Software. 99% of the time there is some Free Software alternative that either somehow does the job for my personal tasks, or is better anyways.
FOSS for the win 😁
Or you have to run a shady crack or keygen to get it to work, and I don’t trust those.
But ...their catchy 8bit music!
I can hear KMSpico in my head already...
monkrus FTW
* cries in Adobe *
i refuse to pirate indie games. i will always buy games that are independently released or from small publishers because 1. they're just trying to break even (unlike publishers like EA and Activision who have millions of fans lining up to buy their repetitive junk) and 2. they almost never have DRM. i'll also buy my music for similar reasons; 99% of artists can barely make a living and i really do not want to contribute to that statistic
We've been buying stuff on bandcamp friday, it is pretty neat
Apps. I prefer foss apps. I donate, report, contribute and spread the word.
Even if I would pirate an app it wouldn't become open source. I couldn't contribute. I couldn't report bugs, suggest ideas, fork and apply my own stuff.
I only pirate apps with no alternatives and very aggressive monetization like 100€/year subscriptions....
We've had a no piracy rule over in the Android subs/communities for years and the funny thing is, by time we ever got to someone trying to post a pirated APK the community themselves tore them a new arsehole.
Easiest rule to enforce when the community will absolutely hiss at you. Love em.
edit: a fun talking point I suppose is YouTube, and its app. We got a lot of people arguing that Newpipe 'was piracy' and I even had many debates with other members/mods about is it, or isn't it piracy?
My view it's a website that you can parse even with other tools like yt-dl, and if Youtube.com wanted to stop use of Newpipe / Revanced whatever they could in the blink of an eye.
I had to 'pirate' geometry dash apk as only the lite version was on the play store. I'd already payed for the full version on Steam and iOS.
I kinda pirated Spotify (xmanager). I believe Tidal is one I would actually subscribe too if I had the income.
I'm sadly aware...which is another reason why I try go straight to the band/artist first.
Pretty much anything that I can buy easily without going to second-hand or stupid subscriptions. For me, it's really a service problem, not a cost problem.
As long as they participate in Steam sales, assuming they're on Steam to begin with, PC games are more convenient to have in a library where I don't have to manually update each game. Valve's not perfect, with its 30% cut of sales being arguably too high (as is the case for all other platforms that defend its use as being an "industry standard"), but given Nintendo's monetization of online gameplay and replacing the Virtual Console system with what is essentially console library rentals, I don't mind putting up with updating Switch ROMs once in a blue moon if it means not supporting anti-consumer practices. Any games I had in my Switch library that are also on Steam I simply repurchased for the sake of convenience, however.
30% allowing to use: Steam servers, Steam Workshop, Steam Cloud, Steamworks, Steam API
All of this is free for the players and developers they got to find a way to pay for all of this.
Considering that Valve makes more money per employee than most major tech companies, it definitely seems like it would still be turning a profit if its share of sales were reduced to 15 or 20 percent. Steam's services aren't free; the 30% fee inflates the price of games by 43%. As with any company Valve needs to have a high enough profit margin to cover long-term costs and R&D budgets, but the 30% cut is an outdated industry standard from when server operating costs were substantially higher than today.
Well I don’t know the internal details but looking at all the benefits and services provided to the developers and players this doesn’t seem unfair.
Aside from hosting cloud saves and Steam workshop data, there aren't many other services that justify a high fee to offset long-term costs. Steam trading cards, for instance, are just another source of revenue for Valve given that they also take a cut of sales from marketplace transactions.
Given that Valve's costs in developing Proton are offset by the higher Steam game purchase rates of Steam Deck users (myself included), the main benefit to developers is Steam's user base. As with Apple and the iOS app store, however, having what amounts to a monopoly in a market segment is not a justification for high platform access fees.
I mean… there’s Steam Workshop, Steam Voice, all the post, interactions, communities, etc.. all of this have to weight a lot on their budget.
My guess is that R&D as well as third-party Steam keys eat into their margins.
It could be more sustainable with this higher fee as well. Valve supports old games for a long time whereas console manufacturers pull the plug 10 years later. You could argue that Microsoft takes only 12%, but Microsoft has the luxury of being able to exit the PC games market at any time, or they can take a loss on it indefinitely. Valve needs to survive off its PC store because it's the only thing they really have
With tinfoil and a good shop, updating switch rooms can be almost as convenient
So there is a thing I kind of pirate, but not entirely – e-books.
But thing is, our public library page has e-books and some of them are available to be read online. Now I cannot officially download them, however opening a network tab on browser console shows me a request to download the whole .epub file. So what I do is copy that request as curl and just download it via terminal.
Is it piracy, probably, is this resource publicly available for me to read, definetly yes.
Other than that I don't really pirate much else.
I can't recall the last time I pirated anything executable (games and other software). There are legitimate free options for everything I've wanted, and executable code is just too risky.
well gog games can be safely pirated because the executables you're getting are signed with their digital signature.
it's much less morally correct tho, especially because most of the games published on gog are indie games, but if you have literally no money to spend (like I used to) there aren't any better options
Usually music made by artists from my country, if they have a website where I can pay for their music directly to them I do it that way.
🙌🏻 I buy CDs and newer unseal them, but pirate the songs because it’s more convenient.
Sometimes I rip CDs to replace music I've already pirated just for the feeling of having music I ripped myself.
Makes no sense, I know, but music is just for the feeling after all.
I prefer high res over CD quality 😇 but I think I can relate.
I mean, I can put up with far worse quality.
In some cases I have to. For example I have some classical songs ripped from YouTube that sound absolutely horrible, but I am kinda accustomed to those specific performances, and it's not always possible to find a better recording from one specific performance. And the other ones just sound... off. Sometimes this is also the case with remasters.
The worst one I have is a song from Beatles I am keeping both because it's one of the first files I downloaded when I was 8 and however weird it sounds, I got used to the compression artifacts. It's 32kbps HE-AAC at 22.05kHz sample rate. I don't even know its name. The name and metadata is in Chinese.
DRM-free ebooks. I make a point of buying them, of thanking the publisher... And not sharing it on the usual piracy channels.
i try to pay indie devs whenever i can
Food for thought. If you have decided you were never going to buy the game, what's the harm in pirating it
sometimes i decide its worth my money after i play it
Honesty as an aspiring indie dev myself, I wouldn't mind you pirate my game BUT I just buy cheap indie games on sale without not being sure if I'm going to play them any time soon.
Best case scenario I found new favorite game, worst case scenario, I just payed 8€ (-the expenses from the store) to some developer chasing their dream.
My wallet can take it and I like to support indie scene.
Fuck yeah! Good on ya :)
If you were never going to buy it, why pirate it?
To check it out and realize I don't like it after like 15 minutes and then not have to deal with a refund.
Gimme a demo at least.
That indicates that you might buy it if it's good. The person I replied to implied they would never have purchased it at all.
Because if you're selfish enough you can enjoy the game at no cost to you guilt free.
I'm just pointing out the facts here.
Anything that is an executable on PC (software / games) due to security risk. Game ROMs for emulators are fine.
Same
I refuse to pirate a car, just because I don't know how
It's a bit easier to pirate a boat, seeing as cars didn't exist in 1600s
I extremely rarely pirate games and software. It's just far too easy an attack vector for malware. The games I want to play are usually worth buying regardless, and free software is good enough for my needs. It isn't a flat out refusal, I've definitely pirated these things, but it's in niche situations where I need to see something specific, and I always check run it under a vm
Nothing.
Nothing nowadays.
I’ll pirate indie games, see if it like it and if I do - I buy them to support the developer.
Similar with ebooks, I pirate them, read and if I like it. I will buy the physical book to support the author.
Not refusing, but lately I basically don't pirate games anymore. Steam made it so easy to buy games... + pirating games is always a pita with the required hacks etc. (or at least it was way back when I did it).
Software I don't pirate, I just use foss stuff wherever I can.
I also don't pirate books in general. Just get them on Kindle and support the author (and unfortunately also Jeff bezos)
I pay for Netflix (mainly for kids) and go to the theater for big movies, but aside from that I pirate all screen content.
I also pirate comics, but that's 90% because it's almost impossible to get them legally where I live. I would pay for DC unlimited if it was available in my neck of the woods.
I'm pretty much the same. Although my e-reader supports generic epub files, so I go to whichever book shop site and look for ebooks.
When I bought my e-reader, I specifically looked for one that wouldn't lock me into their ecosystem too much.
Could you suggest me an e-reader?
I've been using Kobo Libra 2 for more than a year now. It's good for me as I mostly read books. It's black and white and has adjustable (intensity and temperature) backlight. One thing I'd recomend – get a case as well. The screen is rather soft and scraches easily.
Other than that I can't recomend much else since I haven't had anything else. It'll depend very much on your use case: do you need a collored screen, what do you intend to read, comics, PDFs, regular books.
Reading regular books screen size does not matter as much as for PDFs and comics. And for comics colored screen might be a better choise.
My general recomendation: an adjustable backlight is a must, both intensity and temperature, deside on a size and color requirements and start looking for something in your price range. Kobo and Onyx were the brands I looked at first, but there are others.
Thank you for your suggestion. I found an old Android tablet. I used ForceDoze app using Shizuku (temp root) to prolong battery life for 3 days for using 3 hour daily. And using Moonreader + for my books with reading mode and put on a hazy screen protector. It works wonderfully now. Setup was a bit of hassle. But now it's done.
Kobo is where its at, Amazon has locked down their ecosystem to prevent piracy. Which also made my paperwhite garbage. Unless you're using Kindle Unlimited its not really worth going for kindle
I don’t understand this “Amazon has locked down” part. I easily send epub to my kindle through send to kindle or email, and the best part imo is whispersync that permits me to read among my iPhone and inkpalm 5.
Oh well if everything you do on your kindle is above board then I imagine it's a great device. Having had my jailbroken kindle auto updated to the latest version without me noticing and with no way to revert it, it has left me rather salty about the device. It can still read epubs but it now only receives KFX files from Amazon which can't be de-drm'd anymore.
On mobile read forum there are instructions to dedrm kfx from kindle. With some setbacks, I should point out
Antivirus softwere. i cant even began to describe how horribly wrong can that go
I mean who the fuck pirate that, you went out of your way to pirate a software from a shady website just to protect yourself from other files u download from other shady websites
Newer malware wouldn't be easily detected. Linux app stores should be proactive when reviewing apps.
ESET Endpoint, ESET used to be easy to pirate, box+Mara fix, then they patched that loophole and I was forced to subscribe to it (until I switched to Linux anyway) but I thought about putting eset on my windows VM and checked out the latest options for pirating it and I found out about ESET Endpoint which is self hosted antivirus for corporate environments. So we have pirates running their own Endpoint servers...virus definitions hosted by other pirates. That scared me a bit.
Back in the day, when I didn't know better I did try this. With Norton I believe. I'm not gonna drag this story, it ruined my boot, but for some reason it didn't steal or encrypt anything (Makes me think if I just fucked up the install instead of it being malicious). After re-installing Windows everything went back to normal, and I managed to get BitDefender & Malwarebytes another way xd. Good ol' times. 2/3 AV worked
I wouldn't download a car.
Pornography. You never know what could be inside a folder!
Fuck that x100.
Also, I don't need porn that badly.
I don't know, I have never downloaded porn that isn't porn.
I think the implication is that it might be porn you would rather not see.
I used to pirated everything and left no survivors, now I bought Terraria one of my favorite game of all time with actually nice community and developers and it's felt wrong to pirate it, for softwares I just use open source alternatives or abuse free trial
Based, wanna hop on?
Not so much refuse, but I don't currently pirate games or music. The systems available to me are too convenient for me to waste time fucking around with piracy.
Same, Spotify and steam are too convenient for me. Everything else though...
I am in the opposite boat. I've been downloading individual songs I like since the age of 8 when I bought myself the cheapest Android tablet (€50).
I won't be spending my time to move to some online service.
And getting the music on other devices?
I can either play it through my laptop from phone using Bluetooth thanks to pulseaudio-bluetooth, and control the playback via KDE connect which can run over BT-PAN connection to save power, and is also more resilient to noise than Wi-Fi thanks to FHSS.
Alternatively, I can use LAN. All my music is on my phone (and a backup HDD + encrypted on cloud) and run a Navidrome server on my phone in Termux. This also goes for video which I serve from my phone using nginx with fancyindex module to make it nicer. Since I already have that, nginx acts as a reverse proxy to Navidrome. My music is sorted by folders, so to keep things simple I create m3u playlists that get autoimported to Navidrome. That part is pretty simple ls playlist-dir/* > playlist.m3u.
OK, perhaps the second part doesn't sound that convenient, but first part needs no setup with most distros. Perhaps installing KDE connect for music control (and more), but that is optional. Actually, the music control can be done just via Bluetooth, but I wasn't able to utilize my laptop's media buttons for that, and I don't want to have to mouse over to Bluetooth panel.
How do you handle discovering new music? That's a big sticking point for me
I also listen to radio.
But I don't even have to as I travel by a bus. The bus drivers almost always listen to some music, whether on radio or from their own playlists.
Since I usually sit in the front, it's often good enough to remember the lyrics or even use Shazam.
So yeah, radio and bus drivers. :)
i think the concept of "donation" is a relevant piece of this puzzle.
Video games, because it's easier to do it legally. If it was as easy for other media, I would do it that way.
Stuff that I can buy for a fair price and use without many restrictions. For example DRM-free games on GOG or itch.io
VPN service
How would you even pirate that?
Creating accounts to exploit free trials.
All the VPN providers I know either require payment information or don't even have a free trial
I checked, and yeah, ProtonVPN also stopped offering the 7 day free trial. That required no info.
Music that's available on Bandcamp.
Any sort of program, because I don't trust anonymous people enough to not end up with a virus.
I pirate everything. If they gain my respect, I then buy it. For example I bought a copy of Witcher 3 I never actually played (because I pirated it).
My main ones are:
Pretty much any software or games. Not really for moral reasons especially, but I mostly run Linux so most of them aren't available anyway, and if I do get something it's usually such a pain in the ass to actually get it working (and keep it working whenever there's an update) that it's usually not worth it when there's often a FOSS alternative. Also no pirating indie games.
Books, with a few exceptions. I don't want to screw over authors so I don't download books, but there have been a couple of old ones where the author is long dead and I already paid for a paper copy, so I snagged the eBook just for convenience. I figure that's not hurting anyone except the publishing company so whatever.
Also with games I'm one of those extremely patient people who can wait years for something to go on sale, so what I usually do is set a price in my head for what I think something's worth, and then ignore it until it ends up at that price. So like: Baldur's Gate 3 - they did a good job and released a proper working game = full price. Cyberpunk - looks alright but it was a big mess on release and had a bunch of stuff missing = wait until it's all fixed and has all the add-ons in a bundle, $25. Last Of Us PC = it's one of my favourite games but it's 10+ years old now and was also a bit of a mess on release so they can fuck off with the $70 price tag = $10 tops. No Man's Sky - Might be decent now but they really bullshitted that one on release = wait until it shows up for free on Epic or PSPlus. And so on. There's a lot of them lol.
Porn.
What's the point?
I even have a counterpoint. You may accidentally get some illegal stuff (and I don't mean piracy). Not on my HDDs!
Ads, interface.
insulin
Only the content that i don't care about.
My wife likes to watch Disney +. Thus anything that comes out on Hulu / Disney + / ESPN bundle we will watch through traditional means. If I can purchase a show or movie legally and retain ownership I will watch through traditional means. On the flip side anything that was once on Hulu/ Netflix but is not anymore we are gonna pirate. Anything that airs on a streaming service that forces you watch within an app with ads we are gonna pirate. Anything that airs on Netflix after its password sharing crackdown we are gonna pirate. Any show that airs on streaming service that did not before but now has ads (I am calling you out Amazon) we are gonna pirate.
Anything I would actually buy if I couldn't pirate it.
I buy GOG copies of games when I can.
Pretty much nothing. I get pretty much whatever I want. I still buy stuff before-hand though, I just like having backup copies so I don't have to rely on some server that will go away some day.
Do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate.
Nothing I'm just pirate to the bone..
Indie games. Tremendous respect for indie devs.
Same with some exeptions (when i cant afford it or when its very complicated to buy or if i had it and (insert game store here) removed it from my library)
PC games. Too much of a worry about malware for that nonsense.
On my mac, the little I pirate today is Microsoft office apps. Because fuck MS.
Most of the games I buy either from steam on sale, or cheap keys from g2a & co. I rarely get new games. I have little time for gaming, and have a backlog of games that could last me a couple of lifetimes already.
System utilities (firewall for instance) I buy
I go FOSS when I can.
Only thing I subscribed (and regret it, but the hassle to go rogue is just not worth it) is Adobe Lightroom Classic.
Last but not least, I pirated the hell out of the Nintendo Switch OLED though. Because Fuck Nintendo.
I've donated to indie devs for games I loved (whatever the platform, even if I ended up only playing them a bit).
I pirate TV shows and movies.
Do you buy firewall ?
Apple will make you pay for anything apparently
I’m not sure how to describe it, so I’ll just give an example. There’s a completely free online game called corru.observer, where all music is available to listen to on soundcloud, where the only support the devs have is to support on patreon/kofi/i don’t remember, or to buy the music on bandcamp.
I love the game, i love the music, and so I supported the game by buying the music.
Anything not coming from a big publishing company.
If it wasn't for publishers changing content, removing content, or outright de-listing games, as well as always online requirements, I would never consider video game piracy, but these things are pushing me in that direction.
open source
I was going to say music, but I suppose ripping from YouTube is piracy, isn't it? And so is X-manager for Spotify, probably? Where's the line on ad blockers for YouTube/Free tube/NewPipe?
I also thought to say books, since I mostly read free web serials and Kindle Unlimited... But I can't afford $10-20 (local currency)/day for books, and at the pace I read that's what most pay-per-chapter web serials or non-KU books would cost me. And how do we feel about using library cards we're not entitled to?
Then I was going to say games, but, lol, emulation.
So... Everything is on the table for me, I suppose. I try to buy games legally, and authors get a lot of money from me from KU page reads ($2+ USD/day most days), but only if it's not too expensive or inconvenient for me.
PC games, just don’t feel like making arbitrary code execution a cakewalk for internet strangers
DRM-Free books.
Windows antiviruses. It's not wise to use a cracked program that's supposed to protect you from malicious cracks/downloads...
PC Games.
Software and videogames. I use Linux and Free/Libre Software and any game I want is on steam or gog.
Pretty much no games, at this point. I've been buying up every game(worth owning, to me) on Steam sales, humble bundle, and other means. The last year or two, I've just been buying the new games I want at full price on steam, or waiting for sales if I don't want it that much. The only game I still refuse to buy is The Sims 4, for that one time every other year that I want to boot into a heavily modded Sims game to play Sims Orgy Simulator 6969™. But even the other dumb hentai waifu nonsense games, I just buy on Steam (half of which are my gf's, but she refuses to buy them on her own damn account), even though they are easily obtained at the usual locations.
Song and Books
I don't "refuse" to pirate anything. If I buy something I see it basically as a donation, that I like what the creator does and want to support them. I tend to buy indie games for that reason; I wouldn't buy a AAA game because obviously they don't need the money. Oh, and I buy books if I know the author is actually a good writer, ie if I've read something by them before and I want to support their writing. Also seconding what people are saying about FOSS; I've donated a lot more to FOSS projects than I've paid for proprietary software.
Indie anything as well as books, except textbook cause expensive and they are useless anyway, we just have to buy them for school and literally never open them.
Software and video games. I just haven't had a need, and I like supporting creators. Only reason I'd download books, music or movies is because I absolutely abhor subscription payments and would rather have access to those things permanently. At least with software you can just find a free alternative.
Nothing.
But i usually buy games made in my home country. Trying to move the industry along.
Books, except maybe college books.
I mostly pirate games that don't have free trials. I'll play them a bit and if I like em I'll just buy them legit and often buy them for friends so we can play together. I've bought like 3 copies of terraria and 2 of minecraft way back in the day in addition to a bunch of other smaller names. I also pirate AAA games because fuck em, they don't need my money.
Music and software/games. Both are convenient and relatively affordable to access.
Software I will try to find non-subscription based or open source options if available.
Things infected with viruses.
I guess technically am not pirating all the games Epic gives me for free.
I'll buy most things I like on steam once they hit under ten bucks. It's mainly just for convenience.
movies/series that are available in amazon prime. since i use my friend's amazon prime, i just use it to watch stuff quickly instead of going to private trackers. only exception might be "The Boys" since there is a huge number of scenes that got censored.
Software. 99% of the time there is some Free Software alternative that either somehow does the job for my personal tasks, or is better anyways.
FOSS for the win 😁
Or you have to run a shady crack or keygen to get it to work, and I don’t trust those.
But ...their catchy 8bit music!
I can hear KMSpico in my head already...
monkrus FTW
* cries in Adobe *
i refuse to pirate indie games. i will always buy games that are independently released or from small publishers because 1. they're just trying to break even (unlike publishers like EA and Activision who have millions of fans lining up to buy their repetitive junk) and 2. they almost never have DRM. i'll also buy my music for similar reasons; 99% of artists can barely make a living and i really do not want to contribute to that statistic
We've been buying stuff on bandcamp friday, it is pretty neat
Apps. I prefer foss apps. I donate, report, contribute and spread the word.
Even if I would pirate an app it wouldn't become open source. I couldn't contribute. I couldn't report bugs, suggest ideas, fork and apply my own stuff.
I only pirate apps with no alternatives and very aggressive monetization like 100€/year subscriptions....
We've had a no piracy rule over in the Android subs/communities for years and the funny thing is, by time we ever got to someone trying to post a pirated APK the community themselves tore them a new arsehole.
Easiest rule to enforce when the community will absolutely hiss at you. Love em.
edit: a fun talking point I suppose is YouTube, and its app. We got a lot of people arguing that Newpipe 'was piracy' and I even had many debates with other members/mods about is it, or isn't it piracy?
My view it's a website that you can parse even with other tools like yt-dl, and if Youtube.com wanted to stop use of Newpipe / Revanced whatever they could in the blink of an eye.
I had to 'pirate' geometry dash apk as only the lite version was on the play store. I'd already payed for the full version on Steam and iOS.
I kinda pirated Spotify (xmanager). I believe Tidal is one I would actually subscribe too if I had the income.
It's not that I won't but I do try to go out of my way to support smaller artists I enjoy, especially nowadays.
Lucky it's gotten a lot easier with sites like Bandcamp, but it's better if I can buy directly from the bands own store.
Sad news about band camp from last year though.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/oct/17/bandcamp-lays-off-half-its-staff-after-buyout-by-songtradr
I'm sadly aware...which is another reason why I try go straight to the band/artist first.
Pretty much anything that I can buy easily without going to second-hand or stupid subscriptions. For me, it's really a service problem, not a cost problem.
As long as they participate in Steam sales, assuming they're on Steam to begin with, PC games are more convenient to have in a library where I don't have to manually update each game. Valve's not perfect, with its 30% cut of sales being arguably too high (as is the case for all other platforms that defend its use as being an "industry standard"), but given Nintendo's monetization of online gameplay and replacing the Virtual Console system with what is essentially console library rentals, I don't mind putting up with updating Switch ROMs once in a blue moon if it means not supporting anti-consumer practices. Any games I had in my Switch library that are also on Steam I simply repurchased for the sake of convenience, however.
30% allowing to use: Steam servers, Steam Workshop, Steam Cloud, Steamworks, Steam API
All of this is free for the players and developers they got to find a way to pay for all of this.
Considering that Valve makes more money per employee than most major tech companies, it definitely seems like it would still be turning a profit if its share of sales were reduced to 15 or 20 percent. Steam's services aren't free; the 30% fee inflates the price of games by 43%. As with any company Valve needs to have a high enough profit margin to cover long-term costs and R&D budgets, but the 30% cut is an outdated industry standard from when server operating costs were substantially higher than today.
Well I don’t know the internal details but looking at all the benefits and services provided to the developers and players this doesn’t seem unfair.
Aside from hosting cloud saves and Steam workshop data, there aren't many other services that justify a high fee to offset long-term costs. Steam trading cards, for instance, are just another source of revenue for Valve given that they also take a cut of sales from marketplace transactions.
Given that Valve's costs in developing Proton are offset by the higher Steam game purchase rates of Steam Deck users (myself included), the main benefit to developers is Steam's user base. As with Apple and the iOS app store, however, having what amounts to a monopoly in a market segment is not a justification for high platform access fees.
I mean… there’s Steam Workshop, Steam Voice, all the post, interactions, communities, etc.. all of this have to weight a lot on their budget.
My guess is that R&D as well as third-party Steam keys eat into their margins.
It could be more sustainable with this higher fee as well. Valve supports old games for a long time whereas console manufacturers pull the plug 10 years later. You could argue that Microsoft takes only 12%, but Microsoft has the luxury of being able to exit the PC games market at any time, or they can take a loss on it indefinitely. Valve needs to survive off its PC store because it's the only thing they really have
With tinfoil and a good shop, updating switch rooms can be almost as convenient
So there is a thing I kind of pirate, but not entirely – e-books.
But thing is, our public library page has e-books and some of them are available to be read online. Now I cannot officially download them, however opening a network tab on browser console shows me a request to download the whole
.epubfile. So what I do is copy that request ascurland just download it via terminal.Is it piracy, probably, is this resource publicly available for me to read, definetly yes.
Other than that I don't really pirate much else.
I can't recall the last time I pirated anything executable (games and other software). There are legitimate free options for everything I've wanted, and executable code is just too risky.
well gog games can be safely pirated because the executables you're getting are signed with their digital signature.
it's much less morally correct tho, especially because most of the games published on gog are indie games, but if you have literally no money to spend (like I used to) there aren't any better options
Usually music made by artists from my country, if they have a website where I can pay for their music directly to them I do it that way.
🙌🏻 I buy CDs and newer unseal them, but pirate the songs because it’s more convenient.
Sometimes I rip CDs to replace music I've already pirated just for the feeling of having music I ripped myself.
Makes no sense, I know, but music is just for the feeling after all.
I prefer high res over CD quality 😇 but I think I can relate.
I mean, I can put up with far worse quality.
In some cases I have to. For example I have some classical songs ripped from YouTube that sound absolutely horrible, but I am kinda accustomed to those specific performances, and it's not always possible to find a better recording from one specific performance. And the other ones just sound... off. Sometimes this is also the case with remasters.
The worst one I have is a song from Beatles I am keeping both because it's one of the first files I downloaded when I was 8 and however weird it sounds, I got used to the compression artifacts. It's 32kbps HE-AAC at 22.05kHz sample rate. I don't even know its name. The name and metadata is in Chinese.
DRM-free ebooks. I make a point of buying them, of thanking the publisher... And not sharing it on the usual piracy channels.
i try to pay indie devs whenever i can
Food for thought. If you have decided you were never going to buy the game, what's the harm in pirating it
sometimes i decide its worth my money after i play it
Honesty as an aspiring indie dev myself, I wouldn't mind you pirate my game BUT I just buy cheap indie games on sale without not being sure if I'm going to play them any time soon. Best case scenario I found new favorite game, worst case scenario, I just payed 8€ (-the expenses from the store) to some developer chasing their dream.
My wallet can take it and I like to support indie scene.
Fuck yeah! Good on ya :)
If you were never going to buy it, why pirate it?
To check it out and realize I don't like it after like 15 minutes and then not have to deal with a refund.
Gimme a demo at least.
That indicates that you might buy it if it's good. The person I replied to implied they would never have purchased it at all.
Because if you're selfish enough you can enjoy the game at no cost to you guilt free.
I'm just pointing out the facts here.
Anything that is an executable on PC (software / games) due to security risk. Game ROMs for emulators are fine.
Same
I refuse to pirate a car, just because I don't know how
It's a bit easier to pirate a boat, seeing as cars didn't exist in 1600s
I extremely rarely pirate games and software. It's just far too easy an attack vector for malware. The games I want to play are usually worth buying regardless, and free software is good enough for my needs. It isn't a flat out refusal, I've definitely pirated these things, but it's in niche situations where I need to see something specific, and I always check run it under a vm
Nothing.
Nothing nowadays.
I’ll pirate indie games, see if it like it and if I do - I buy them to support the developer.
Similar with ebooks, I pirate them, read and if I like it. I will buy the physical book to support the author.
Not refusing, but lately I basically don't pirate games anymore. Steam made it so easy to buy games... + pirating games is always a pita with the required hacks etc. (or at least it was way back when I did it).
Software I don't pirate, I just use foss stuff wherever I can.
I also don't pirate books in general. Just get them on Kindle and support the author (and unfortunately also Jeff bezos)
I pay for Netflix (mainly for kids) and go to the theater for big movies, but aside from that I pirate all screen content.
I also pirate comics, but that's 90% because it's almost impossible to get them legally where I live. I would pay for DC unlimited if it was available in my neck of the woods.
I'm pretty much the same. Although my e-reader supports generic epub files, so I go to whichever book shop site and look for ebooks.
When I bought my e-reader, I specifically looked for one that wouldn't lock me into their ecosystem too much.
Could you suggest me an e-reader?
I've been using Kobo Libra 2 for more than a year now. It's good for me as I mostly read books. It's black and white and has adjustable (intensity and temperature) backlight. One thing I'd recomend – get a case as well. The screen is rather soft and scraches easily.
Other than that I can't recomend much else since I haven't had anything else. It'll depend very much on your use case: do you need a collored screen, what do you intend to read, comics, PDFs, regular books.
Reading regular books screen size does not matter as much as for PDFs and comics. And for comics colored screen might be a better choise.
My general recomendation: an adjustable backlight is a must, both intensity and temperature, deside on a size and color requirements and start looking for something in your price range. Kobo and Onyx were the brands I looked at first, but there are others.
Thank you for your suggestion. I found an old Android tablet. I used ForceDoze app using Shizuku (temp root) to prolong battery life for 3 days for using 3 hour daily. And using Moonreader + for my books with reading mode and put on a hazy screen protector. It works wonderfully now. Setup was a bit of hassle. But now it's done.
Kobo is where its at, Amazon has locked down their ecosystem to prevent piracy. Which also made my paperwhite garbage. Unless you're using Kindle Unlimited its not really worth going for kindle
I don’t understand this “Amazon has locked down” part. I easily send epub to my kindle through send to kindle or email, and the best part imo is whispersync that permits me to read among my iPhone and inkpalm 5.
Oh well if everything you do on your kindle is above board then I imagine it's a great device. Having had my jailbroken kindle auto updated to the latest version without me noticing and with no way to revert it, it has left me rather salty about the device. It can still read epubs but it now only receives KFX files from Amazon which can't be de-drm'd anymore.
On mobile read forum there are instructions to dedrm kfx from kindle. With some setbacks, I should point out
Antivirus softwere. i cant even began to describe how horribly wrong can that go
I mean who the fuck pirate that, you went out of your way to pirate a software from a shady website just to protect yourself from other files u download from other shady websites
Newer malware wouldn't be easily detected. Linux app stores should be proactive when reviewing apps.
ESET Endpoint, ESET used to be easy to pirate, box+Mara fix, then they patched that loophole and I was forced to subscribe to it (until I switched to Linux anyway) but I thought about putting eset on my windows VM and checked out the latest options for pirating it and I found out about ESET Endpoint which is self hosted antivirus for corporate environments. So we have pirates running their own Endpoint servers...virus definitions hosted by other pirates. That scared me a bit.
Back in the day, when I didn't know better I did try this. With Norton I believe. I'm not gonna drag this story, it ruined my boot, but for some reason it didn't steal or encrypt anything (Makes me think if I just fucked up the install instead of it being malicious). After re-installing Windows everything went back to normal, and I managed to get BitDefender & Malwarebytes another way xd. Good ol' times. 2/3 AV worked
I wouldn't download a car.
Pornography. You never know what could be inside a folder!
Fuck that x100.
Also, I don't need porn that badly.
I don't know, I have never downloaded porn that isn't porn.
I think the implication is that it might be porn you would rather not see.
I used to pirated everything and left no survivors, now I bought Terraria one of my favorite game of all time with actually nice community and developers and it's felt wrong to pirate it, for softwares I just use open source alternatives or abuse free trial
Based, wanna hop on?
Not so much refuse, but I don't currently pirate games or music. The systems available to me are too convenient for me to waste time fucking around with piracy.
Same, Spotify and steam are too convenient for me. Everything else though...
I am in the opposite boat. I've been downloading individual songs I like since the age of 8 when I bought myself the cheapest Android tablet (€50).
I won't be spending my time to move to some online service.
And getting the music on other devices?
I can either play it through my laptop from phone using Bluetooth thanks to pulseaudio-bluetooth, and control the playback via KDE connect which can run over BT-PAN connection to save power, and is also more resilient to noise than Wi-Fi thanks to FHSS.
Alternatively, I can use LAN. All my music is on my phone (and a backup HDD + encrypted on cloud) and run a Navidrome server on my phone in Termux. This also goes for video which I serve from my phone using nginx with fancyindex module to make it nicer. Since I already have that, nginx acts as a reverse proxy to Navidrome. My music is sorted by folders, so to keep things simple I create m3u playlists that get autoimported to Navidrome. That part is pretty simple
ls playlist-dir/* > playlist.m3u.OK, perhaps the second part doesn't sound that convenient, but first part needs no setup with most distros. Perhaps installing KDE connect for music control (and more), but that is optional. Actually, the music control can be done just via Bluetooth, but I wasn't able to utilize my laptop's media buttons for that, and I don't want to have to mouse over to Bluetooth panel.
How do you handle discovering new music? That's a big sticking point for me
I also listen to radio.
But I don't even have to as I travel by a bus. The bus drivers almost always listen to some music, whether on radio or from their own playlists.
Since I usually sit in the front, it's often good enough to remember the lyrics or even use Shazam.
So yeah, radio and bus drivers. :)
i think the concept of "donation" is a relevant piece of this puzzle.
Video games, because it's easier to do it legally. If it was as easy for other media, I would do it that way.
Stuff that I can buy for a fair price and use without many restrictions. For example DRM-free games on GOG or itch.io
VPN service
How would you even pirate that?
Creating accounts to exploit free trials.
All the VPN providers I know either require payment information or don't even have a free trial
I checked, and yeah, ProtonVPN also stopped offering the 7 day free trial. That required no info.
Music that's available on Bandcamp.
Any sort of program, because I don't trust anonymous people enough to not end up with a virus.
I pirate everything. If they gain my respect, I then buy it. For example I bought a copy of Witcher 3 I never actually played (because I pirated it).
My main ones are:
Pretty much any software or games. Not really for moral reasons especially, but I mostly run Linux so most of them aren't available anyway, and if I do get something it's usually such a pain in the ass to actually get it working (and keep it working whenever there's an update) that it's usually not worth it when there's often a FOSS alternative. Also no pirating indie games.
Books, with a few exceptions. I don't want to screw over authors so I don't download books, but there have been a couple of old ones where the author is long dead and I already paid for a paper copy, so I snagged the eBook just for convenience. I figure that's not hurting anyone except the publishing company so whatever.
Also with games I'm one of those extremely patient people who can wait years for something to go on sale, so what I usually do is set a price in my head for what I think something's worth, and then ignore it until it ends up at that price. So like: Baldur's Gate 3 - they did a good job and released a proper working game = full price. Cyberpunk - looks alright but it was a big mess on release and had a bunch of stuff missing = wait until it's all fixed and has all the add-ons in a bundle, $25. Last Of Us PC = it's one of my favourite games but it's 10+ years old now and was also a bit of a mess on release so they can fuck off with the $70 price tag = $10 tops. No Man's Sky - Might be decent now but they really bullshitted that one on release = wait until it shows up for free on Epic or PSPlus. And so on. There's a lot of them lol.
Porn.
What's the point?
I even have a counterpoint. You may accidentally get some illegal stuff (and I don't mean piracy). Not on my HDDs!
Ads, interface.
insulin
Only the content that i don't care about.
My wife likes to watch Disney +. Thus anything that comes out on Hulu / Disney + / ESPN bundle we will watch through traditional means. If I can purchase a show or movie legally and retain ownership I will watch through traditional means. On the flip side anything that was once on Hulu/ Netflix but is not anymore we are gonna pirate. Anything that airs on a streaming service that forces you watch within an app with ads we are gonna pirate. Anything that airs on Netflix after its password sharing crackdown we are gonna pirate. Any show that airs on streaming service that did not before but now has ads (I am calling you out Amazon) we are gonna pirate.
Anything I would actually buy if I couldn't pirate it.
I buy GOG copies of games when I can.
Pretty much nothing. I get pretty much whatever I want. I still buy stuff before-hand though, I just like having backup copies so I don't have to rely on some server that will go away some day.
Do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate.
Nothing I'm just pirate to the bone..
Indie games. Tremendous respect for indie devs.
Same with some exeptions (when i cant afford it or when its very complicated to buy or if i had it and (insert game store here) removed it from my library)
PC games. Too much of a worry about malware for that nonsense.
Do you buy firewall ?
Apple will make you pay for anything apparently
I’m not sure how to describe it, so I’ll just give an example. There’s a completely free online game called corru.observer, where all music is available to listen to on soundcloud, where the only support the devs have is to support on patreon/kofi/i don’t remember, or to buy the music on bandcamp.
I love the game, i love the music, and so I supported the game by buying the music.
Anything not coming from a big publishing company.
If it wasn't for publishers changing content, removing content, or outright de-listing games, as well as always online requirements, I would never consider video game piracy, but these things are pushing me in that direction.
open source
I was going to say music, but I suppose ripping from YouTube is piracy, isn't it? And so is X-manager for Spotify, probably? Where's the line on ad blockers for YouTube/Free tube/NewPipe?
I also thought to say books, since I mostly read free web serials and Kindle Unlimited... But I can't afford $10-20 (local currency)/day for books, and at the pace I read that's what most pay-per-chapter web serials or non-KU books would cost me. And how do we feel about using library cards we're not entitled to?
Then I was going to say games, but, lol, emulation.
So... Everything is on the table for me, I suppose. I try to buy games legally, and authors get a lot of money from me from KU page reads ($2+ USD/day most days), but only if it's not too expensive or inconvenient for me.
PC games, just don’t feel like making arbitrary code execution a cakewalk for internet strangers
DRM-Free books.
Windows antiviruses. It's not wise to use a cracked program that's supposed to protect you from malicious cracks/downloads...
PC Games.
Software and videogames. I use Linux and Free/Libre Software and any game I want is on steam or gog.
Pretty much no games, at this point. I've been buying up every game(worth owning, to me) on Steam sales, humble bundle, and other means. The last year or two, I've just been buying the new games I want at full price on steam, or waiting for sales if I don't want it that much. The only game I still refuse to buy is The Sims 4, for that one time every other year that I want to boot into a heavily modded Sims game to play Sims Orgy Simulator 6969™. But even the other dumb hentai waifu nonsense games, I just buy on Steam (half of which are my gf's, but she refuses to buy them on her own damn account), even though they are easily obtained at the usual locations.
Song and Books
I don't "refuse" to pirate anything. If I buy something I see it basically as a donation, that I like what the creator does and want to support them. I tend to buy indie games for that reason; I wouldn't buy a AAA game because obviously they don't need the money. Oh, and I buy books if I know the author is actually a good writer, ie if I've read something by them before and I want to support their writing. Also seconding what people are saying about FOSS; I've donated a lot more to FOSS projects than I've paid for proprietary software.
Indie anything as well as books, except textbook cause expensive and they are useless anyway, we just have to buy them for school and literally never open them.
Software and video games. I just haven't had a need, and I like supporting creators. Only reason I'd download books, music or movies is because I absolutely abhor subscription payments and would rather have access to those things permanently. At least with software you can just find a free alternative.
Nothing. But i usually buy games made in my home country. Trying to move the industry along.
Books, except maybe college books.
I mostly pirate games that don't have free trials. I'll play them a bit and if I like em I'll just buy them legit and often buy them for friends so we can play together. I've bought like 3 copies of terraria and 2 of minecraft way back in the day in addition to a bunch of other smaller names. I also pirate AAA games because fuck em, they don't need my money.
Music and software/games. Both are convenient and relatively affordable to access. Software I will try to find non-subscription based or open source options if available.
Things infected with viruses.
I guess technically am not pirating all the games Epic gives me for free.
I'll buy most things I like on steam once they hit under ten bucks. It's mainly just for convenience.
movies/series that are available in amazon prime. since i use my friend's amazon prime, i just use it to watch stuff quickly instead of going to private trackers. only exception might be "The Boys" since there is a huge number of scenes that got censored.
@tet nothing is off the table.
Piracy puts control back in the user’s hand, where it belongs.
nothing