Oh but it's not buying! The big "Buy" or "Purchase" button might have said so, but if you'd have careful read through 35 pages of user agreements, you'd see that you only rent the license to stream it.
Which obviously is total bullshit and the whole fucking system should be burned to the ground.
This is precisely why I refuse to buy digital games. (And it extends to other media, but games are where I actually spend money)
I’ll pay for a rental service designed to be a rental service (ps+, for example) but will not buy individual games digitally. Who knows when they will become unavailable for some reason, and I can no longer download a copy. It’s bad enough when servers are shut down within 2 years of launch, but when the whole game gets pulled, then what?
I’ve decided I’m not even bothering with the next generation of consoles. So few things are even released on disc, with half the consoles being digital only, that it’s not even worth it. I’ll pirate instead.
This is where the law needs to step in, it should be illegal to call it "Buy" if you are just leasing it. It's absolutely misleading to most consumers.
Also, copyright infringement never even used to ever be a crime, although now there is a form of criminal copyright infringement, if it's done for money or if the value is above a certain amount. Thanks to lobbying from wealthy industries. Most copyright infringement still is not a crime, though.
The reason industries lobby for harsher copyright laws is because they know they can make more money if people can't pirate. They take the piss with their pricing, but they're acutely aware that if they take the piss too much then people will turn to piracy. By prohibiting piracy and levying harsh penalties they can get away with even more unfair pricing, and maybe even profit from piracy through punitive damages (which is mainly a US thing, most sensible nations only allow you to sue for actual damages).
The previous comment is more like shorthand, rather than literal truth.
It's faster to say piracy isn't stealing if purchasing isn't ownership than it is to say "if a company can simply reverse a permanent access license at any time then pirating media from them is perfectly ethical and should not be considered a crime"
It is stealing. I don’t understand the mental gymnastics here. You’re stealing income from whoever created the content if you’re not paying them for your ability to watch it.
I'm starting to think that everybody's thinking about this the wrong way. But I think really needs to happen is they need to be sued to oblivion with a class action lawsuit. They can say whatever they want in their user agreement and do their best to get away with it but if it's not enforceable in court then it needs to be shot down and shot down completely. This needs a class action lawsuit. There need to be several class action lawsuits. One against them, one against Sony and so on.
They have a lot of money and they might win in court maybe but they should at least be challenged in that venue.
A clarification that really only makes this worse: Crunchyroll did not acquire Funimation. Funimation acquired Crunchyroll, and decided to use the Crunchyroll name instead. They have had every opportunity since the merger to support people's purchases, but have chosen not to.
This is incorrect. It was a merger. Sony owns both Crunchyroll and Funimation. That being said, the servers didn't magically disappear. Media could 1000% have been consolidated.
Sony owns both now, but Crunchyroll was purchased from AT&T in 2021. Sony purchased Funimation in 2017. So while it is perhaps not 100% accurate to say that Funimation itself did the purchasing of Crunchyroll, the company that owned Funimation did.
Edit: it is also worth mentioning that after the acquisition there was an immediate decrease in new content added to Funimation, and within a couple seasons there was virtually none, as customers were being pushed to the Crunchyroll app. Many, but not all, Funimation shows were also copied to Crunchyroll, but none the other way.
They probably bought all the lube they'd need to fuck everyone over before the merger was proposed at a board meeting the person with the idea was so excited for it.
They couldn't even transfer over everyone's watch history like they promised. They can't even manage to apply multiple audio tracks and subtitles to the same videos, so each dub is displayed like it's own season and when youre done a series it just starts playing episode 1 in German right away. Their newly added page is full of old titles that just had a Hindi dub uploaded.
They'd have an easier time getting to mars than letting people transfer their purchased videos over.
But crunchyroll paid video game YouTubers to promote it a decade ago, so it was the brand that won out. Never mind that all these problems did not occur on the funimation website. Never let anyone ever tell you that advertising isn't important, it's more ten times more valuable than good coding or engineering.
The dub problem is a Crunchyroll problem, in my experience, having been a Crunchyroll member before the merger. Dubs on Crunchyroll where a complete mess, each time they tried to fix it, it got worse. As you mentioned, dubs being displayed as seasons.
After the funimation buy out, I see dubbed titles being fixed, and more dub options being added.
Just a couple of weeks ago I used a free trial on Crunchyroll and none of that is true, at least for the 3 titles I watched (My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaizen, and Demon Slayer). The audio tracks were selectable in the video player, as were the subtitles.
Also, the subtitles were absolutely top notch, with translations of Japanese text appearing just next to the original, at the same angle and with the same colours, and without obscuring the original text.
I haven't heard about any shoddy business before seeing this post, but that could be because I haven't looked for it.
So they bought another company and then said "we changed our name so we're not obligated to fulfill any of our previous obligations now!"? How dafuq is that legal?
"We understand that you may have concerns about your digital copies from Funimation."
The problem is your concerns. We are being understanding about your problem.
"Please note that Crunchyroll does not currently support Funimation Digital copies, which means that access to previously available digital copies will not be supported."
Crunchyroll does not support this, which means that it will not be supported. Your role here is to note this.
"We appreciate your understanding..."
We are being appreciative. Your are being understanding. That's the way it is, got it?
"We appreciate your patience" has always rubbed me the wrong way too. How dare you assume? I'm a very impatient man, and i know you [x company] appreciate nothing of real value
I work in customer service and find myself saying this all the time. It translates to: 'It is what it is and your bitching at me won't change anything. So let's both save ourselves the time and energy of the charade.'
I still feel like it should be illegal for the button to say "Buy" or "Purchase" when you're actually leasing the item.
There should be a nice, big, summarized disclaimer right above the button explaining what exactly you are purchasing. I'm sure the 100 page EULA explains but nobody has time to read through the whole thing every time they make a digital purchase.
Been saying it since I popped out the womb, I'm so happy to see more people share this sentiment. It doesn't matter that changing the definition of "buy" is legal when they put a tiny little link to a 30 page document above the big green "purchase" button. The fact that that's legal is the whole problem.
That's basically how iPhones have worked from the start. You're paying all that money to lease the phone. Apple can do as it pleases or ban you from using your purchased phone for whatever infraction they want. You are paying all that money but you don't own it, Apple does. That's why I've never and will never own one
Unfortunately, that applies to way more than just Apple products. You can't unlock the bootloader on many modern Android phones sold in the US, and you can't replace the primary bootloader on any phone (with very few exceptions), anywhere, due to the hardware implementation of secure boot, which requires the bootloader to be cryptographically signed by the owner of the keys (the vendor).
There is no option to replace the keys with your own in the device that you purchased and "own".
Don't even get me started on Smart TVs and other IoT devices. All of a sudden, people don't care about computer freedom as much if you just stop calling it a computer.
you can also steal physical media from Walmart, copy it all to a hard drive, melt down and cast the plastic into dildos and buttplugs for your own enjoyment.
Fucking amen. Especially in the music scene, I've read about sooo many people going back to CD's because they got fed up with their music streaming service of choice and I'm just over here feeling like that guy at the Diablo Immortal announcement... Do you guys not have phones?
Like, these things have hundreds of gigs of storage, more than any iPod ever did, and yet almost everyone has completely forgotten about having an mp3 collection? I have about 2500 songs saved on my phone with the same or better bitrate than you'd get on Spotify premium and it's like... 25gb? I could easily quadruple my collection and still not be hurting for storage space.
if you can take something I own from me without compensating me, I can take something you own from you without compensating you. piracy is a moral imperative in order to preserve art.
Feel bad for Abe. I had a same conversation with Garmin; it turns out when you buy lifetime maps it means for the duration we decide to support the product, which can have the lifetime of a mayfly and there is nothing they will do, and nothing you can do except not buy another Garmin product.
I did a quick google, you can torrent updates for free for at least some garmin products. Given you paid for lifetime map updates, I'd argue it's not even illegal.
It's such a bullshit argument. Imagine buying a Snap-On wrench because of the lifetime warranty, and they told you, "Oh no no no no, we meant the lifetime of the wrench."
Yeah the IP holders are not going to be happy about this. But this is why I pirate because I ACTUALLY OWN MY SHIT ON MY MEDIA SERVER! It's so fucking easy too
At least a partial refund at minimum. It's one thing if you go out of business cause you ran out of money. Voluntarily turning off access is another story.
Likely because the original company had terms similar to others where digital content "ownership" is only an "ongoing license/subscription to access" which they can revoke (which is the real issue with any sort of online digital media)
Funimation bought Crunchyroll, then moved everything to the Crunchyroll name.
"Crunchyroll" isn't the one doing this...it's funimation. Which, arguably, only make it worse. If funamation wanted to it would be easy....they don't want to honour those purchases.
Edit: I just found out technically Sony is the one that bought Crunchyroll and is technically "merging" them. So again, would be 100% possible if funimation sony wanted to.
Exactly. Somewhere in the Funimation ToS, there is almost certainly a clause that absolves them of any obligation of keeping anything you bought available to you at all times. You never owned anything you bought from Funimation in the first place, so there is no obligation to fulfill for Crunchy Roll.
Remember kids, piracy is not only moral, but a moral obligation in this capitalist hellscape! (and not theft by definition, and should not be illegal) Torrents are one of the few effective weapons against corporations
It's also more accessible than ever. People have had over 20 years to write software to make piracy better, and it's less of a pain in the ass for me now than streaming services. The most idiotic thing companies could do right now is restrict access to legally bought content.
Honestly kind of bold of them, given that anime watchers tend to be extremely familiar with piracy and it was only the efforts of Crunchyroll and other easy to use services that finally managed to make legal anime a reasonable option. They aren't so entrenched that people won't go right back to pirating again.
I don't see the problem. You bought the product, you're allowed to download it in perpetuity, even if it's from a torrent site.
Hell, the law is on my side. Depending on where you live, there are laws which allow you to make copies of media you own for personal use.
You can use a VCR to record broadcast TV, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to make a copy of stuff that's available on streaming sites, etc. Especially if you bought it.
Fair use does allow you to back up your stuff. That's why you can rip CDs in the US. Nbd. They tried to make it stop, but it didn't. And I buy CDs specifically to rip the lossless audio off of them. You can also rip DVDs legally.
But Blu-Ray gets a little muddy. It's not the content that's the problem, but the DRM. You're allowed to back up the content, but it's technically illegal to defeat the DRM in order to access said content.
Hasn't stopped me. I don't make my MKVs available on the Internet. I acquire copies of my movies legitimately. What I do with the discs when I get home is honestly nobody's business.
I can’t think of a major suit regarding this, but I would imagine thats half the reason decisions like this get made. I can easily see the people making this decision asking the legal department the same question, and the lack of an easily identifiable loss solidifying the choice.
I try to buy non-DRM downloadable media. If it's impossible ... I'll buy it and then "obtain" the non-DRM version. I make sure I have a digital backup of physical media too.
My stance is "Fuck 'em, I paid for it." I'm not going to be beholden to a service or system that's likely to disappear at some point, or a physical thing that can break.
There's a bit of misunderstanding here. You didn't buy digital content on Funimation. You purchased the physical copies (DVD/BluRay) and also got access to it digitally on your account, sort of like a bonus. I do understand the frustration since Funimation said you'll have access to it forever online. I don't know what to say if people bought it solely for the digital convenience. But you still have access to the physical media.
Taking back a sold good (access to a digital library) after sale is nothing but theft. Imagine the bag boy at your supermarket would take an apple out of your purchase and eat it.
Voicing "I do understand the frustration" is not the answer to stealing.
It was still part of the purchase. It was often part of the advertised product. You purchased digital content from Funimation, and Crunchyroll is revoking access to that purchase.
This is simply false. The "quote" here fully omits a sentence without using a bracketed ellipsis, so you can't tell you're being deceived. The omitted sentence makes it clear that the claim made in the post about purchased digital copies is false; the thing we are discussing is not purchased digital copies. Full post from Crunchyroll; I will add emphasis to the sentence omitted by Mr. Goldfarb.
We understand that you may have concerns about your digital copies from Funimation. These Digital copies available on Funimation were a digital access to the content available on the DVDs or Blu-rays purchased.
Excuse me while I continue to enjoy the salty sea air, practice my vocal projection for shanties, and peruse then collection of different national flags aboard to make sure they are convincing and not in need of mending.
Hilarious how CrunchyRoll actually did the 'live long enough to become the villain' thing.
McDonnel Douglas more or less bought a controlling amount of shares in Boeing, then the two merged with technically Boeing purchasing McDonnel Douglas, but in functional reality nearly all Boeing management retired or was forced out, leaving McDonnel Douglas upper management in charge, but they went with the name Boeing because it had better reputation at the time.
Well, then I guess its a shame crunchyroll's name has been besmirched, back to rigging the main sails.
TBH I have a subscription to multiple streaming sites, but I usually torrent what I want to watch anyway.
I paid to watch it, I'm simply choosing to watch it in the way that's most convenient to me. Sometimes Netflix forgets to supply the video in the quality I paid for, so I'm simply helping them fulfill their contract.
But on page 69, section 420 of Netflix's EULA, it says that you may only watch videos in the quality you paid for if your device is capable of supporting their shitty hardware DRM implementation, where if you modify any part of the system, it becomes invalidated.
Therefore, you, the consumer, are in the wrong for not reading through and understanding the entirety of the license agreement before paying extra for a service that didn't make that limitation obvious before receiving payment. Nothing legally-dubious going on here.
This is something I don't see enough people bring up. It's one thing to download the newest album from [independent band] for free when they're selling a DRM-free version of it on their website for $5. It's another thing to download an obscure 20+ year old anime that's had its distribution rights passed to seven different companies since its release. Someone from Madhouse can correct me if I'm wrong, but I cannot believe that using my friend's Crunchyroll account to watch the Japanese dub of Boogiepop Phantom instead of illegally streaming the English dub from a sketchy website would earn any of the original creators any money at all. Even if I paid for my own CR subscription, it would only provide Crunchyroll with money. No matter how I consume this anime, the folks who made the show aren't getting compensated. So why should I pay for an inferior service?
Day 10,490 of saying it should be flatly illegal to call a lease a purchase. Companies should never be allowed to use language that implies ownership of a product when what you're buying is a permanently revokable temporary lease.
"But it's in the TOS, what they're doing is perfectly legal" yeah the problem is that it's legal
Fraud is still fraud, even if they call it something else.
The consumer was led to believe, they could access the media for a long time. The time was abruptly cut short. The consumer did not get what they were led to believe. It's fraud.
It's like every other (consumer-)fraud before: they can write in the fine print whatever they want.
I am not saying that this argument will definitely hold up in court. I just want to point out, that it's not so clear-cut as you are presenting it.
Yeah you bought the right to use their license and to pull it off their servers as long as they exist.
You still have that, nothing changed in that regard.
But yeah it's a problem that buying digital stuff doesn't really mean anything.
I bought the fallout 4dlc when it was new. I went back to try and play recently and my dlc is gone and says I need to purchase it. My save files don't work cause they need the dlc so clearly I had it.
But it was years ago, I lost or deleted the email. I called up psn support and since all records of me having bought the dlc are gone on their end, they won't refund or give me the dlc back.
They literally swiped my purchase away and are asking me for a receipt to prove I bought it, 8 fucking years ago. At least with physical media, the studio doesn't walk into my apartment and steal my hard copies
I bought Assassin's Creed Origins on Steam and purchased one of the DLCs on Uplay because it was on sale. They told me after it wouldn't load that no the DLC wasn't compatible because it was bought on a different storefront even though they both ultimately run on Uplay...
No I couldn't get a refund either...
I now view it as a personal risk to give Ubisoft any money whatsoever so I have zero qualms about pirating their games.
I don't hate physical nor digital media. I don't hate streaming or services which provide access to streamed content.
I hate shitty business people. Those who think that paying once for something isn't good enough.
This is exactly that. You paid for the media. You should continue to have uninterrupted access to that content.
The whole idea of ownership is getting muddied by all this "pay for access" and "pay for license" nonsense. It's one thing of you're paying to use a service and that service licenses things. Sure. Like Netflix licensing access to a show. End users of Netflix don't need to buy the show again from Netflix, they are paying for access to the platform and can use the Netflix license to watch the show. You're paying for a service, that service has content that's licensed, you're not paying for the content.
My problem is that licenses are not ownership of the thing that they license. They're not supposed to be. Even back in the days of DVD, movies had a small section of the package that was a "proof of purchase" (usually a small tearaway section inside the case) which physically represented the license for that copy of that media. You had a physical copy and a license all in one. You can have a license and no copy of the licensed content, and you can have licensed content without a license, most notably in the case of downloading a program or something and having that program but needing to activate it with a license before it works.
In the past licenses were often included with or implied by ownership of a thing. You bought a record, and having the record itself implied that you had a license to own that copy of the content on that record. Over time, especially with digital content, the concept of license ownership and licensed content have been decoupled. Having a copy of... Say, Windows, does not and should not imply you have a license to use the windows operating system. This is the same idea as applied to online media. All of those people have a license to the content, but no access to the licensed content now. Get fucked I guess.
I think it's foolish to buy a license for a thing, and not keep a copy of that thing. While I think that's foolish, it's exactly what I do all the time with games in my steam library. The only reason I trust steam with it is because of their long history and track record. I have licenses to a bunch of games, they have the games on their servers and I can download those games and license them through steam in an entirely seamless process. It's not the smartest choice but it's a decision I made long ago that I've stuck to. Bluntly, I won't buy games on other platforms because I don't want to risk losing access to the content that I paid for the license to use. So I avoid epic Games and other online games libraries for that reason (though, shout out to gog, mainly for giving me the ability to transfer my license to steam when I buy something).
The biggest issue I see is that media doesn't have a universal license authorization method. With software and games, there are license keys. You get a set of seemingly random numbers (and sometimes letters too) which are a valid license for that content. It's transferrable. With media, no such system exists, and licenses granted by a company usually are not transferable in part due to having no system to validate the license with the new service. You bought it, you have a license with x company for it, but y company doesn't even know what you're talking about, and won't accept or otherwise recognise the license from company x for the media, and grant you the access you paid for to that media.
Because of this, I've been extremely hesitant to buy any digital media. I'll get services from a streaming service like Apple music, YouTube music, Spotify, etc for my listening, or YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, HBO+, etc for access to their licensed content that they have licenses for, but I hesitate to buy any non-physical media otherwise. If I'm relying on an online service to maintain my license and deliver the licensed content to me, I'm pretty much not going to do it unless I'm very desperate to access that content (which is rare, of its ever happened at all).
Until we can get a valid license transfer system from the media conglomerates, I'm just going to stick to physical media, or get it in a way that I don't have to worry about licensing. I have a source online for buying and downloading music. An online music store, if you will. What it does is allow me to buy albums and download them. No streaming, no muss, no fuss. Pick your format, download, transaction complete. Enjoy. I chose this because they offered the content in flac, frequently better than CD quality (I'm usually looking for studio quality, 16/24 bit, 48khz or better). Once I have the files and my receipt, everything is done. I legally have the content and the receipt is archived in my email as my proof that I purchased it and hold a license to have the media.
I'm not aware of anything similar for video media, and I stopped looking for one. I will buy the physical media for now.
There's no way I'm going to hand over my money to any company for any licensed content that I can't have a copy of.
All that being said, these corporate types are dicks. They've taken people's trust in them to maintain their license and access to the licensed content, and wiped their ass with it. They don't deserve your money, and they certainly don't deserve your trust. Boycott them until a crunchyroll competitor emerges.
I'm just fed up with how digital media ownership is handled these days. Companies keep pushing these "pay for access" schemes, which just muddles the whole idea of ownership. I prefer physical media or DRM-free digital purchases because at least then I know I actually own what I paid for. Platforms like Steam are alright for games, but I'm wary of buying digital media due to the risk of losing access. Until companies sort out a universal license transfer system, I'll stick to physical media or DRM-free options. These corporate types need to earn back our trust before we start giving them our money again.
I can't find anything about transferring a GoG licence to Steam, could you elaborate? Besides, GoG seems like a great idea of maintaining old games and no DRM stuff and I hope they will keep up for as long as possible (by now they probably have some DRM games, idk)
I was pretty sure that I got something via gog and transferred the license to steam. It might have been another service.
Gog is kind of exempt from the licensing complaints since they're DRM-free AFAIK. So you can save, back up, transfer, and otherwise hold onto any of the games you purchase. They're doing good work regardless.
I know other services let you transfer keys around. With steam you can always see/access your product keys. So that's a good thing. I know with epic, you can export the keys for steam and other platforms I think.... Which is okay.
I wouldn't know how anymore. I haven't purchased a game that wasn't on Steam for so long that I just can't recall the process to do it for any platform.
This is not about digital vs physical.
CD's, DVD's and BluRay's are also a digital medium at the end of the day.
It was just a lie, there were no digital copies for purchase, they were only selling "lifetime" (as long as the service exists) rights to rent from them.
Buy physical or digital copies, whatever. Just be sure you are actually buying a copy.
Exactly. Optical discs still have data that can be ripped (In some countries it’s explicitly legal to keep a back up). You have something tangible you can keep.
They weren't selling digital copies. You could only get these by buying a physical copy. They came with a code allowing you to also stream the digital version.
I see a lot of calls to just buy physical media but there are plenty of things that aren't available on physical media. But you can still make your own and depending on what it is, you might not need much to make copies. Games on Steam, for example, can be backed up by copying the installed files and finding a crack if it actually uses Steam's copy protection system (many games don't need cracks and can just be copied and run; such as Kerbal Space Program).
You can do this with GOG games too, and not even worry about cracks because they have no DRM, allowing you to merely make copies of the installers themselves.
Nobody but Funimation ever owned these files. Let's start calling a spade a spade and maybe people will start realizing how dumb of a purchase they are.
I refuse to support Funimation after how they handled the Vic Mignogna allegations. Them acquiring Crunchyroll, shutting down their own service and failing to actually improve CR with the content that Funimation Now had shows what scumbags they are.
Anime licensing in general is why sailing the high seas is so tempting.
Monica Rial (voice of Bulma in DBZ) made sexual harassment allegations. They fired Vic after an internal investigation and he sued for defamation in response. Unfortunately the lawsuit was dismissed, but a lot of people actually believe that Vic was innocent based on the evidence he gave.
Sony, which has owned Funimation since 2017, bought Crunchyroll in 2021. Then Sony announced they were planning to discontinue Funimation in favor of Crunchyroll since it's the more recognizable brand. They then renamed the company Funimation to Crunchyroll, LLC.
Until now, they left the website Funimation alone, aside from continuing to add new episodes for shows that were already on the website Funimation when the companies were merged. (Completely new shows only went to Crunchyroll's website.) Now, they're shutting down the website Funimation and trying to get everyone who hasn't already to migrate over to Crunchyroll.
However, anyone who purchased digital content to keep that wasn't included in their Funimation subscription in Funimation is out of luck. Crunchyroll doesn't support paid digital content of that kind. They only support the content that comes with a subscription. So everyone is losing any digital purchases they made through Funimation.
It's funny. Companies are trying to force people to go the proprietary streaming digital-only route (where you don't own what you paid for and can't download it to view offline) while simultaneously showing people why that is an absolutely horrible idea. They're basically shooting themselves in the foot.
I should make a store and sell a bunch of rented and leased content. Doesn't seem like there is anything stopping me from stealing from people, as long as I am a business and not an individual doing it.
Don't listen to this person, I'm pretty sure Bible black is porn.
Some personal recommendations:
I agree with cowboy bebop, basically western in space
Steins Gate: Time travel based drama. A bit slow to get going, but everything builds on itself. It has a slight Donnie dark vibe, but without as much teen angst.
Fullmetal Alchemist (I would say either series but most prefer Brotherhood): This is an action heavy one, but has a pretty good story too.
One thing to note if you haven't watched a lot of anime is that there is usually a bit of camp to any anime. I've recommended these ones as I think they are easier to get into if you aren't familiar, but anime isn't tied to one genre and there are great comedys, slice of life, mystery, etc anime.
It really depends on how much you're willing to put up with. I think Spy Family is a good point to start out with; it doesn't have any of the annoying anime tropes that a lot of shows have. If you enjoy that, then I'd say try Steins;Gate, Mushishi, and Gurren Lagann. I haven't really thought these through, but I feel like these four shows are all different enough that you could get a good idea of what you're looking for based on what you like and dislike in them.
Steins;Gate has a much more complex story that you have to pay attention to–if you like Steins;Gate, add From The New World to your list. Mushishi is the most mature show on this list, not because of violence or anything, but because it's a slow-paced, serious story, the kind of anime that your grandparents might watch if they were weebs. If you like it, add Monster to your list. Gurren Lagann is my favorite out of these, but it has a lot of those annoying anime tropes I was talking about. If the childish story and oversexualization of female characters doesn't bother you, that opens up basically every other anime for you to potentially enjoy
Anyone want to extend me and invite back to bakabt? I was purged from not having a computer for several years and pirating is looking much easier these days.
I encourage everyone who cares about piracy to not talk about it in an outright and encouraging manner. Here's some examples based on what people are publicly posting:
-"This is why we commit crimes"
-"I think it's crazy that everyone doesn't commit crimes."
-"Committing crimes is justified when I can't do it legally."
Do you think corporations would be upset with people encouraging what legally equates to theft?
Do you think corporations are unaware of if their legal property is popularly being stolen?
Do you think corporations avoid scraping lemmy for data or trends?
Do you think corporations have unreasonable power to lobby government and push legislation?
Maybe you should all quit narcing yourselves and making a public spectacle before another wave of legal action takes place to dissuade another generation, like what happened back in the Napster days.
Do you really think that these corporations need to see spy on our forum talks before they realize how and what is being pirated?
The "don't talk about Usenet" idea has always been silly and really underestimates the tenacity of the ones who are fighting piracy. This is not done by the technically illiterate figurehead CEO of a company who needs reports about what DrillBlaster74 said on Reddit was the latest hype in the *arr family.
Any sufficiently effective way of pirating is on the radar of those that care, and no amount of hush hush tactics is going to change that. What we need is an intelligent approach to how these function and how we use them, not some pact to never talk about them.
I never said to stop talking about them. I said people who do pirate should stop openly telling people that they do so. To say there is nothing corporations and the government can do is downplaying their power. The senate already thinks the internet is a series of tubes. Let's not give them a reason to plug those tubes.
I mean, it sounds less like narcing on ourselves and more like imploring businesses to stop stealing from us. The reason we don't pay for shit is because when we do, it just gets taken away from us. If it didn't, we would pay for stuff.
Businesses aren't implored to be less shitty or charge you less. Businesses are implored to upheave whatever avenue you use to steal possible profit. When Businesses hear everyone is pirating again they aren't going to lower their prices or increase their service value. They are going to give pirates the shift.
Read between the lines. If you want to continue pirating don't talk about it online. If you want them to feel it in their wallet, don't talk about it.
I'm sorry to hear about the fire, but I think you missed the point.
The reason for a loss matters and the emotions around the reason also change. Just having blank acceptance is dangerous and people/corporatations would love to take advantage of you if you just accept bullshit.
You'd be fine if a business takes your car without paying you?
"Sorry but you bought your car from Jim's used cars and we bought Jim's business last week. So your contract of sale with Jim is null. We took your car."
All their content is available for free on pretty decent pirate sites, so it's ultimately delusional that they think they xan jacl up the prices this month