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 but I won’t rewatch. Boom, gonzo.

Your piracy is an excuse for data hoarding, which is a problem.

I was looking for an album by a small punk band called Straighten Things Out called "Dawn Of A New Hope". Loved this album; listened to it all of the time on Apple Music (where I discovered it). Went on a walk one day and tried to load it...and it was gone.

I can't even find this album on eBay, and you can find everything there!

"Milo Goes To College" by The Descendants, a more well-known pop punk band, was removed as well. Randomly, without warning. The Descendants are often credited as the "fathers" of Pop Punk; basically any mainstream pop punk band you've heard of cites them as an influence. This album basically started this genre...and it's gone.

Fortunately there are enough vinyls of this record that make it easy to find when I one day build my epic vinyl collection.

Had I saved these to my iTunes Library or ripped them to a NAS of some kind, I'd still have it. (Fun fact: Milo Goes To College _was_ in my Google Play Music Locker, which Google sunsetted when they launched YouTube Music, so I lost that "copy". I'm also going to guess that it was in my iTunes Music Library as well, which still exists as cloud storage, but albums that you add to your iCloud Music Library from Apple Music are pointers to tracks in the streaming service which can go away at any time.)

Riverdance. Yeah, the Eurovision pause show from 1994 which became a huge hit and started a decade-long fad of various rhytmic dance ensembles touring the world and actually doing really well. Fantastic commercial success, of course. They did many CD releases, and there are a lot of differences between the recordings: the cast of performers, whether they have stepping noises mixed in, even the track listing. But you can only get the last of them on streaming services.

i hope that discussing secondhand sales in the context of piracy might not be off-topic. if it is on topic, discogs.com is a decent source for most secondhand recordings. if you visit [1] you'll see there are two different sellers offering copies there, as well as price histories. i have not found many releases not listed on discogs.

[1]: https://www.discogs.com/release/6768123-Straighten-Things-Ou...

...I'm a tad surprised that worked as well as it did:

1. https://vk.com/wall-112927118?w=wall-112927118_185 ("Download")

2. http://metalbootlegs08.blogspot.com/2016/10/descendents-milo... ("Official Website")

Oh, also - *hands you a vacuum cleaner that tends to eat things in case they disappear later* - maybe go wandering/exploring? These types of sites are incredibly fun yet even more transient.

piratebay might still point to trackers that have copies, but bittorrent isn't as popular as it was in the past

Mediafire is still up https://www.mediafire.com/

> piratebay might still point to trackers that have copies, but bittorrent isn't as popular as it was in the past

Most music pirates have moved on to using Soulseek (a P2P network) it seems. Releases not found on bittorrent can most likely be found on SLSK.

http://www.slsknet.org

Just don't start hoarding terabytes of music you don't enjoy.

Politically incorrect music tends to get sent down the memory hole.

it's still an important album that i like to listen to.

It’s like mirroring Wikipedia on S3 and then publicly stating or even complaining that using Wikipedia costs hundreds of dollars.

I'm not sure why so many of the replies in this article are trying to interpret my post as some kind of call for help.

My point was that piracy is a service problem.

Your personal expenses for hoarding data, or the practice of hoarding data, have nil correlation to piracy itself.

To add to this at this point,

> Streaming services still have significant service problems that need to be addressed.

This connection is irrational as well - the name "streaming services" already implies that content is being streamed for viewing and not downloaded for storage.

If you are under a different assumption, or concerning other issues with streaming services, yes, piracy might be a service problem, but on the other hand, there are options available to actually buy and download content that you can also store.

Really, these associations you are seeing are incredibly irrational and this might be a contributing factor to people assuming this would be a call for help. I do not assume it is, data hoarding is not necessarily a problem in itself, but that doesn't make your invalid associations any more valid.

Yes, that's true. My point was that I'm already spending a lot of money to pirate, and that I would be spending that money to support the creators if something like steam existed. Not once did I say or even imply I was unhappy with that situation, not once did I imply that you needed to spend that kind of money in order to pirate.

I simply said that I spend a lot of money on piracy, and that there's a significant service problem with streaming services. The implication one could draw from that is that if the service problems were improved I'd be giving the money to the creators, instead of spending it on hard drives.

Instead some people seem to think this is some kind of an attack on piracy as being too expensive. Which is a reasonable mistake to make under the circumstances, if I could edit the post to clarify I would. I'd just appreciate it if you weren't so... aggressively misunderstanding. The reality is that I do a lot of other data-archival stuff on that server as well, and have made no claims about piracy being expensive.

> This connection is irrational as well - the name "streaming services" already implies that content is being streamed for viewing and not downloaded for storage.

Since you seem to care about rationality, try giving this a read: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/A_Human%27s_Guide_to_Words

… okay then. Let’s leave it at that.

I remember all the way back to the late 90s, when we were already ridiculing the people who thought "streaming" was some radical new concept that was different/better than downloading. I remember a VC or some other exec hotshot coming to visit a startup I was involved in, insisting he was interested in investing in media streaming, not media downloading. Everyone on the eng team just held their chuckles until he left. There's really no technical difference between streaming and downloading, besides that streaming has an extra deletion step. It's all just transferring bits from one computer to another. "Streaming" is just downloading dressed up in a business suit.

I have to convert and move the original file for my TV anyway, so sometimes the file will be gone from my library, but I'm still seeding the original for a while afterwards.

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

Listening "offline" by installing a shitty app is a severe service problem. It punishes me as a customer and doesn't stop any piracy anyway.

Files are just so much more flexible than an app. From my favorite artists I usually still buy CD since there are almost no alternatives. Of course I would prefer a digital download. Some offer it and that is much appreciated.

It's entirely rational. The availability of music/video on streaming services is very ephemeral.

If you really like something, buy a copy and store it locally.

"I can organize a music collection the way I want...AND take it with me wherever I go?"

Somewhere along the line "convenience" displaced "freedom".

"Why manage my own collection when I have Spotify or Apple Music?"

I suspect the pendulum will swing back at some point.

I have sirius xm in my car, which is how I learn about new things. But you could hear new stuff via FM or YouTube.

The truth is I don't spent $9.99 a month on average so maybe it is not that expensive.

Thanks, didn't know about it and it's an interesting marketplace. Catalog is limited but I found bands that I follow there.

> When they go belly up what happens to all the time you invested in it?

Spotify is just a platform to listening to music, the subscription fee is like paying rent, time is invested in what I listen to. And it will not go belly up, at least not all streaming services, it will just raise subscription fees.

I understood your argument it's better to buy the albums now than to expend all that money on streaming and then later having to buy all of that anyways. But that is a misconception because not everyone is a collector and some are just explorers and like to listen to a new artist/album for a weeek and then move on.

I don't identify with this comment at all! How is it expensive and inconvenient?

I prefer to buyt the CD and rip it if possible, as then I have built-in backup. But if not, I'll buy the MP3 online, from amazon usually. Very easy.

Either that or we're on the same hallway. :)

Most of my collection is older stuff, not available on streaming services anymore. Forgotten, almost, in a lot of places since companies can't be bothered to license it anymore.

In an age where a lot of culturally relevant media is not stored on physical copies anymore, preserving what we love for our children is all the more important.

Data hoarding is not a problem. It's a hobby.

Everyone needs a hobby, most hobbies cost money.

Traveling? Cost money.

Woodworking? Cost money.

Photography? Cost money.

Biking? Cost money.

Gaming? Cost money (+ way more time).

Data hoarding is just a hobby like others. Plus data hoarding can have great value, if you choose to hoard good content.

I have probably filled at least 60TB of drives in the past year alone since my ISP has been ignoring data caps, and that is besides the large amount that IS deleted, as I do not archive anything that's been lossily compressed after being ripped unless a higher quality version does not publicly exist.

I "hoard" TOSEC libraries for every conceivable console and consumer computer system from ~1970 up to the PS3, but don't archive PC games past the DOS era, because Steam exists as a better service than I can provide for myself, so I use that. There is no equivalent service for music or film or Amiga games.

There is a believe that this will damage the hard drives. I am not sure how valid it is.

Or maybe I misinterpreted this post and they don't think it's a problem, which is fine then. But if the post is about how expensive it is to pirate... that expense has a lot to do with the data retention policy choice, not just the pirating. Is the point to be made.

It does seem to have aspects that are a bit more troublesome than people talk about. Reddit seems very pro hoarding, this thread seems to see it like physical hoarding.

It doesn't seem to be as much of a problem as this thread would make you think though.

Then he realized he had a box full of DVD-Rs, nicely ripped using DVDFab Decrypter and processed and RCE-stripped with the latest DVD Shrink, but had never gone back into that box to rewatch any of them, and had never been asked by anyone if he had any of those movies.

It was at that point where he decided if he really liked a movie, it was worth buying to have the original box and leaflet.

With bandwidth becoming a metered utility and cost of streaming becoming a ridiculously overpriced fiasco, it's more important than ever to be able to be able to buy and own content. Even cloud storage is now yet another costly monthly service set to rise over time, and that's why device makers are reducing the storage capabilities on phones and computers while prices still rise. We need to fight this trend by spending more carefully on devices and services, they often add no new value when updated besides new revenue streams for the companies.

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.

This post seems a bit tongue-in-cheek, but if it's costing the OP more money than they'd like to spend on it, then it is a problem. Or maybe it's not.

I don't think what you were describing is a "problem" at all. And it looks like you don't view at it as a problem, either. Not sure why so many of the replies in this article are trying to interpret your post as some kind of call for help.

I hate the phrase "Data Hoarding" because the word hoarding has negative connotations that don't apply to collecting digital media. When you look at actual hoarders, their homes are disgusting, filled with trash, and not navigable. On the other hand, there are no negative effects of data "hoarding", besides maybe the cost of buying and powering hard drives. Most hobbies have monetary costs and don't carry negative connotations. It's no more of a problem than stamp collecting. We don't call people Stamp Hoarders.

It's one thing to be over budget for it, but the budget just may not be realistic for the project and cost expectations have to be adjusted or the project downscaled. That's not a problem really it's just a normal part of budgeting.

The problem comes in if OP were missing work to work on this thing, or neglecting personal relationships. Or so over budget it was putting them financially in the red, leading to risky loans to pay for or borrowing from friends/family or whatever else.

Problems are things that have real negative externalities, imo.

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!

You could easily be spending $45 a month just on streaming services.

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.

What point are you trying to make?

Is that accurate?

How does the fact that he could be saving money support that?

The hard drives are the main power cost though.

Calculating it again the actual number is a bit lower than that, and it wasn't in US dollars.

Should is a tricky word. What is OPs income? What's the rest of their budget look like. What standards are you applying to their spending habits? What hardships do your models forecast for OP as a result of their hobby?

If you know what OP should do, presumably you have this data and can provide your numbers.

imagine this same person was someone who in the past might have hoarded VHS recordings or newspapers. How much space would that take up. A significant amount, to the point where we see the houses of hoarders and the hoarding has really damaged their ability to live. While data hoarding does take time and money, it doesn't have to take over one's physical space in the same manner.

So, while hoarding can be a problem, it really depends on the damage its doing to one's life. If one spends hours a day searching for content, neglecting one's life/family/job and putting them at risk, that's bad. If one has things automated, and its just a question of money they spend on it, then its just a question can they afford it. If they can, its just a hobby, not a sickness, as its not damaging to one's life.

Now, even with what I said, it can be hard for the person themselves to understand the effect it might be having on their life, perhaps until its too late (you think you are on top of things, but things unravel quickly).

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.

Fair warning: It is very dangerous to make statements like this in a public forum like this.

You run the risk of someone spotting it and making a seemingly-innocent reply along the lines of, "Oh, you should at LEAST have TWO disks set up as a mirror so you don't lose all your movies when (not if, but when) the disk dies." And then someone else will say, "LOL u noob, RAID not a backup!" Another participant will assure you that no data is safe unless it's stored at on at least a 5-disk ZFS array. And then someone else will jump in to point out that even ZFS is not safe if you're not running ECC memory. And course you can't just have ONE of these ECC-enabled 5-disk ZFS-breathing monsters, because every component ASIDE from the disks is a single point of failure, so you'd better have TWO just to be safe. Which means you'll need a UPS because sudden power loses are _awesome_ if you like having your platters scribbled all over by a browned-out disk controller. And what exactly is your disaster recovery plan in the event of a fire or flood, gotta have some infra running in good health off-site in case something like that happens. And so on.

Of course if you dig far enough into these admonitions and suggestions, the good news is that you won't have the time to watch any of those movies.

Weight off my shoulders!

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

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.

I hear about people who stopped hoarding when they discovered the hybrid middleground: debrid services, which cache torrents and usenet so they can be directly downloaded / streamed. you pay roughly the same per month as you would for the basic Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, etc. packages but on just one subscription, i.e. all the content for the price of one. the quality and reliability is better too (4K, 10bit, 7.1, atmos, CDN..)

You mean Dredd 2012.

"Are you ready?" "Yes." "You don't look ready." Absolutely the best performance of Olivia Thirlby, although of course Karl Urban was great, too.

(The one complication is that I pirate using private BitTorrent tracker sites where I need to do some amount of seeding to stay on good terms, under conditions that vary from site to site, and can be hard to keep track of as I try to recover storage space).

But yeah, I'd say the cost of OP is not in the pirating, it's in the hoarding.

But certainly there is no guarantee, that is true.

(I don't use usenet as a source, myself).

Not OP, but I’m guilty of this.

However, I also rewatch anything I like and love introducing people to things they haven’t seen. It’s great being able to share a large library of curated content.

I absolutely love that Robocop is the specific movie that you felt needed to be mentioned. :)

Did OP state it was a problem?

Not that I see - AFAICT the only people declaring it a problem are the busybodies latching on to OP spending the same amount on this hobby as they would dining out at a decent restaurant once a month.

That doesn't say it's a problem. It's a statement of fact. You are projecting a problem onto it.

I pay more for dinner out than I would if signed up for HelloFresh to be delivered to my house.

What if I like eating out?

What if neither cost has any meaningful impact on my bottom line?

Is that a problem too?

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? Try to figure out why you are doing it to begin with.

Streaming services have a similar issue (re-encoding, bad rereleases due to licensing issues, delistings, crappy format choices in the first place) but generally a bit better SLA-like and a longer timeframe to watch certain content.

The constant availability of the pirated content is a big driver of the cost here. For some of the obscure stuff, this could be on a backup, or even on something like Amazon Glacier (I.e. no one is watching 30tb of video content regularly), and the resulting computer needed for pirating could be significantly less expensive, both to build/buy and for monthly electricity costs (like a laptop).

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.

Crushed to death under a stack of computer equipment, they leave behind only 1 Petabyte worth of Seagate 8TB hard disks. Upon investigating, it was found that each drive was completely filled with “boutique furry porn.”

Those who knew the deceased in passing say they cannot imagine where his millions had gone.

The setup I've got doesn't require very much active maintenance, aside from yelling at my father to tag things better. I'm sure I could just go to sketchy pirate streaming sites (putlocker and the like) if I was concerned about the money. The point of this isn't so much that I'm spending too much on this hobby, but that piracy really is a service problem.

I object to the term "pirating" here. Piracy involves depriving people of life and property. You are not doing anything like that. Bootlegging might be a tolerably apt term. Bootlegging is just bypassing onerous restrictions and taxes, with an admixture of freeloading.

My wife pays for various channels, but I torrent the same content because the experience is radically better. Am I pirating? I don't think I am even bootlegging.

The main thing keeping me from doing it more (I hardly ever do anymore) is that I just don't have time to watch things. I have taken to running what little I do grab at 1.5x to 2x so I can spare the time. Now, not running that fast seems intolerably glacial.

All that said, hoarding is a common symptom of depression. Treating depression is a very, very good idea.

Think you might have to feed the chickens along side your tagging scheme.

Anecdotally, I have a mild data hoarding hobby and no streaming subscriptions, and had my tech setup offline for about 6 months after moving to a new house. Spent most of the free time running ethernet, replacing dozens of recessed lights, replacing all the lights switches, assembling furniture, painting, picking up nails and rocks that reno guys left all over the lawn, and various other house things.

I bought a TV for black friday, wall-mounted it, and haven't even gotten around to plugging it in. (Or finding a piece of furniture from which to use it.) I'm looking forward to that; watching TV and playing video games is really more fun than patching drywall.

The upside is that we have a lot to share with folks (mostly family) who've not necessarily seen this stuff (and can't typically find it on services in our area).

They made it dead-easy to sign up, there was no pushy retention teams or hoops to jump through if you wanted to cancel. That's why I paid them.

Amazon Video launched here, and they had some content that I was interested in, but their UX from day one has been awful. They insist on adding pre-roll ads, despite that I'm paying them. The video quality was pretty awful and was quite regularly at something like 480p quality on my (4k) TV. Yes their X-Ray tech is neat, but the ads just drive me up the wall.

There was a time that I would've happily paid for HBO - they had/have some really great content (at least in the US), but they are or were not available in AU outside of a $120+/month PayTV device that I really didn't want.

Now there are dozens of streaming services, with their own $15-30/month fees, which will have (or not) selections of some of the content I want, each with their own uniquely awful and annoying interfaces or quirks of whether they will or won't play on my TV or device.

If they really want to make it into a thing, it cannot be within amazon.com. Call it something else, rip out and make it into a service not an addon to prime.

The movie selection on NetFlix's DVD service[1] is still fantastic.

The movie selection on their streaming service[2] is absolutely atrocious.

Not sure what accounts for the discrepancy.

[1] - https://dvd.netflix.com/

[2] - https://www.netflix.com/

The reason they can rent-out DVD titles from anyone, is because of the First-Sale doctrine[1] in the US. Basically, once they buy the DVD, they can do with it what they want. It's the same law that lets libraries operate.

With streaming, they need permission of the copyright holders. Who, at first, were all "Who gives a shit about streaming, it doesn't make any money and the quality is shit". Once Netflix proved out how to do it right - then all the studios realised there was money to be made by doing their own platform (even if you do a shitty job of it)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

Conversely, since NetFlix's DVD service doesn't have any competitors they could get away with having a crappy selection, but they have a great selection, and it's been great for at least a decade.

So it still doesn't make sense.

Both of these have way, way, way better selections than NetFlix streaming.

1. I could not download the right Disney+ app on my Android TV because my Google account is French

2. I could download the right app on my iPhone (after temporarily switching stores which is a PITA) so I bought a cable to stream from my iPhone to my TV but the app doesn’t allow me to

3. I bought a Raspberry Pi and installed Plex and al. I can now watch the Disney movies easily on my TV.

I have a subscription to Netflix…

1. I went off-internet for a week, so I synced a couple of movies to be available offline.

2. I started watching one on the first day and 48h hours later it expired…

3. Next time I will use my Plex setup!

I must be very dumb to keep paying for these two subscriptions!

Beyond that I think there should be forced syndication after an initial lockout period for the first run (say, a year).

It would be a much more consumer friendly environment if 20 year old shows couldn't be sold for billions and any niche streaming service could license for a reasonable fee and we wouldn't be forced to shuffle services around playing exclusivity games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

I've considered getting back into it occasionally.

Why: Convenience and access. From having everything on Netflix a decade ago, to now having almost as many subscriptions as I used to have cable channels, it's a pain (let alone a cost) to install dozen apps on my phone tablet TV roku etc. Their quality varies WILDLY. The user experience ranges from pretty decent to seemingly user hostile. I've recently watched a set of seasons of a show pirated a decade ago, then last two seasons on actual subscription service, and it sucked: app would not let me download to SD card, had to take precious phone storage. Subtitles were 2 seconds behind with NO way to adjust. Fast forwarding was wonky and basically unusable. And best of all, it auto deleted itself 48hrs after downloading so I had to keep redownloading same stuff over and over. Brutal!

Why Not: As explained above - It's pricey and time consuming, there's a fair amount of risk in pirating, and technology seems to keep changing. I made a post about that a while ago, but I'm no longer at a point in my life where every 6 months I can spare the time to fully rebuild and reconfigure and troubleshoot a stack from sabnzbd and nsbmatrix to udirwioay and fewiap and fdsjei, and then 6 months later again to fdwjieo and wearp routed through wefheio and zxcnzxcv. I have a friend who keeps urging me to set it up because it's so easy - oblivious that whenever I try to use his helpful "how to", a) It's 3 pages long b) it is missing about 10 pages of details and c) It's already out of date so it's "do that, but none of that actually because these days now the cool thing is ____" :D

1. You need to set up NAS and downloading software - that is not as trivial or common as HN audience assumes :)

2. You need a reliable and safe source of torrents. They may be paid or invite only, or may be super scammy and unrealiable and mine crypto etc etc

3. How safe do you feel in your jurisdiction/location at running plain torrents. Here you get notices and sometimes strikes / actions pretty quickly, so now we are talking at least a VPN, which is next layer of setup, configuration, possibly price, possibly its own threat vector as commercial VPNs are scammy, your own VPN is non-trivial to setup correctly.

etc etc etc :)

Agree with 2 though.

If you want to go down this route (and you use *arr) prowlarr is a must have to avoid wasting time copying configs between the *arr.

I download remotely, then have local snag from remote. Local is a custom server, on Pi, on an isolated network (with its own cable modem).

Once the Pi receives a file, it transmits it over a modified optical link, where I cut the receive line on the sending nic board.

Checksums are simple, and sent via email back to the remote server, checked, and I am alerted of wrong.

My media PC is all that is connected to that local network.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/

You can reduce electricity use if you can keep your content stored in a powered-off state and run a low-power device for your pirating; when needed, boot up your server to watch things or to transfer out your new downloads.

Finally, you might like the software I created to browse your collection: Video Hub App

https://videohubapp.com/ & https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App (MIT open source)

* All in one place/App/UI. Be it Plex/Jellyfin/Emby/Kodi/etc, you only have 1 app UI/UX to deal with. No more wondering "What network was that on?", "Wait, it's on 2 services but which one has my watched status?", "What does clicking forward/back do in this App?", "How do I turn on subtitles?", etc

* Local playback. You never have to wait on your internet or deal with lower quality if something goes amiss.

* More features. Ability to download a show/movie to your iPad for travel (Yes, this has improved on the streaming platforms but is not always easy or ubiquitous)

* Access forever. If you hoard at least. You cannot find certain shows online anymore. The Daily Show or The Colbert Report are good examples. I know some people might find watching old episodes of daily news shows to be odd but I find them interesting and still humorous. All you can find is scattered clips online. Also shows that were never super popular can be impossible to find on streaming and often impossible to buy.

* No Ads. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

* Tech/Job improvement Aspect. This is less about piracy directly and the skills you are forced to learn to maintain an *arr+plex+UnRaid/FreeNAS/Debian/etc box.

You are correct that the cost is not cheap, I've probably sunk $5K+ into my servers but I find the process to be both informative and enjoyable.

Lastly, I would happily pay $100-150+ a month for a service that gave me all of the above (aside from server management experience). 1 App, offline/local caching, no ads, all content. But it will never happen. Netflix gave us some golden years where they had almost everything someone would want but then the content providers started to pull back their content to their own "platforms" and now it's a mess. Even things like Amazon Channels, Apple TV (no, not the device, no, not the service, the app :rolleyes:), or now even Plex (with their newest release) that attempt to serve as directory that can either play the content directly or bounce you directly into the app to play are a far cry from what you get from an only-Plex (or insert other media server) setup.

All games in one store, offline play, hosting mods and support forums, cross-machine save sync, access even if the game gets removed from the store entirely later on, etc.

GoG for example goes a step further with the ownership principle, making games DRM free, and yet when it comes down to it their service offers less practical features to the average user than Steam and its ecosystem does.

Of course the monetization approach is different, since you pay per game and not per month for access. I wonder if streaming networks would have more success with a similar pay-to-own approach. Making the service free by default, with some stuff free to view and the rest requiring a small fee each to own the right to view it infinite times. The approach that has worked reasonably well with VHS and DVD in the past. Then on the other hand most games have more replayability than your average TV show...

https://moviesanywhere.com

Your fiscal problem is data hoarding, not piracy.

Your commitment to making sure your favorite TV shows never disappear into the void of indefinitely buffering cloud rentals is commendable.

Used to torrent a lot, but realized I'd forget what I actually had and ended up re-downloading a lot.

So now I just go on sketchy streaming sites. I have 2 that are good for movies/ty, 1 for animated content.

Maybe once a year something will go down and I'll find a new site, but it really is as easy as clicking through the first 10 links when googling "watch $movie online free" and picking the most reliable one.

In the extremely rare case I can't find something, I'll drop the 4 bucks or whatever on youtube movies or amazon prime. Probably only happens a few times a year.

~~~

Unrelated to the discussion, but still HN worthy, is how interesting these sites are when they operate.

Websites will constantly lift not just content but entire pages from each other. A lot of the time they'll even just change a X.com to an X.biz and add a banner saying "THIS IS THE REAL X, UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARKS!".

What are they going to do, take legal action?

I'm also suspecting everyone sources their movies from a very small set of places.

I tried watching the movie Multiplicity on one of these sites, but every single site hosted the first 4 minutes 27-ish seconds of it, exact same cut. It makes sense content propagates out, likely by automation. Everysite is a race to get the most ad clicks before getting shutdown.

A very interesting "industry"!

Though I am from the same era, I don't generally find many movies or TV series that I really want to watch more than once. I have no desire to keep a large library of movies, they have almost zero value after the first watch (music is an entirely different thing though).

As others have pointed out, your costs are more due to the long term retention of the content, not the initial acquisition.

Personally, I prefer the path of least resistance, but the content has to be of decent quality and value. Thus, I am not interested in 5+ ~20/mo subscriptions to get access to the maybe 10 things I watch per month.

I used to almost never rewatch movies, but I have kept track of what my favorite movies were, and when I've made friends with someone who was interested in seeing some of the movies that I liked then I'd find myself rewatching these movies with them (especially if it's been a really long time since I saw these movies and forgotten most of the details).

Also, some of my favorite movies are kind of obscure, so there's no guarantee they'd be available through streaming. Because of that it does make sense for me to archive films.

Even when the movies I like are available, why pay twice (or more) to watch them again?

Also, a lot of content is online for long periods of time, if you downloaded it once, you can probably download it again. Free online storage basically ;)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elyfo1DIlzs (6m 23s)

I go to e.g. the South Park website, and I'm greeted by an error message saying they're "working hard to resolve [their] pre-existing contractual obligations," which is the same message they've shown for years. Thanks for trying, I guess, but if I pirated it then I'd just...watch the show, from start to finish, with all seasons and all episodes, no wasteful physical media, no subscription, no data collection, and no ads. That sounds good. I want to be able to pay money, maybe even quite a lot of money, and do that.

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 if it had been made available that way. Some people purchase a controlled versions to atone for their pirating sins but that just rewards consumer-hostile business models, and most of the money goes to middle-men that only add negative value to the product they're selling.

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.

Most, if not all, things I've downloaded, which isn't much, I've either rented before, seen on TV or in a theater, or have been on one of the streaming services I pay for at some point. Does that cover me ethically? Some people seem to think so. I personally don't care either way and not a single person on this planet is any worse off for my lack of concern.

Actually it's kind of easier than torrenting and copying files around to various devices I want to watch it on.

(That being said, I do have access to cable television, netflix, and amazon prime streaming as well as the piracy setup, so people are getting paid. I'm not going to go buy a bunch of old red-dwarf and dilbert DVDs though, they just take up too much space)

But I'm so jealous of the user experience for people who buy into a $5/mo plex and get better service than I'm paying for. IMO, that's broken.

So much time wasted, figuring out what service to watch something on, dealing with content ads, bad user interfaces... having content vanish and become unavailable, etc.

I don't even watch much video, but it's still way too much of a sink on my time.

My intent is that someone somewhere reads this and decides to let me buy their damn content. It's not a justification, it's an appeal. Put your album on bandcamp. Put your game on itch/gog/your own website/humble bundle, preferable without intrusive DRM. I have no idea where you'd put a movie or TV show, but there's probably some place.

Please.

In my opinion, the most practical solution is to buy things (for the ethics) and then crack the DRM anyway (for usability).

I don't mind throwing down some cash, but I'm not going to throw down cash just to get fucked over.

Back to discussion, I agree that saving money could apply to almost anything. However my first point is that, in my opinion, there's a material difference between digital piracy and stealing a car. If I possess a car, nobody else can own it. However with digital media, I'm making a copy of something that has zero impact on anybody else's ability to own their own copy of that data. The only thing that's lost is my physical storage space that could've stored something else, but that's my call to make.

A second point is that I mainly pirate things I wouldn't have bought otherwise. I still watch movies in theaters because I can't pirate a theater experience (AMC A-list is great if you enjoy watching in the theaters IMO), I still buy modern games because I'm extremely cautious when it comes to running executables.

A third point is that ethically, I consider supporting a mega-corporation like Amazon worse than committing piracy. Mega-corporations commit much more morally heinous actions, and at an enormously greater scale, than an average pirate would ever commit. In my opinion, the moral sin is not that pirates commit piracy, it's that mega-corporations have been given almost free rein to shape and exploit our society as they see fit

Pay $10,000 for a KIA that can only goto McDonalds and Burger King, then buy a $15,000 chevy that's the only car that works on the road to to work, then pay $5,000 for a ford that is the only vehicle that will take you to Burger King and the Apple store, but it stops every 5 minutes to show you the same ad repeated 3 times, and the only car that will take you to grandms's house is $30,000 and for some reason it requires 12 cars worth of parking spots. Taco Bell will only be accepting Mazdas starting in August, so you've got to decide what you want to do about that. Also there's no cars you can buy at any price that can go anywhere you want. Nobody sells the lamborgini you can drive anywhere for free.

Anyways, that's why pirating is good.

They may also ship to you internationally.

Just looking at a couple of shows that I watched a year ago, I couldn't actually find any of them on Amazon.de. And actually, only found one on Amazon.com, where it was unavailable. Also, the Chinese version for some reason?

In the US, it's a different story. Everything outside of Karagarga is available to be streamed, or at least purchased on Bluray/DVD. The only big thing is quality. Streaming has atrocious quality for the most part.

Streaming should not have these problems.

The only way to stream it is through low quality Youtube rips. I've got the album in my mom's house on CD... it is stupid that I cannot listen to it in any of the 3 stream services I pay for.

[1] https://open.spotify.com/album/4gZ1yplfdbNfdh8DkBHWbM

On the other hand nobody cares about torrents here, so at least I don't need to pay for usenet access to get it :-)

Though in the case of the comment you're replying to, the tone suggests that the barrier to content being available legally is government censorship, not copyright or rights management.

And, yes, this hobby is expensive.

Do not go around saying that piracy is expensive.

There is also a similar side to it. You are _storing_ a lot of data. What if you decided to _play_ (games) instead? You would have needed more expensive hardwares. And a lot of power. Here _gaming_ would be more expensive.

What is expensive is your datahoarding habits, and not piracy.

You are also comparing apples to oranges here (watching movies vis-a-vis storing them). A more obvious a-to-o comparison is buying a Spotify subscription versus playing CoD: WW2 from a pirated source. You see, the second is more expensive than the first.

So,

1. Piracy is not expensive, your datahoarding habits are (plenty of people watch pirated content on 300-400$ laptops and 200$ phones.)

2. You are comparing apples to oranges.

I haven't torrented or paid for content in years. If I want to watch something and it's not on the server, I message the admin in Bangalore and he adds it.

Sure I don't "have" the content in the sense it's not sitting on spinning disks, but I don't care. Life is too short to try to collect widely available digital media.

Don't even get me started about commercials. Amazon Prime has been putting up movies without commercials, and then adding commercials later. This has bit our movie group a few times lately. Very frustrating.

This came to a head for me not too long ago when my internet went out for a little while. I told my wife we could just watch the antenna TV, and she simply couldn't grok the idea that TV signals were coming to the house without the internet working.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/plexshares/

Just shop around and find one with a free trial. It's not very automated, so you'll have to chat with them over Discord, but once it's set up it's completely hands-off. Good luck!

Very helpful when flying for 30h

What these Plex share owners do is advertise first . Reach the number of users they need then go private and it becomes invite only . This what happened to the one I joined and it's perfect for 2 years now .

What I find odd about these Plex shares is the insane catalog they have which includes Vhs rips of obscure 1980s slasher films

The only way how I can keep my TV offline and put content on a USB stick is by breaking the DRM. It's literally necessary for privacy-preserving content consumption.

Plus the market has really weird incentives. I have disposable income and I'm happy to pay for ad-free content. And precisely because of that, they try extra hard to shove ads into my face.

I used to be mostly happy with streaming services, I still have most of the big ones, but selection and quality is very hit or miss, I sometimes go over a month without using any of them. And "no ads" tiers have become a lie. Showing me a trailer for anything before the thing I chose to watch, even if it's for a show on the same service, is an ad. Stop it, you have a whole app/website to shove shit in my face, once I make a selection, leave me the fuck alone.

It's a learning process. Remember the "old times" were CDs had DRM? It took quite a while to get high quality digital files without DRM - talking about FLAC here.

The story looks faked all over the place. 30 TB? I have as much, and the storage price was maybe $600 last year.