What does a post-piracy world look like?

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?

63 comments

There is so much good, open source software that I haven't had to pirate any software in years.
As far as movies and TV, the piracy won't stop until the enshittification stops. Usenet and torrents won't go anywhere.
- This is so true regarding software. The FOSS apps present today are good enough with adequate features for daily day users like me - whether on Linux, Windows & especially Android (almost all my apps there are FOSS). I simply haven’t had the need to pirate software for a decade now.
  Now games and media, that’s a whole different story. Coming from a third world country, I simply can’t fuel my gaming desires with a weak currency that even great services like steam hardly makes a difference. Therefore - sailing the high seas.
- Open source software offers significant benefits, but there are still many positions that remain unfilled. Specifically, it falls short in areas such as professional software (like AutoCAD) and business management software (such as QuickBooks Desktop and ERP systems).
  
  There's a difference here that I describe as "pro" meaning specialized, complex software targeted at big businesses vs individual tools of the trade: Vectorworks is gonna get paid for happily by companies needing support and relying on it for critical output, while your next door young architect will run an outdated, cracked version of AutoCAD because it's just too expensive - that kid could (and should) run Qcad.
  Where I see pirated software surviving is also as a form of legacy support: if you run old hardware (i.e. 32bits), that's where "pro" software is gonna suck & leave you dry, while torrents are still out there.
  In gaming or media, cracking looks like a sport, I feel people just want to have fun blowing restrictions to pieces. It's heartwarming!
  Back to the 'tools of the trade" category, I am happy to pay a moderate price to support a talented dev (Isadora, D::Light) but get understandably annoyed at huge businesses practicing insufferable licensing schemes. I wish people start looking, and using then supporting more alternatives out there - but isn't photoshop still crack-able because it helps it dominate the market where The Gimp would do if it was the standard?
- Torrenting on I2P especially won’t go anywhere. Even if you ban all VPNs/their legal protections

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.
- 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.
- I really like your way of thinking. Have a good one.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.

Honestly my friends ask me tonnes of questions like this, including "what happens when AI takes over", or "when everything mines your data".
I don't think people realise how close me as an IT person is to going and living in an off grid cabin in the woods.
- Your friends will find you wherever you are and will continue asking you such questions. There is no escape.
  
  Doubt.
  I could disappear and my friends wouldn't be able to find me again.

honestly not trying to be a shill but there was a brief period that caught a glimpse of a post-piracy world where there were very little streaming services that had all the content you could want. It moved me away from piracy because of the convenience, library, and being able to share with friends and family.
Ideally a post-piracy world would have the options for uncensored/original versions of content, the ability to buy and store said content locally and own in perpetuity, with a price point for access to a vast library from a very small number of services. As many have said, the way to combat "piracy" is to offer a service better than piracy itself.
- If video streaming worked the way music streaming does, that would be a major blow to piracy for sure.
  If I had to have Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, and Apple Music in order to listen to everything I want to listen to, I would subscribe to none of them and pirate all my music. Fortunately, most of these services have the same core catalog, the major difference between them is UX and extra features. You just choose the one you like and you're set.
  No such luck with video streaming services which have nearly no overlap.
- Yeah same re: purchasing convenience vs pirating.
  Pirating is a juicy prospect once again.

I think your examples apply only to a specific use case. In particular, for movies and TV shows — illegal streaming sites only account for one part of pirated material. I would assume many more simply download film/TV.
Can't speak to the others but I'm fairly sure that pirates will find a way to pirate no matter the obstacles.

FOSS alternatives are out there for most software. I don't really care for pirating photoshop when GIMP is free.
You can't really kill P2P file sharing. If there is a need for creating a seed then someone will do it if the film/show is popular enough. Will probably be hosted through a DMCA non-compliant country.
- Actually, many old movies and shows are available on P2P networks, but the lack of seeders renders them inaccessible.
  
  It depends on the movie, but I agree people do need to keep seeding more for those older, niche films.
- Even if there was a multinational effort to stop P2P file sharing I feel like other methods would just be adopted or become mainstream
  
  Even then I still don't think you could stop it. Maybe put a dent in it by taking down sites that host them, but all that'll do really is push indexers onto .onion or i2p, or make it so you share the torrent files by word of mouth or matrix/telegram groups, or back to IRC.
- You do you, but any way you slice it Gimp is inferior to PS except for cost. My shipmates and I use piracy to level that field. I'm all for FOSS for privacy, security, diversity, competition, and niche applications that have minimal profit potential. I'm still going to use the best tools available to me though be they FOSS or otherwise. Smell you later land-lubber.
  
  Sure, I have no issues with someone cracking adobe photoshop. In my case, I'm not going to be doing any serious photoshopping, so GIMP and KdenLive are suitable alternatives for me, a hobbyist, that wants the minimum effort required to use the tool every now and again.

I think 1) and 2) have already been that way for at least 15 years. Software copy protection used to be very simplistic and is getting improved constantly. Also when I grew up games didn't yet talk to servers and they do it for quite some time already. Every new physical video format gets a new copy protection mechanism... DVD, BluRay,... now streaming services with DRM... Illegal sites get shut down all the time.
The piracy scene also adapts, changes their methology. I'm pretty sure it'll continue that way. I asked the same question 10 years ago and yet here we are.
The adult content is getting worse though. But i think mainly for the big and well known commercial streaming sites. Maybe there are still torrents of that around and pirating adult content will get similar to pirating a tv series.

Can't wait for the highly dystopic future where we transfer files via smoke signals
- It'll happen some day. There will eventually be "Illegal" wireless transmitting devices that do things such as transmit data over disallowed frequencies, break the token rate speed limit imposed by the fcc (fuck 56k) and illegally use encryption (using data encryption on amateur radio is illegal). When they do start becoming a thing, they'll be able to transmit data maybe a few miles at up to a megabyte per second (not 1 megabit), or for dozens of miles at a few kilobytes per second. Depending on whether the designers wanted to prioritize speed or distance.
  The technology exists to make such wireless transceivers using off the shelf parts available to normal people, there's just no reason for them to exist. Yet.
  
  That actually sounds kinda awesome. Can't wait to torrent the X-Files over websdr or some shit while pretending it's Russian number stations

As somebody who only got back into this recently (thanks Amazon, you sticking ads into Prime gave me the push I needed), it involves a lot of subscriptions and unavailable content.

To me, the term "post-piracy" means that piracy has taken over and is the norm; not that it's been abolished. "After piracy has taken over..." I suspect wearing parrots on your shoulder would be much more in vogue.
- exactly; there will always be piracy as long as piracy is needed, a post-piracy world is a utopia, even in the worst dystopia people find ways to "pirate"

Piracy will never die, the one next step the industry goes the two next steps piracy goes. So basically this is a thing of cats and mice, it will never stop, it just goes and goes..
There is no post-piracy world, while the private owned system remains there will be people pirating it.
If private owned economic system never ends ergo piracy never ends also.
Private owned system should end? Idk maybe yes maybe not, we should define what's the point into ending it or not? If the system still maintain the pyramid scheme going what's the point of getting rid of it?
- Did you read my post?
  If you have read my post, you will understand the conclusion that I have reached.
  If you wish to validate your own conclusion, you need to address the issues raised here.
  
  But your premise is bad

No, I don't think it will go like that.
But if piracy would go away, then it would mean we live in a great world:
Software: FOSS/Freeware/Donationware software prevails. People want to use this kind of software, and this is the go-to for any appliance. People would be deeply affected if they could not use free (as both in freedom and/or money, as mentioned before) software - gone will be the days of everyone needing Adobe products or MS Office for their professional work, and the year of the Linux desktop would be in the history books.
Movies and TV shows: They would be available anywhere, on demand, in any format. Or there would be this website where you would go to and watch whatever you would, without ads. It would kinda be the same with music.
p0rn: I don't have enough knowledge in this field, I just go to certain websites when I need. Guess it would be like on the previous point? idk.
As long as those points are not achieved, there will always be a need for piracy, and people will always find new ways to get their content. So far, I do not see us being somewhere even close to that ideal world, so there are plenty of reasons for piracy to exist.
I personally try to pirate things more ethically, for example I try to buy music and games whenever I can, but I know several people that pirate stuff just because they can.

Hahahaha

Dumb.
- And Dumber

*Software: Idk, never really messed with pirating software, that's how you become part of someone's botnet.
*Movies and TV shows: Torrents and Usenet.
*Adult Content: Torrents and Usenet.
*Music: Slsk and yt-dlp.
- The problem is not their absence from the P2P networks; rather, it’s the lack of seeders that renders them useless.
  
  He's right, usenet isn't p2p, but finding old movies there can be a challenge. Still, I manage just fine for old movies with ipt and tl for the most part, or the rare thing I can only find on soulseek of all places. Archive actually has a bunch too.
  
  Usenet isn't P2P

Given these trends, what might a post-piracy world entail?
Assuming you are right with this:
For media: Buy in or consume less. If piracy will really become less prevalent you don't really have much choice, do you? I don't think everyone has to live like I do, but my media consumption in the past few years has shrunk more and more (for various reasons) and maybe that's something other people may gravitate towards as well. Life has a lot to offer beyond screens.
For software it's trickier. Maybe you find an open source project that suits your needs or maybe there's a competitor that hasn't (yet) enshittified their product. Unfortunately, if you really need a specific piece of software I think you might just be SOL 🤷‍♂️
Just my two cents
- Lifa has a lot to offer beyond screens
  Yarr, mateys, all sails to the Public Library! We'll drop anchor at the secondhand bookshop on our way back! And drop all that electronic ballast, it's only slowing us down...
  You are absolutely right; I hadn't thought of it this way but a post-piracy world should be a frugal one, could be a quiet one. A planet-friendly one.

More brazen crackdown of piracy, DNS-level or maybe even IP-level blocking. Complete overhaul of the infrastructure of the internet to make it more "corporate friendly."
We got to remember that piracy, whose backbone is the bittorrent peer-to-peer network, exists because the current infrastructure of the internet allows users to open their ports and allow people from all over the world to request media from them. The internet infrastructure is controlled by the government, who is controlled by corporate overlords. As of right now, the government has (imperfectly) worked hard to retain the neutrality of the internet, but we might be losing this battle folks.
I've always advocated for i2p (https://geti2p.net/en/) because it allows us to be more resilient to the current infrastructure, with the added bonus of not needing a VPN to download stuff. It would be lovely to see you all at tracker2.postman.i2p :-) Yeah, speed might be an issue but it'll get better once there are faster nodes in the network. I2p allows people to participate in the network even when behind a CGNAT and unable to forward their ports, as is the case with a lot of restrictive ISPs.
More detailed tech information to be found : https://geti2p.net/en/docs/how/tech-intro
- I2p is too slow to be useful.

I've also felt that the age of piracy is coming to an end and subsequently have begun hoarding a lifetime worth of content. I have 32 TB to fill and I'm halfway there. My taste is mostly older movies and shows, so I want to ensure that I have access to them forever.
I've struggled to find resources for adult content, though, so that's a point of concern. I'm open to suggestions.
- Torrents and usenet my dude. Unless you're looking for something real specific like Brazilian balloon popper fart porn, you'll find something.

Post-piracy? There will only be darkweb piracy that untraceable and unkillable. Everything will be available anonymously through I2P and there will be a jump in its popularity. Every normie will know that in order to download the new blockbuster, all they have to do is install I2P, an eDonkey clone, QBittorent, or Popcorn Time (which will run on I2P's anonymous torrents).
I pray that they shut down every single clearweb streaming and download website for us to finally all move to the darkweb.
- Did you ever actually use i2p?
  It's very very slow that I don't think most people can do it.
  
  Yeah, and I used it when it was even slower. With a seed-box, it's fine. Just like in the 2000s when you had to download stuff overnight or wait a week. There are way fewer nodes in I2P than TOR nodes, but if it were to grow in popularity, speed wouldn't be an issue anymore.

[??Uh, you're getting downvoted for asking a straight question? WTF lemmies??]
- OP's question is "given the above arbitrary and largely unfounded claims, how would a post-piracy world look?" which is... not straight. It's not just based on anecdotal premises, it also demands answers that don't call those into question.
  
  OP's premises may be not wrong on the first point, is in need of some realignment on the second, and I have no idea about the third.
  The idea of a post-piracy world can still be envisioned and discussed; will it be full of FOSS and CC-BY-SA? Will it leaves us with only secondhand pulp comics while our roku devices blast 23h out of 24 of ads? Who knows?

"You'll own nothing and be happy"

as software becomes more complicated and harder to modify the tools we use to pirate will catch up eventually

63 comments