this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I have quite a few, as I find streaming services in general to be very much worth my money and to be very convenient. It's when stuff isn't on any streaming site where I personally consider piracy acceptable. While I dislike the fragmentation of streaming services, I will pay for whatever streaming service the content I want to watch is on. I do want to support things I enjoy so long as the price is reasonable, and streaming service prices are all reasonable in my book.

  • Youtube Music - I switched from Spotify ages ago due to content it didn't have at the time, but may no longer apply. I recently upgraded to Youtube Premium because I've started using Youtube more often and detest ads.
  • Disney+ - I've found that here in Canada, D+ is the best streaming service in terms of quantity of content. We basically get all or most of what is on Hulu in the US.
  • Crave - In Canada, this is basically how you get HBO content. I subscribed to watch The Last of Us and have been sticking around to watch older HBO shows too.
  • Amazon Prime - This is mostly for the shipping. The fact I get some shows out of this is a bonus. It has fewer shows that I care about.
  • Nintendo Premium - For multiplayer and also some DLCs that got included with it. I find this to be the lowest value of the subscriptions I have, especially since I rotate what consoles I'm using and am strongly considering canceling it.
  • Dropbox - offsite backup is important and I don't want to manage it myself (nor have the risk that comes with that).
  • Some random Patreons and most recently lemm.ee's equivalent.

I'm not currently subscribed to Netflix because I regularly rotate what streaming service I'm subscribed to. When I'm done with what I'm watching on Crave and/or Disney+, I'll unsubscribe to those and maybe resubscribe to Netflix. Rinse and repeat. In the past, I've also used Paramount+ (worst streaming app I've ever used), Dropout (I subscribed for Game Changer and stuck around because of Dimension 20, but haven't had the time, so unsubscribed for now), and Ubisoft+ (I did the math and concluded it was better to subscribe for 2 months to play Far Cry 6 and Assassin's Creed Valhalla than to buy the full games with all their DLC -- I'll totally do it again next time they have a newer release I wanna play).

I make good money and really have no concerns with paying for all these. A couple dozen bucks a month for entertainment is nothing for me and highly worth it, especially to avoid any wrangling with finding and acquiring content. I also feel strongly about wanting to pay any reasonable amount for things I enjoy. To me, piracy is almost entirely about access and not about price. Heck, these days, most piracy I've done is for older games that you literally cannot find legitimately anymore.