Fuck Empress, however she’s right on this specific matter.

I felt the Adobe part. I bought Photoshop CS2 back in the day then sadly lost the license key a few years later. I never felt bad for pirating the latest version.

Another example of ethical piracy would be when offline games force you to be online all the time. Minecraft forces me to be online to play through the official launcher. Since I also play with mods that are still a few versions behind, I downloaded a cracked launcher so I can play even when I don’t have internet access.

Leaks suggests that the iPhone 15 will have a USB-C charging port. Also I can’t imagine Apple going full wireless thus incapacitating the user’s ability to effectively use the phone while charging.

To you perhaps, I’m perfectly fine with it.

Like segmentation isn’t an issue…

What app so you recommend?

Because they realized people are willing to pay for extra subscriptions. Production studios created their own services while keeping their IPs exclusive rather than licensing it to third parties. They make more money this way until people stop subscribing to every new service that comes out each month.

Music has the potential of undergoing the same path. I wouldn’t be surprised if major labels like UMG, Warner and Sony pulled content from Spotify and other services and creating their own. Let’s just hope people smarten up so this doesn’t happen anytime soon.

I did the math, subscribing to every major streaming service is about $100. I got an offer to subscribe to Cable with my ISP for $29 a month. Obviously years ago Cable was more expensive but it doesn’t feel like we necessarily improved on convenience which streaming services are supposed to provide.

Content gets pulled constantly from these services and they often require dedicated hardware to stream HD content, Prime and Apple TV being an example. By the time I switch between 4 apps to find what I want to watch I’ve already fallen asleep.

In 2023 it’s just stupid having to rely on so many different subscription services to only have access to a portion of the available content (which gets constantly removed). All considering how anti-consumer these big corporations are I wouldn’t say things are WAY better. A few years ago Netflix alone had much more diverse content, was generally enough for most people and was cheaper overall.

Music services offer 99% of the available content in one app, if you switch to a different service you don’t miss out on content availability. If we had that for videos it would be perfect.

Mine doesn’t seem to be blocking anything

Copyright infringement laws vary but even though simply downloading copyrighted material is against policies, it’s hard to enforce and most copyright holders don’t always find grounds for a lawsuit or it’s straight up not worth pursuing. You downloading a movie off a website is the same as a friend of yours sharing the same movie with you on a USB stick.

Actions against unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials (especially if it’s for profit) on the other hand are much more easily enforceable.

Windows 10 on my main machine and Lubuntu on my home server

Piracy is absolutely self interest, nobody is arguing against it. Pirates have the choice not to purchase and leave it at that.

ViMusic looks a well put together app, I’m gonna check it out!

I don’t know why people even feel the need to justify themselves here where anonymity is a thing.

I just don’t find it constructive to assume everyone does something for the same reason, it just doesn’t seem to make sense to me, that as well as defeating the point of any conventional structure.

At least with cable TV you can get the highest tear subscription with all the channels. With streaming services you have to subscribe to a decent bunch just to have a broad variety of content, resulting in a much higher price than any cable TV subscription.

It’s a disaster.

Thanks a lot, I’ll check them out!

I’ve been using flixhq.to which is add-free and I’ve been pretty happy with it!

There’s people on both sides of the scale here.

I used to pirate stuff because I couldn’t afford it or because I prioritized spending my money elsewhere since I could get stuff for free. Then as I got a job, I could afford to pay for lots of things and legal options became more convenient than piracy, so I just stopped pirating.

Now I’m back on the ship because pirating has become more convenient than subscribing to a bunch of different fragnented and anti-consumer services just to access a handful of content.

Some people just want shit for free (which is ok, been there), some others value service and convenience first and foremost.

And there’s no other way to play those games. They’re pretty much gone forever alongside the money spent to purchase them.

I’m not judging you for that, I’ve downloaded stuff because I couldn’t afford also.

There are different type of pirates all doing the same thing for different reasons, which are all very valid.

The one thing to keep in mind is that piracy is by no means “stealing”, not even close. When you pirate stuff you’re not depriving the creator or other buying customers of their products because you’re essentially just sharing/downloading a digital, replicable copy.

If anything it’s copyright infringement, we should start calling it for what it actually is.