The first is people who don't have the money, e.g. students. They will never pay you; they don't have the money.
The second is people who do have the money but value the experience above other things. These would be your best customers, if you provide the better experience.
If you don't provide the better experience, they don't pay. Is that a rationalization? Maybe, but are you better off to whinge about it or to take away their excuse?
Let us be clear from the start. This thread is not about piracy. Everyone pirates. Everyone knows everyone pirates. The internet is a vast floating marketplace of digital oranges stolen from the same tree. The practical question is boring.
The interesting question is psychological.
How do you, personally, live with yourself while doing it?
Why do people in this thread need to build entire theological systems of justification just to sleep at night?
That is the comedy here.
Not the piracy.
The denial.
Because if someone simply said,
“Yes, I stole it because I wanted it and did not feel like paying,”
I would respect that.
Honesty. Integrity, even if dark.
But this thread is packed with people inventing ethical origami to explain why pressing the magnet link was actually a noble act of cultural preservation, spiritual support, intellectual necessity, or cosmic fairness. We are not talking about Kant. We are talking about a TV show and a PDF.
And then there is the classic justification play:
“I already bought the ebook on Kindle years ago. But I need a clean PDF to mark up on my iPad for research. Amazon will not give me a DRM free copy. I refuse to buy the same book twice. So I torrented a pristine academic version. I am simply aligning formats with my rightful ownership.”
The phrasing is beautiful. It sounds like a legal defense and a eulogy at the same time.
But think about it without the internet anesthesia. The bookstore will not give you a hardcover just because you bought the paperback once. You want the hardcover. So you go to the bookstore at night, slip a brick through the window, crawl in, take the hardcover, and walk out. You say to yourself on the way home, “I am merely aligning formats for research purposes.” People do not debate nuance when you break a window. They call the police. They call it theft.
Digital removes the broken glass.
So people remove the guilt.
They fill the empty space with story.
This is what I am calling out. Not piracy. Human psychology. The instinct to preserve self image at any cost. The inability to say a simple sentence:
I pirated it because I wanted it. End of explanation.
Instead we get excuses from the Pirate Justification Vending Machine
I am archiving culture
I am previewing it
I will pay later
I support the creator emotionally
I did buy it once, in 2014, which grants eternal metaphysical ownership across all formats for all time including the direct brain injection edition in the year 2089
And then sometimes someone sends the author twelve dollars via PayPal and walks away like they personally restored the moral balance of the universe. It is adorable. Like a drug lord funding a kid science fair and expecting applause.
So yes, piracy happens. Yes, I do it too. The reason does not matter. But I am not delusional about it. I do not rename theft as cultural stewardship. I do not wrap it in story. I am a thief. Not a romantic one. Not a noble one. Just one who wanted a thing and took it. I can live with that truth.
The problem is not piracy. The problem is the lengths people will go to avoid looking in the mirror.
The thread is not about economics.
It is about ego protection.
And seeing adults twist themselves into philosophical pretzels to avoid saying a simple uncomfortable sentence is the funniest part of all of this.
The broken glass and the physical object are the actual difference in that case. The book store is paying for the glass and the unit cost of printing the hardcover.
You've diverged from criticizing rationalization of not paying to accusing someone who actually paid of doing something wrong. Now who is rationalizing the double dipping and copyrights that last so excessively long the medium they were released in becomes outmoded before they expire?
> I pirated it because I wanted it. End of explanation.
Which isn't a sufficient explanation if it doesn't reveal what it would take for you to pay instead.
Oh simple. Remove the glass and I pick the lock of the front door to your home and walk in at night while you, your wife and your kids are fast asleep and I scan the book that I want with a portable scanner. Not just one book. Many book across many nights. No damage done right? Once your wife and you find out that that’s all I’m doing you guys are totally ok with this.
> Which isn't a sufficient explanation if it doesn't reveal what it would take for you to pay instead.
Easy. What causes people to not steal other than good will? What causes people to not kill other than altruism. The government and society has several methods for this. Jail time? Locks? Etc. It’s just hard to do the same for piracy.
Either way. The topic of this thread is not about what would make me pay. That’s fucking obvious. The topic is about the less obvious thing and why people like you go to elaborate lengths to side step admitting that you’re a fucking thief.
I’m a thief. I sail the high seas. Am I proud of it? No. But I’m not delusional about it like this entire thread.
> Oh simple. Remove the glass and I pick the lock of the front door to your home and walk in at night while you, your wife and your kids are fast asleep and I scan the book that I want with a portable scanner. Not just one book. Many book across many nights. No damage done right? Once your wife and you find out that that’s all I’m doing you guys are totally ok with this.
So now you want to replace the things that aren't happening in the digital case with some other things that aren't happening in the digital case?
Your analogy is barely even an analogy. It's pretty obvious what the physical equivalent would be. You'd make a copy of the paperback as a hardcover, yourself in your own place with your own materials. Which doesn't seem nearly as objectionable as breaking into a bookstore or a house or stealing a physical object with a unit cost, because it isn't.
> What causes people to not steal other than good will? What causes people to not kill other than altruism. The government and society has several methods for this. Jail time? Locks? Etc. It’s just hard to do the same for piracy.
Which is why it would make a lot of sense for the companies selling this stuff to care about and do everything they can to retain that good will, right?
> The topic is about the less obvious thing and why people like you go to elaborate lengths to side step admitting that you’re a fucking thief.
Were the people saying they were returning to piracy not admitting they were returning to piracy, or were they just explaining what it would take to make them not?
>So now you want to replace the things that aren’t happening in the digital case with some other things that aren’t happening in the digital case?
Oh I see. You think the physical break-in imagery is the problem, not the behavior itself. Cute. The point flew over your head so hard it’s now in low Earth orbit.
Nobody is saying the method is identical. The point is the moral equivalence.
If you want a book that you do not have, and you obtain it without permission, the only difference between burglary and piracy is how easy it is to lie to yourself afterward.
Digital theft just comes pre-laundered.
No broken window. No police report. Just a clean conscience and a folder named “Book_Final_FINAL2.pdf.”
>Your analogy is barely even an analogy. It’s pretty obvious what the physical equivalent would be. You’d make a copy of the paperback as a hardcover, yourself in your own place with your own materials.
Fantastic. And where exactly are you getting the paperback to copy, professor?
Are you growing it in a hydroponic book farm? Summoning it from the astral plane? Wishing really, really hard?
To “make your own copy at home” you must first acquire the book.
And if you do not buy it or borrow it, you steal it.
Congratulations. You have just walked right back into the house at night with a scanner, only you changed the lighting and think the ethics changed with it.
The source is the theft. Not the printing method.
This is not subtle. You are just allergic to saying it out loud.
>Which is why it would make a lot of sense for the companies selling this stuff to care about and do everything they can to retain that good will, right?
Yes, and they do, and pirates still pirate.
Spotify. Steam. Netflix. Apple Books. Kindle.
Platforms with instantaneous, frictionless, brain-dead-simple purchasing flows already exist.
And people still torrent.
Because the UX excuse was never the real reason.
It was just the most socially presentable one.
People do not need better UX.
They need better courage to say:
“I wanted it and I took it.”
>Were the people saying they were returning to piracy not admitting they were returning to piracy, or were they just explaining what it would take to make them not?
No. They were explaining how to preserve their self image while returning to piracy.
They were not saying:
“I pirate.”
They were saying:
“I pirate but I am still a good person because I have constructed a beautiful little narrative terrarium where I am the protagonist of justice.”
This thread is not about piracy.
It is about delusion.
⸻
Let me say it plainly so your brain has no escape hatch:
To read a book you do not have, you must obtain it.
If you obtain it without permission in the physical world, you break in somewhere.
If you obtain it without permission in the digital world, you click a link.
The click feels cleaner, so you tell cleaner stories.
Ah, the classic HN Passive Aggressive Concern Troll.
“Are you okay mate?”
Translation: I want to insult you, but I do not want dang to notice.
It is the same genre as:
“I am genuinely confused how someone could think this.”
Translation: I am calling you stupid.
or
“This feels emotional rather than reasoned.”
Translation: I have no counterargument.
You are not being kind. You are being condescending while wearing a cardigan of civility. It is the approved HN way of calling someone unwell without saying the word stupid directly. Very on brand. Very polite venom.
If you think my point is wrong, say why.
If you cannot, do not hide behind a wellness check.
So yes, I am okay.
Are you okay?
Because it seems like making eye contact with your own reasoning gave you altitude sickness.
Setup is tricky first time and permissions can be a horror, but after that it’s ‘Rrs doing it all.
Sonarr, Radarr etc. it’s all automated and if you use lists you don’t actually touch it unless adding a new series, it just works.
I pay for usenet indexers and access, VPNs and Plex. I also pay for Netflix, Sky for Appletv.
The piracy setup costs far more to run the streaming services.
I do it for the quality and the all in 1 nature. I pay for the streaming services too, which makes me feel less bad about it. I should cut one or the other, but haven’t yet.
Yeah I would say you’re the minority use case or you’re lying. People who pay for and therefore fund pirates usually don’t pay for legal services as well.
Setup of an automated media server and the containers it requires was more or less my training for an IT role. Similar setups were maintained by most the staff and all also had streaming accounts.
I can’t fault the training, it helped me out of many jams.
The first is people who don't have the money, e.g. students. They will never pay you; they don't have the money.
The second is people who do have the money but value the experience above other things. These would be your best customers, if you provide the better experience.
If you don't provide the better experience, they don't pay. Is that a rationalization? Maybe, but are you better off to whinge about it or to take away their excuse?