Some of the best piracy options might cost you… Drebid, Usenet, Private Indexers, Seedboxes. They all cost money to varying degrees.
Hell if I’m being honest with myself, I’ve sunk way more into piracy than I probably would have spent just paying for a streaming service. What with building my server and buying extra hard drives, buying blocks of data, paying for API access. That stuff can add up. I know I could do free alternatives, but I really like how I have things set up now, and I love building my media collection and sharing it with my friends and family.
And this is fine, because you’re using your cash to “screw the system” which I hold utmost respect for.
I pirate movie, tv and music and pay for seedbox and spotify.
Whats your point?
This is actually a huge joke on the film and television industry. Back when Napster blew up the music industry was in a full panic that their industry would die while film and TV were cozy because the media was too large to mass-pirate compared to music.
The music guys figured it out. Cheap subscriptions with massive catalogues that don’t disappear.
Movie and TV still hasn’t figured this out.
I’m going to chime in with what I think. I’ve been sailing the seas for a while now. And at the end of the day I am all for people doing whatever the fuck they want. Want to pay for streaming? Fine. Want to digitize you library of blurays, cassettes, dvd. etc…? Go for it. Want to share everything you have? Cool. Want to be a bootlicker? Fine, I guess. Want to hit n run every torrent you every come across? You a bitch, but I mean there isn’t anything really stopping you. Luckily, certain communities have ways to weed out people that don’t share similar values (whatever they may be). I am part of a thriving one. I am more of the belief that all media should be available to everyone forever. That’s all I’ma say about that, and at the end of the day I know of the issues with this sort of thinking, but I am not gonna elaborate nor argue with anyone about anything.
At the end of the day people will do what they want (for the most part). With regards to the larger idea of paying for content, that is gonna be done in one way or another depending on what you do. You never want to pirate? That’s fine you’ll just have to pay for internet and whatever streaming services you want. You also run the risk on never again being able to access certain shows, movies for a variety of reasons (licensing issues, because companies can just pull the “fuck you” card, etc). As for pirating, the cost of this is always going to depend on what you want to do and how long. The minimum you will need is a HDD/drive to download your shit, internet, and then a player to play said shit (TV, android box, etc…). If you want to do more you’ll have to pay or have available a computer that will host your shit (old computer, NAS, etc). If you have a robust collection or are digitizing your movies/shows, once again you are gonna need drives. You can get an external drive or invest in those huge drives (20+TB) to get more bang for your buck, but they also aren’t pocket change to throw around. Luckily drives are always getting cheaper, but know that they don’t last forever and they aren’t always super cheap depending on how big you want them. As for services to stream your shit to your devices, there are plenty of free and paid things to make that happen.
There are also tools/services that I pay for that have made obtaining content much easier, but by no means are they necessary to eventually get the media. I’m not gonna lie, it does seem a little ironic that I have had to pay to do/obtain the things I have, but I do not regret it at all. These tool and services allow me to have the my current collection and allowed me to do it quickly for the most part. I am part of a community that is thriving and passionate about what they care about with regards to media. I am not going to go into the whole, “is it moral?”, or “where does piracy stand?” argument cause at the end of the day I don’t give a fuck nor am i going to try and moralize piracy or whatever . People can do that till the cows come home and feel any which way they want. Not my business and has no bearing on what I am doing.
Back to the point of money and piracy, like I said, one “pays” for media in one way or another. Some forms are cheaper, others are more convenient, and some choices are maybe even both. At the end of the day, from how I see things, most thing are never going to be truly free. It is going to boil down to what you care about doing, how fast you want something, how long you want said thing, maintenance, convenience, and finally, money. While you don’t need much money to start pirating there is a bare minimum of required things. Yes, you can acquire them for free if someone gives them (computer, phone, etc…) to you but there are people that don’t even have that. Someone that is destitute (by this i mean someone that literally has nothing, no home, no phone, no computer) will not be able to pirate. Then there’s the internet issue which some people may or may not have regular access to nor have reliability.
Money will always be tied to piracy in one way or another. Depending on who you ask there will be different answers. It varies widely on how you view piracy and what you view as money spent towards it. They money I have spent on drives alone and my NAS compare to years of a subscription to multiple streaming services. Money is part of the equation on any side you take, whether straight laced or eye-patched.
Back to the point of money and piracy, like I said, one “pays” for media in one way or another.
While I agree with you on everything this point is not 100% true. I am paying thousand of $CURRENCY on disks and other hardware every few years but I feel that for every side of the coin, there is a minimum situation (let’s call it a floor situation) on which less privileged people may find themselves.
For example if you are a bachelor already struggling to pay to be in college or a child that has only access to their parent’s computer, piracy is literally free and you can reach to it without paying anything on top of what you have already. On the other hand, netflix is always $CURRENT_PRICE regardless of your situation.
Btw, thank you for making articulate posts. This is why I am on lemmy.
No paid media streaming service could ever topple an automated Jellyfin server. Who wants to scroll through pages of dogshit content just to find something decent to watch?
I have my own personal plex server that I pretty much only use for downloading 4K Remux files, so I’m used to pirating shit. I gotta say Stremio w/ Real Debrid sub is super fucking good. I only use it on my phone, so to be able to pull up any movie or tv show on the go for like $4 bucks a month for it’s cheapest option is crazy. I’m sure it’ll get nuked at some point, but currently 6 months goes for $18 dollars. I spend that much on lunch some days. It’s a really good deal that requires 0 effort on my part. I think we should be open to supporting good services and consider ourselves pirates still.
If you are consuming media in any non-DRM format, then you are effectively a pirate.
As much as I like Real Debrid, over a long enough period the subscriptions should get you a raspberry Pi as a home media server. I personally like having more control over my media.
Question, I’m not techy enough to know anything about jellyfin other than it probably is similar to kodi, which I used briefly but ended up using Stremio instead.
Do you need to download your library? Or can you browse through repositories?
You need to download the library just like you normally would with Kodi. Stremio is neat too. I like the new UI refresh.
It’s like leasing warehouses to store all our treasures.
These days pirates do not use islands to bury treasures.
“Pirates”.
Yeah sorry the point of piracy is to be a cheapskate. If I’m gonna spend money might as well buy the damn thing.
Maybe they’re discussing which service is best to rip new films/series from.
