Inspired by a post since deleted, I feel bad for probably coming off judgemental about the poster’s taste in the movie that drove him to consider sailing.
The earliest desired media I can remember that drove me to figure out sailing was DC Talk, a Christian rock band. Pop music was not allowed in my house, so a Christian group was tantalizing and scandalous to a rebellious, young Vanth. Things escalated from there.
It’s all thanks to my older sister who pirated a lot of games for me including Garry’s mod back in like 2007 or so. She introduced me to uTorrent (that app is shitty as of right now, use qbtorrent.) which i am pretty excited for. This is like when i was 7 (I am 25 years old now) and before the ISP restrictions in the US, we pirated all sorts of games, movies, etc. What my sister used to do is we rent movies from blockbuster and my sis used to rip the movie files from the DVD to a burnt DVD-R. We would do that every time we rent a movie that i’ve liked.
She used to pirate music too as well as pirate episodes of Supernatural before AT&T gave her a bullshit cease and desist letter to her. Afterwards, she stopped pirating media and it makes me sad to see this happen to her. Luckily, at least direct downloads are better than torrents nowadays.
When i first started as a kid, i just wanted games, shows, movies and music without having to pay for it, as i would not be able to afford it all. First movies from P2P-clients like napster, kazaa and limewire. My older brother taught me what i needed to know to get started with torrenting later, and i built up a great ratio on 3-4 private trackers to get what i needed. This continued until soptify and netflix came along and i had some more cash on hand. The initial service was good enough for me to stop pirating.
So after about a decade of being a landlubber, i started pirating again. The services are fragmented, they treat you like shit and using any of their services is a privacy nightmare. As this dawned on me, i regretted having ever stopped pirating, because now i barely had any stuff at all. I didnt own a thing, and i did not like it. So now i had to spend a lot of time building up a library from (almost) scratch. I have a jellyfin-server running at home with about 600 movies and some of my old favorite shows, while also picking up some of the new stuff that i want. I dont have to sit thru all the bullshit on netflix to find a show/movie i like anymore, and the experience is pure bliss in comparison. Still lacking a bit in the music department, but that is also growing and i again enjoy some of the music i listened to before that is not available on spotify. I dont exclusively pirate though, i purchase some music of bandcamp, games of gog (and steam) and audiobooks of libro.fm.
Next time there is an enticing offer that does not involve downloadable drm-free files, im not falling for it. Fool me once etc etc
I think it was a game that needed activations to play and I ran out of activations or something. Predictably, pirating it was the better experience in every way.
To answer your question, it was probably music that sent me sailing the high seas. The only way to get music back then was to tape songs off the radio, download them online or buy a bootleg CD off the street.
Otherwise you’d have a spend a tonne at the few music shops we have/had.
Similar for me, recently. When I’m really into reading, I can read more than a book a day. $15+ for an audiobook that I’ll crush in a day just isn’t possible for me. That could easily balloon to $5000/year for me and another $3000/yr for my daughter, and $2000/year for my wife. (I’ve read a 6-book series, a 3-book series, and almost half a 4-book series in the last week… And didn’t sleep, lol!)
We can’t afford a used car in audiobook costs each year.
I actually mostly switched to text-to-speech with Kindle Unlimited so authors get paid for most of my reading, but audiobooks I still pirate when I read them. By my napkin math, authors get about 20-30 times what I pay in KU fees based on our voracious reading.
I live in a kinda poor country, the money for a game can be used for 4 or 5 days of food, that is with regional pricing. Otherwise it’s a whole month.
That and also it’s satisfying to give back to the people, KB by KB copies get to new owners that will enjoy them.
I was in middle school and I saw my friend had all the episodes of ATHF (aqua teen hunger force) and I wanted to be able to get free episodes of stuff. Silly but true.
You can therefore blame the mooninites for my piracy.
I really wanted to give Assassin’s Creed Valhalla a try soon after it came out, as it had been a few years since I’d played any of the games. So I began looking into how I could get it for free.
I didn’t really enjoy the game but what I discovered was much greater than just one game.
TLDR; It started as a young teen who just wanted to get games for free; It continues because companies don’t give two flying hoots about me.
Currently, I pirate because I can’t rightfully give any money to these anti-consumer companies that will only victimize me. I can’t own anything anymore, and this absolutely frustrates me. If I could own the media I purchase, I wouldn’t pirate anymore. (by this I mean I wouldn’t pirate the media I consume. I’d still data hoard because it’s a literal addiction, please help!!)
I don’t pirate games anymore; or better said, I rarely pirate games, and when I do they’re ran in a VM with VFIO because I really don’t like the idea of running arbitrary code on my system; even though we have reputable, vetted, and trustworthy groups. (As a general rule, I don’t trust what I can’t verify.) I buy all my games on Steam for convenience, and I opt to use Goldberg’s Steam Emulator (which is open source!!) to store backups of my games, and this setup works wonderfully! I stay away from games with invasive DRM like Denuvo (I play these in a VM), and I’ve long stopped buying EA and Ubisoft games.
The only forms of media I pirate nowadays are movies, and music (and the occasional game).
Everyone just copied everything from each other. Floppy, then Twilight CDs. Then came the internet and exploring music there was better than sitting around waiting for a song to come on the radio to quickly press record. It was normal when I was young to share, not really an active choice.
Earliest example of me pirating was when my dad used Limewire. I’d like to think I used it as well, but I doubt it since I wouldn’t have known anything to look up.
Otherwise, in highschool I would go to different sites to find cartoons/anime that weren’t available on Netflix (or Hulu back when it was just about the only competitor). This was before I knew what sites were safe, so I probably ended up getting viruses without knowing.
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⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
It’s all thanks to my older sister who pirated a lot of games for me including Garry’s mod back in like 2007 or so. She introduced me to uTorrent (that app is shitty as of right now, use qbtorrent.) which i am pretty excited for. This is like when i was 7 (I am 25 years old now) and before the ISP restrictions in the US, we pirated all sorts of games, movies, etc. What my sister used to do is we rent movies from blockbuster and my sis used to rip the movie files from the DVD to a burnt DVD-R. We would do that every time we rent a movie that i’ve liked.
She used to pirate music too as well as pirate episodes of Supernatural before AT&T gave her a bullshit cease and desist letter to her. Afterwards, she stopped pirating media and it makes me sad to see this happen to her. Luckily, at least direct downloads are better than torrents nowadays.
When i first started as a kid, i just wanted games, shows, movies and music without having to pay for it, as i would not be able to afford it all. First movies from P2P-clients like napster, kazaa and limewire. My older brother taught me what i needed to know to get started with torrenting later, and i built up a great ratio on 3-4 private trackers to get what i needed. This continued until soptify and netflix came along and i had some more cash on hand. The initial service was good enough for me to stop pirating.
So after about a decade of being a landlubber, i started pirating again. The services are fragmented, they treat you like shit and using any of their services is a privacy nightmare. As this dawned on me, i regretted having ever stopped pirating, because now i barely had any stuff at all. I didnt own a thing, and i did not like it. So now i had to spend a lot of time building up a library from (almost) scratch. I have a jellyfin-server running at home with about 600 movies and some of my old favorite shows, while also picking up some of the new stuff that i want. I dont have to sit thru all the bullshit on netflix to find a show/movie i like anymore, and the experience is pure bliss in comparison. Still lacking a bit in the music department, but that is also growing and i again enjoy some of the music i listened to before that is not available on spotify. I dont exclusively pirate though, i purchase some music of bandcamp, games of gog (and steam) and audiobooks of libro.fm.
Next time there is an enticing offer that does not involve downloadable drm-free files, im not falling for it. Fool me once etc etc
Being a poor elementary school kid who wanted to play the trendy singleplayer games.
I think it was a game that needed activations to play and I ran out of activations or something. Predictably, pirating it was the better experience in every way.
I’m very fond of DC Talk’s So Long My Friend.
To answer your question, it was probably music that sent me sailing the high seas. The only way to get music back then was to tape songs off the radio, download them online or buy a bootleg CD off the street.
Otherwise you’d have a spend a tonne at the few music shops we have/had.
I was a truck driver, driving long distances, long hours. I was listening up to 4 audiobooks per week. Audible only offered 4 books per month.
deleted by creator
Similar for me, recently. When I’m really into reading, I can read more than a book a day. $15+ for an audiobook that I’ll crush in a day just isn’t possible for me. That could easily balloon to $5000/year for me and another $3000/yr for my daughter, and $2000/year for my wife. (I’ve read a 6-book series, a 3-book series, and almost half a 4-book series in the last week… And didn’t sleep, lol!)
We can’t afford a used car in audiobook costs each year.
I actually mostly switched to text-to-speech with Kindle Unlimited so authors get paid for most of my reading, but audiobooks I still pirate when I read them. By my napkin math, authors get about 20-30 times what I pay in KU fees based on our voracious reading.
I first wanted a copy of miitopia. But didn’t know atbrhe time. Then I just got some nodded apks and game roms
I live in a kinda poor country, the money for a game can be used for 4 or 5 days of food, that is with regional pricing. Otherwise it’s a whole month. That and also it’s satisfying to give back to the people, KB by KB copies get to new owners that will enjoy them.
I was in middle school and I saw my friend had all the episodes of ATHF (aqua teen hunger force) and I wanted to be able to get free episodes of stuff. Silly but true.
You can therefore blame the mooninites for my piracy.
I started because I wanted to get around censorship in my country. I also wanted to view stuff in the original language and here we dub everything.
wir hatten ja nichts
I really wanted to give Assassin’s Creed Valhalla a try soon after it came out, as it had been a few years since I’d played any of the games. So I began looking into how I could get it for free.
I didn’t really enjoy the game but what I discovered was much greater than just one game.
TLDR; It started as a young teen who just wanted to get games for free; It continues because companies don’t give two flying hoots about me.
Currently, I pirate because I can’t rightfully give any money to these anti-consumer companies that will only victimize me. I can’t own anything anymore, and this absolutely frustrates me. If I could own the media I purchase, I wouldn’t pirate anymore. (by this I mean I wouldn’t pirate the media I consume. I’d still data hoard because it’s a literal addiction, please help!!)
I don’t pirate games anymore; or better said, I rarely pirate games, and when I do they’re ran in a VM with VFIO because I really don’t like the idea of running arbitrary code on my system; even though we have reputable, vetted, and trustworthy groups. (As a general rule, I don’t trust what I can’t verify.) I buy all my games on Steam for convenience, and I opt to use Goldberg’s Steam Emulator (which is open source!!) to store backups of my games, and this setup works wonderfully! I stay away from games with invasive DRM like Denuvo (I play these in a VM), and I’ve long stopped buying EA and Ubisoft games. The only forms of media I pirate nowadays are movies, and music (and the occasional game).
Everyone just copied everything from each other. Floppy, then Twilight CDs. Then came the internet and exploring music there was better than sitting around waiting for a song to come on the radio to quickly press record. It was normal when I was young to share, not really an active choice.
Earliest example of me pirating was when my dad used Limewire. I’d like to think I used it as well, but I doubt it since I wouldn’t have known anything to look up.
Otherwise, in highschool I would go to different sites to find cartoons/anime that weren’t available on Netflix (or Hulu back when it was just about the only competitor). This was before I knew what sites were safe, so I probably ended up getting viruses without knowing.