The problem is, that there is no alternative yet for that.
Movies are not an issue, there's piracy, music is not an issue, there's piracy, books are not an issue, there are libraries... and piracy, but youtube is still limited, and the only way to avoid the ads is to buy another device (computer), thus turning pretty much any smarttv (with features you paid for) into a dumb display (that you mostly cannot even buy anymore).
The alternative is paying for things you like so the people who make them can continue doing so. If you don’t think YouTube is worth paying for, it might be a good idea to reconsider the amount of time you spend on it or whether you want to help promote it.
Piracy offers the best service there is. You used to be able to buy DVDs, vhs tapes, etc., and you'd get the media, and even then you had to sometimes fast forward through ads.
Now, it's impossible to buy media in many cases, even if you click "buy", it might be gone after a month, because some contract somewhere expires, there are ads even in paid plans, there are limits, to what I can do with that media, and more and more services require you to continue paying for content you already "bought".
When they fix the "buy" button to actually mean "buy", and when they remove ads from "no ads" plans, i might reconsider. Until then, they're not getting any of my money anyway, piracy or not.
> When they fix the "buy" button to actually mean "buy", and when they remove ads from "no ads" plans, i might reconsider. Until then, they're not getting any of my money anyway, piracy or not.
This pretty much sums it up for me. I lost so much money over the years for so much content I technically should still "own access to".
And not just media, games and books, too. It's so ridiculous how important things like anna's archive have become because otherwise science would be so crippled that it wouldn't even function anymore.
"Piracy" of digital goods is an oxymoron... I don't think it's immoral. If you pay publishers, the creators don't get paid. And about the legality, well, just ask Meta what they think about torrenting.
Meta, however, is hoping to convince the court that torrenting is not in and of itself illegal, but is, rather, a "widely-used protocol to download large files." According to Meta, the decision to download the pirated books dataset from pirate libraries like LibGen and Z-Library was simply a move to access "data from a 'well-known online repository' that was publicly available via torrents."
To defend its torrenting, Meta has basically scrubbed the word "pirate" from the characterization of its activity. The company alleges that authors can't claim that Meta gained unauthorized access to their data under CDAFA. Instead, all they can claim is that "Meta allegedly accessed and downloaded datasets that Plaintiffs did not create, containing the text of published books that anyone can read in a public library, from public websites Plaintiffs do not operate or own."
While Meta may claim there's no evidence of seeding, there is some testimony that might be compelling to the court. Previously, a Meta executive in charge of project management, Michael Clark, had testified that Meta allegedly modified torrenting settings "so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur," which seems to support authors' claims that some seeding occurred. And an internal message from Meta researcher Frank Zhang appeared to show that Meta allegedly tried to conceal the seeding by not using Facebook servers while downloading the dataset to "avoid" the "risk" of anyone "tracing back the seeder/downloader" from Facebook servers. Once this information came to light, authors asked the court for a chance to depose Meta executives again, alleging that new facts "contradict prior deposition testimony."
If you pay publishers, the creators don't get paid.
Sure they do. The amount they get paid might not be enough. But by pirating, your guarantee the creator gets nothing at all. So... I stand by my statement. But, I will definitely agree that the whole "digital media" economy is fundamentally broken and hostile to both creators and consumers.
Sure, technically some creators get paid something. Some creators don't get paid anything. If those creators don't have the means to sue, that's their problem.
> the whole "digital media" economy is fundamentally broken and hostile to both creators and consumers.
This is why I think it's actually our moral imperative to not pay into this system wherever possible. (But personally, I choose to not consume rather than pirate. I'll pirate something to check it out. If it's nice, I'll buy it.)
Movies are not an issue, there's piracy, music is not an issue, there's piracy, books are not an issue, there are libraries... and piracy, but youtube is still limited, and the only way to avoid the ads is to buy another device (computer), thus turning pretty much any smarttv (with features you paid for) into a dumb display (that you mostly cannot even buy anymore).