If you do get caught, you’re fucked. Like fucked. The legal headaches and costs going up against Adobe or MS will ruin you… forever.
With that said, pirating tools is one thing, but using other people’s loops or artistic work without approval is another matter altogether. And that kind of stuff will land you into all kinds of trouble, not to mention curb your work as talk will quickly get around in the community.
If you’re serious about becoming a musician or artist or a creative selling their work, reputation and community standing is like 90% of it.
And if you’re wondering how can an artist tell? We know our work. And people talk. Share stuff. Sooner or later, it’ll get around. The internet is still powered by people.
You would only likely get caught if you either do something stupid or someone tells Microsoft or Adobe with evidence, even then, the process to grass on them is a ballache, so if someone does actually take the time to do it, then you must have pissed them off so bad you might deserve it.
Why not use FOSS alternatives, or at least say you do?
If your stealing assets and IP, its just a matter of when you get caught, not if.
I keep trying, I have an extremely large collection and it keeps falling flat on metadata matching. Especially with anime, yes I have installed the add-ons. They still suck. And for whatever reason it’s transcoding performance is nowhere near as good. It also still has an unresolved memory leak issue with a ticket that’s been open for a long long time about it. I want to replace Plex but it needs to be with something as good as Plex
Emby is the premium version of Jellyfin. I have found the meta information works a lot better. I haven’t done much transcoding but it does support it, and there are more apps to access it. Not too happy with the iOS app but the LG WebOS app works great.
I had a lot of trouble jellyfin and anime until I started putting things into season folders, even if they only had one season. So if I had Ano Hana I’d put the episodes in a folder like this
Media Disk/Anime/Ano Hana/Season 1/episodes_here
If it’s a movie, then it goes into a folder with other movies.
Media Disk/Anime Movies/movies_here
Once I started doing that, Jellyfin automatically recognized most Anime.
I already do this, everything in my media is extremely cleanly named because they are handled by sonarr
series name/season 00/EPSxxExx-“episode title”
so it’s not a file format issue. It gets a lot of them but there are certain things especially if they are recently aired or currently airing where it will simply fail to find a match until I give it the Japanese name at which point it manages to find the metadata for the English name. Really stupid stuff like that
I’d like to add that Jellyfin has a provider order that it checks for metadata from. I had some issues until I changed the order to pull metadata from the same provider that Sonarr and Radarr use. Once it checked there for metadata first, everything lined up and I’ve had exceptionally few issues.
Yup. For the server admin, maybe 10 minutes of reading and another 10-20 for setup. For the users (if any), they just need to input an IP or URL along with logging in.
And it doesn’t rely on external servers to connect like Plex does, which is always a bonus.
Jellyfin gives you 100% control. You’re responsible for setting up remote access. Which actually isn’t that hard. Several IT and network admins of the community (myself included) hand out documentation on how to do this. Without completely ruining your security.
With Plex, some of the application communication is routed through their network. It requires an active internet connection and you must create an account with them. They have third party analytics embedded, use tracking pixels, beacons and device fingerprinting. Whatever personal data you have supplied is used to serve ads. This being their promoted content that isn’t part of your library.
Given that it’s Hetzner, there’s not much you can do besides telling them “oops sorry didn’t know this was illegal” and proceed using a VPN on your seedbox, go private tracker or just use a different hoster. Hetzner isn’t a big fan of torrenting since they have the (german) feds in their neck.
The solution is so easy. Make your content available at a reasonable price, make it easy to use, don’t restrict it by geography, and let people watch it on any device that can connect to your service.
Piracy is about ease of use (it’s getting even easier), and about value. DRM has repeatedly been shown to hurt only the people who try to pay for legitimate access. Not a single time has it prevented me from getting a copy of something if I wanted to, and it’s clearly not stopping people from providing those copies or streams.
So stop wasting bathtubs of money on stopping piracy, but maybe take a few less buckets of money from consumers in exchange for your service. As long as you price it such that the cost of being legit can’t compete with the ease of use and value from piracy, some folks aren’t going to make the choice you want them to.
Some folks won’t be able to spend on your service anyway, because they just can’t afford it - but they still might buy other merchandise, they can still spread how great your show is to their friends who possibly will subscribe to your service, but regardless you aren’t going to get their dollars no matter what you do. So stop trying.
What’s a reasonable price to you? Can you apply this same value to everyone? Seems like just about anything is easy to access through various services except for maybe some niche stuff. I don’t think being “easy” is quite enough. People like getting stuff for free even if they can afford it.
Do you need all of them at once? It’s ok to rotate. I subscribe to different things at different times. I still download stuff if, either what i have access to isn’t good enough or if i just can’t find what I’m looking for through conventional means.
Dunno. Less than what things cost now? I think knocking down the geographic restrictions and letting people watch it on any device or OS that can connect are likely bigger fights than pricing, if the industry actually cared to solve the problem.
It’s not as if we don’t have examples of this. Yes, some people still pirate music. Roughly 20 years ago, almost literally everyone with the knowhow was pirating music. (And with services like kazaa, emule, etc, it took very little knowhow)
You know what didn’t solve it? Prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM.
What solved it was when Apple started selling legit music for 99 cents per track, and keeping album costs reasonable. (Much as I hate to give apple any credit.) Spotify, amazon, etc all got on board, and now almost no one pirates music. (I pre-apologize for whatever detail I misremembered there - that was a long time ago.)
Am I saying that exact model will apply to video streaming services? No, but what’s not going to do it is prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM. We have decades of proof of this.
People like getting stuff for free even if they can afford it.
Some people will pirate no matter what. You can worry about them, or you can worry about everybody else. At some point (and I suspect we’re well past it) the return on investment has got to start looking pretty bad for all the money and technology they have tried to throw at piracy.
Thanks for the reply! Valid points. I was one of the ones that downloaded a ton of music before it was available at all, back in the Napster days. It’s harder for some reason with video. With the music they can just throw everyone’s stuff on there but video for some reason can only go to maybe a couple of services which really limits what some people have access to.
I don’t worry about the ones pirating at all, lol. I’m actually looking into setting up arr apps but my setup is not conventional so it will take some fiddling.
The solution is so easy. Make your content available at a reasonable price, make it easy to use, don’t restrict it by geography, and let people watch it on any device that can connect to your service.
They had achieved this just a short time ago, and their subscriptions and profit reflected that consumers were happy with the offerings. But the studios wanted MORE, and now everything is fragmented across a dozen different services with increased subscription fees, and geo-locks so you can’t share accounts. I was paying almost $100 per month for subscriptions at one point, and then they fragmented it further and I said “fuck it, I’m out!”. I cancelled everything. They think they can endlessly exploit their consumers, and maybe there is a sub-section of them that will endure never ending fragmentation and price increases, but I’m not one of them. Bye!
Sure they don’t. Just be aware that if you’re using public trackers you can appear here, as some of the peers track the IPs that appear in the swarms: iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/
I believe we determined that Jesus invented Buddha and Buddha invented VPNs. So, by extension we could say without Jesus, there would be no VPNs. Also, no corn chips.
If you have ever connected to a DHT network your address will be associated with more things than you can count. I’ve been running a DHT indexer/crawler and that page shows me shit I’ve never seen before in my life
But also don’t panic out thinking someone on your network might have been torrenting weird stuff as you may just be behind CG-NAT or have dynamically assigned IP address.
If you do have static public IP, consider the possibility of someone using your wireless connection without permission (even if you changed the password, don’t forget to disable WPS PIN, or at the very least change it from default PIN, it’s easy to forget about).
If anything, torrents have a region boost. Provided no one has servers or seedboxes set up, you’re going to benefit hugely from seeders near your location.
As others have said, just use qBit. It’s feature-rich and supports network interface binding. Simply bind it to your VPN’s interface, and it’ll only use your VPN. If your VPN connection drops/isn’t turned on, qBit simply won’t be able to connect.
I disagree that it’s simpler, because most VPNs will use dynamic IPs. So any time your internet flickers or your power goes out, you’ll need to reconfigure Transmission with the new IP. Sure your method works for a kill switch. But it requires manual intervention every time it gets killed. With qBit’s interface binding, it doesn’t care what the VPN’s IP is. All it cares about is that it’s using the specific interface. So if the VPN is disconnected (and the VPN’s interface has no connection) then qBit simply thinks there’s no connection to the internet.
you’ll need to reconfigure Transmission with the new IP. Sure your method works for a kill switch. But it requires manual intervention every time it gets killed.
It doesn’t. You can specify your VPN provider range instead of a single IP and you won’t need manual intervention.
RestrictNetworkInterfaces= Takes a list of space-separated network interface names. This option restricts the network interfaces that processes of this unit can use.
So I guess this is a better option than doing IP or IP range restrictions - zero manual intervention like you do in qBit. I’m so used to work with IPs instead of interfaces (because of the issues that can cause) that I even forgot about that option.
It’s not just about being simple, it’s about 1) still using transmission - because some people like decent and simple torrent clients and 2) a systemd enforced network restriction is way safer than whatever bind to interface / IP setting a program might come up with.
Its simpler than having to learn another torrent client or whatever, at the end of the day what I’m suggesting is adding a line to a text file with the interface.
You’re not allowed to buy the content anyways. You’re only allowed to pay for the illusion of ownership, until they decide they don’t want to host it anymore, and then you lose it. They’re such bullshit artists that they redefine common words like “buy” and “own” in their ToS.
I believe their justification would be that you aquiring the media is a definite loss of sale vs you not subbing/buying the media is a potential sale in the future.
Edit: Not my opinion. Just imagining how they would justify it before court should it come to it.
I gotta say I love this meme. I think about it every time a tech company does something really scummy to take away features and products that people have purchased (and not rented/leased).
Look, it’s all about authorial intent - if the author had wanted their book to be easy to reference or accessible to people who use screen readers, they would have published a DRM free PDF in the first place. Gotta respect the artist’s vision.
What a goofy interpretation of that series of events. Reddit changes API which fucks over moderators -> mods protest and say if they can’t use these tools they can’t moderate -> when API restrictions come into effect, mods either leave over moderating being way harder now or basically not being able to mod
Why is that final step so hard for this person to believe? All of Reddit moderation wasn’t lying to people for fun
Also wasn’t the sub basically taken over by one mod who spends their time working their way into as many moderator positions as possible and then not doing anything with them? Looking at their post history they’ve made like a dozen posts in the last month and one of them was asking to mod another sub.
Why is that final step so hard for this person to believe? All of Reddit moderation wasn’t lying to people for fun
You are so naive to believe they even were aware of step 1 lol.
They just were mad at their favorite subreddits being closed against their will, that and just being inconsiderate pricks.
What amused me back then is that in most of the subreddits I was subbed there were polls where mods were gonna act as the results said, (we were basically running against the time, so there were not very many alternatives for this kind of democracy, I add this note because many people were very mad and argued they never got to nor realize there was an ongoing poll lol) and more users approved to keep the protests and regardless these cunts were saying that this was mod’s power abuse lol.
Yeah it’s weird how privacy and piracy have blended together over the years.
With some games you need to pirate them if you don’t want a Russian nesting doll of launchers and accounts that are able to leak your information and fill your computer with bloat.
I do find the argument interesting some YouTubers try to make about ad blockers being a form of piracy.
To be fair, it makes sense to liken the use of ad blockers with piracy. Consuming the content without paying for it either way, either without directly paying yourself or without indirectly paying through watching ads. Doesn’t change that ads on most parts of the internet are extremely invasive and far too much.
I feel fully entitled to protect myself from the ads because of the problems with them. But I don’t feel the need to lie to myself about the fact that I’m consuming content without paying for it in some way. Then again I support some content creators that I feel deserve it. Not sure if that helps offset it somewhat or not, but I don’t really care that much either.
I don’t see why a free market can’t take care of this problem. Let the suppliers run their ads and if it’s not profitable then let them fold. None of this “please stop using ad blockers our business model sucks and we need you to accept worse overall service so we can stay in business”.
I don’t really care that much either.
This is the most important thing imo. Some people just don’t care (not saying it’s a bad thing). Others do so to each their own.
Sure, let everything require that you pay upfront for everything. Those too poor to afford to pay don’t deserve to have access to it anyway, right?
I’m not saying that ads are good, but having an option for people to pay to access a service that isn’t directly tied to money they have accessible seems better than barring them from that access. At the same time that option cannot be too intrusive or otherwise be too much of a negative before it becomes predatory. We can wish for the world to be perfect as much as we want, that doesn’t make it so. We can work towards a future where people don’t have to work to be able to live comfortably and where we have very different ways to compensate people for their time and effort on top of that. But we’re not there.
I’m not quite sure what you meant by your last paragraph, though.
Those too poor to afford to pay don’t deserve to have access to it anyway, right?
Those too poor to afford to pay get it for free, comrade.
I feel like a lot of people are wholly unaware of FOSS. But anyway my free market idea would require consent, for example a pop-up that says “would you like to pay $0.30 or watch an 8 second ad to view the content?” and then people could make their choice. If their choice is neither then they will go somewhere else for the information or entertainment. Consent is absent from the current model, aside from using an ad blocker to signal your refusal.
There are tons of videos (educational and otherwise) on youtube that have never paid out to their creators, either because they were from the era before youtube enshittified or because the algorithm decided that the content creator has earned nothing. It reminds me of the old argument that “you shouldn’t pirate music because it’s not fair to the artist” but man you’ve got to see those record contracts, especially those made to black or otherwise underprivileged artists. Being fair to the artist was never an imperative, but this argument still persists with people who identify themselves with their jailers, or who actually don’t really care that much (not saying that in a bad way).
Humans by nature are creative and helpful. We will always make how-to videos, guides, music, stories, and art. We don’t need megacorps to facilitate this, it’s the megacorps that want in, and they’re going to have to come up with a better business model.
Please stop doing this. It just gives bad actors better tools to fuck content creators.
If ads arent chosen and paid to the content creators directly then its a damned cancer on the entire industry and you, by giving them this, are supporting wage theft at best and exploitation at worst
How many content creators have been demonetized for no reason at all yet ads are still injected into their content anyway?
Sorry for being angry about this, but if we as a whole accept this then we are watching enshitification in action and im sick of the amazing thing that is the internet continually get worse
No, I fully believe you’re making different issues into one, which is dishonest argumentation.
Adblockers are functionally equivalent to piracy, the fact that some entities abuse others is a different issue. It’s the same as with gambling mechanics in games, the fact that most people would think that those are predatory and bad does not change that not paying for the game is piracy. It’s possible to be more nuanced about things than to group everything together.
If you can’t see past someone’s spelling mistakes then your credibility is the one I think is in question. Just ask me to fix it if the meaning is unclear or ambiguous instead of attacking my credibility(pot kettle black). Perhaps I did make some spelling mistakes, but do you know if english is even my first or third language?
It’s interesting that you both tell me not to connect one issue and also its downstream effects, but then turn around and say that my argument lacks nuance(if that’s a fair summary of your response, as I take it to be)
I’m saying that calling adblocking piracy has downstream effects that complicate the larger issue of the enshitification of the internet in general, and you want to boil things down to a simple binary of circumvention, i assume. But I reject the statement that adblockers are piracy without explanation.
So please, explain it so that the basis for this opinion can be understood instead of simply repeating it. What is it that makes adblocking equate to piracy in your opinion?
I’m passionate about this. I see it very much like a repeat of introducing micro transactions in the form of DLC into gaming which ruined gaming for me and many other people. Enshitification seems rampant these day. I believe that ive seen it in action before and that im seeing it again with this idea that adblocking is piracy.
Oh, I could see past your errors, I was just pointing it out. Errors do not help credibility, almost ever. (There might be some times it does, but I’m not sure I would want to gain credibility with people that would take such as helping my credibility). If you disagree with this I don’t know what to tell you. I also didn’t actually attack your credibility (I don’t really think you have any, but that’s a different matter), but made an observation that you could make sure your writing is better to not detract from your credibility. With the amount of tools available to avoid spelling mistakes it doesn’t really matter whether English isn’t a language one is perfectly proficient in.
I have clearly expressed what makes adblocking equate to piracy. It’s in the first paragraph of the first comment of mine you replied to. It should be fairly straight forward. Consuming without paying.
I reject your premise that it’s like microtransactions in gaming, unless you specifically mean in “free” games. Of course microtransactions and a lot of DLC for paid games are enshittification, but that’s more like asking you to pay more to access a new episode of a show or a scene from a show you’ve already paid for. Not near the same as having ads to pay for the costs of delivering content (and I include producing the content in “delivering” it).
Now, if you instead make the argument that the amount of ads or the contents of ads are enshittificating services that let you consume content without directly paying for it yourself I can agree. But not that ads themselves are enshittification. Nor that avoiding to pay to consume content isn’t piracy. I just think it’s self-deception to claim that not paying by blocking ads isn’t piracy. I have also made it clear that I think blocking ads is perfectly reasonable and what should be done. It may not be piracy in the legal sense, but circumventing systems meant to pay for something seems perfectly in line with the colloquial sense of the word.
Somewhat of a tangentNow, do I think the internet would be better if there were no ads at all? Yes, of course. But do you think it would be better that people would have to directly pay to use services on the internet instead? That would mean poorer people would be barred from a lot of online services. Because it costs something to host services on the internet and that has to be paid somehow. And people generally congregate to a small subset of sites which thus get a lot of traffic and thus high costs that has to be paid somehow. Sure, you could have some sites being public forums made available by government and thus “free to use” because they payment is through taxes, but that’s generally not how businesses operate.
You either couldn’t look past a couple of spelling errors or deliberately chose not to. My evidence? You commented on it and now we are talking about them. What was the point of mentioning it all if you were willing and able to ignore them.
You are a bad actor and you have shown what worth you are.
Go away.
Im done with you.
You have shown who you are and you arent just arent worth another thought
You’re more of a bad actor with your tantrums and rage-downvoting.
I wish you a better future.
EDIT: also to add that I simply made a note of it, specifically in a spoiler, while you were the one to try to make it into a conversation and talk about it. It really shows more about you than about me.
Did you lose your ability to recognise sarcasm, or did it never develop in the first place?
Of course that’s not what he said, but the issue of web ads is much deeper than the ad revenue or no ad revenue question he is taking a stand on. It has been discussed ad nauseum by more technically minded people than him.
Ad blocking being likened to piracy would be valid except for the fact that internet ads have always been predominantly intrusive, misleading, predatory, and malicious.
for giving them that power to wield they will use it to claim that putting tape on your camera so you cant be spied on is piracy. And thats rediculous, but thats what will happen if we dont stand together and say no no its not piracy just because i didnt want to watch your stupid fucking add on a video that YOU ARENT MONITIZING DIRECTLY. ads that arent payed to the content creator directly is wage theft at best and exploitation at worst
Edit sorry this isnt aimed at you personally beyond the first 8 words. Im not drunk but it does feel a bit like a drunken ramble, guess it touched a nerve. Ill have to reflect on that
Is piracy not inclusive of subverting the means for a producer to profit off of a product when using that product?
The issue I see in it is that businesses have made the assumption that internet adverts are the same as television adverts. They started using them as such and now they are having a hissy fit that they don’t have a captive audience.
If they find a way to force adverts on us, then we will be a captive audience once more.
It’s gotten to such an extreme that some websites are nothing more than ad delivery mechanisms under the concept that “ads allow us to provide you quality content for free”, which, under the hood, is just a shitty business model that doesn’t work for consumers. I’ve seen websites that literally copy paste the content 2 or 3 times to extend the word count and have nonsensicle, out of order sentences that don’t contain any information. There are also websites that have incorrect information, which are also published with the sole purpose of serving ads to generate revenue, which imo is worse. Just another way that capitalism is making our world more shitty.
What should be happening is people avoid the culprits and/or use an ad blocker. I do believe this is actually what’s happening, which is why content platforms like YouTube are looking for ways to control their audience.
Ad blockers aren’t illegal, but neither is a website blocking ad blockers. It’s an arms race that the content platforms will lose. So I wonder what will be the next step if the ad space depreciates too much to drive the content.
Is piracy not inclusive of subverting the means for a producer to profit off of a product when using that product?
Not really. Most people who “pirate” games or media wouldn’t have paid for them anyway.
As Gabe Newell said (and demonstrated with Steam), “piracy” is a service problem.
Give people an affordable and more convenient way of accessing said games or media (Steam, Spotify before it got enshittified, Netflix before it got enshittified and the market got fragmented beyond any reasonable usability), and we’ll happily stop “pirating”.
“Piracy” is free marketing (of course, this doesn’t work if your product isn’t worth its price, but bad products not earning money is a good way to improve overall quality), not theft. And without all the inconveniences of paid marketing. And often it’s a symptom that the way you’re selling your content is too inconvenient or overpriced for at least a fraction of your potential consumers, and thus needs to be fixed or improved (either voluntarily or through regulation).
You’re saying “piracy” subverts the means for a producer to profit off their product.
I’m saying the exact opposite: that it not only doesn’t do that, but in fact almost certainly increases said profits (and linking references to support said position).
And I’m absolutely not defending “piracy”. It shouldn’t exist, as its existence is a symptom of serious issues within the market. And getting rid of it is simple: just provide an affordable and more convenient alternative. Valve did it. Netflix and Spotify did it, for a while.
But, if said alternative doesn’t exist, “piracy” will happen, and it happening, while definitely a worse situation than said convenient and affordable option existing, will be more beneficial to both society and content producers than the absence of both.
You are suggesting that piracy eventually leads to profit. That’s not a definition of piracy.
I am saying piracy is obtaining a digital product in an unauthorised manner to avoid paying for the product.
I am ambivalent to piracy. I think it’s a common factor and it is up to content producers to combat it. I am familiar with the studies you’ve linked, but that’s not the topic I’m discussing.
You are suggesting that piracy eventually leads to profit.
Provided the product is something people want, yeah. If not, at the very least it won’t decrease profit. As I said it’s free marketing. Sharing. Word of mouth. Trying before you buy.
That’s not a definition of piracy.
No, it’s not, correct. I don’t know why you think I was attempting to define it, but to be clear I was replying to this rethoric question of yours, and disputing your implicit assertion that it subverts the means for a producer to profit off of a product (which it evidently doesn’t):
Is piracy not inclusive of subverting the means for a producer to profit off of a product when using that product?
(This is the end of the previous paragraph; just putting this here because otherwise, at least in my client, the two quotes back to back look like they might be confusing to read; this probably is, too, but hopefully not as much.)
I am saying piracy is obtaining a digital product in an unauthorised manner to avoid paying for the product
No, piracy is the practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea. Of course dictionaries also include, at this point, definitions like (from Oxford’s) “the unauthorized use or reproduction of another’s work” (which is clearly wrong, as it would include things that no one refers to as “piracy”, like plagiarism or copyright infringement) or yours (also wrong; that would be corporate espionage and sabotage; you might have been trying to say “obtaining a copy of a digital product…”), due to the concerted malicious efforts over several decades by IP lobbies to attack such a fundamental aspect of culture and of human nature as sharing (which is what is being attacked when the word “piracy” is used in this context) by labelling it with the same word as a particularly horrible crime.
I am ambivalent to piracy.
That’s horrible, tragic, and sad. Regardless of whether you’re using the correct definition or the malicious one.
it is up to content producers to combat it.
Sure, if by that you mean provide an affordable and more convenient alternative.
Though I’d argue that given that most of them (with exceptios such as Valve, which is doing an excellent work combating it, judging by the amount of unplayed games in the stereotypical Steam library) seem to prefer to make their customers’ experience worse (to the point of installing malware on their computers) such alternatives should, at this point, be forced through customer protection regulations.
but that’s not the topic I’m discussing
I wasn’t replying to whatever topic you were discussing (and at this point I neither remember what it was, nor care to), as I thought was evident by quoting a specific part of it I was replying to said specific part, to wit, your implicit (and clearly incorrect) assertion that “piracy” negatively affects profits.
Then for some reason you started talking about definitions, and here we are. 🤷♂️
Websites can choose to include ads, and I choose to filter them out with ad blockers.
Its no different than me placing a sticky note over every ad on my screen, or turning away and covering my ears when a video ad plays. But ad blockers automate that process and make it a whole lot easier. Simple quality of life
If someone claims adblocking is form of piracy they are also claiming its immoral or bad thing to do. I doubt someone making claim like that would have anything nice to say about piracy.
I mean, why else would people speak against adblocking if they didnt think it was somehow “immoral” or otherwise negative thing to do.
No. Making a claim that adblocking is a form of piracy does not in any way say that either piracy nor adblocking is immoral. Only if they actually make a claim that piracy is immoral can it be transferred like that.
You also seem to make the claim that anyone equating adblocking and piracy are speaking against them. Why are you making such a claim?
I’m just so tired and annoyed about people wanting to restrict adblocking in anyway, so I guess i assume things too easily. I consider being able to not see ads my inherent right.
Oh, absolutely. And it’s just gotten worse with the intrusiveness and amount of ads everywhere. Piracy also seems to become the only way to avoid far too much data collection about us as well.
Absolutely. Sure pirated games run that risk but communities are big enough to usually snuff it out quickly if it’s a malware filled crack. Going through legitimate means a PC gamer is likely to have steam, epic games launcher, blizzard launcher, EA, Ubisoft, and probably more I can’t think of. Many of these are clunky and slow and demand online connectivity or multiple sign in auths every time you just want to play a damn single player, offline game
Sure pirated games run that risk but communities are big enough to usually snuff it out quickly if it’s a malware filled crack.
Big time. Even rumours of a repackers adding malware blow up on communities like this.
Core characters in the repack community also occasionally ask for and receive donations. I’ve donated to DODI, FitGirl, and Gnarly. Hopefully they receive enough to discourage them from anything malicious but they’re also adored and respected by the community.
Going through legitimate means a PC gamer is likely to have steam, epic games launcher, blizzard launcher, EA, Ubisoft, and probably more I can’t think of. Many of these are clunky and slow and demand online connectivity or multiple sign in auths every time you just want to play a damn single player, offline game
I purchased a Call of Duty title recently and that was a big thing. The amount of ads in the launcher was wild.
I didn’t even think of the ads when writing that, but damn that’s probably the worst part of it all! Thank you for adding that major detail, clearly my very minimal usage of most of those launchers was showing lol
I do find the argument interesting some YouTubers try to make about ad blockers being a form of piracy.
This argument makes no sense to me, it would be piracy if I was copying the videos into my own channel and raking in the views. An YouTube channel is more like TV, you’re broadcasting into the wild hoping to get some eyeballs and selling those eyeballs to the highest bidder. It’s up to me if I want to see the ads or not, just like TV.
Disagreed. If it requires a server side element, it incurs an ongoing cost and a subscription can be justified. And to clarify, by “requires”, I’m referring to the functionality, not having it shoveled in. And the price should be realistic.
Some apps do this well, Sleep for Android is an example that comes to mind. Free with ads, ad-free is an inexpensive one time purchase. You can also purchase additional plugin apps that add functionality that isn’t required or even useful for most people. And finally, they have a cloud plugin app to let you backup your data, you can pay for their cloud subscription which is $2.99 a year, but you can also just use other cloud for storage like Google drive.
Then the dev needs to build out a range of protocols and API’s to enable users to “supply their own server”, which can bring a range of additional headaches, like having to provide support for external dependencies outside their control, etc.
What if the users “server” fails? Should the dev waste hours of their life assisting a user with a highly specific Google Drive issue when they spent $5, 3 years ago?
But the developer doesn’t need to provide support if you opt to use your own data storage and the storage itself fails. Google would be the one to contact if Google drive has an issue.
Well yes, but that’s not how your average user thinks and acts. They will either a) contact you as the developer of the app that doesn’t seem to work and when your say it’s not your fault give you bad reviews or b) directly give you bad reviews.
You clearly haven’t dealt with the “average user”. Get ready for a boatload of idiots who followed some crappy tutorial for “how to get it for free” making a problem for support or review bombing the app when they lose all their data through incompetence.
The average user doesn’t work like that, also an average user does not always think he is average. There are many people thinking they are advanced, because they know where settings in Windows or Android are located. You will probably get bad reviews then emails, because quote “your app doesn’t work”. This comment is based on real experiences with Google Play Store and its users, thinking they know what they do.
JetBrains ran aground of this years ago when they introduced a subscription model for their (excellent) software. People (rightly) lost their fricking minds when they heard that if they cancelled their subscription, they’d lose the ability to continue using the software they’d already paid for.
So JetBrains went back and reworked their system so that a cancelled subscription would continue to have the rights to install all the software that existed up to the day of cancellation. Effectively meaning that if v3 came out the day before you cancelled, you can still install and use v3 10 years later.
JetBrains comes to mind as one of the fairest subscription services I know. It also get cheaper the longer you’re subscribed, incentivizing you to to stay subscribed. It’s both smart and user friendly.
I do use JetBrains software. If subscriptions all agreed that when you cancel the subscription you can continue to use the latest version before you cancelled, I’d be prepared to consider them. Any software ought to be able to do this except software that uses significant server resources. I’d even consider rent-to-own where you get to keep the software after a certain number of payments. (Splice offers some music software like this.)
Roland have a ton of good software synthesizers but I will never subscribe to them because the moment you stop they take the whole lot away. Even their “lifetime license” requires an active Roland account and the software disappears if you ever close the account or they change their minds. Similarly I haven’t used any Adobe software since they went subscription only.
If you want a worse example than Roland, let me tell you about my solitary experience with IK Multimedia. I bought a secondhand hardware synth of theirs off marketplace. Get it home and try to download the software tool to control and update it. It tells me to set up an account, and then lets me download it, awesome. Plug it in and fire up the software, and it tells me I’m not licensed. Wait, what? Search through their support site and it turns out that to transfer the “license” for this piece of hardware you have to pay them $49. Sunk cost fallacy got the better of me at this point and I sent an email through to support asking if I could pay the transfer fee. Nope, only the original owner can transfer the license. I was so immediately turned off it that it sat around as a paperweight for a few months. Ended up selling it to a pawn shop.
Meanwhile, Arturia are the exact opposite. When you buy a digital license of the Arturia V Collection, you own that license. Which includes being able to sell it to someone else, and transfer it to their account for free. I bought a secondhand MIDI controller of theirs, which had some bonus licenses for their software originally included. They transferred the license to me with just a picture of the serial number label. But I could still download and use the software for setting up macros and updating it without doing that.
I hope Arturia don’t change. They are one of the most reasonable companies out there when it comes to licensing and pricing.
Licenses for hardware are a concerning trend, because it’s unnecessary, and because the terms are never made clear before purchase. I suspect it’s mainly there to sabotage the second hand market.
Yeah, I hope they don’t change either. I wouldn’t have been surprised, or particularly disappointed, if they said they wouldn’t transfer the bonus licenses. These weren’t needed to use the device at all. The license was originally for Analog Lab 3, this was a Minilab Mk1, but they’d given free upgrades so the license I got was for Analog Lab V. Having that license meant getting a cheaper upgrade to the V Collection 8. I got a 50% off upgrade to 9 as well, and I just checked now that X is out and they’re offering me the same deal again until late January.
They did deactivate my license for 8 because I’d used it to upgrade to 9, but I think that’s pretty reasonable. You can also absolutely choose to pay the full price and keep the previous version. You can still sell and transfer it too though, and their system will happily let the new owner re-download it. They’ll let you activate the license on an offline computer too, and as far as I can tell, it’s indefinite. You could absolutely take advantage of that, but they don’t punish all of their users because there’s a chance a few are bad actors.
Honestly, in my opinion, they are the platinum standard that software companies across the entire industry should strive to be.
Oh I just remembered another thing. You can buy individual V Collection instruments without ever being worse off. The price of it will be discounted off the full collection. Then, after 4-6 instruments, they’ll just upgrade you to the full ~39 for free. I don’t think even when you could still buy the Creative Suite from Adobe, that they would let you upgrade like that.
(Sorry for the lengthy reply. Arturia is just one of the few companies out there that I will legitimately praise.)
Yeah that was basically the sentiment of the developer community when JetBrains announced the change. Thankfully they heeded the screaming and fixed their model. I’ve been using JetBrains tools for around 10 years now and they continue to impress. I can’t recommend them enough.
Sygic broke trust like that with me . The software is/was excellent and very reasonable, so I bought licences for parts of world and suddenly they made it subscription based app, with ability to keep forever licence for only part of world you bought.
So even though I have fully paid software , i have to pay subscription for the feature of Android Auto and world maps.
It was the list betrayal of trust i have seen. I never used sygic after that at all.
Someone linked them up thread and it doesn’t quite work like that. You need to have been using a version for 12 months before that becomes your “fallback license”. So, if v3 came out the day before, your fallback license would only be v2 if you cancelled.
Oh! Good to know. I guess that’s there to prevent people from reaping 2 years worth of development for a 1 year fee. That still seems reasonable to me.
Not quite - you get a perpetual license for the version that was released a year before you cancelled your subscription. And for most languages this is not really practical anyway, as they get relatively frequent updates that require IDE updates, so you will just stay subscribed.
This was a fairly low business risk, high PR value move by JetBrains.
Could be, but the rumor of something like this happening had existed since the Vista era.
I don’t think it’s happening mostly because there is no real benefit for Microsoft. IP holders are not hounding Microsoft, and their store market share is inexistent.
Honestly, pirating anything with an executable in it is just asking for something to happen. The hoops required to mitigate these risks, especially when games mostly now are online with a multiplayer component, I can understand why game-piracy would really only be for the people who are REALLY hardcore into AAA titles. Most of the stuff I purchase now is indie and ends up being better than AAA titles, and it’s cheap enough that I don’t really even want to pirate it.
Additionally, lemmy just doesn’t have the eyeballs that Reddit has…still. I can understand someone’s justification if they stayed over there. I got site-banned once just for reporting a mod for child-predatory statements, and I literally hadn’t even made a comment. Just reporting the post got me banned. So I’m over here hiding from child predators.
Accusing someone of being and/or defending a child predator (or stance) is a serious, potentially life ruining action. Without context I can’t assume it was warranted or that you were unfairly banned given our current social discourse where people flippantly call people “pedos.”
Point is we only have your side and no clue what was actually said. Just something to consider.
I’m in agreement. Old PC games like pre-2006 are fine, but anything newer than that, especially GFWL and beyond, i’m just not comfortable downloading executables for. Even repacks seem mega sketchy to me, so I’m fine with waiting for steam/gog sales.
I play a lot of older AAA games and piracy has been a life saver. I tried playing Assassin’s Creed 4 with a legit steam copy and couldn’t even play offline because of the stupid Ubisoft launcher. With a pirated copy, you skip the launcher and get a better experience than a paying customer. Just stick to reputable groups like fitgirl and you’re fine
I’ve been pirating games for 20 years and only ever got a virus when I was very young and didn’t know any better. Downloading from reputable scene groups, repackers, and private trackers doesn’t really put you at risk. There’s also plenty of multiplayer games that work on pirated copies, either with other pirates, or sometimes even with legit players. Denuvo has slowed down the rate of cracks, but things aren’t really much different now than they’ve ever been.
there really is no way to know if you’ve got a virus. it doesn’t take a lot of time to develop a malware that is undetectable, especially if you target something very specific and make it be patient about it. e.g. wait a month, snatch all the browser cookies and send them to a server hosted on azure.
or every so often snatch the clipboard
there are a lot of ways to be very silent
I highly suggest you don’t use the pc you run the pirated games on for anything critical
background: I crack stuff as a hobby (never published anything), used to be a security engineer, programmer by hobby
I recently switch to Linux and the only way I was able to run some of the games I already bought was to pirate them because of the launcher. I hate game launchers.
Yeah pirating games is way sketchier than pirating movies. I used to do it when I was a kid, but nowadays I know enough to avoid random .exe’s. That’s basically just volunteering to be a part of a botnet.
Also, most of the games I’m personally interested in are online multiplayer titles. Playing pirated games online can be very difficult or basically impossible, depending on the game.
Game piracy certainly isn’t dead, but there are valid reasons that it’s less popular.
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