4 ms·

Yes. My wife and I have a strict "pay for what you consume" policy in this house. I'm a former "industry" professional, so I have the utmost respect for people

Yes. My wife and I have a strict "pay for what you consume" policy in this house. I'm a former "industry" professional, so I have the utmost respect for people being compensated on whichever end they process/release material we prefer. (Usually Blu-ray, but sometimes digital if we can't find Blu-rays.) In fact, it's so important to us that we have only a handful of pre-owned movies/TV; all stuff we can't buy new. Obviously it's a bit of a legal gray area to rip Blu-rays we purchased, but we don't do anything that would prevent content creators/platforms from receiving compensation. We don't format-shift (i.e. If we have a DVD, we don't obtain an HD version) and only rarely platform-shift (i.e. download a Blu-ray if we've only purchased the streaming rights) if that's the only option. Legally shady but ethically sound stuff we do: - torrent TV shows that we own the same-resolution discs for (it's faster than ripping/transcoding hundreds of hours of video) - torrent TV/movies we've purchased effectively-lifetime licenses for (willing to remove if for a good ethical reason a platform revokes said license; hasn't happened yet though) - pre-download Blu-rays we order if it'll take some time to get here - torrent the very limited number of broadcast TV shows we record and strip ads from (this is probably the most questionable thing we do, ethically) Far as music, most platforms at this point allow some form of non-DRM download, so we generally don't do anything unusual. We use several unauthorized plugins for our music streaming services, but do not download/keep anything we haven't purchased. We absolutely do not "preview" stuff. If we want to "preview", we rent the movies and watch them there. If we choose to purchase, we may torrent, but generally just wait to rip. No doubt we're in a minority, but Kodi is an invaluable way for us to consume our ethically-sourced content. (Even our children's friends seem to have ethics with this stuff, i.e. if they "gift" some MP3s to a peer, they'll also give them a gift card so they can purchase that content. Not sure how common it is, but I certainly don't remember doing this during the early days of CD ripping and Napster.) I don't have a huge problem with some people fudging a little more than we do, but take great offense at people who use it simply for the pirating plugins. I don't, for example, take much issue with people geo-shifting stuff they can't otherwise obtain. (The content creator is still in the same $0 profit situation their publisher put them in.) But stuff like Popcorn Time is really not cool for pretty much anyone except people who can't obtain the content for whatever reason. Make of it what you will. But guns don't kill people; people kill people.

darknavi 6y ago
Do you still watch your physical media? Your "pay for what you consume" policy jives with me but I will virtually never watch a physical Bluray. I wish it was easier to buy DRM free digital media directly from the people who make it. I don't like the ewaste of buying something on a medium I never intend to use and I'd rather pay the creators directly instead of having every person in the physical goods chain take a cut of their profits.
- covidthrow 6y ago
  We sure do! We've had server outages/maintenance, vacation travel with a self-imposed no-distracting-technology policy where we still wanted to do family movie nights, and of course as gifts. We also limit the children to our own library, but they do not have unfettered access at night, so if they want to watch something in their room to fall asleep to, they are allowed 1 or 2 discs at a time. We've got philosophical/psychological issues with the unending smorgasbord of streaming services, so the children aren't allowed to use those alone for the most part. They have full access to our family library, but they often prefer the discs for some reason. (Our oldest has a DVD she watches frequently and refers to it as "retro".) We've got external SSD drives with our favorites (since a few server-downtime left us wanting something more convenient—we keep most of our 3+ year old discs in a fireproof safe), but new stuff is often watched by the kids on disc. And before you ask, no, the safe isn't "for the discs". It's just large enough to have plenty of room for them in CD cases, and that's a pretty reasonable backup in case of disaster. Not sure I understand why some of our friends happily show off $80,000 worth of Blu-rays or $100,000 worth of vinyl in their living rooms. I'd hate to have to recreate our collection, so why bother if we can easily protect it?
tom_mellior 6y ago
You seem to torrent a lot. Do you do it without seeding?
- covidthrow 6y ago
  We do not torrent a lot. I was outlining the ways in which we "bend the rules" when we do. 90-95% of our digital collection is self-ripped. And no, we do not seed or even upload. That can make it difficult to obtain stuff sometimes (bad/low reputation) but we'll hop proxies if we need to. And before you ask, we don't feel bad about leeching. It's one thing if someone else wants to contribute to piracy, but I'm not willing to myself. This is a mode of convenience, not necessity. The likelihood that we would be contributing to someone with similar ethical principals is pretty low, so we're thankful to the folks that provide, but could take it or leave it.

darknavi 6y ago

Do you still watch your physical media? Your "pay for what you consume" policy jives with me but I will virtually never watch a physical Bluray. I wish it was easier to buy DRM free digital media directly from the people who make it. I don't like the ewaste of buying something on a medium I never intend to use and I'd rather pay the creators directly instead of having every person in the physical goods chain take a cut of their profits.

covidthrow 6y ago
We sure do! We've had server outages/maintenance, vacation travel with a self-imposed no-distracting-technology policy where we still wanted to do family movie nights, and of course as gifts. We also limit the children to our own library, but they do not have unfettered access at night, so if they want to watch something in their room to fall asleep to, they are allowed 1 or 2 discs at a time. We've got philosophical/psychological issues with the unending smorgasbord of streaming services, so the children aren't allowed to use those alone for the most part. They have full access to our family library, but they often prefer the discs for some reason. (Our oldest has a DVD she watches frequently and refers to it as "retro".) We've got external SSD drives with our favorites (since a few server-downtime left us wanting something more convenient—we keep most of our 3+ year old discs in a fireproof safe), but new stuff is often watched by the kids on disc. And before you ask, no, the safe isn't "for the discs". It's just large enough to have plenty of room for them in CD cases, and that's a pretty reasonable backup in case of disaster. Not sure I understand why some of our friends happily show off $80,000 worth of Blu-rays or $100,000 worth of vinyl in their living rooms. I'd hate to have to recreate our collection, so why bother if we can easily protect it?

tom_mellior 6y ago

You seem to torrent a lot. Do you do it without seeding?

covidthrow 6y ago
We do not torrent a lot. I was outlining the ways in which we "bend the rules" when we do. 90-95% of our digital collection is self-ripped. And no, we do not seed or even upload. That can make it difficult to obtain stuff sometimes (bad/low reputation) but we'll hop proxies if we need to. And before you ask, we don't feel bad about leeching. It's one thing if someone else wants to contribute to piracy, but I'm not willing to myself. This is a mode of convenience, not necessity. The likelihood that we would be contributing to someone with similar ethical principals is pretty low, so we're thankful to the folks that provide, but could take it or leave it.