Turns out people will stop caring about your property rights if you take the things thry paid for away from them. They also like things to be convenient and easy! Who knew?
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
356 points (97.3% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
63161 readers
115 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
🏴☠️ Other communities
FUCK ADOBE!
Torrenting/P2P:
- !seedboxes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !trackers@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !qbittorrent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !libretorrent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !soulseek@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Gaming:
- !steamdeckpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !newyuzupiracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !switchpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !3dspiracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !retropirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com
💰 Please help cover server costs.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Corpo parasite think they can abuse contract law without peasants clapping back is naive.
Also, why would I fund my enemy
Uh, because not funding them is illegal and bad and you can't do illegal things because those would be crimes and its illegal to fo crime.
That's right, fuck 'em 🐸
load more comments
(5 replies)
They were on the right track and then greed took over yet again, injecting advertisements and making tiers. I want a video in reliable good quality, no worry about it being edited or that it will disappear, without ads. The options are buy the Bluray or pirate it, for older movies there is one option.
greed
Didn't take over. It took the mask off.
I'm not watching a whole ass video to tell me "because streaming fragmentation is worse than ever"
Also it's unlikely it actually almost died
Yeah, I don't think piracy ever came close to dying. It definitely slowed down for a small time when Netflix was the only real player in the streaming space, as a lot of pirates didn't actually mind paying for a service as long as it worked and had content. For those people, piracy was a service issue, not a cost issue.
Now that Netflix doesn't have anything to watch and the content is spread across dozens of networks (again), piracy is back on the menu for that specific demographic. But there will always be a demo that will pirate no matter what, be it principles or be it cost.
Yeah I've been on and off dabbling in downloads for probably a solid 20 years now and it never really "died". I frequently download things like games to avoid dropping £40+ on something that might be completely worthless before I'll throw money at it. And I know steam refunds are pretty good now but they're not perfect and anything out of steam isn't affected by them. Hell my most played steam game, rimworld, I initially pirated and dropped before trying again later on and buying. I'm happy to pay for things like streaming services if they actually provide something I want and I don't have to navigate the bs. If they can't sort out licensing then that's not really a me problem, it's a them problem. After Netflix started price hikes and screwing around with recommendations I dropped it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Definietly not, but it dropped from the 'mainstream' knowledge base and people who only knew screaming are 'discovering' it now.
That speaks more toward general tech illiteracy than anything else.
GenZ might be even worse than boomers when it comes to learning how to use tech. That is why so many solutions are basically automated these days so that you can treat everything like it is a streaming site.
Tech illiteracy today is insane. I had to help my parents connect up the TV as a kid, and now I have to help my kids connect up their TV/PC. Obviously a lot wrong with that statement (I. E. Not everyone leans techy) but it does make me feel like my age group is the only ones that have a vauge idea what is going on
I think it's probably being in the age range that kinda straddled the time between now - when it's all an unshakeable piece of daily life - and the time before it existed / was commonplace. Having grown up before all of these world changing tech advances, and then being there for the ride, is just a singular experience and perspective neither our parents or our kids can possibly have.
I'm really grateful for having gotten to take the ride, but it does strike me as sad in a way.
load more comments
(1 replies)
me pirating everything for the last ten years
"it almost died?! On my watch!?"
Every one is else is doing piracy while I'm doing "digital content preservation". These companies would happily send you a letter telling you to destroy all copies of a book In your house if they had the right to. You must resist.
I'm thinking the same - i for example have nearly every fitgirl release stored and backuped. there is no way i can ever play them all, but last time i checked i have quite a few games that are not available to buy anymore because they were pulled from steam/gog/epic. sometime in the future i will work on making all of these games available again.
Piracy never got anywhere close to dying. TV and movie piracy dropped a bit when there were decent streaming services though.
Lots of people got used to watching what they want, when they want it. Now that the streaming services have all enshittified, loads of people are turning to piracy because it provides better service.
In general I agree, but my understanding is that the pirate streams of live sporting events were cracked down on quite hard. There was definitely a dip at one point where the high quality SopCast and Ace Stream broadcasts that had become very popular for competitions like the Premier League (e.g. Bloodzeed) disappeared quite suddenly and weren't replaced with anything comparable.
True, good sport streams are a lot harder to find than they used to be.
If it wasn't for piracy I would have just kept reading books. Instead, I just watch all the bullshit.
EDIT: Most of the time, the people who make shows have a much better imagination than mine
I get a stellar service from my mate's Plex server that he doesn't charge me to access. If there's something I want, I request it through some automated service he has and within no time at all it's ready to watch.
load more comments
(4 replies)
The craziest thing about online piracy is that Donald J. Trump is in the Epstein files.
I do have the feel that gaming piracy is on a all time low. At the moment there isn't even a single active denuvo cracker while there used to be like 3-4. Probably because stores like steam and gog, which are consumer friendly with fair prices for most products and not linked with stupid subscriptions.
On the other hand movie and shows piracy is rising for the anti-consumer platforms, who can pay $200 a month for seeing all decent shows and movies without ads? Very few people, and even then you own nothing.
I have a feel that music piracy will rise soon too. As Spotify already have started the anti consumer route. I'm pretty sure in a few years it's subscription won't be as worth it as it used to be, and a lot of people will find out that they have been paying for years and still own nothing.
Music piracy, while still a thing, is basically nil at this point, because the record industry didn't fuck up streaming (for the consumer). The artists don't get paid enough, but from a consumer perspective you don't have to sub to all the services to get all of the music.
We were so close to that with Netflix back in the beginning. Then the studios got greedy, and here we are.
Music piracy's still alive here and there. The torrents I usually find are massive FLAC files that have very little advantage over much smaller MP3s though. I might need to buy some really fancy gear to appreciate it maybe.
Yeah, music piracy is kinda niche these days: mostly just people who want a local library and who have a modded iPod or similar. I use Soulseek to get flacs of the music I play on my radio show, just so I can be sure I'm offering the best possible quality.
But to be honest, I straddle both camps. I have a modded iPod full of music, but I also have Apple Music mostly for convenience.
load more comments
(3 replies)
The second that valve goes public and gets horribly enshittified , it will grow exponentially.
I have codex steamdrm crack at good custody for saving my library when it happens.
load more comments
(4 replies)
How exactly is Steam consumer friendly? Or is the bar so low that companies that don't shoot themselves in their feet by mistake because they were actually aiming for the customer are considered "consumer friendly"?
The bar is, indeed, very low. By comparison I don't feel as predated as in other shops.
The fact that you can add any game to Steam is pretty consumer-friendly, I think.
load more comments
(4 replies)
gog is more consumer friendly but steam is pretty good too compared to the alternatives.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(11 replies)
Turns out making it easier to pay and access content (ie. Steam) actually encourages consumers to pay. Weird.
load more comments
(2 replies)
You know what this means. They're gonna be tightening things up as soon as they smell slowing down profit growth. If you live in a copyright haven, make sure your anon VPN, blocklists and all that are setup correctly.
load more comments
(3 replies)
In the professional world it's called "Distributed backups" and is recommended technique for archiving. I'm doing my bit daily at no charge to the media industry, just out of the goodness of my heart :)
It almost died when?
Any pirated content that I've looked for over the past 20 years has been easily accessible.
The only reason I've slowed down is due to the quality of today's media, not because of availability of content.
That is called engagement farming, pretty common on YouTube, there are probably 50 videos like this released in the past month, they just copy paste from each other, each getting hundreds and thousands of views.
The only noticeable decline in piracy came in the year when Netflix got famous, which got reverted in the next few years due to the launch of another 100 Streaming sites and netflix's enshittification.
It definitely had a dip. Sure you could find whatever you wanted but the amount of people doing it has declined, and ease of use. Streaming when it started was to easy and people didn't bother. Now price increases and ads and stuff going everywhere, piracy is easier.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
bring back shareware tbh
I'm going to guess that Paramount/CBS will be filling up some hard drives, at least until they kill of all the content people wanted to watch in the first place. Paramount, the next fox news.
load more comments
(1 replies)
The line graphs for corporate greed and online file sharing are the same line.
view more: next ›