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Welcome to Hacker News where everyone makes $500k/year and nobody pays for content. Or at least it feels that way sometimes. I don't make that much money but I

Welcome to Hacker News where everyone makes $500k/year and nobody pays for content. Or at least it feels that way sometimes. I don't make that much money but I also don't pay for content.

Hamuko 4y ago
Sometimes you can't even buy (or rent) the content because of georestrictions. At least I often encounter TV shows and movies that are available in some US streaming service, but are not available in our version of the same service, or the entire service is not available.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I mean, you can justify it any way you like - there's no referee, no judge, no one to stop you. I just don't bother with the justifications myself; it is what it is.
  - runesofdoom 4y ago
    There's an easy solution if you want the clear conscience of paying creators but the freedom of actually controlling the content you paid for. Buy, then pirate. Don't even bother with ever accessing your crippled purchase.
- bombcar 4y ago
  I usually get the DVDs in that case, if possible. Some of the newest content isn’t available on DVD but most of the older stuff is.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    If you're buying secondhand DVD's, and I don't see how you aren't because who's still producing DVD's (or even, who's producing Blurays for older content), then you're on the same level as people who pirate from the eyes of publishers and media conglomerates. You might feel better about yourself, but it's a quirk of history that they haven't been able to make secondhand sales illegal.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      You'd be surprised, lots of content is still available as new on places like Amazon, especially if you broaden to outside the US.
      - Sakos 4y ago
        Actually, you're entirely right. I don't know why I thought they stopped printing DVDs for new releases.
- eatbitseveryday 4y ago
  You can purchase abroad and ship to your country. Amazon for example has country local stuff. Use the .xy for whichever country you want to search in (.com for US, .de for Germany, etc) and see if they have what you want. They may also ship to you internationally.
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    If Amazon.differentcc sells something that Amazon.yourcc doesn't why wouldn't Amazon the global org set you up with an international sale. Surely that would make them lots of €¥$£ more?
  - Hamuko 4y ago
    The problem with Amazon is that my nearest Amazon, and the one that actually reliably ships to me, is Amazon.de. And the media on Amazon.de is usually German media, if there is even any media available. And I'm not German. Just looking at a couple of shows that I watched a year ago, I couldn't actually find any of them on Amazon.de. And actually, only found one on Amazon.com, where it was unavailable. Also, the Chinese version for some reason?
jcranberry 4y ago
In college I pirated things when I was living off a few hundred bucks a month. But nowadays when I'm making good money I pay for everything. Its frankly absurd to steal content when you're that well paid.
silicon2401 4y ago
Paying for things you don't have to pay for is a quick way to lose money, no matter how much you make.
- phren0logy 4y ago
  But that excuse justifies much more than digital piracy. You don't "have to pay for" a car if you can steal one.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    The secret ingredient is crime.
  - piceas 4y ago
    We need a public library for cars!
  - antifa 4y ago
    But imagine if you could ride a single lamborgini for free anywhere you want, or: Pay $10,000 for a KIA that can only goto McDonalds and Burger King, then buy a $15,000 chevy that's the only car that works on the road to to work, then pay $5,000 for a ford that is the only vehicle that will take you to Burger King and the Apple store, but it stops every 5 minutes to show you the same ad repeated 3 times, and the only car that will take you to grandms's house is $30,000 and for some reason it requires 12 cars worth of parking spots. Taco Bell will only be accepting Mazdas starting in August, so you've got to decide what you want to do about that. Also there's no cars you can buy at any price that can go anywhere you want. Nobody sells the lamborgini you can drive anywhere for free. Anyways, that's why pirating is good.
  - silicon2401 4y ago
    Before this devolves into an argument about piracy, let me begin by saying the reason I pirate is because I feel fine doing so. I don't care about any arguments for why others might think I shouldn't. I'm simply not bothered by it. Back to discussion, I agree that saving money could apply to almost anything. However my first point is that, in my opinion, there's a material difference between digital piracy and stealing a car. If I possess a car, nobody else can own it. However with digital media, I'm making a copy of something that has zero impact on anybody else's ability to own their own copy of that data. The only thing that's lost is my physical storage space that could've stored something else, but that's my call to make. A second point is that I mainly pirate things I wouldn't have bought otherwise. I still watch movies in theaters because I can't pirate a theater experience (AMC A-list is great if you enjoy watching in the theaters IMO), I still buy modern games because I'm extremely cautious when it comes to running executables. A third point is that ethically, I consider supporting a mega-corporation like Amazon worse than committing piracy. Mega-corporations commit much more morally heinous actions, and at an enormously greater scale, than an average pirate would ever commit. In my opinion, the moral sin is not that pirates commit piracy, it's that mega-corporations have been given almost free rein to shape and exploit our society as they see fit
strken 4y ago
Nobody lets me pay for content. They're all tying themselves in contractual knots trying to find the most lucrative deal, and meanwhile it's impossible to just buy a movie or a TV show without shipping a physical disc. I go to e.g. the South Park website, and I'm greeted by an error message saying they're "working hard to resolve [their] pre-existing contractual obligations," which is the same message they've shown for years. Thanks for trying, I guess, but if I pirated it then I'd just...watch the show, from start to finish, with all seasons and all episodes, no wasteful physical media, no subscription, no data collection, and no ads. That sounds good. I want to be able to pay money, maybe even quite a lot of money, and do that.
- rr808 4y ago
  Is it really so hard to watch something else?
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  When I see all the justifications I wonder who are they for? If you feel the need to justify it to semi-anonymous people on the internet, then you're probably trying to justify it to yourself which means you think what you're doing is wrong.
  - pirate-Loo6uoDu 4y ago
    It's not a justification, just an explanation of what needs to change if people want me to pay for that content. Like I say I pretty much never pirate things if they're on steam, I've probably paid tens of thousands out to steam over the years. (That being said, I do have access to cable television, netflix, and amazon prime streaming as well as the piracy setup, so people are getting paid. I'm not going to go buy a bunch of old red-dwarf and dilbert DVDs though, they just take up too much space)
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      You started the post with "I have a confession". I felt that guilt was implied.
fxtentacle 4y ago
I buy all my stuff on iTunes. But that alone won't allow me to put a 4K HDR movie on a USB stick to watch it offline on my TV. In my opinion, the most practical solution is to buy things (for the ethics) and then crack the DRM anyway (for usability).
- kgwxd 4y ago
  Rewarding consumer-hostile business models and middle-men that only add negative value to the products they're selling is, in my opinion, unethical.
  - fxtentacle 4y ago
    While I agree with you, these middlemen at least pay some money to the original content creators. With pure pirating, there's no feedback to the movie company that I liked their offering.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dfxm12 4y ago
There's so much free (as in beer) content on the web that you don't even need to pirate stuff, either.
dilap 4y ago
I used to not have any $, so I'd pirate. Then I had $, so I paid for stuff -- and, without fail, everything I paid for ended up giving me bullshit problems because of DRM restrictions. So now I don't pay for anything with DRM, which ends up meaning I mostly pirate. I don't mind throwing down some cash, but I'm not going to throw down cash just to get fucked over.

Welcome to Hacker News where everyone makes $500k/year and nobody pays for content. Or at least it feels that way sometimes. I don't make that much money but I also don't pay for content.

Hamuko 4y ago

Sometimes you can't even buy (or rent) the content because of georestrictions. At least I often encounter TV shows and movies that are available in some US streaming service, but are not available in our version of the same service, or the entire service is not available.

hotpotamus 4y ago
I mean, you can justify it any way you like - there's no referee, no judge, no one to stop you. I just don't bother with the justifications myself; it is what it is.
- runesofdoom 4y ago
  There's an easy solution if you want the clear conscience of paying creators but the freedom of actually controlling the content you paid for. Buy, then pirate. Don't even bother with ever accessing your crippled purchase.
bombcar 4y ago
I usually get the DVDs in that case, if possible. Some of the newest content isn’t available on DVD but most of the older stuff is.
- Sakos 4y ago
  If you're buying secondhand DVD's, and I don't see how you aren't because who's still producing DVD's (or even, who's producing Blurays for older content), then you're on the same level as people who pirate from the eyes of publishers and media conglomerates. You might feel better about yourself, but it's a quirk of history that they haven't been able to make secondhand sales illegal.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    You'd be surprised, lots of content is still available as new on places like Amazon, especially if you broaden to outside the US.
    - Sakos 4y ago
      Actually, you're entirely right. I don't know why I thought they stopped printing DVDs for new releases.
eatbitseveryday 4y ago
You can purchase abroad and ship to your country. Amazon for example has country local stuff. Use the .xy for whichever country you want to search in (.com for US, .de for Germany, etc) and see if they have what you want. They may also ship to you internationally.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  If Amazon.differentcc sells something that Amazon.yourcc doesn't why wouldn't Amazon the global org set you up with an international sale. Surely that would make them lots of €¥$£ more?
- Hamuko 4y ago
  The problem with Amazon is that my nearest Amazon, and the one that actually reliably ships to me, is Amazon.de. And the media on Amazon.de is usually German media, if there is even any media available. And I'm not German. Just looking at a couple of shows that I watched a year ago, I couldn't actually find any of them on Amazon.de. And actually, only found one on Amazon.com, where it was unavailable. Also, the Chinese version for some reason?

jcranberry 4y ago

In college I pirated things when I was living off a few hundred bucks a month. But nowadays when I'm making good money I pay for everything. Its frankly absurd to steal content when you're that well paid.

silicon2401 4y ago

Paying for things you don't have to pay for is a quick way to lose money, no matter how much you make.

phren0logy 4y ago
But that excuse justifies much more than digital piracy. You don't "have to pay for" a car if you can steal one.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  The secret ingredient is crime.
- piceas 4y ago
  We need a public library for cars!
- antifa 4y ago
  But imagine if you could ride a single lamborgini for free anywhere you want, or: Pay $10,000 for a KIA that can only goto McDonalds and Burger King, then buy a $15,000 chevy that's the only car that works on the road to to work, then pay $5,000 for a ford that is the only vehicle that will take you to Burger King and the Apple store, but it stops every 5 minutes to show you the same ad repeated 3 times, and the only car that will take you to grandms's house is $30,000 and for some reason it requires 12 cars worth of parking spots. Taco Bell will only be accepting Mazdas starting in August, so you've got to decide what you want to do about that. Also there's no cars you can buy at any price that can go anywhere you want. Nobody sells the lamborgini you can drive anywhere for free. Anyways, that's why pirating is good.
- silicon2401 4y ago
  Before this devolves into an argument about piracy, let me begin by saying the reason I pirate is because I feel fine doing so. I don't care about any arguments for why others might think I shouldn't. I'm simply not bothered by it. Back to discussion, I agree that saving money could apply to almost anything. However my first point is that, in my opinion, there's a material difference between digital piracy and stealing a car. If I possess a car, nobody else can own it. However with digital media, I'm making a copy of something that has zero impact on anybody else's ability to own their own copy of that data. The only thing that's lost is my physical storage space that could've stored something else, but that's my call to make. A second point is that I mainly pirate things I wouldn't have bought otherwise. I still watch movies in theaters because I can't pirate a theater experience (AMC A-list is great if you enjoy watching in the theaters IMO), I still buy modern games because I'm extremely cautious when it comes to running executables. A third point is that ethically, I consider supporting a mega-corporation like Amazon worse than committing piracy. Mega-corporations commit much more morally heinous actions, and at an enormously greater scale, than an average pirate would ever commit. In my opinion, the moral sin is not that pirates commit piracy, it's that mega-corporations have been given almost free rein to shape and exploit our society as they see fit

strken 4y ago

Nobody lets me pay for content. They're all tying themselves in contractual knots trying to find the most lucrative deal, and meanwhile it's impossible to just buy a movie or a TV show without shipping a physical disc. I go to e.g. the South Park website, and I'm greeted by an error message saying they're "working hard to resolve [their] pre-existing contractual obligations," which is the same message they've shown for years. Thanks for trying, I guess, but if I pirated it then I'd just...watch the show, from start to finish, with all seasons and all episodes, no wasteful physical media, no subscription, no data collection, and no ads. That sounds good. I want to be able to pay money, maybe even quite a lot of money, and do that.

rr808 4y ago
Is it really so hard to watch something else?
hotpotamus 4y ago
When I see all the justifications I wonder who are they for? If you feel the need to justify it to semi-anonymous people on the internet, then you're probably trying to justify it to yourself which means you think what you're doing is wrong.
- pirate-Loo6uoDu 4y ago
  It's not a justification, just an explanation of what needs to change if people want me to pay for that content. Like I say I pretty much never pirate things if they're on steam, I've probably paid tens of thousands out to steam over the years. (That being said, I do have access to cable television, netflix, and amazon prime streaming as well as the piracy setup, so people are getting paid. I'm not going to go buy a bunch of old red-dwarf and dilbert DVDs though, they just take up too much space)
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    You started the post with "I have a confession". I felt that guilt was implied.

fxtentacle 4y ago

I buy all my stuff on iTunes. But that alone won't allow me to put a 4K HDR movie on a USB stick to watch it offline on my TV. In my opinion, the most practical solution is to buy things (for the ethics) and then crack the DRM anyway (for usability).

kgwxd 4y ago
Rewarding consumer-hostile business models and middle-men that only add negative value to the products they're selling is, in my opinion, unethical.
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  While I agree with you, these middlemen at least pay some money to the original content creators. With pure pirating, there's no feedback to the movie company that I liked their offering.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dfxm12 4y ago

There's so much free (as in beer) content on the web that you don't even need to pirate stuff, either.

dilap 4y ago

I used to not have any $, so I'd pirate. Then I had $, so I paid for stuff -- and, without fail, everything I paid for ended up giving me bullshit problems because of DRM restrictions. So now I don't pay for anything with DRM, which ends up meaning I mostly pirate. I don't mind throwing down some cash, but I'm not going to throw down cash just to get fucked over.