Not much thought goes into it. I've never bought a copy of windows in twenty years of using it because they don't need the money. I buy small pieces of specialist software from small and independent developers. I've got a streaming video service but if it doesn't have the thing I want to watch I find it online.

Convenience and lack of ads

I pirate when getting a copy of something is otherwise too inconvenient and/or ridiculously overpriced and I REALLY need to watch it. I used to pirate basically everything. Nowadays very often I will wait for and then rent a movie on iTunes because that is the most convenient way and the price is fine. My FOMO is not as strong anymore. I also rarely watch any series that is not on a streaming service.

i mainly pirate games because it usually works way better. like i own gta v and with pirated copy the game starts as soon as you click on the exe. with steam version, it takes like 1-2 minutes to connect to servers and shit. also like some aaa games are really expensive for my income even after regional pricing.

i have never bought a subscription for a streaming service or paid for any movie/tv show/music. why do it when you can pirate it and dont have to look for which streaming service its on and pay for it.

as for 'you claim to hate capitalism, yet you want to take advantage of its treats' is such a dog shit argument. Do I see capitalists in the C Suite making video games or movies? No its the fucking actors, vfx graphics, programmers etc. did anti-monarchists during feudal times not eat food because it was produced under a feudal system? the argument can be flipped just as easily, if you love capitalism so much why do purchase games made by workers?

If I have legally purchased content or an application, and that content or application is no longer available for some reason, then I feel justified pirating.

A game that requires an online connection but the company took down the servers and won't release the code for example.

There is no legitimate way for me to use the thing I already bought.

Other than that, I'm just too lazy to do it any more.

When I was young and poor, there was various software I did pirate, but now days there is nothing I need that the company won't pay for.

I pirate ebooks, especially textbooks, when I can't get something through my library. I don't watch enough television to bother pirating shows and movies. With video games, the circumstances that would make pirating a game worth it rarely come up for me; pirating games means losing out on updates and bug fixes, multiplayer, Steam cloud saves, and more. For new games, not getting bug fixes and updates makes my experience worse, and older games usually go on sale for cheap enough that I might as well buy it

Media in English language are either inaccessible or overpriced while translations vary in quality. I'm also a little fan of how individuals in seed-peer networks keep content alive just for the sake of it. I don't see how piracy hurts artists as much as it's said to.

If unemployed: Pirate EVERYTHING.

If employed: Pirate EVERYTHING (excluding: indie games)

I pirate what I can't get by reasonable means within my boundaries.

I pay for three streaming providers constantly. If the one series I want to watch is on a fourth provider, they can fuck off and I'll just download it. Same if the offering gets moved out of a provider I use (because their license expired or whatever).

Games I typically don't pirate, since Steam is just too damn convenient. Epic Exclusives though... well, if possible I just avoid them.

Most books can be bought via Kindle store so that's also convenient and I just do that.

Music is basically close to equal on all streaming providers so I am mostly good with that. If something isn't I either buy them on beatport or just rip them off youtube (so pirate).

I basically live GabeN's theory: piracy is a service problem. Give to me without having to bend over and I gladly pay. Try to fuck with me and I shrug my shoulders and go elsewhere.

I pirate content that is not in print within my region. Fan subs of Japanese TV shows, emulated games for discontinued consoles, things like that.

I pirate because i want to own something. For example, if i buy a physical book or cd, its mine forever. i can make digital copies for myself to archive or enjoy on different devices, this is legal. if i pay the same price for a digital copy, i am buying the temporary privilege of enjoying the media in the format that they specify for thw time period that the seller has a license to distribute, before i understood this, i spent good money on digital goods that just went away, furthermore, i had bought books and tapes and cds that were destroyed by time, rain, a flood, etc. i feel i am just exercising my rights and getting what i am entitled to. and fuck the big companies that shit on the actual producers to make money copying bits and bytes.

My friend only pirates 80€ games to try them out before buying.

I just pirate everything because it's easier.

Well, my friend, he's kinda poor he can't afford some books and some streaming services, so he pirates.

Good on your friend. Poor or not, you should too.

Do you pirate?

Yes

And do you justify pirating? i.e., what is your piracy philosophy?

Justify it ? you seem to suggest it's wrong or something

I still buy physical media every now and then as gifts or to collect, but generally it just doesn't make sense to pay for data that can be freely and easily copied. I need that money for things that aren't freely and easily copied.

I never pirate games from indies or smaller publishers, but from the likes of EA, Activision, Take Two, etc? Since they're always going to use, abuse and discard their workforce so they can keep giving the C suite their multi-million dollar annual bonuses, I will pirate their shit without an ounce of remorse.

With music, I never pirate simply because it's more convenient to stream the music at a reasonable price. If there's an artist or album I really love, I will buy it and/or some merch to support the artist directly.

Your friend sounds cool

I am disabled and earn pennies every month. I'll glady support something I like (I buy a shitton of CDs), but I won't lose any sleep from pirating a movie I wasn't gonna buy or see in the theatres anyway.

Ebooks often cost more than paper books, they're also easily pirate-able, mainly due to their small size, so my Kindle has almost... 600MB of wArEz

Pirated games some long time ago, if I liked it I bought it, it's a nice way to test how a game runs on my machine, there were almost no demos a few years ago, now more and more games have them, also you can test some of them with subscriptions like gamepass

Also streaming subscriptions are too fragmented, that IMO justices occasional piracy

Yes, I pirate. But I don't justify it. 🤷‍♂️

I'll pirate anything I have owned but for various reasons I now can only license so all my old games I bought I'll have ROMs of as well as albums whose labels no longer exist or are not in circulation such as obscure Punk tracks.

I don’t pirate anymore, it’s more convenient for me to purchase in most cases, but I fully support the right of anyone to pirate anything, and in the few cases where I can’t find what I’m looking for I have no qualms with trying to pirate it. P2P file sharing is honestly the coolest part about the entire internet. Social Media, Web 2.0, it’s all mediocre compared to the absolute wonder that is p2p file sharing. Lemmy and other decentralized non-crypto web 3 projects are the first time I’ve been excited about the internet since I discovered p2p 20 or so years ago, and it’s because it feels like an evolution in peer to peer community. I hope one day we don’t have to rely on centralized servers too because p2p finds a way to have paper light websites run distributed across everyone’s devices.

I do not pirate. I occasionally like to go out to sea, but I feel like spending long stretches of time out there would suck. I'd get sunburnt, I would eat like shit, my ship would probably not have decent internet access... like, there are so many cons, and I probably would make less money doing that than I am as an attorney. Not a great career path.

I do download movies I want to watch if I can't find them streaming. But I don't do anything that I'd call "piracy."

Across everyone in the house, we have Hulu, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Disney/ESPN. Sailing the high seas means all the shows and movies available from those servicea can be accessed via one media server interface.

Every once in a while I log into Amazon Video to see if their interface is as hot trash as I remember. It always is.

Tv and movies: streaming services have buggy and badly developed apps, random connection issues and sometimes shitty quality because of browsers DRM madness (looking at you Prime Video). Regular televion has too much ads. If I want to see something comfortably sometimes it's just better to browse your folder of .mp4, in full quality and with no interruptions.

Games: either 2000s era games you literally cannot buy anymore or games that keep releasing broken and unfinished remasters and enhanced versions and that pump up so many DLCs you would end up broke to have a somewhat complete experience. Or games you can buy but with the original price and that are more maintaned by the community than the developers (looking at you 25€+DLC codMW2 full of hackers with iw4x servers working perfctly)

I just don't earn enough money to justify paying for movies, games and books, i can use those money to pay my bills and what little left after paying my bills, i save it for future

I live outside the US market. As a rule I'll pay for whatever content is legally available in my country (netflix, disney+, steam etc) however there are certain publishers and/or content which is simply not offered through any channel. At that point they aren't going to see $ from me in any case, so I may as well pirate.

I want to start pirating and I want a forever solution to media management. Photos, music, movies/television, audiobooks/podcasts, even construction literature I use for work. I don't know where to begin however. I'm just thinking I'll need to spend an incredible amount of money if I ever want to continue any subscription model.

If its region locked i pirate it. I just cant be bothered to look for a vpn that's not blocked by this site. Alao if site is a shit i pirate it ,in my case crunchyroll . I really tried using it but Its just not working with my shitty internet and the buffer size is too small to load whole wideo while i do other stuff. YouTube and Netflix somehow works on my internet.

I do, movies and TV shows. Occasionally books, but I buy them much more often than I do pirate. When I was in my teens and early 20s I also pirated games, but I'm too lazy to do that anymore. Movies and TV shows are too fucking expensive for the value they provide. I also pay for a few streaming services, so I only pirate stuff that isn't there.

Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn't pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it? i.e., had you paid for the book, you would have more likely read that book.

Not really, with books and movies I only buy/download when I want to watch/read. With games I buy a lot more than I play, but I don't pirate those, so it's not relevant.