Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Jfc, I can't even calculate.

Music, if we say 10 bucks a CD, at least 10k. Probably closer to 20k, and maybe more because I haven't actually counted in years because I didn't see the point in trying to keep up. However, I just went and looked at the folder on my nas and it has 1k+ albums on it, and that's way less than is on my main drive on my media PC. So even the 20k estimate is a lot lower than what's actually there. Likely closer to the $50k mark if my memory is right. I tend to grab whole albums rather than individual tracks only, and I'm prone to grabbing an entire discography when I discover a new band. My music collection is around 2tb total, I know that without looking.

Movies, even at the same price, it would be around the 8k mark somewhere, though they aren't all in one place, so I cant be certain. There's a little over 1k files on the nas, but that's only the ones that everyone wanted available on there.

Books, I'm fucked. Call it 5 bucks for a cheap paperback, and I'm close to 10k, if not over. Hard to be sure because I do have duplicates in multiple formats. I've whittled down to only "borrowing" epub files and converting on my own if someone borrows an ebook from me and wants a different format, but I've never gone through and deleted mobis and whatnot. But it's around 3k files on my boox reader, plus more on my nas drive that I really only keep because I like having access to some reference materials but don't use them often enough to justify keeping them on devices. So 15k there, at that price.

I just checked because I was curious. Almost 18k files of ebooks. That, however, does include classics that I only read occasionally, copies in multiple formats, stuff that isn't for me (kid, wife, etc), and probably some stuff that I read once and never will again, but didn't delete. So, over 50,000 bucks at 5 bucks each.

Comics, that's easier because a scanned version doesn't really have a monetary value at all, and most of my collection is of OOP stuff. So, depending on how you look at what a price should be, it's $0, maybe 600 bucks at $1 each, or you'd have to track cover prices on all of it, and I ain't doing that lol.

Tbh, I can't think of the last time I pirated a game. I just don't game that much on my desktop any more, and I know I haven't in the 10 odd years I've had that specific hard drive.

If I tried to factor in stuff that was higher priced at some point (and CDs used to be pretty expensive), numbers would go up.

Shit. Even if I wiped out the stuff I have physical copies of, it would still be in the 100k range I think.

None I think. I paid for all my streaming services that had these movies and shows and then have sourced everything else through originals or sources that were rentable.

This is that whole issue with defining ownership with digital media. Movies were called the greatest financial invention of America because they only had to make a product once and could sell it forever.
With digital media and technology increases we now have a much easier time owning our own copies.

This is likely literally what NFTs hoped to fix to make set revenue of of each digital file and also why they failed because they are so easy to copy anyways.

So, none, or an infinite amount, depending on if you ask me or a business major.

A lot. Though it's hard to put a price on some things because they're software for discontinued products ( old game consoles, Amiga software, etcetera ) and aren't sold as they were, even if some of them are still sold for other platforms.

everything up to 2006 was roughly 70K cad including stuff I never used, duplicates only counted if they were either games for different system/movies from different phys. media/given to friends. value of dollar was roughly accounted for as if it was bought when new.

A bunch of friends and I stopped pirating stuff when we started working and had no time for entertainment and we tallied everything up and checked each other's calculations and voted on if certain items could be included, etc., as a closure/end of an era thing. I was second place and top of our group was like 130K

current bounty is probably just whatever mcu films are on bluray and maybe 6 bluray volumes of whatever anime weren't on the netflix or amazon I'm mooching. Maybe like 8 switch games but I only played 2 and wiped it when I sold the switch, and 3 pc games but I only played 1 but I'll probably just go through my steam backlog if I ever have gaming time again in my life.

edit: I guess also some netflix shows while I wasn't mooching an account and some apple shows but no idea how to account for that.

Depends. Do we count in-app purchases of apps I've modded or obtained pre-modded? Do we count the cost of films as one-off rentals/purchases, or do we count them as subscriptions?

If we consider games as buying one-off licences for them that I kept in perpetuity, it would be in the few hundreds, probably about £400.

If we include streaming, as a subscription service that I've used for the last decade roughly, then 10×12×£10 (assuming a tenner a month), we're looking at £1,200 saved for streaming.

However, at least 20-30 films have been downloaded by me personally, so assuming a cost of about a fiver per film (idk how much films go for these days), we're looking at another ~£700.

But also, we have to include ad-free YouTube as YT Premium. And even if we're to assume that YT Premium is anywhere close to the service I provide myself with, i.e downloading things I actually keep as digital files forever, it would still cost a lot. About 5 years of YT Premium would be (according to ChatGPT because I didn't want to research price increases), just over £800.

But I've also watched both Netflix and Disney+ exclusives, namely Squid Game and The Mandalorian, so I guess streaming would've been much more expensive?

Also, we have about a year of Spotify, which ChatGPT (easier to give more accurate estimates) claims is just over £140.

Adding to that, apparently the cost of Netflix over the same period is just over £1,500, so that changes the total.

So far, £3500, not counting in-app purchases in modded games. If we count that (which is ridiculous cuz I would never spend that much money on games, even if I was a liquid trillionaire (meaning having £1T cash)), we'd probably be looking at something in the hundreds of thousands if not millions.

If I can't own it, I'm not buying it.

Straight up piracy - probably only like $3k, if we're including backups of a personal physical media collection well over 20k.

Unclear. Cause I don't tell

Depends, are we talking the highest retail price? Or clearance prices?

Let's take steam as an example, before steam existed I was a big pirate. Now that steam exists and it's so convenient I basically buy every game. But I only buy them after wish listing them and waiting until they get to like $5 or less. So I'm a bargain basement patient gamer.

For other things I'm the same way, so what would be the actual cost of a cheapskates pirate library? Flea market clearance DVD prices would be fair

Very little. I've always wanted to be paid for the work I do so I have always paid others for the work they have done for me. If I couldn't afford to pay for it, I didn't steal it instead.

Enough to make me hate capitalism and inflation rates twice as much!

Hard to tell, guesstimate €1,500.

I really only download music, mostly individual songs. I use sites like himovies.to for movies, and then if I like something enough, I buy a DVD, if available.
And some few "mod apks", which yes, are a bit shady. I don't know how to do that myself, so I just run them through VirusTotal and hope for the best if it's all green (false negatives). Stuff like KineMaster because I am procrastinating to learn using Kdenlive, MLUSB Mounter and some games.

I haven't purchased any media or software (excl. donations) that doesn't come on a physical medium.

Depends. If we take from when I was a kid? Probably something in the hundreds of thousands or even in the millions. I pirated pretty much everything because I lived in a very small town with no electronics shop so I couldn't even buy games.

However, in the last 8 years or so? I find that I rarely pirate games anymore. Bundles, steam sales and refunds allow me to buy without worrying about liking the game.

Music is also something I don't pirate anymore. I'm not one needing thousands of tracks, but rather a small and select collection. So I occasionally buy from bandcamp or other services so I can keep the music I want in my jellyfin server.

Films and shows are a different thing tho. At home whave netflix, so for most stuff we go there, but if something's not there, I'll pirate it. So... idk but... some hundreds? I'm not a fan of movies and most of the stuff I watch (which is not a lot) is on netflix.

I only pirate what is unavailable.

And things that are supposed to be bad, like the new Snow White movie, which made me still feel robbed.

I’m like in like 200$ maximum

On music alone... I have 774 albums on my library, of which I probably legit own like 20-30. At a conservative 10€ per album, that'd be around 7500€ on music. I also have 81 series, of which some of them are dropout.tv, which I'm legit paying for, so let's say 75 series that I pirate. I have no idea of the real cost, but let's say each series is 100€ in bluray. That's another 7500€. I also have 202 movies, of which I own some, but not in bluray, so let's assume I'd have to buy all of them. At, let's say, 20€/movie, that's another 4000€.

So, in total I'd say I have around 19000€ on pirated content. There's no way I could pay for all of it lol, but I also haven't watched/listened to all of it, so I wouldn't have bought it even if I could.

Edit: oh and I forgot about videogames. But I don't pirate many of those lately anyway, since steam is so convenient, and I also have a big catalogue of free games from Epic. But I did pirate maaaany in the past. When I was a kid I would rent them and then download a "nocd" crack lol, those were the days.

Does it count if you barely watched/played it?