TL;DR at the bottom.

I started getting into torrents about 2 years ago, at the time I started out with downloading YIFY rips and x265 RARBG encodes. I didn’t care about the quality at the time, I was just happy to get movies. But I also wanted stuff like Special Features, and while Tigole and the QxR team occasionally added them for some of their movies, it felt like something was missing.

Eventually I grew dissatisfied with encodes, and wanted to watch movies in the highest quality possible. I would have downloaded BDMVs, but no one seemed to be seeding them, or in the case of less-mainstream/obscure movies, they weren’t on public trackers at all. (I tried downloading REMUXes from FGT, but they always replaced the PGS subtitles with UTF text subtitles, which I didn’t appreciate.) So in early 2022 I bought myself a Blu-ray optical drive, set up MakeMKV, and bought the Blu-ray of the movie I wanted to rip. After that, I bought some more BDs to rip, and I started making my own REMUXes. Some time after that, I flashed my drive with the LibreDrive firmware so I could rip my 4K UHD discs too.

So anyway, my point is that the arguments that piracy is “bad for business” and causes companies to “lose money” are full of hot air. If anything, piracy is good for them and increases sales. There have been numerous occasions where I have wanted to download a REMUX and there were no seeders, and decided it would be easier for me to buy the disc and rip it myself.

So, the main takeaways are:

  1. Piracy isn’t nearly as bad as the authorities say it is, and may actually increase sales.
  2. Create good-quality encodes.
  3. Seed all your torrents.

TL;DR: Started buying and ripping my own Blu-rays due to dissatisfaction with low-quality encodes and lack of seeders.

  • Tippon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    You do realise that you’re saying that piracy didn’t work for you, so you went out and spent your money instead, yeah?

    • TheImpressiveXOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not saying it didn’t work, in fact I still download encodes. But for stuff I really like, I buy the physical versions.

        • TheImpressiveXOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I’ve been trying to find a place where I can safely do so, but I don’t want to risk getting in legal trouble.

          EDIT: Typo.

          • Pulp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            11
            ·
            1 year ago

            Some private tracker. Just be careful, and maybe don’t upload things there are already remuxes of

          • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            1 year ago

            As @Pulp mentioned: Upload to private trackers.

            I may or may not have uploaded some music cds I imported from overseas to private trackers.

          • BitterSweet@discuss.tchncs.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            1 year ago

            Consider shooting me a message and I can get you started on a smaller private tracker. Then you can move to better places from there.

            • matey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              How do you get permission to upload to a private tracker? It seems like you need extra special permissions in the ones I’ve seen.

              • BitterSweet@discuss.tchncs.de
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                1 year ago

                You can upload content to any tracker you’re in (usually). It just requires mod approval. After enough verified uploads you get the “uploader” role where you get to bypass mod verification.

              • Pulp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                1 year ago

                The larger, more general ones do, and they likely won’t allow one-off uploaders. But smaller ones are happy to take uploads, and it may spread from there to elsewhere.

            • TheImpressiveXOP
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I have the misfortune of being a United States citizen; and yeah I have Mullvad.

          • Psythik@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Google “Debrid services” and download all the torrents you want without having to wait for seeds. No VPN or extra security measures needed. (Unless you’re paranoid, then by all means, VPN away.)

            You’re welcome.