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Comment by pedrogpimenta | Hacker News Reader

Downloading is more alive than it was 5 or even 10 years ago. And it all started, as usual, because of mega-corp greed.

Netflix solved most of the problem, it was paradise (aside from licensing issues that may mean that you can't watch some stuff in your country)! But... Thus came greed.

And all of the sudden, you need 10 subscriptions to access it all. And not everyone has that money. Actually, most people don't. So you... Choose? You either watch Disney stuff or the other stuff... But Game Of Thrones? Oh now you're on HBO... But no, you need HBO MAX as well... Oh...

So that's the story of how I rediscovered Jellyfin, sonarr, radar, etc... I can have it all and it's free.

It's sad that piracy is the best and most reliable way to consume media, but here we are.

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It’s not free. You’re stealing content.

It's free, though.

I think the term stealing is a bit normative in this context. Copying is more descriptive.

They don’t have the original.

Negatory, chief. The legal term “copyright infringement” was created precisely because bootlegging media could not meet the criteria for theft, (ie a pirate is not depriving someone else possession or ownership of the media that they copy). It all started with a man that was selling copied cassette tapes of an Elvis Presley concert through an ad in the back of a magazine.

Your getting content you didn’t pay for.

No matter how many times you want to call it theft, copyright infringement is simply not the same thing.

It isn’t for the initial copier but the consumer is certainly consuming content they did not pay for.

Are you not aware of dozens of streaming websites where you can watch any movie for free? Why would you want to download a pirated movie?

I don’t want to download movies. I want to watch Star Trek. You can’t do that on Netflix anymore. So paramount plus (aka “janky Netflix”) gets my $10/mo extortion fee.

If it wasn’t infeasible to download all of TNG, voy, and ds9 to my iPad, I would in a heartbeat.

I mean, if your options were downloading a pirated movies from a shady website, or streaming a pirated movie from a shady website, why would choose the first one?

Torrent download sites are everything but shady, if you know how and where to look.

Maybe, but usually when I want to watch a movie I want to watch it right now, not in a few hours.

There are clients to stream torrents.

If you’re on a private BitTorrent tracker, the video quality and encoding is often significantly better (bitrates often double). The download speeds saturate your internet connection. Piracy is often the best, fastest and most ethical option (no DRM).

Once I have a local copy, I don't have to depend on the continued availability of the shady website. I can pass the copy along to friends who might also enjoy it, and I can watch the movie whether or not I happen to have high-speed internet access at the moment.

Get a RaspberryPi, install Jellyfin, Sonarr and transmission and you won't have to move a finger anymore.

Because all those sites appear and disappear too quickly. I don't have the time to track them down, and avoid the malware ones. I have a setup made where everything downloads automatically, and once downloaded, is mine forever.

It's not straightforward, you never know which site is still available, how many will work, how many mirrors you'll have to try. Also, most don't have subtitles, at least not in my language. Also, if you don't have super high speed connection, it may stall.

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