes a game and rakes in more than 100% profit from it is fair game imo. (That would be revenue devided by the engineer’s salaries, machines and office related stuff times 100. explicitly leaving out ceos overinflated salaries. They should not be tax deductible anyway.)
I pirate things because it's free and easy. My actions are not intended to serve any greater cause. There are some things I pay for out of convenience: pirated video games typically mean no official servers; Android apps are better managed automatically by the Google Play store.