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:
Well, I mean in their defense they were very private and didn’t tell anyone about it.
Why install the app when all the same features work in browser?
This is a pretty fair argument. It reminds me of the early 2010s when the sentiment everyone had was “we have an app for that”. We don’t need more specialized apps (which really aren’t that specialized - most of these do exactly the same thing), we just need intelligent solutions using what we have. Back in the day that was responsive layouts, today it’s browser extensions.
While an interesting idea, there is no evidence that supports that Ad Nauseum adversely impacts reporting metrics. This is due to ad servers all determining click by different methods. It rarely ever aligns. It likely doesn’t impact user targeting either as your behavior still hasn’t really changed and clicks aren’t typically used for that purpose.
You’re better off just running UBlock Origin. Punishing advertisers doesn’t really make any sense anyway. The blame is really on publisher groups and their rampant greed. Auto-clicks just further that.
Here’s my take on it. Things like Radarr, Sonarr, Jackett, etc offer a better service then Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, etc. Devs could charge for the *arrs and a lot of people would pay. Why? Because it’s completely a la carte. Right now if there are say three shows I’m interested in then I could have to pay for three different streaming services. But not only that, I would also have to be concerned with whether or not that show is leaving the platform anytime soon. In the case of Hulu, not only do I have to worry about paying them but I also have to worry about paying them enough that I don’t have to watch ads after paying them.
Likewise with video games, there are games that have DLCs that require previous DLCs to fully unlock what they include. In other words, it is paywalling already paywalled content. I don’t have a problem with the content, I have a problem with the way they present the content.
With the Premium Afterhours service you get ad-free but also handjobs from a YouTube intern in the broom closet. $15.99 per month no contract, cancel anytime.
Pretty much in any case, PII is sent but what exactly gets sent may differ. For example, Revanced I believe just acts as a wrapper for the YouTube platform. YouTube is still collecting information it’s still just you interacting with it just minus the ads. For something like Invidious, YouTube would still be getting information in regards to your IP address in the case of self-hosting or if the connection’s proxied that information, but not the same amount or type of information is being collected.
All cracked software normally still sends data. You would have to block via Windows Firewall (Windows), use a no-inet group and iptables/ufw (Linux), or use a tunnel interface/root access to block (Android).
Moonlight/Sunlight are both really great options. The only problem I’ve encountered with either is that the mouse cursor is encoded into the video stream itself. It adds a little bit of lag when moving the mouse and makes it feel not quite right. Steam doesn’t encode to the stream, so it feels much more responsive. Parsec doesn’t either, but it does not support hardware decoding in Linux so you’re going to be stuck with an added ~10ms decode time.
Every day is a pirate party in the US.