7 ms·

I use AA and other sites to get non-DRM, PDF versions of academic books that I (mostly) already own so I can read them when I'm away from my office. It's a clas

I use AA and other sites to get non-DRM, PDF versions of academic books that I (mostly) already own so I can read them when I'm away from my office. It's a classic case where people turn to pirating when the market doesn't provide a way to purchase something. Same thing with movies. Ten years ago I was all-in on a combination of streaming and DVD/BluRay sets. The market has completely collapsed for me with region locking and overly aggressive DRM. So, I've started pirating those again as well when it's not possible to get through another route.

ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
This was the whole premise of Steam. Paraphrasing slightly because I can't remember the quote exactly, "It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be less hassle than piracy". Even Youtube is no longer less hassle than piracy now.
- jaapz 4mo ago
  > Even Youtube is no longer less hassle than piracy now. YouTube premium is hassle?
  - iso1631 4mo ago
    I don't see any hassle with youtube, but I'm willing to pay. I do see hassle on things like disney and iplayer, which put now put adverts for shows I don't want to watch in front of Rivals. It's fortunately very rare that happens (on Disney), but its getting close to what I did when Amazon brought that in, and cancelled my subscription. Just like I stopped buying DVDs when they brought adverts in. I wouldn't have any moral problem in downloading Rivals from piratebay though, as far as I'm concerned I'm paying for it. But sometimes though there's no option to buy the thing. I want to buy the audio version of "a stitch in time" by Andrew Robinson (Garak from Star Trek). It's not available in my country on audible -- only the German translation. I haven't acquired it via other means yet, I'm still on the look out for another supplier which will take my money, and if I can trust that's a legitimate supplier so at least some of my money goes to the copyright holder (and thus pays for the people that create it) I don't have a CD player so not much use, but technically it is available for £142 from "Paper Cavalier UK". That's second hand, the creator won't make any money from me doing that. To my mind if someone won't "shut up and take my money", it's acceptable to acquire via another means.
  - NewsaHackO 4mo ago
    I think he means that you can’t watch regular videos on YouTube unless you use a IP that is easily traceable to a subscriber or a YouTube account that requires everything short of a DNA sample to be valid.
  - jack_pp 4mo ago
    since youtube premium and various methods to skip ads now even Joe rogan who has 200+ million dollars does ad reads directly in video.
    - VorpalWay 4mo ago
      You might be interested in the SponsorBlock[1] browser extension for Firefox and Chromium based browsers. It deals with this issue, and is open source. [1] https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock
      - encom 4mo ago
        I love SponsorBlock so much. >You've saved people from 21,262 segments (5d 18h 50.7 minutes of their lives) > >You've skipped 3522 segments (1d 5h 17.4 minutes) Not just for skipping ads, but also pointless filler like intros and engagement reminders. I hope someone makes an AI-Block addon, to filter out slop channels based on the same crowd sourcing principle. It's gotten so bad I rarely venture beyond that channels I'm already subscribed to, because those are pre-sloppocalypse.
    - derektank 4mo ago
      That’s not a problem with YouTube, that’s a problem with the content creator. YouTube Premium accounts actually pay out more per watch than free users, and YouTube also provides a Skip Ahead button that will appear at the start of most ad reads (it’s a bit hit or miss, I think it relies on data from other people scrubbing past them).
      - jack_pp 4mo ago
        sure but if youtube wanted to, they could force the creators to tag these sections themselves so they are 100% accurate and have an option for the paying customer to skip these automatically. it is within their power
      - pbhjpbhj 4mo ago
        YouTube could ban ad reads that aren't tagged, then Premium accounts could get no ads. I guess they're worried that tags would leak and allow 3rd party solutions (like SponsorBlock) to skip more easily.
- klik99 4mo ago
  IIRC the interview that quote was from came with the story - Russia was seen as a lost cause by the game industry, there was so much piracy that nobody even bothered trying to give legitimate ways to purchase, why invest in distribution when they’ll just pirate? Now of course Steam does heathy business there so that’s obviously not true. But indicates writing off piracy is a self fulfilling prophecy
  - DiabloD3 4mo ago
    Not anymore they don't. Putin's 3 day special military operation has been going on for 4 year and 3 months, btw.
    - tredre3 4mo ago
      Steam is still accessible in Russia btw. Sometimes it's spotty, but it's because of Russia's own restrictions, Valve itself is happy to keep doing business there.
      - DiabloD3 4mo ago
        Does Valve just have an internal Russian entity that processes with a domestic payment processor, then? All of the international payment processors (ie, anyone piggybacking off Visanet) are in compliance with the sanctions.
- throw28573 4mo ago
  Original interview with Gabe: https://youtube.com/watch?v=EQweFurRz4g https://youtube.com/watch?v=EQweFurRz4g
- ninjalanternshk 4mo ago
  Spotify is always my example. Spotify (and Apple Music I assume) is far more convenient, for a modest price, than pirating music. It’s a shame the TV and movie people can’t seem to learn this. Most music is available on Spotify and Apple and probably other places as well. They toyed with exclusivity for a while and I’m sure there’s still some stuff that’s exclusive to one or the other, but any time I hear a song and look it up, it’s on Spotify. Done. Such a contrast to the stupid game of figuring out which streaming service has the show I want.
  - auggierose 4mo ago
    Music is very different to TV and movies. You only watch a show or a movie once, maybe twice. And it costs much more to produce it.
    - hack1312 4mo ago
      [dead]
    - th0raway 4mo ago
      The biggest difference there isn't production costs, but the physical costs of maintaining the giant library, in a way that is reasonable streamable at a good cost from any device, with many dubbings, and even video differences per version. Go see how many little differences are there in a random Pixar movie due to localization. The infrastructure per hour watched is relevant, and there's a lot of differences between one is willing to spend on something that is being watched hundreds of thousands of times today, and some 30 year old episode of a series nobody followed. It's a much different production than sending music files over. Even with licensing costs at zero, the infra of Youtube, the closest thing to Spotify for video, is a very different beast. And I'd argue youtube doesn't go far enough.
      - pbhjpbhj 4mo ago
        Maybe there's an opportunity for a media host to farm out data for preservation by clients (end users' computers) - what I'm thinking is torrent essentially, where the data-unit is a scene (or a series of frames between n key-frames). Clients get access to that show if they agree to store m chunks. The media repo can sell access whilst only keeping a copy in cold-storage because you can 'popcorn time' the show from the pool of user-clients. Reduced hot-storage, increased playlist. Sort of media communism but the capitalists still hold the keys?
- wlesieutre 4mo ago
  > We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable. https://www.escapistmagazine.com/Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem/ https://www.escapistmagazine.com/Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Pir...
  - amusingimpala75 4mo ago
    Aren't most piracy services free though nowadays? This quote is at least referencing pirates that sell the pirated content.
scosman 4mo ago
Sure, but the difference here is the pirate is claiming it's "their data" and asking for donations.
- margalabargala 4mo ago
  Well, it is their data. The word "their" is overloaded, it could mean "thing I have the legal right to", or, "thing I have in my possession right now". The latter condition is clearly true. It's their data. If you pretend the other definitions of possession don't exist and claim "aktually it's not theirs they don't have rights to it" then that's on you for faking an incomplete understanding of language.
  - TZubiri 4mo ago
    It's their servers sure, but if you download something under a license that doesn't grant you ownership, then it isn't yours. You are being granted a license to use the data.
    - margalabargala 4mo ago
      Yes, exactly, if you ignore all definitions of "yours" that involve possession then it isn't "yours". But no one else is obligated to ignore the definitions of words that you're choosing to ignore, so the rest of us will go on saying it's their data.
      - scosman 4mo ago
        If you steal my car, no who knows it's stolen would say it's "yours". We're not talking abstract language concepts, this is a specific case. The data was taken without license/rights/approval. It's stolen. AA calling it "our data" is disingenuous. Legally it isn't theirs. While you could use "ours"/"theirs" loosely in English, they knew it wasn't true in a legal sense when publishing this.
        a_conservative 4mo ago
lloeki 4mo ago
My region is maybe not so affected as others, so I pay for subscriptions, watch something a bit, get annoyed by the craptastic 480p quality cap on non-blessed systems (a.k.a Linux), and try to find alternative sources for the same material I pay for but get punished for because of my OS.

ErroneousBosh 4mo ago

This was the whole premise of Steam. Paraphrasing slightly because I can't remember the quote exactly, "It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be less hassle than piracy". Even Youtube is no longer less hassle than piracy now.

jaapz 4mo ago
> Even Youtube is no longer less hassle than piracy now. YouTube premium is hassle?
- iso1631 4mo ago
  I don't see any hassle with youtube, but I'm willing to pay. I do see hassle on things like disney and iplayer, which put now put adverts for shows I don't want to watch in front of Rivals. It's fortunately very rare that happens (on Disney), but its getting close to what I did when Amazon brought that in, and cancelled my subscription. Just like I stopped buying DVDs when they brought adverts in. I wouldn't have any moral problem in downloading Rivals from piratebay though, as far as I'm concerned I'm paying for it. But sometimes though there's no option to buy the thing. I want to buy the audio version of "a stitch in time" by Andrew Robinson (Garak from Star Trek). It's not available in my country on audible -- only the German translation. I haven't acquired it via other means yet, I'm still on the look out for another supplier which will take my money, and if I can trust that's a legitimate supplier so at least some of my money goes to the copyright holder (and thus pays for the people that create it) I don't have a CD player so not much use, but technically it is available for £142 from "Paper Cavalier UK". That's second hand, the creator won't make any money from me doing that. To my mind if someone won't "shut up and take my money", it's acceptable to acquire via another means.
- NewsaHackO 4mo ago
  I think he means that you can’t watch regular videos on YouTube unless you use a IP that is easily traceable to a subscriber or a YouTube account that requires everything short of a DNA sample to be valid.
- jack_pp 4mo ago
  since youtube premium and various methods to skip ads now even Joe rogan who has 200+ million dollars does ad reads directly in video.
  - VorpalWay 4mo ago
    You might be interested in the SponsorBlock[1] browser extension for Firefox and Chromium based browsers. It deals with this issue, and is open source. [1] https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock
    - encom 4mo ago
      I love SponsorBlock so much. >You've saved people from 21,262 segments (5d 18h 50.7 minutes of their lives) > >You've skipped 3522 segments (1d 5h 17.4 minutes) Not just for skipping ads, but also pointless filler like intros and engagement reminders. I hope someone makes an AI-Block addon, to filter out slop channels based on the same crowd sourcing principle. It's gotten so bad I rarely venture beyond that channels I'm already subscribed to, because those are pre-sloppocalypse.
  - derektank 4mo ago
    That’s not a problem with YouTube, that’s a problem with the content creator. YouTube Premium accounts actually pay out more per watch than free users, and YouTube also provides a Skip Ahead button that will appear at the start of most ad reads (it’s a bit hit or miss, I think it relies on data from other people scrubbing past them).
    - jack_pp 4mo ago
      sure but if youtube wanted to, they could force the creators to tag these sections themselves so they are 100% accurate and have an option for the paying customer to skip these automatically. it is within their power
    - pbhjpbhj 4mo ago
      YouTube could ban ad reads that aren't tagged, then Premium accounts could get no ads. I guess they're worried that tags would leak and allow 3rd party solutions (like SponsorBlock) to skip more easily.
klik99 4mo ago
IIRC the interview that quote was from came with the story - Russia was seen as a lost cause by the game industry, there was so much piracy that nobody even bothered trying to give legitimate ways to purchase, why invest in distribution when they’ll just pirate? Now of course Steam does heathy business there so that’s obviously not true. But indicates writing off piracy is a self fulfilling prophecy
- DiabloD3 4mo ago
  Not anymore they don't. Putin's 3 day special military operation has been going on for 4 year and 3 months, btw.
  - tredre3 4mo ago
    Steam is still accessible in Russia btw. Sometimes it's spotty, but it's because of Russia's own restrictions, Valve itself is happy to keep doing business there.
    - DiabloD3 4mo ago
      Does Valve just have an internal Russian entity that processes with a domestic payment processor, then? All of the international payment processors (ie, anyone piggybacking off Visanet) are in compliance with the sanctions.
throw28573 4mo ago
Original interview with Gabe: https://youtube.com/watch?v=EQweFurRz4g https://youtube.com/watch?v=EQweFurRz4g
ninjalanternshk 4mo ago
Spotify is always my example. Spotify (and Apple Music I assume) is far more convenient, for a modest price, than pirating music. It’s a shame the TV and movie people can’t seem to learn this. Most music is available on Spotify and Apple and probably other places as well. They toyed with exclusivity for a while and I’m sure there’s still some stuff that’s exclusive to one or the other, but any time I hear a song and look it up, it’s on Spotify. Done. Such a contrast to the stupid game of figuring out which streaming service has the show I want.
- auggierose 4mo ago
  Music is very different to TV and movies. You only watch a show or a movie once, maybe twice. And it costs much more to produce it.
  - hack1312 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - th0raway 4mo ago
    The biggest difference there isn't production costs, but the physical costs of maintaining the giant library, in a way that is reasonable streamable at a good cost from any device, with many dubbings, and even video differences per version. Go see how many little differences are there in a random Pixar movie due to localization. The infrastructure per hour watched is relevant, and there's a lot of differences between one is willing to spend on something that is being watched hundreds of thousands of times today, and some 30 year old episode of a series nobody followed. It's a much different production than sending music files over. Even with licensing costs at zero, the infra of Youtube, the closest thing to Spotify for video, is a very different beast. And I'd argue youtube doesn't go far enough.
    - pbhjpbhj 4mo ago
      Maybe there's an opportunity for a media host to farm out data for preservation by clients (end users' computers) - what I'm thinking is torrent essentially, where the data-unit is a scene (or a series of frames between n key-frames). Clients get access to that show if they agree to store m chunks. The media repo can sell access whilst only keeping a copy in cold-storage because you can 'popcorn time' the show from the pool of user-clients. Reduced hot-storage, increased playlist. Sort of media communism but the capitalists still hold the keys?
wlesieutre 4mo ago
> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable. https://www.escapistmagazine.com/Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem/ https://www.escapistmagazine.com/Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Pir...
- amusingimpala75 4mo ago
  Aren't most piracy services free though nowadays? This quote is at least referencing pirates that sell the pirated content.

scosman 4mo ago

Sure, but the difference here is the pirate is claiming it's "their data" and asking for donations.

margalabargala 4mo ago
Well, it is their data. The word "their" is overloaded, it could mean "thing I have the legal right to", or, "thing I have in my possession right now". The latter condition is clearly true. It's their data. If you pretend the other definitions of possession don't exist and claim "aktually it's not theirs they don't have rights to it" then that's on you for faking an incomplete understanding of language.
- TZubiri 4mo ago
  It's their servers sure, but if you download something under a license that doesn't grant you ownership, then it isn't yours. You are being granted a license to use the data.
  - margalabargala 4mo ago
    Yes, exactly, if you ignore all definitions of "yours" that involve possession then it isn't "yours". But no one else is obligated to ignore the definitions of words that you're choosing to ignore, so the rest of us will go on saying it's their data.
    - scosman 4mo ago
      If you steal my car, no who knows it's stolen would say it's "yours". We're not talking abstract language concepts, this is a specific case. The data was taken without license/rights/approval. It's stolen. AA calling it "our data" is disingenuous. Legally it isn't theirs. While you could use "ours"/"theirs" loosely in English, they knew it wasn't true in a legal sense when publishing this.
      - a_conservative 4mo ago

lloeki 4mo ago

My region is maybe not so affected as others, so I pay for subscriptions, watch something a bit, get annoyed by the craptastic 480p quality cap on non-blessed systems (a.k.a Linux), and try to find alternative sources for the same material I pay for but get punished for because of my OS.