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.
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.
The 90s when the Internet became commercialized
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.
Well, I grew up with knowledge of cable pirating in apartment complexes, VHS recording of retals to share or rewatch or watch later, and tape and CD sharing and mixing…
So as far as Im aware pirating was always a easy, viable, and economically savvy choice.
I did explore Netflix for a brief time 15 years ago, but the quality of their service degraded heavily, and I still pirated alongside my Netflix membership, as their content was always limited. And I shared my member ship with others, then later occasionally used a membership that was shared with me, until Netflix broke that system.
I don’t watch a lot of films or TV so I used to buy blu-rays and rip them myself but I really don’t want to store a load of useless discs in my house. If companies offered DRM-free digital purchases of the remuxed blu-ray files then I’d pay but since that’s nowhere near being the case, I guess it’s piracy for me.
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.
I started pirating so far back I cannot remember.
Soon as things started getting too expensive and shitty EULA’s that basically exempt the Software maker from any liability whatsoever. This is what started me pirating.
I would say it was in the 90’s then I got lazy as things got cheaper but now I think I may start up again. I have ton of rock FLACS and a fair number of movies (a lot of original YIFY’s with subs) I could seed etc. Just need to setup with whatever is used nowadays.
The tenth time I told someone “watch X show on Netflix” and they said “it’s not on there.”
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.
Probably around 1998, when you could just copy a few files on a floppy drive and play the Pokémon games for free on the library or school PCs.
People here might be interested in retrovibed. its an early stage personal media library/player with builtin tooling for distribution for artists and dead simple setup for users. its primarily built for music/podcasts, but supports video media as well.
…I seriously hope the “vibed” is about the style and NOT about it being vibecoded or using AI in any way.
The name isnt in relation to vibe coding, its a callback to early days of sharing and vibing out to music, but it certainly will use AI for the recommendation engine(s) and other areas where it makes sense.
as for the coding the AI is primarily used for generating test cases and cli functionality. areas that are incredibly useful for debugging but not worth my time directly.
so consider your hope crushed i guess. I’m more interested in building a community that works for musicians, artists, and their fans than I am in moralizing around tool usage.
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!
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
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.
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.
I would say it reached a better service position in the early 2000s with the rise of broadband (1.5Mbps to 3.0Mbps) internet speeds.
Prior to that, you still had IRC and BBS, but there was a divide between filesize and your ability to download that filesize within reason. There also existed a divide between what was accessible to technical users vs everyone else. Non-technical users might copy 3.5 floppies or cassettes but weren’t present in the internet space. Broadband opened the door for services like Napster, Kazaa, and Limewire which granted everyone access.
That service model was so successful to the point that it completely altered the music industry and how people bought music (ex. iTunes).
