Had an interesting conversation with someone the other day on why people pirate - especially due to the cost of living increasing, etc.
I've just cut back on a bunch of streaming services myself - mainly due to cost.
Was curious to hear all of your perspectives on why many of you pirate.
Choose the option that best applies to you!
WinMX as well.. What about newsgroups.
Newsgroups are still around.
Why not?
If buying isn't owning, Piracy isn't stealing.
One word: IPTV
While it's not the cheapest option, it's comparable to having a single streaming service that has all of the latest 4K movies—which most streaming services charge extra for—as well as any series you're interested in watching.
Nice try ACMA!!!
I used to sail the seas quite a bit. I never paid for software or music. In my later years I'm getting sick of cracking Windows / Office so I usually buy a cheap key for those. But you can gf if you think I'm paying for any Adobe product, Solidworks, AutoCAD. I'm not rich!
I now have Netflix, Prime, Disney, Spotify - mainly for my wife and kid. Ease of use for them.
lets put it out like this. the shows i like to watch:
Doctor Who is now on Disney Plus. $13.99 a month.
Star Trek Discovery Paramount $9.99 /M
Star Trek Picard, Grand Tour also on Prime $9.99 /M
Monarch apple TV $12.99 /M
Family Guy also on Disney but delayed by 2 or more weeks.
Richard Hammonds workshop not avaiable to Australians
What we do in the shadows TV Foxtel $69 /m
and thats just a few to start with and already $100 just for a few tv shows. then add movies, not all are out for streaming, gotta pay for it, take Oppenheimer, not avaiable for streaming, gotta pay for that $24… so yeah its on the ship and sailing the waters for me.
And the worst thing is… they have season 1,2 but not season 3,4,5… Happened all the time, all the streaming services, including free like 9now, abc.
The only way to get full show (all seasons) is high sails.
Also some of the streaming providers remove show to avoid paying fees to content creators. If the show is not very popular - it might be removed.
ahhh ok, i wonder why that happened, never knew that.
Over the last few months I've thought of 5 older movies or TV series I'd like to watch. eg "See No Evil, Hear No Evil", "Snatch" or "Married with Children". None of them were available included in any streaming service available in Australia. You could rent some of them through AppleTV or Prime's store for like $5 but I pay for those streaming services already, I'm not going to pay an additional $5 to watch a single movie. The other thing older movies that have been ripped for streaming are sometimes appallingly bad. Watched the NetFlix version of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels last weekend and there's a scene that was missing the forced subtitles (which were part of the joke in the scene) and some of the artifacts were so large I thought there was a bug on my projector lens. I have the DVD and I put that on instead, which was better than the supposedly HD rip NetFlix had.
That said I mostly buy physical media of CD's or Blu-ray's anyway and as the studio's continue to edit or remove "problematic" content it's getting more important than ever to get physical media for the stuff you like.
Christmas Vacation has a scene dubbed aswell on streaming. and well… South Park…. you may as well just not watch it on any streaming cause it offends bunch of soft co(ks
I'm pretty sure this is why Married with Children isn't on Disney Plus, it's a piece of content they got with the Fox deal and has been deemed far too offensive by Disney for their service.
That and the first Revenge of the Nerds movie.
@cheeksahoy: That was one of the movies I acquired recently on the seven seas because I couldn't find it anywhere else.
@Rockets84: Sadly, the blu ray isnt the best. Shrill audio and still edited to conceal a phone number. An uncut 4K remaster would be nice but thats not gonna happen with Disney's current regime.
Buying physical media is the only [legal] way to avoid the deletion of content.
I recently visited a few op shops and ended up with ~25 movies (mostly DVD, some BR) for $1 each. Also got some rarer stuff on eBay for about $5 a movie. They're all ripped and available on Plex.
Unfortunately, the price has gone up for new physical media in the last couple of years, and some new releases are not being released on disc
I got to level 6 thief on pool of radiance and just buffed him out.
Is it just me or do OP’s replies and questions feel very “market research”…
I don't watch a lot of TV so a monthly subscription will never make sense for me, especially not multiple different subscriptions.
If streaming services just allowed me PAYG and just watch a show every now and again for $1-$2 I would probably do that.
Do this sometimes already on Apple TV in the discount movies section.
I like to plunder Booty.
But Seriously it's Foxtel all over again, everything just becomes too expensive and too hard. The streaming industry is fragmented and everyone's getting tired of it.
Subscribed to Spotify. Every song ever made including in the future instantly in one place.
Won't subscribe to any streaming service. iINet v. Dallas Buyers Club effectively made piracy legal in Australia anyway.
Some songs are missing. And you can't choose your version of an album, but music pirate sites will let you choose whatever edition you want from multiple masterings and formats. But yeah, (profanity) manually managing music. I'll only pirate music to add it to Apple Music if it's missing. I'll probably pay for music streaming for the rest of my life, thousands of dollars before I die…
Simple enough: I can’t find it from any available streaming services.
I think it’s limited to movies/series for me. If it’s available to rent, I’d pay for it that’s fine, but seriously some movies, mainly old ones, are super hard to find, most of the times it’s easier to just torrent them which baffles me. I don’t watch a lot or movies or series, but it’s always the case that once in a blue moon that I decide to watch something, they just don’t have it.
I don’t normally have problems with music, games or books though, so I’m happy to pay for them.
I simply don't use the services I do pay for, like Netflix, enough. If I wasn't splitting it with a couple of friends, I'd cancel it. Its been a couple of weeks since I watched anything on it. Cant remember the last thing I watched on Prime.
Most content produced these days is offensively bad garbage that isn't worth paying for.
There's no way in hell I'm committing hard-earned money to any mainstream content upfront after being disappointed and ripped off over and over again. You want my money? I want to sample the product first. If I like what you're doing, I'll support you otherwise Hollywood can take its ever-increasing, record profits and shove them.
The quality offered by most streaming services still can't touch the +50GB BD Remux streams or lossless audio you can find on the high seas.
Obscure/hard-to-find content is still lacking from pretty much all streaming services.
Offline media libraries hosted on a NAS have better reliability/availability and aren't dependant on Internet connectivity nor suffer from streaming issues/provider outages.
Right! They're is so much new content but 90% of it is garbage.
Obscure/hard-to-find content is still lacking from pretty much all streaming services.
Well that would be the definition of obscure/hard to find :)
Netflix used to be the go to. But in the last few years, they have had countless updates that block older hardware from accessing the app. What they are as their end goal is unclear, but pretty much every android box and the majority of TVs more than a few years old are likely to face this issue if they haven't already. We use other streaming services of course, but we can only watch Netflix content through… err … free sources now.
people use exploits in older hardware to rip netflix content, thats why
All you need is a hdmi capture card.
Pirated way back then Netflix (and Spotify) took over most of my use. They had pretty much everything and my piracy was at an all time low. And it was cheap. One service, definitely convenient.
Then Netflix lost their distribution rights to everything and every other media empire wanted a slice of the cake. I'd need 8 or 9 services to watch everything. That's gonna be $150+/m. Hard pass.
And back to piracy…. piracy has gotten easier than ever with automated tools like Radarr and Sonarr (rss feeds of old days were hell….), and software like Plex and Jellyfin to give you a frontend that rivals most streaming services.
And they wonder why streaming services are losing members. It's become oversaturated, and quality has worsened. When piracy is easier, and the media provided is better quality visually, they've really shot themselves in the foot.
Gave Newell put it best,
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "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."
It's a bit outdated, and related more to gaming, but it hits the nail on the head. When piracy is more convenient, customers will vote with their dollars - or lack thereof.
Eye patch because It was good when there was a few players in the market… but now it just seems it's back to the fragmented system that Foxtel had.
I could get 90% of all my needs in one place… then other services opened up and now I needed 2 or 3 subscriptions…. now, for all the shows I want to watch, I need about 8 different subscriptions, some require VPN subscriptions as well, and no I cant share half of them with friends and family… This was like the old, Foxtel days of "Well, if you want that show, you need this pack, but to get that pack, you need the entertainment pack and the family pack, but the only way to get the family pack is you need the Disney pack, and the Disney pack required the All-Sports pack…
Turns out it's just cheaper to buy a subscription to Plex and roll your own streaming service…
I run a seedbox server hosted in Europe with all the apps and plex which provides me more movies and tv shows I could ever watch. Costs me around $25 a month
I want to find the One Piece therefore I became a pirate.
0-day all-day
The pirate experience is just better than the paid one. I get to download in x265/HEVC at the resolution I intend to watch in. If you the torrent to download sequentially, you can watch it basically within 30 seconds.
It's also super creepy that the government wants to track everything I watch online and that you never know what will be politically correct or incorrect in the future. It's only a matter of time until that stuff gets leaked. Who knows what AI will tie back to you that someone might want to ruin your life with as cancel culture takes off and nosy next-door nelly decides they want a cheap thrill of burning someone's life down in the name of piety or righteousness.
I pay for 3 streaming services. If what I want to watch is not on one of them, I pirate it.
I'm not going to subscribe to everything just for one show on each.
So at least 5 of you are willing to break the Law and then leave a Neg without standing up with your reasons?
So many dam cowards lurk in ozbargain.
Point proven.
I didn't downvote you but claiming moral superiority is probably what got you downvoted. Rubs most people the wrong way. Calling people cowards is just farming negatives.
Thanks. No superiority implied, just my opinion; but if that is all it takes to receive Negs… sad to be them.
I'm not entirely sure about the un-Australian part though. Many of our great great greats (give or take) came here as part of a penal colony because they stole a loaf of bread or something.
I used to be a frequent sailor of the high seas, and like most on here, started streaming until it became intolerable due to low quality content and price increases. If it were up to me, i would cancel all our services and and return to sailing exclusively.
What stops you?
my wife wants the convenience. >.<
Its simple. media is entertainment, entertainment is not conducive to a fulfilling life. Entertainment is a past time, actually more of a waste of time. The prices these people want for something that brings no real value or benefit to my life is absurd.
I dont understand why guys or girls playing make believe, pretending to fight, drive talk shit etc makes millions of dollars more than say an engineer, a job that requires an enormous amount of science and skills, or soldiers, or miners etc. people that physically torture their bodies everyday for other mens benefits.
F#*king world is backwards IMO. Risky, life threatening, difficult jobs should be rewarded more, much more, than easy safe jobs like acting.
so IMO, they dont deserve the asking price they request.
This does not apply to informative material or war journalist filming on the front lines. I will buy that if I feel that I can benefit from that material in some way.
Thanks for sharing your wisdom
entertainment is not conducive to a fulfilling life
lmao ok then
Is watching entertainment is the most fulfilling you do in your life?
absolutely not, but it's a ridiculous take to suggest that it's detrimental to living a fulfilling life, just because you don't think it's particularly valuable or useful.
humans have been producing and consuming 'entertainment' since before we invented engineering or mining.
never did I say or suggested in anyway that entertainment is "detrimental to a fulfilling life" the post is still there if you need to read it again for clarification. although now that you mentioned it, definitely a strong argument can be made that too much consumption could very well be.
Its impossible for the production of entertainment to be invented before engineering, as the instruments required for entertainment needed to be engineered. hell the engineering of the wheel, knife or bow and arrow etc, probably were invented long before musical instruments were out of necessity.
And even if entertainment was round before engineering, whats your point? what does it have to do with this topic?
If you're not a fan of entertainment… why are you posting here!
I'm at a stage where I like to avoid stupid questions. If you believe I said I dislike entertainment, then you are absolutely right.
I pirate partly because I am poor, but also due to a moral imperative: capitalism is an evil system and by pirating I am &^%^$^% over the capitalists.
Piracy = sharing = communism.
Arrr comrade, arrr
I don''t watch enough TV shows to justify paying for any streaming service
Why pay for something you'll never own I still buy physical media
i am poor, if i didn't pirate it i would not get to have it at all
Need another option - if you steal, you will lose someday with a much higher interest. So don't do it. See the bigger picture.
Because SBS streams at 720p.
DRM/Availabilty/Quality. I like watching 4k movies, not a lot are released on physical media in Australia, import fees are high. id buy digital 4K, but the bitrate of 4K streaming is lower than the bitrate of a 1080p blu-ray disc.
so if it was possilbe, I'd buy all the content i like/wanna watch on 4K blu-ray, but since i cant, why bother
Used to pirate when I had more time than money. Now its the reverso, too much effort to pirate. Just become harder as well.
Came into the world at an interesting time. It used to be because we'd get content months after it was released, or sometimes no release in AU at all. Then it was convenience - not having to record a show on TV or wait for it to come on at certain times. Then it was to get HD quality. Then it was because it's easier than owning a bunch of dvds/blurays
Then Netflix came out and for a glorious few months it was worth it until the interface and library went to shit and then competitors fragmented the market.
It's honestly easier and quicker to find things via torrent than browsing multiple streaming sites.
I've been pirating content for at least 20 years and i'll keep going until someone physically stops me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ju_10NkGY
'cause Netflix shutdown the WiiU app :(
Streaming supplanted piracy because it was convenient and fair value. But as all these companies rush to get into the market, the quality of what they offer is going down.
Amazon's app on my chromecast is hopeless. The English subtitles for old Top gear are innacurate and occasionally nonsense because they've been translated to English from another language (how does that even happen?). It also loads very slowly sometimes despite our fast and stable connection. It then gets stuck streaming at 240p until I reinstall the app, since quality can't be set in the app. Also the ads (trailers) are obnoxious, especially on a paid service.
Binge and Paramount+ have regular crashes and bugs which require force closing the app. Binge doesn't even offer subtitles on many shows.
Meanwhile pirated content is high resolution with subtitles available from a massive database.
They are charging money for a lower quality product.
Because my parents had my ps1 modded and said it was ok.
Disney was the last straw for me, once they decided to pull their content from streamers so I would need yet another service it was back to the high seas. I don't mind paying a reasonable fee, I do object to paying a reasonable fee to a shit load of services and then still only getting a fraction of the content.
It’s a (profanity tonne) easier.
I only have Netflix.
Radarr pulling from an IMDB list, Sonarr just adding shows adhoc when needed.
My big reason for keeping Netflix is purely because it has a large catalogue, a lot of netflix originals are pretty (profanity) good.
Spotify solved music piracy.
Homebrew on switch because it’s easier than buying a game second hand and reselling it, otherwise new they’re $60-$80 each so I’d have over 5K that I’d need to spend on games for the switch alone.
Some PC games are pirated if they’re single-player or if they have SpaceWars or DRM free and I’m only going to play with friends.
I used to download movies but now just pay and watch it. Too lazy and just easy to watch doing it this way
Use to pirate games and then steam came along and provided a better solution.
Pirated TV and movies, then netflix came along. Now streaming is fragmented and expensive so back to piracy.
Not that I watch much, mostly youtube these days anyway. So for those few shows I have no problems with it.
I live in Argentina for Youtube Premium, and I pay for an account on a Netflix sharing platform. Is this counted as half pirating?
If you share your plan with your AU family, you are not a pirate, you are a good man :)
Cos I'm poor
Simple: I don’t have to log in. A website that doesn’t require some sort of credentials is rare these days. The internet has shrunk/become homogeneous quite a lot in the last decade and moving towards its own demise in that sense. If you look at the manifesto and compare it to what it is now, you’ll see. Of course people are allowed to run businesses on it and be well compensated for it, but when it becomes the norm, that has completely derailed its course imho.
It has been a place where we shared and inspired each other, now it’s a place where we bought crap, dehumanised our peers and made professional scammers.
I guess what I’m saying is I do it because that’s simply the internet I’d grown up with: a free space for everyone, and I would stay in that space for as long as I could to prolong its existence.
i'm not saying i'm a pirate, but i'll say this.
In australia there are 7 primary streaming services
- Netflix - $6.99pm
- Stan - $10pm
- Binge - $10pm
- Disney+ - $13.99pm
- Amazon Prime - $9.99pm
- AppleTV+ - $12.99pm
- Paramount+ - $9.99pm
Totalling just over $73.95 a month for the basic of each package (more if you want premium packages).
Now i know what you're going to say "you don't need to sign up for them all", that's correct, but the reality is that for each of these streaming services there is usually 1 or 2 shows which are their "flagship" shows that you really want to watch….you can't pay to watch just that 1 show, you need to pay for the whole service. So if you want to watch all the good stuff, you're going to need to be switching each of these services on and off as you want to watch them.
The next problem comes down to ownership….Just because you are paying for these streaming services you don't actually own any of that content. It's happened time and time again that a streaming service has taken away a popular show because the duration of their contract with that show lapsed. So imagine signing up for STAN because you really want to watch the office, Then, only as you're about half way through the series they decide to remove it from their service. There is nothing you can do because you don't actually own the content.
Then, the next problem comes down to confusion. We are now at a point that when somebody recommends a show to a friend, the next question that follows is "what's that on?" "oh it's on BINGE" "oh i don't have BINGE, i only have STAN, netflix and amazon prime". So you have this problem where it gets incredibly confusing what services have the exact shows you want to watch. Not only that then you are managing a whole bunch of apps on your devices
The next problem is regional exclusivity….IF a show is on a US streaming service, it doesn't mean it's also on the Australian one. Some shows you can't even get here unless you use a VPN.
So now many people are going back to pirating.
- Although you don't legally "own" the content, you can manage it how you wish, you don't run the risk of losing the content (unless you chose to)
- You don't need to manage a bunch of apps
- You don't need to play the whole "oh what service is that on?" game
- You can manage the quality of content you want. If you want 4k, you can get 4k, if you want 720p because you're only going to watch on your phone, again that's ok….you don't need to pay a premium for that higher quality.
- No regional exclusivity
- And of course, this is the big one, ITS CHEAPER
- I need to emphasise on the "ITS CHEAPER", it wasn't always cheaper. Back before the streaming market was so saturated (like when it was just netflix), it made sense to just pay for that 1 streaming service and get all the good content. However with how many streaming services there are nowadays it just doesn't make sense to spend that amount on a monthly basis.
So with all that in mind, again not saying I'm a pirate. but the incentives to be a pirate are growing, whilst the incentive to pay for streaming services is shrinking.
Movies simply because I can never get to the cinema anymore with the kids as cant afford it or afford babysitters. TV shows only when I can't legit watch them in Aus via streaming or free means. Games only if its something I am unsure of but if after an hour or 2 its still grabbed me I do buy them. Music I dont pirate as there is spotify or youtube.
We do have Stan, Netflix, Prime and Disney so do our best to watch things via proper means.
Too much of a tightwad to pay for streaming services, although, have Prime because it's included in my Amazon subscription, am partial to a good rum, but no eye patches worn here
If only someone had the idea to combine all of these streaming services into one and you could request content and not have to worry about torrents or NZB, all at one low price with the option to share your account with multiple friends and family, but would need to be invite only to keep the pesky outsiders away, now that's where I'd pay my hard earned money 😉
Spotify is really the only one I actually use regularly now - don't game or watch TV/movies much these days. I have also been slowly converting to a privacy- & sovereignty-loving self-hoster, and am (very slowly) chipping away at that. Media will become an area of focus for that one of these days, so even Spotify's days are numbered… Google is first but.
I don't regularly pirate. I still pay for streaming services.
I do have an interesting piracy story though;
I've bought a lot of 'AAA' titles over the years that have been absolute garbage.
The Witcher 3 released on PC. I was pretty strapped for cash at the time, so headed to <bleep> and downloaded a cracked copy.
I started to play the game and was just overwhelmed with the games beauty and depth.
I reached out to the dev's via social media and advised my situation and that i wanted to make things right and paypal them the cost of the game. They replied, and said keep your money, we are just glad you are enjoying our work and getting to game. From that day i knew CD Projekt Red were real gamers and have supported them since.
I then paid up for Cyberpunk, and despite all the issues on launch that game had, I found the good in what they were tying to do.
I don't (now). Used to do a lot back 12-13 years ago. Stopped doing it step by step, first with the video games, then software, and finally using streaming services as needed. However, with ridiculous price bumps by the streaming it's getting really hard. Instead, I have opted into doing more things by hand instead of giving it to screen time.
A lot my friends still do it. Their justification (or they think it's justified) is, because it's available for free somewhere on internet, and they pay for internet it's within their rights to get it and own it. It's usually a waste of time arguing with such folks, so we have stopped talking about the subject all together. From my experience, they would never ever pay for anything (not just digital content) if they can get it for free from somewhere.
There is an interesting topic around video games piracy where the game developers (specially the new and smaller studios) are discouraged to nail down on people trying to pirate their games, because people who doesn't want to pay would never pay for it and would move on to the next pirated game. So, making it extremely difficult to crack would simply means lot of people would never get to play your game (even if it means they'll get it for free through piracy). So, unless you're a big company that has lot of player base (call of duty for example) and its entirely online play there is no point in strict enforcement of anti-piracy and often times it costs more for the studio for the anti-piracy measures and mechanisms.
We had stopped pirating for many years as streaming was cheap and at the start netflix had everything. Cinemas are too expensive and in my area at least the quality of the cinema is just shit for how expensive it is. Streaming is both expensive and so fragmented now that its hard to find what you want to watch on a Subscription that you have. Password sharing helped as different family members subbed to different Streaming platforms and we could all share it but with that cracking down im just gonna stop now. They have done this to themselves with greed so im most likely going back to the high seas again.
I pay for a few streaming services and have access to the rest through my family and friends. I use the pirate streams almost exclusively because I can just go to one place, I don't need to dig around 10 different 'channels' to find what I want.
Normally better quality, and better experience.
I stopped paying when netflix cracked down on vpns, its by far and away the best provider with foreign language subtitles. When it became clear all i could hope to access was the bleh au netflix catalog i was done.
I used to quite a bit. These days with access to various streaming services, it's easier just to use the streaming services in Australia (Netflix, Disney+, Binge, Amazon) and US (Hulu, Peacock and Paramount+). Still costs me less than what i used to pay for Foxtel 3 years ago.
Do so for some new release movies before they make it to streaming service but since the shut down of RARBG have been doing it much less. Haven't found a site anywhere near as good.
watchsomuch .to is pretty decent.
You're doing it wrong
Do people still get sued these days for pirating and if so, what are the odds of being done in Australia?
Zero, they wanted to fine with no evidence in bulk and that's not legal in Australia. They can't be arsed dealing with individual cases.
They solved the need to pirate then ruined it with pure greed.
Also if the content I purchase on these platforms isn't mine and can be taken away then piracy isn't stealing.
Also just like in the DVD era… The Pirate experience is superior in every way to the streaming services. If you don't think so it's because you're doing it wrong.
Watch a recent Louis Rossman video, good explanation.
Basically the paid version is usually worse. I may pay for the real version, then pirate it anyway. See Bluray rip vs Netflix sub, and video game rom and owning the physical copy and not ripping it.
Audio streaming services have got it right. People pay and (it seems) very few pirate.
Video streaming services are seriously dropping the ball. I have access to Netflix, Disney, Prime and Paramount… yet I constantly still need to resort to other methods to watch what I want.
That said, when Netflix first came out, I pirated basically nothing for a good while.
When I have to pay for 4 users to get 4k netflix I was done and bought a plex server.
The big brain thing to do would be to pirate the streams.
I don't actually pirate much these days, but I don't really blame anyone that does. A lot of media is published by giant companies that will take any opportunity to skim an extra dollar from anyone they can. They don't prioritise ethics, they prioritise taking everything they can. We rarely have the same opportunities as a consumer, so I don't blame anyone taking the opportunity to exploit large companies where they can.
What happened to DCC via IRC?