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Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

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Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#221

Post by wollsmoth »

kgwxd wrote: post #175
wollsmoth wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, you can actually buy south park from any number of providers. Amazon and iTunes both list Season 1 for $25. You don't need to only watch things on monthly streaming platforms.

Can you play the media without going through Amazon or Apple to do it? Is the quality guaranteed to be good when I choose to watch it? What kind of ads am I going to get when I click play? Even if there are no ads now, is that guaranteed to be the case forever? Downloadable, ad free, and DRM free. Music has been selling that way for decades. I've spent thousands on that kind of media, I'd have spent 10 times as much…

It sounds like you have a lot of concerns about this that all kind of conveniently put you in a place to pirate whatever you want.

Most of the time I watch things once, so I rent it if it's not on a platform I subscribe to. Generally then I can watch it on my tv, ps4, phone, computer, whatever.

Consider that money spent on these products are an indication to studios about what people like. Movie studios, production companies, they make stuff they think they can sell for a profit. I suggest that you try renting movies or buying ones you like. If you run into a situation where one of your concerns comes to life, I think it would be very reasonable to pirate something you've made a good faith effort to pay for. This is kind of how I started and now for the most part I rent/buy with some exceptions. Still downloading some trash tv shows.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#222

Post by smoe »

ntauthority wrote: post #20
BatteryMountain wrote: post #9

Piracy and data-hoarding are two different hobbies. One cost next to nothing, the cost of the other one you are quite familiar with.. Jokes aside, would you consider deleting your entire collection and then also cancel subscriptions and possibly give away or sell any tech equipment you do not use for work? And then find something else to do with the newly-freed time? Can you do it for 6 or 12 months? If not, why not?…

Piracy and such hoarding are inextricably intertwined. If you want a particularly uncommon variant of some pirate content (like an obscure movie in any quality, or a somewhat popular movie in original BD format), you better grab it when it's available, as further down the line getting the exact same such content may be more and more difficult. Streaming services have a similar issue (re-encoding, bad rereleases due t…

I think it is more intertwined with your movie-watching habit. Akin to that in the DVD age most people probably only had maybe a couple of dozens, few with entire walls in their home dedicated to movie storage.

Almost all of the movies/series I watch are somewhat obscure (from a Hollywood perspective) so I like to keep them around. But I don't watch nearly enough movies or care enough about their longevity, that a single, non backed up external drive wouldn't be good enough.

I guess there are many people who pirate for the sake of pirating trying to collect as much content as they can without actually consuming it all. But don't know what proportion this is.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#223

Post by salawat »

l33t2328 wrote: post #130
philistine wrote: post #103

What you’re describing is data hoarding. I pirate a ton too, but you know what I do with a movie or TV show after I’ve watched it? I delete it. Poof, gone. But it’s still in the most important dataset I have. My memory. To help with the metadata of my own memory, I write down a list of the films I’ve seen. I only keep the movies I really love and want to rewatch (Robocop). That TV show I just finished that was great…

In what sense is data hoarding a problem? I’ve only ever heard the term used in jest, at least partially, and in particular not ever with the same severity that actual hoarding receives.

I'd argue the only problematic data hoarders are the ones who've gone put of the way to monetize it (corporates). They tend to collect too much, literally sell to some of the most problematic groups on the planet (whether they realize it or not).

I've yet to see a pirate who isn't basically a library.

For the record, I don't require libraries to necessarily have to play nice with the Publishing Industrial Complex to be legitimate.

Long live the Signal! May it spread far and wide! Fnord!

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#224

Post by dfxm12 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #25

Welcome to Hacker News where everyone makes $500k/year and nobody pays for content. Or at least it feels that way sometimes. I don't make that much money but I also don't pay for content.

There's so much free (as in beer) content on the web that you don't even need to pirate stuff, either.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#225

Post by parenthesis »

Why isn't there a streaming service that has basically every movie and tv show ever made before, let's say, 2000.

Netflix etc. can keep on having their own new stuff exclusive to them, and fair enough if some `special' older content with a high ongoing value was kept off the `everything old' service (Star Wars, Star Trek, James Bond or whatever).

The streaming services have become too much like tv: you can only watch `what's on'.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#226

Post by scarface74 »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #141
colinmhayes wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's costing this guy $45 a month apparently.

$45 a month is a pretty cheap vice as far as things go, though. You could easily be spending $45 a month just on streaming services.

I have a much longer list of content that I want to watch on streaming services - and never care about rewatching - that I don’t even bother with pirating anymore.

As far as $45. I spend less than that on streaming services.

- Netflix $7 (T-mobile discount)

- HBO Max - Free - bundled with AT&T fiber

- Amazon Prime Video - I would have Amazon Prime anyway. But let’s attribute $6.00/month to it.

- AppleTV+ - it’s part of a bundle. But let’s attribute $5/month to it.

- Disney/Hulu no ads bundle - $14

- Paramount Plus - $10/month - no ads

Besides, I travel a lot and it’s much more convenient to use streaming (unlimited data) than trying to maintain hardware. My Plex server has been down for a year.

Admittedly- my wife and I do have the AMC Stubs+ movie pass ($50) because we actually enjoy going to the movies as part of date night.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#227

Post by georgeecollins »

philistine wrote: post #103

What you’re describing is data hoarding. I pirate a ton too, but you know what I do with a movie or TV show after I’ve watched it? I delete it. Poof, gone. But it’s still in the most important dataset I have. My memory. To help with the metadata of my own memory, I write down a list of the films I’ve seen. I only keep the movies I really love and want to rewatch (Robocop). That TV show I just finished that was great…

I don't pirate, I pay for content, but I like to own a digital copy of music content. So I buy MP3s rather than subscribe to a service. It's probably strange-- and maybe dumb-- but I feel like in the long run I never know what will happen to a service in terms of how it may change in price or quality. If I own a CD or an MP3, I know I have what I want.

It may not be rational. I know some people think I am crazy.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#228

Post by iforgotpassword »

Feritiuuu wrote: post #191
300bps wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rewatch things all the time. If I’m doing side work at night and just want something on the background I’ll put on a movie or show that I’ve seen before. Beyond that, hard drives are cheap! I have a single 18 TB disk in my main computer that runs Plex. It lets me and my kids watch content from anywhere with an Internet connection. 18 TB hard drives are about $300.

After 4tb dlof data I started to get weirded out by running too big disks. Resilvering might take ages. So long that raid2 might be mandatory. I haven't calculated the right risk factor but I still only use 4tb disks

Eh I recently switched to two 14tb disks of different manufacturers. One is usually in standby and once a week I do a rsync to it. Btrfs on both for checksums.

Good enough for me, I assume it's way more likely that a PSU failure fries them all, in which case no variant of raid would have helped anyways. For important stuff I have an off-site Backup, but that's only around 800gb anyways and growing a few gb per year.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#230

Post by wollsmoth »

account42 wrote: post #206
wollsmoth wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, you can actually buy south park from any number of providers. Amazon and iTunes both list Season 1 for $25. You don't need to only watch things on monthly streaming platforms.

Can buy them or can you only "buy" them aka rent them for a fixed fee for an indefinite but inevitably finite periord with restrictions on how and where you can watch them?

Sure, unfortunately if you buy something on iTunes, it isn't available on amazon and vice versa. I guess you just have to look at your devices and pick a platform based on that. Most of the time I just rent a movie and watch and it expires so it's not really a problem I deal with a lot. I just rent the movie right before I watch it. It's pretty convenient.
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