Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
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4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
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Louis Rossmann shouts this from the YouTube rooftops all the time. Why not Randall?
He's gotten a bit less edgy over the years. Mostly in good ways.
Of course it's real. This is maybe one of the least shocking beliefs from a webcomic like xkcd ever. Like 1/5 of all the comics are about hacker culture or Linux.
Okay but programing or Unix jokes are whole different cake than openly admitting piracy unless you're Meta.
Fuck yeah Randall is based af.
I will never forgive Microsoft for just straight up deleting everyone's (mine) MineCraft purchases and accounts, and then having the gall to tell us to buy it again. It's still in my Microsoft Store purchase history, for Christ's sake.
I'd sooner buy Skyrim 4 more times than buy back what was stolen from me.
I literally had to look this up just now. Such a high profile game did such a huge thing and somehow I am just now hearing about it? Insane, tbh.
I chose to pirate Minecraft back when Notch was charging $20 CAD for a game in which the health bar didn't work, and I've been nothing but validated by every decision around the game since.
I haven't played Minecraft since they took it from me.
iTunes sells drm-free music downloads. The still do, if you go to the iTunes Store and not the Apple Music streaming surface.
There are better options out there though, like BandCamp.
Bandcamp only works if the band originated there. Most labels don't sell anything through bandcamp. If a label doesn't release digital lossless for me to buy it's getting downloaded on Soulseek.
Also PSA that Amazon Auto-Rip still exists for all CD and vinyl purchases you ever used your account for
256kbps AAC is still proprietary, but you can convert it to an MP3 with something like dBPowerAmp
How is AAC proprietary?
Don't do this. You will lose quality every time you re-transcode an audio file. AAC is supported by basically everything now.
Also MP3 is a pretty bad format all things considered. The most efficient format is Opus, it's open source and transparent at 160kbps.
Bandcamp, even though it's ownership is questionable at this point, still has Bandcamp Fridays where the artist gets 100% of the sale, and they let you download DRM-free high quality FLAC files.
This is for all those who don't like this, and want to demand DRM-free files.
sometimes, especially with niche artists, there aren't that many high quality flacs out there in the first place
Yeah, the one thing that keeps me on spotify
I usually go with Bandcamp, SoundCloud and YouTube (latter two in rare cases) downloads when I can't find it as a Torrent or on Soulseek (using Nicotine +)
Just gonna leave that here:
https://github.com/rmcrackan/Libation
Syncs and deDRMs your Audible library in a configurable interval. Also works headless on your server
i don't buy audible anymore but i had a sizable library from before and this works great!
A lot of books only get Audible Originals, so I don't really get around it. This way I can still keep it on my own server and serve it through Plex.
For games, always buy from GOG if you can. Unless it's a game I really want I only buy from GOG.
Many Steam games are actually DRM free. You can just copy the game folder onto a flash drive, sometimes modify a single file, and then run it from the flash drive in any PC.
You should still buy from GOG first imo, but I wouldn't entirely count out Steam.
Well, it's still a hack, not something officially supported, I wouldn't really consider them DRM-free when you still need Steam to run the game officially.
I'm not ruling out Steam either, they've done a lot of good for gaming and I buy games there if I really want them and there's close to no chance they're coming to GOG (like the recent Dragon Age), but more and more often I decide that I don't actually want that game that much.
if it’s not on GOG, you can also check itch.io!
iirc all games there are DRM-free as well (tho I could be wrong)
...or Humble Bundle if they offer the actual software download.
Not if they just offer Steam keys.
In my opinion.
But then you should also back up the optional downloadable install files for each game. Just using the launcher is not a fail proof way to keep your game collection
Indeed, there are many tools to do that, one of them of my own making: https://github.com/RikudouSage/GogDownloader
But even if you don't back them up, at least you signal that DRM-free is important to you by buying there.