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I’ll admit I don’t understand how people can ethically pirate content. I dislike a lot of business models but I just don’t feel right calling them “silly” and l

I’ll admit I don’t understand how people can ethically pirate content. I dislike a lot of business models but I just don’t feel right calling them “silly” and looking for ways to take things I know I don’t have the right to take.

hellotomyrars 5y ago
This is admittedly a small percentage corner case but there are people who are legitimately unable to access the content even if they want to and are willing/prepared to pay depending on their geographic location. I pay for Prime and Netflix but I still often torrent shows from those services because of the stupid widevine drm level restrictions on quality/resolution. I guess you could say that’s not piracy then but I’m sure I’ve got things downloaded that are no longer on their catalogues so it’s hard to know. When Netflix had 70% of the media content you’d want I was very happy to be a paying customer but now I’m mostly a begrudgingly paying customer as the cost goes up the the library shrinks. Everyone wants their piece of the pie right now and I don’t doubt they’re going to consolidate to some extent after the winners and losers are decided but it sucks ass that the ecosystem has become so fragmented. Also having the raw files makes it easier for me to sync up watching with my fiancé who is currently abroad. She pays for Netflix in the UK but even when both libraries have the same content the UK version often has different intro credits which makes syncing difficult. I guess the overall crux of my issue with the business model is that I can pay $15 a month to access X service and get hundreds/thousands of movies and shows or Something like $20 a season for a show which could end up being hundreds of dollars for just one show. The economics really just break down for me since they price owning a digital copy against physical. Ironically physical copies will end up getting discounted at retail because things have to move but the digital copies won’t. Also in many cases even owning a copy digitally doesn’t give you the ability to dictate where you use it/give you a raw file. I just want things to work the way I need them to, however that manifests and the only way to do that is with the video files themselves and any barrier or artifice between them is a problem.
brazed_blotch 5y ago
Why do you have to justify it? You might pirate content simply because you can. If you don't want someone to copy your data without charge then find a better business model.
benrbray 5y ago
As an example, I recently wanted to watch The West Wing. I pay for Netflix and Hulu already, but the show is only on HBO Max. OK, fine, I guess I'll pay for a month of HBO like I've done before to watch Game of Thrones. Ok, uh, what's it called now? HBO Go? HBO Now? Oh, HBO Max, ok. I live in Japan now, so I'm region-blocked, great. Time to open the VPN. HBO already seems to know that server #1243 is a VPN, but server #849 works OK for now. Ok, time to create an account. "Account with that email already exists"? Ok, so let's log in using my old HBO Go credentials. Looks like there's some kind of account migration problem and the account is stuck in the "account verification" phase but I can't get it to send me a new verification email. There's a little pop-up chat window for the support team, let's try it. Three separate support agents and thirty minutes later, I have a working verification email. But my payment information is out of date. OK, let's update it. HTTP 505 error. Wonderful. Ok, that's enough: Type "West Wing season 1 episode 1" into Google. Thirty seconds later I'm watching in full HD and there's popcorn in the microwave.
- nix23 5y ago
  Yep, same old story. If pirating has the better deployment, then pirating is the better service. People have no problem to pay, but driving into the city to buy a cd then convert it so you can listen to it on your ipod......or eMule? I love it that they are resistant to learn anything from the past.
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
try it. use their best practices and be amazed how much mental energy it saves.
- paulcole 5y ago
  I don’t find it takes much mental energy to pay for what I want to watch or just watch something else if I can’t pay for what I want to watch.
  - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
    You are absolutely right it's the least draining part of the streaming experience. First you have to look if it's on a streaming service or where you can buy it in the quality you look for, is it like many sport events even available in my country, does the device or browser use the right drm or do I just get the 720p version, is it just the dub and not OV. Why are there no forced subtitles? What my Mac and Windows PCs can't play Blurays? What no Dolby passthrough? Your comment is just ignorant to the problem itself.
bo1024 5y ago
Your use of the word "take" is probably related to the disconnect. In copyright violations, the crime is copying. Usually "taking" has a different connotation than copying. (I'd be mad if you took my bike, but if you copied it then I'd just be happy for you.)
- paulcole 5y ago
  If I’m describing an action I took as a “crime” I’m not going to feel good about it no matter how finely I choose to split the hairs.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    Some people have a looser coupling between legality and morality than others, often because they disapprove of some laws (like the crime of sleeping under a bridge, or repairing your own tractor…)
nitrogen 5y ago
I subscribe to some streaming services and that's all I use, but consider this: copyright grants ownership over a fraction of your mind without your consent. Once you've seen a show or heard a song, whether you chose to or not, those neurons are permanently allocated to that show or song. How is that ethical? Moreover, the current state of copyright gives a few large corporations enormous power to shape our culture. The stories of our time should belong to us well before we're dead, but copyright lasts well past one human lifetime. And as others have mentioned, sometimes there is no price you can pay to legally watch something, for reasons that are truly "silly" to anyone who isn't profiting from the international balkanization of distributors. Like the Great British Baking Show on Netflix: it's actually Great British Bake Off, and you can't watch the original in the US. Good luck finding anywhere to watch Grand Designs (from any locale) in the US without ads, no matter how much you'd be willing to pay. There are many examples of shows from UK, Australia, and New Zealand that aren't available in the US at all, and probably vice versa, let alone the rest of the world.
jancsika 5y ago
> I dislike a lot of business models but I just don’t feel right calling them “silly” and looking for ways to take things I know I don’t have the right to take. How do you know if you have a right to take them? If it's according to the law, then your ethical stance changes with the wind. E.g., you would believe you have a right to derive new music by taking a chord progression from your favorite song, but not by taking the melody. Worse, the rich history in the U.S. of building new songs out of old chord progressions was preferred to taking melodies chiefly because it was illegal to take copyrighted melodies and put new chord changes to them. So your ethical stance would change depending on whether you happen to be reading the notes that are stacked vertically on the page (i.e., a chord), or horizontally across it (a melody). That's ethically incoherent. If it's according to your own ethical stance, you have to explain what that stance is. E.g., are you ethically opposed to circumventing a company's API to download content in a way they didn't intend? Are you opposed to someone accepting a flash drive from a friend that has their friend's favorite music on it? Someone pasting their big fat head on indy content and reposting as a "reaction video" to steal views? I happen to think these aren't all covered by the same ethical rule, but maybe they are.
- paulcole 5y ago
  > How do you know if you have a right to take them? If someone says “This is $5.” And if I don’t pay them $5, then I feel like I don’t have a right to it. If it takes paragraphs of text to explain why despite not paying them $5 I have a right to take it, then I feel like I don’t have a right to take it.
throwaway984393 5y ago
Maybe they're Utilitarianists.
glanzwulf 5y ago
For me its quite simple. Just the other day I really wanted to watch Anthony Bourdains No Reservations. Where I am right now I can't do: 1. Stream 2. Purchase 3. Rent 4. Catch on tv 5. Subscribe to an american streaming service using a vpn (requires an american credit card, and while there are services that allow to get a pseudo prepaid card the costs of it all are huge) I can however pirate it.
dartharva 5y ago
Not just "silly", many are genuinely user-hostile. I have legitimate copies of games that I'd rather not touch as against pirated copies of the same games (mostly from Rockstar and Ubisoft) that provide an objectively superior, garbage-free experience. Same goes with Movies and shows. I have Netflix and PrimeVideo subscriptions but the overall quality they provide is trash as against 4K ripped HEVC releases with 10bit audio and better subtitles which you can watch in whatever player you want.

hellotomyrars 5y ago

This is admittedly a small percentage corner case but there are people who are legitimately unable to access the content even if they want to and are willing/prepared to pay depending on their geographic location. I pay for Prime and Netflix but I still often torrent shows from those services because of the stupid widevine drm level restrictions on quality/resolution. I guess you could say that’s not piracy then but I’m sure I’ve got things downloaded that are no longer on their catalogues so it’s hard to know. When Netflix had 70% of the media content you’d want I was very happy to be a paying customer but now I’m mostly a begrudgingly paying customer as the cost goes up the the library shrinks. Everyone wants their piece of the pie right now and I don’t doubt they’re going to consolidate to some extent after the winners and losers are decided but it sucks ass that the ecosystem has become so fragmented. Also having the raw files makes it easier for me to sync up watching with my fiancé who is currently abroad. She pays for Netflix in the UK but even when both libraries have the same content the UK version often has different intro credits which makes syncing difficult. I guess the overall crux of my issue with the business model is that I can pay $15 a month to access X service and get hundreds/thousands of movies and shows or Something like $20 a season for a show which could end up being hundreds of dollars for just one show. The economics really just break down for me since they price owning a digital copy against physical. Ironically physical copies will end up getting discounted at retail because things have to move but the digital copies won’t. Also in many cases even owning a copy digitally doesn’t give you the ability to dictate where you use it/give you a raw file. I just want things to work the way I need them to, however that manifests and the only way to do that is with the video files themselves and any barrier or artifice between them is a problem.

brazed_blotch 5y ago

Why do you have to justify it? You might pirate content simply because you can. If you don't want someone to copy your data without charge then find a better business model.

benrbray 5y ago

As an example, I recently wanted to watch The West Wing. I pay for Netflix and Hulu already, but the show is only on HBO Max. OK, fine, I guess I'll pay for a month of HBO like I've done before to watch Game of Thrones. Ok, uh, what's it called now? HBO Go? HBO Now? Oh, HBO Max, ok. I live in Japan now, so I'm region-blocked, great. Time to open the VPN. HBO already seems to know that server #1243 is a VPN, but server #849 works OK for now. Ok, time to create an account. "Account with that email already exists"? Ok, so let's log in using my old HBO Go credentials. Looks like there's some kind of account migration problem and the account is stuck in the "account verification" phase but I can't get it to send me a new verification email. There's a little pop-up chat window for the support team, let's try it. Three separate support agents and thirty minutes later, I have a working verification email. But my payment information is out of date. OK, let's update it. HTTP 505 error. Wonderful. Ok, that's enough: Type "West Wing season 1 episode 1" into Google. Thirty seconds later I'm watching in full HD and there's popcorn in the microwave.

nix23 5y ago
Yep, same old story. If pirating has the better deployment, then pirating is the better service. People have no problem to pay, but driving into the city to buy a cd then convert it so you can listen to it on your ipod......or eMule? I love it that they are resistant to learn anything from the past.

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago

try it. use their best practices and be amazed how much mental energy it saves.

paulcole 5y ago
I don’t find it takes much mental energy to pay for what I want to watch or just watch something else if I can’t pay for what I want to watch.
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
  You are absolutely right it's the least draining part of the streaming experience. First you have to look if it's on a streaming service or where you can buy it in the quality you look for, is it like many sport events even available in my country, does the device or browser use the right drm or do I just get the 720p version, is it just the dub and not OV. Why are there no forced subtitles? What my Mac and Windows PCs can't play Blurays? What no Dolby passthrough? Your comment is just ignorant to the problem itself.

bo1024 5y ago

Your use of the word "take" is probably related to the disconnect. In copyright violations, the crime is copying. Usually "taking" has a different connotation than copying. (I'd be mad if you took my bike, but if you copied it then I'd just be happy for you.)

paulcole 5y ago
If I’m describing an action I took as a “crime” I’m not going to feel good about it no matter how finely I choose to split the hairs.
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  Some people have a looser coupling between legality and morality than others, often because they disapprove of some laws (like the crime of sleeping under a bridge, or repairing your own tractor…)

nitrogen 5y ago

I subscribe to some streaming services and that's all I use, but consider this: copyright grants ownership over a fraction of your mind without your consent. Once you've seen a show or heard a song, whether you chose to or not, those neurons are permanently allocated to that show or song. How is that ethical? Moreover, the current state of copyright gives a few large corporations enormous power to shape our culture. The stories of our time should belong to us well before we're dead, but copyright lasts well past one human lifetime. And as others have mentioned, sometimes there is no price you can pay to legally watch something, for reasons that are truly "silly" to anyone who isn't profiting from the international balkanization of distributors. Like the Great British Baking Show on Netflix: it's actually Great British Bake Off, and you can't watch the original in the US. Good luck finding anywhere to watch Grand Designs (from any locale) in the US without ads, no matter how much you'd be willing to pay. There are many examples of shows from UK, Australia, and New Zealand that aren't available in the US at all, and probably vice versa, let alone the rest of the world.

jancsika 5y ago

> I dislike a lot of business models but I just don’t feel right calling them “silly” and looking for ways to take things I know I don’t have the right to take. How do you know if you have a right to take them? If it's according to the law, then your ethical stance changes with the wind. E.g., you would believe you have a right to derive new music by taking a chord progression from your favorite song, but not by taking the melody. Worse, the rich history in the U.S. of building new songs out of old chord progressions was preferred to taking melodies chiefly because it was illegal to take copyrighted melodies and put new chord changes to them. So your ethical stance would change depending on whether you happen to be reading the notes that are stacked vertically on the page (i.e., a chord), or horizontally across it (a melody). That's ethically incoherent. If it's according to your own ethical stance, you have to explain what that stance is. E.g., are you ethically opposed to circumventing a company's API to download content in a way they didn't intend? Are you opposed to someone accepting a flash drive from a friend that has their friend's favorite music on it? Someone pasting their big fat head on indy content and reposting as a "reaction video" to steal views? I happen to think these aren't all covered by the same ethical rule, but maybe they are.

paulcole 5y ago
> How do you know if you have a right to take them? If someone says “This is $5.” And if I don’t pay them $5, then I feel like I don’t have a right to it. If it takes paragraphs of text to explain why despite not paying them $5 I have a right to take it, then I feel like I don’t have a right to take it.

throwaway984393 5y ago

Maybe they're Utilitarianists.

glanzwulf 5y ago

For me its quite simple. Just the other day I really wanted to watch Anthony Bourdains No Reservations. Where I am right now I can't do: 1. Stream 2. Purchase 3. Rent 4. Catch on tv 5. Subscribe to an american streaming service using a vpn (requires an american credit card, and while there are services that allow to get a pseudo prepaid card the costs of it all are huge) I can however pirate it.

dartharva 5y ago

Not just "silly", many are genuinely user-hostile. I have legitimate copies of games that I'd rather not touch as against pirated copies of the same games (mostly from Rockstar and Ubisoft) that provide an objectively superior, garbage-free experience. Same goes with Movies and shows. I have Netflix and PrimeVideo subscriptions but the overall quality they provide is trash as against 4K ripped HEVC releases with 10bit audio and better subtitles which you can watch in whatever player you want.