I believe we’re approaching the final 3-5 years of prevalent piracy for several reasons:

  • Software: The difficulty of cracking and modifying software has significantly increased.

  • Movies and TV Shows: Numerous streaming sites have been shut down or faced legal penalties.

  • Adult Content: New releases are often removed within 1-5 weeks, and many older titles are no longer available on piracy platforms.

Given these trends, what might a post-piracy world entail?

  • BreakDecks
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    7 months ago

    There has never been a better time to use free open source software. Software piracy is actually less convenient today. Game piracy is really only dead for big multiplayer games, which makes sense since they rely on online services.

    Pirate streaming sites were a stupid thing to begin with. I’m happy to see them and the malware they push die. Torrents and P2P will always be king.

    Porn piracy is absolutely huge. I think you’re just doing a bad job downloading it.

    A post piracy world can only be one thing: crushing authoritarianism. That’s the only way piracy dies.

    • Chahk@beehaw.org
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      7 months ago

      Porn piracy is absolutely huge. I think you’re just doing a bad job downloading it.

      Unless you have a very particular kink or fetish, porn is the one thing that you can find for free all over the internet. You don’t even have to look that hard.

      Piracy of movies, TV, music, & books is alive and well with no intention of slowing down. If anything, the advent of streaming helped get media in higher quality sooner than before. It’s even easier if you’re willing to pay a little for a private tracker membership, of a Newsgroups subscription.

      Gaming is the most difficult part because cracking copy protections carry a very high risk of infecting your computer with a nasty virus. Even then, if you know where to look, there are trusted groups that value their reputation and pride themselves on releasing clean repacks.

      Bottom line is, there’s not going to be a “post-piracy world” OP asks about. The game simply changed to paying for a single all-in-one subscription instead of being nickel-and-dimed to death by corporations. And it’s already here.

    • rockhandle@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Game piracy is currently in a precarious position, given how difficult it’s become to crack denuvo. Games without denuvo still release very often, but especially in the AAA space, piracy is definitely slowing down

    • onlinepersona@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      I look forward to an opensource software and gaming industry. Godot and Bevvy games all over the place on opensource gaming stores that allow you to transfer money directly and in a privacy friendly manner using Taler (completely non-crypto) or openbanking.

      Yes, I dream, but it is possible.

      Anti Commercial AI thingy

      CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

    • Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org
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      7 months ago

      One thing that I recently saw being mentioned is that xbox 360 backups and downloads are hard to find and that the scene is pretty quiet. I have no idea how true this is as I haven’t personally checked, but I would be concerned about that.

      I suppose the demand isn’t there yet? Maybe it’ll take a while before people start to get into it more. I just hope that in the future, we figure out ways to make newer consoles more accessible, especially as companies attempt to shift towards digital downloads, etc.