Comic Strips

For piracy I mostly go to those watch online sites with ad block and stuff turned on. I used to torrent but I don't do that much anymore.

One thing that I will enjoy with the slow demise of streaming is that the current generation will git gud at IT again. It's kinda shocking, as an older millenial/xennial, how bad some of the Gen Z's I work with are with basic IT tasks whereas X's and M's are fine with it as we've had to deal with Napster and Limewire

Yo ho ho. If purchase is not ownership, then piracy is not theft.

Add to this, "this service will only stream in 480p on Linux"

Enshitification is the word

Completely relatable. The prices keep going up with more and more restrictions while being enshittified with ads, tiered service, and paying twice to watch something - the streaming service fee and then a rental fee on top of that, for a movie that might be a decade or more old.

Arr…fuck that.

This is exactly why people fled cable. It was completely predictable the streaming services would enshittify just like cable.

Do what you want, cuz a pirate is free

You ARRRR a pirate!

The new one is: This streaming service is owned by one the most evil people on the planet, and it comes included with my phone plan, but I'm just going to pirate everything anyway, just because Fuck Them.

Wife and I live in Germany, but still have some streaming services from our home country in Eastern Europe.

We started a Scream movie marathon on the weekend to catch up on the series, before we watch the newest one in cinema.

We watched the first 2, and half of the 3rd on 28th February Saturday on one of the streaming platforms (SkyShowtime). The next morning (1st of March), the movies were not available anymore.

We finished 3 and watched 4 on Amazon Prime, but within that we had to start a separate subscription for horror movies.

5 was only available in German with no subtitles, so I had to search for another source. Ended up creating a Paramount+ account, downloaded the app, and watched the movie there.

Then back to Amazon Prime, where finished the 6th Scream movie, before heading to the local cinema.

This was the last straw, we decided to go back to sail the seas after a decade of streaming service subscription. Next weekend I will take some time to figure out the setup we need to make this happen safely, as a lot has changed since I left it behind.

the fact that Gabe said "piracy is a service problem" fifteen fucking years ago, and none of these fuckwits in content distribution have learned this at all is a source of continuous astonishment to me.

"The content isn't available in your region"

You have the content. I want to watch the content. But nooooo, I have to turn my VPN on and pretend I'm somewhere else, and you know I'm not really there because I can't magically materialize half-way across the world in 1 minute.
So what's the point? Just let me watch the damn content.

I'm sure these region locks make a lot of sense for the suits when it comes to paying royalties and whatnot but as a consumer it's infuriating. Archaic ass bullshit.

In instances where there is no legal way to watch something piracy hurts nobody as the company would not have made money from me anyway. It doesn't even hurt the artists, the refusal of the distributer to offer content worldwide is the real scandal that everyone in the creative industry should tackle.

I tried to buy digital copies of an album the other day and couldn't because it was only on streaming services and DRM'd to all shit, so I just pirated it instead.

Ended up with some high quality flac too...

Or

Here is everything the human race made so far. All the movies, music, books etc. Download whatever you want.

Yes, pirate is better

Okay I gotta disagree partially on the third panel. I'd much rather have the option of purchasing individual movies or shows than having a subscription. Like, imagine we had Steam but instead of games, it was shows and movies? That'd be great. Imagine the sales! PatientWatchers amirite?

Unfortunately it's rarely possible to actually purchase, and definitely not without any DRM. So the third panel should really say "This show is not available for purchase" or only mention renting or specify that it's with loads of DRM or whatever.