What do you think of piracy?

piracy is kind of a double edged sword

on one hand, it keeps older anime (looking at you) afloat so future generations can enjoy it as much as we do

on the other hand, it damages the industry and those "season 2" anime might not get their second season because the interest isn't actively recorded (or so I think)

but on the OTHER hand, some anime don't get releases despite popularity or other reasons, making piracy a requirement to watch these series (unless you like dropping hundreds on a dvd)

@TempestoGod monster dropped last year on Netflix so as true is argument for before (the 20 years or so) now it can be watched legally.

I fully endorse piracy, all these services can remove and censor things whenever they want and your digital purchases can be taken away from you, you really don’t own any of the media you have. Download as much as you can.

Piracy is a big topic these days on MAL I see. I'm voting neutral on this. The only take I have here is that whoever you are, wherever you are, you should be able to enjoy anime if you want to. If you have to pirate to watch anime in your country then so be it.

As far as dubs go, I actually have a question about this. Are there groups out there making fan-dubs? I don't watch dub and don't plan on watching any dubs but I have seen fan-subbed anime before. Actually kind of curious about that, I would imagine that's not a thing but I do wonder.

@PaleHominid these days you can buy drm-free lossless albums from online music stores and once you buy them you actually own them. you can download it, re-download it, and use the music files you bought as you please. so at least for music, drm is not an excuse to pirate. besides, there's always spotify, where you only have to spend maybe 10 seconds on ads, so you literally are not paying anything other than 10 seconds of your time.

Piracy is an issue of convenience, If you can afford your hobby, with a reasonable price, 99% of people will pay. and the remaining 99% of those remaining 1% wouldn't buy the product if they couldn't pirate it.


But the thing is, when you can't even watch a singular show/movies series at times, by having a streaming service, of course you have to pirate.

You would be paying 100+ $ a month for streaming if you're hoping to watch everything or even most things that interests you, and even after that a ton of older shows just aren't licensed anywhere.

add the fact pirate sites have genuinely better service with multiple video players in case one of them is not working and genuinely better UI, and yeah of course I pirate. I have 1 singular streaming site, and I am not willing to buy more.

Specially because sometimes I even pirate the stuff ON THAT STREAMING SITE because it's just easier.

like with disney +, you can't even do a watch along with your friends, cause they have a measure that makes the stream black, how fucked is that? Some sites don't even let you take screen shots!

@Otakupervert890 Wait really? That's awesome, I genuinely didn't hear about Monster dropping on netflix

This is my opinion and I know I will likely piss off quite a few Users by saying this...

While some Users might think Piracy is a necessary evil, Piracy has created a culture of unprecedented entitlement.



No one has to do anything. Piracy is a conscious choice. Users who do not have access to something are choosing to resort to piracy because they feel they are entitled to something that isn't officially available to them financially or otherwise.

It's this sense of entitlement I will never understand about Anime fandom. Simply because something exists, fans feel the need they deserve to have access to it no matter what.

I grew up during a time period when most Anime wasn't even officially available outside of Japan and when Anime did reach the West it would take sometimes up to a decade for some franchises to even reach western audiences officially, let alone fans being able to pirate them in the 1st place.

If I can't afford something that would cost money, no matter how financially realistic or unrealistic or even it's official availability, my 1st thought wouldn't be to just try to steal it. That's how I view piracy.

Piracy is theft.

You have to pirate, IF you want to realistically watch most or all the things that interest you.

That is what I said.



You are just objectively wrong. Piracy is NOT theft by definition of what stealing even is.

you can't "steal" something, without the person who owns the thing loosing it. it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement.



Right, but there is a difference between lack of availability, and the availability being locked behind an extremely inconvenient paywall that in so many ways has has worse service than pirate sites.



I own 95% of the games that I have played. but the ratio is the exact opposite for anime. because unlike anime, gaming is a hobby that you can reasonably afford to have.



Entertainment is for the consumer.

If the consumer isn't happy, they aren't going to feel bad about """stealing"""" from the massive companies.

I am not entitled to the entertainment, but I am also under no obligation to play fair and be a good little boy who watches everything legally, when the other option is right there.

I'm not going to pretend like I am such a morally good angle that the thought of doing something as bad as not giving money for a shit service, is out of the question.

Piracy isn't good. But it is far more the fault of the provider. If the service was good, I wouldn't pirate. It's as simple as that.

You might not like this but Piracy is theft. You can even google the question, "Is piracy theft?" just to find out yourself.



Feelings are irrelevant. The thing is if one is not paying for something that normally cost money, one is not truly a consumer to begin with when dealing with Piracy because they aren't paying for anything to begin with. Doesn't matter if it's not fair if something is unrealistically out of reach for them. It's still theft.

This goes back to the whole thing of entitlement. One is simply just making up excuses for their piracy because they feel entitled to something just because it exists.

You might not like my opinion, but that's how I feel about it.



No I don't need to resort to piracy. I can afford to pay for multiple subscriptions to streaming sites and watch most of the things that interest me. If something is not Officially available to me I simply just wait till I can get my hands on an Official physical copy of it (I have done this countless of times before). If something ceases to ever be available to me (extremely rare instance), tough for those distributors to lose out on my business as a consumer and I just move onto something else...

I will say this for your own good.

This isn't even just about this one argument. asking google leading questions like this is how people become flat earthers.



Also, this tells me you have very little understanding of what "context" is. I said it is objectively not stealing, but by the fact that I called it copyright infringement instead, I thought it was obvious that I was talking about "theft" in law.

Piracy does not fall under theft, it falls under copyright infringement, that is not my opinion. it is literally true.



Well, I'm 19, living with my parents, and studying, my only income right now is a casual job at mcdonald that I have besides my classes.
most streaming sites, are about 10$ month nowadays.

Even if I get 3-4 which are still not enough to watch all the things that interest me, that is still 30-40 dollars a month, and 360-480$ a year. Now considering how I have other interests besides watching anime, is it really realistic for me to pay that amount of money just to get a worse service than the pirate sites?

I could of course, just NOT WATCH what I want to watch....

but I am not selfless enough to neglect my own interest, for the sake of a random massive company. I simply do not hold such a high morals to see that as such a bad act that I would have to avoid. most people are the same.

A bit Ironic because if you ask Google if the earth is flat they would say it's a sphere. Which is nothing close to being flat.

You could do all the mental gymnastics you want to somehow justify piracy and claim it's not theft but you are only fooling yourself.



There you have it, you are simply just making up selfish excuses to justify Anime piracy. It goes back to this culture of entitlement, where people expect to have access to something just because it simply exists.

A bit Ironic because if you ask Google if the earth is flat they would say it's a sphere. Which is nothing close to being flat.

You could do all the mental gymnastics you want to somehow justify piracy and claim it's not theft but you are only fooling yourself.



There you have it, you are simply just making up selfish excuses to justify Anime piracy. It goes back to this culture of entitlement, where people expect to have access to something just because it simply exists.