At least for media, piracy websites have a more extensive catalogue (of course) but they also have better privacy which is crazy. And they also allow you to use ad blockers. Sites you pay for would still show ads sometimes and don’t even allow VPNs.
At that point there is no point on paying for streaming and if you wanted to support the creators you could do it separetely with merch, other proyects they have or direct donations if any of those are aviable.
For me it stopped being that way because decent commercial options were available. Then every asshole competed with Netflix and now you need multiple subscriptions to watch shows. Then they raised prices, started advertising when you already paid, and then stated selling the next season of your show to some other assholes who also required a subscription.
If it’s easier to pay than to pirate, people will.
It has always been the case except for a short period of time when Netflix was decent but then streaming turned into cable with ads and shitty content. Now it is all the more enticing due to Jellyfin, arr stack, Seerr and faster Internet speeds. If I had to pay for streaming all the shows I liked, I’d be paying in excess of $200 per month. No, thank you. The seven seas it is for me.
Yes exactly and I always consider Steam (and to a lesser degree the Kindle ecosystem), which make it obvious to me that interoperability and convenience are something consumers are willing to pay for.
Yeah, I have never pirated a game because of steam. My dad taught me about bearshare, limewire, and others from his time for music but I pay, unfortunately for YouTube, get new music from indie artists. It’s so easy to just listen to anything I want. Netflix was the same way. Hell now places are uploading to YouTube for old stuff kike all of myth busters.
100% true. I buy games on Steam and GOG, sometimes from Epic. The convenience, the absence of enshittification, the cross-platform compatibility (or info about what’s compatible and what’s not), the periodic sales, etc. all add up and make people less likely to pirate games. The only barrier to entry at this point is price for those struggling to make ends meet.
It was already the case 20 years ago when I was selling burned CDs in high school for pocket money.
The 90s when the Internet became commercialized
“Always has been.”
Hell, my grandfather was taping shit off the movie channels and copying rentals for us back in the 90s even that was better than the legit tapes that you had to skip past all the ads on. That man had an entire wall of a bedroom that was tapes from floor to ceiling. It was awesome.
Always, It’s just been about ability to do so. I did nothing but piracy in the 2000s but then went mostly paid in the 2010s and now I’m back to basically pirating everything but YouTube since family premium ends up being easier and cheaper than the effort to get around it.
However YouTube premium is slowly getting to a point where privacy seems inevitable in my case.
Same. They can fuck right off. It has come to a point that they are trying to see who can extort the most from their users. I cancelled everything and went back to the good old days. And if you know what you’re doing things are pretty good.
When individual and corporate greed raced passed universal societal progression. Nothing counts unless it sells.
Movies? Just owning a dvd or bluray. It was filled with a bunch of trailers and other junk when I just wanted the movie itself to start and didn’t care for all of the other.
TV Shows?
Right when it releases, so I don’t have to see the between ads and I couldn’t actually buy it until the full season released. Even then, now they moved to streaming only, where even now you can’t buy the optical media if you want leaving you with only the option to download it. Even if you wanted to pay, they won’t let you buy it.
Music?
Instead of a bunch of music at the time, on MP3 player, I could just rip my discs or download them. If my disc was damaged, I could download. Instead of just having all of these crappy songs, I could select just the ones I want and put on cd at the time.
Software?
When I couldn’t afford it, and still refuse to pay for subscription. I usually try to use open source now other than gaming. I will buy games, on sale, on gog or steam. Provided it’s on sale, and not $60 or $80. $20 or $30? Sure.
Now? One time license? Sure.
I specifically own a computer, for dedicated cracked software and cracked games that doesn’t ever connect to the internet. So, no issue if it’s infected. For those games, I will buy them, when they’re not $80 dollars. I’ll wait until it’s $30. I only install trusted sources, but you never know.
Never will I pay $80 for a new game. Even if I want it bad. That’s beyond ridiculous.
I buy most games at 10 or 5 dollars tbh but that might be related with regional pricing and like all of them being indie for the most part.
That’s a tough line to draw; it’s different for everyone.
In the US, it used to go:
- Parents buy kids stuff
- Kids start buying their own, but can’t afford what they want to they bootleg
- Kids get decent-paying jobs that make the time needed to bootleg a bad equation.
- Kids become parents
But the coming and going of cheap music, streaming music, cheap video, and expensive video has wrecked the market.
I stopped pirating when purchasing music became cheap (apple music)
I started again when catalogs weren’t what I wanted. And supported artists directly.
I stopped video piracy when Netflix was cheap and good and started again when they sucked.
If you can bring me long-form entertainment that I enjoy and own for less than a meal out, I’ll buy it.
If you can bring me short-form entertainment that I can re-partake hundreds of times for less than a snack, I’ll buy it.
If I can’t buy it, or it encroaches on my other comforts, that’s where the line is for me
When broadband became the predominant way of using the internet and it no longer took an entire day to download a single episode of DBZ.
And most pirate streaming sites have a better player (and subtitle encoding of new episodes) than HBO Max.
Seriously, there’s no fucking excuse for a multiple billion dollar conglomerate with some of the highest rated entertainment programs in history in their library to care THAT little about UX!
Audible is literally the biggest pile of dogshit, completely barebones, yet somehow still immensely battery hungry pile of trash (jk I know it’s because of all the telemetry shit they’re using to profile my habits) with next to none of the basic QoL features you’d find on various free apps that would make listening on their app a more enjoyable experience.
Copyright gives them a monopoly over (legitimate) distribution so why spend any more than necessary when people can’t go elsewhere for your content.
Because the legitimacy becomes less and less of a selling point the more you piss on your customers while other people are offering the same thing shown better for free
Torrenting has been more stable than paid services for years. I have prime video, but I watch torrents of the content.
The tenth time I told someone “watch X show on Netflix” and they said “it’s not on there.”
Maybe with the *arr suite? It was better waaaay earlier than that for other reasons.
The inverse is also a good question, as I left piracy behind for Netflix and was happy to be legit… right up until so many studios got $ signs in their eyes (envious of Netflix’s success,) and instead of building their own platforms and letting folks choose where to consume their content, the studios pulled their content and fractured the market.
The greedy fucks! So no, I don’t feel bad pirating content. Not one bit.
(Felt bad for Netflix but their oh-shit-we-need-content in house studio is doing ok, I’d say! Also I paid for Netflix for far longer than anyone else, by far.)
Oh I suppose I should say, if you’re not familiar with the *arr suite it basically makes it so you can just search for a show or movie, add it to your library, and come back later and it’ll be ready to go in jellyfin or whatever. Plus it’ll grab new versions as they come out.
Combine that ease of use with zero ads and zero bullshit and yeah, the net effect is better than paid streaming services.
