this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
456 points (98.3% liked)

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

70401 readers
947 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others



Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

We heartily recommend visiting the free port of freemediaheckyeah (aka FMHY) while you sail the high seas, for all the freshest links the ocean has to offer.

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):

🏴‍☠️ Other communities

FUCK ADOBE!

Torrenting/P2P:

Gaming:


💰 Please help cover server costs.

Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Nangijala@feddit.dk 2 points 10 minutes ago

In my case, i went back to physical media. Bought a blhray player and now my boyfriend and I are gradually expanding our movie library when we feel like it. Some movies and shows don't exist on dvd/bluray, but that's okay. I think there is something healthy about not having access to absolutely everything you want at all times. Besides, for me, there is also something satisfying in having ti get up from the couch and change discs and so on. I missed the physical aspect of watching movies and remember how much streaming services fried my fucking brain while i still used them.

It was to the point where you barely register wtf you are watching because everything on streaming services is about the next thing.

Movies werent movies on streaming services, but content and I heard people starting to refer to movies and shows as content at some point and was like "this is fucked".

Content. Content to fill the void. Not to experience or educate, enlighten or provoke your senses and morality. Just content to distract you.

Ew.

I dont mimd piracy, but i prefer physical media. I no longer wish to follow technollgical advancements. I want to go back and stay at a place where there was some level of conscious and physical effort to watch a movie. That way you remember it better, you slow down and you appreciate the piece of art in front of you rather than seeing it as content.

[–] fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 39 minutes ago

The real winners here are pirates because thanks to companies streaming quality media, we get quality pirated media the moment or hours later, whereas with film we had to wait until DVD until we got quality pirated film.

[–] Zephyr@sh.itjust.works 1 points 45 minutes ago

Netflix didn't have a choice but to get into production and producers were going to see their money anyways and get into streaming. There was only one way forward that was sensible for both groups.

[–] heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 1 points 58 minutes ago

He skipped over LUSERnet and LimeWire, which was before 2007. Usenet was a big sharing community too before 2007.

Piracy has always been around. It's the underhand method of getting what someone wants. Empires didn't mint coins because it was fun, but they needed to identify forgeries. Also, scales were used (and people would use lead) to trick it instead of coin.

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 hour ago

Before 2007, but mostly yes.

[–] PacketPilgrim@thelemmy.club 5 points 3 hours ago

You wouldn't download a car!!! I would if I could and soon with 3d printers you bet I will!

[–] wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 children)

Sometime around 2007

Bahahaha! Oh, OP, please tell us you're ≈20yrs old without saying it outright. 🤣

To the point: I, and everyone I knew, was pirating everything they could —from the early 90s onward.

Yes, all of us would've "downloaded a car" in a heartbeat (well, maybe a week of them, at those baud modem speeds. 😅)

[–] locuester@lemmy.zip 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Yep. Grabbing photoshop 7 via zmodem from a wwiv bbs.

[–] wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Hey, when they started listing it as a prereq for advanced design courses in school, I was 100% not gonna let my clever brain sit idle as my poor AF upbringing cost me another educational opportunity.

Fuck the Man, I crave knowledge and pursue it like it's a civil right.

(FWIW, why it isn't is kinda essential to this whole thread's point, IMHO.}

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Our Apple User Group received a letter from Bill Gates back in the 1980s admonishing people for pirating his compiler. It was hilariously badly done.

[–] wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

How shamelessly ironic of him. 🤣🖕🏼

(Get fucked by an undead horde, Gates. You're trying to be the Democrat among oligarchs —which hasn't aged well at all, ya pedo.)

[–] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 9 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (2 children)

Woefully inaccurate, the entire P2P file sharing craze kicked off by Napster all went down before 2007 and there were plenty of online piracy venues before then too like IRC, 90s copper internet was perfectly capable of all that. And I was torrenting movies right alongside my Netflix DVD rentals. Piracy has always been here and has never left.

[–] Souvenir@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Filesharing pre-dates the web.

[–] heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 1 points 54 minutes ago (1 children)

I mean, technically - the internet and computers run on copying functions. On the Internet, it literally reads a file from a computer system (or a database entry), and on a computer, the MOV assembly operation copies memory between registers and RAM.

[–] Souvenir@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 53 minutes ago (1 children)

Oh, yeah.

But I mean piracy filesharing. That was already popular on dial-in BBSes in the 80s.

[–] darkwing_duck@sh.itjust.works 2 points 35 minutes ago (1 children)
[–] Souvenir@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 13 minutes ago

Sorry grandpa. All your friends are dead.

[–] eightys3v3n@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 hours ago

It never left, but common folks decreased reliance on it substantially. When Netflix was popular my house of IT people slowed and almost stopped pirating video content entirely, there was no reason. After Netflix turned shit and half a dozen services sprung up, we cancelled Netflix and now pirate absolutely everything video. There was a slight drop while crunchyroll was good, but it becasue shit enough apparently that those in my family using it returned to pirating.

Music didn't shitify as much though, I feel it's improved now. I have Tidal because it's cheap and easy to find new music. I seldom find music that I can't listen to on Tidal.

Elegedly.

[–] bedwyr@piefed.ca 12 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Piracy very much existed before the internet took off. Recording VHS, then burning dvd's and cd's, and the like. Many stores in the hood would openly sell burned cd's even. Others out of the trunk of their cars.

And the need to pirate never went away, fuck netflix, never had them, never will.

[–] Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Recording vhs for home use didn't even count as piracy i think.

My dads friend group already wildly shared and copied commodore 64 games and music though.

[–] Uri@infosec.pub 3 points 6 hours ago

Never paid for any of these streaming shit

[–] johncandy1812@lemmy.ca 17 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

The order is a bit off. Production companies starting pulling their content from Netflix after they saw how profitable streaming services could be.

This forced Netflix to start producing their own content.

[–] wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

forced

That's humanizing the corp way too generously. Nothing "forced Netflix to start producing [its] own content" but itself. 🤑

[–] johncandy1812@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

"Caused" is probably a more appropriate and less loaded term.

[–] wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

No. That's still removing the onus from the corpos. Fuck that simping.

re: your handle : I'd totally watch Uncle Buck as Paul Revere (or as the Duke of Wellington), FWIW. I guess I'll have to wait until the Disney-Sony shite machine pushes it through their botfarm to raise that dead legend for the screen.

[–] johncandy1812@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

Simping? I rephrased my idea a bit for the sake of argument but I understand their motivation and their behaviour.

I'd say you're one to talk about handles with yours being some reference to Bill & Ted and Joseph Stalin but I think it might be lost on you.

load more comments
view more: next ›