Morgikan

Every day is a pirate party in the US.

Yeah, I remember the days of renting VCR players and acting like we didn't already own one so we could play on one and record off the other. I think a lot of this is due to the rise in Internet infrastructure. 15 years ago streaming services wouldn't have been doable. There was no licensing, just files to download. You'd even get Digital Download codes in your DVD case when buying a movie, so you had multiple copies. Really sad how things are consolidating.

I'm guessing you are extremely young as that is not how digital purchases have historically worked. The concept of "you bought a license to use it" hasn't been around long. Before that, you would be given an access code to go to a publisher's website like Disney and download a copy of the content you purchased. It wasn't tied to any licensing server or authentication system past that point, you just had a digital copy of your purchase.

This is exactly what happened actually in one of Valve's court cases. It wasn't that Steam went down, but rather the user was permabanned. When that ban happened he lost access to his game library. However, he had purchased those games so he argued successfully that he had a right to download what he purchased. Valve attempted to argue that they were a subscription service so that they would not have to provide anything to him. In the end since he won the case, he was allowed to download what he purchased. I'm sure that created a weird situation for those publishers and I'm not sure whether or not Steam had to remove the Steam DRM prior to allowing him to download.

That's not really true. I still have physical media that I've purchased as a teenager. That's not a license key that I own that's physical media. It was independent of any licensing servers or anything like that. Digital media licensing didn't really start taking effect until about 2010ish en masse. Prior to that most streaming services like Netflix weren't really streaming services as internet infrastructure didn't quite exist to that degree yet.

Valve argued in court that you do not own any title in your library and that they are a subscription based service. That's not very ethical.

Bare in mind what OP posted was from 4 months ago, but one of the mods mentions it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PiratedGames/comments/14qvyi3/some_controversy_going_on_at_this_sub/

They acknowledge changes were made, so I would take that as confirmation, but that whole group/sub kind of cringey. Posts do get deleted by mods but users also make a lot of claims without any evidence. I get that most of those people don't have a technical background so its hard to find evidence, but that also maybe is a good reason to make a claim.

EDIT: When I wrote my original comment, I used "Apparently" and "Allegedly" synonymously. I understand if anyone wants to call me out on that, but doesn't seem right changing what I wrote (seems like that would be covering).

Apparently some mods were running keyloggers on the community.

I think the OP's question is better worded on the second point as "What is preventing a copyright holder from joining a private tracker?" The answer to that is nothing. In theory, invites would only be handed out to trusted individuals, but the reality is you can just ask for invites and people will give you them.

To be fair, pirating a service you would otherwise not pay for (regardless of source) doesn't effect their revenue stream and therefore would be considered ethical piracy. Pirating content from pirates is perfectly fine.

Black Friday ads on a piracy board. There is no God.

I'll add two I didn't see listed:

1. Cookie AutoDelete
2. Dark Reader