Fuck you Sony…
Signed a lifelong pirate.
Like shouldn’t they just be suing the customers directly for a bazillion dollars at this point?
Japanese corporate culture is fucking terrible. I don’t understand how anyone can support these gaming companies.
Edit: Gaming/Entertainment
UMG and Warner Bros are Japanese? Lol
Japanese corporate culture is atrocious ≠ American corporate culture isn’t atrocious
Both need some major reforms in order to be just non-awful, let alone acceptable.
My point is more that what they wrote didn’t make sense talking about Japanese corporations when more American companies are listed. The entertainment industry is simply awful, nationalities aside.
Pretty sure sony is Japanese.
Read the first sentence of the article
Sony Music (the company involved in this lawsuit) is an American subsidiary of Sony Entertainment, a division of Sony Corporation of America.
as digitized almost all societal functions are, we really should define basic internet access as a human right.
but think of the corporations!
Is music piracy is still a major thing these days? I’ve not even considered it for years, because every music streaming platform has all the music, it seems.
Movie and TV show piracy must be so much more rampant because of the fragmentation creating inconvenience to consumers.
Music piracy isn’t rampant at all. It’s the “immigrant crime is out of control” of the internet.
If anything, youtube is the biggest sharer of pirated music. You can listen to anything on it for free, from anyone.
And download all the music you want without an account using yt-dlp.
I rip all of my music from youtube
It’s honestly easier than torrents.
Hell, most of the major labels post tracks themselves to sponge up that sweet ad revenue. You can just use the tool of your choice to download the audio straight out of it if you decide you want to keep it for later.
Hell I still sometimes find those old “lyrics” videos. Remember those? They all had that bluish teal background? Some of them survive to this day.
They’re still around for most big songs, old and new.
I mean, there was a particular format of them, I think they were made in Youtube’s old built-in editor, there’s a distinctive style that is extremely 2007.
The blue background is in fact a default for Windows Movie Maker
It’s mostly hipsters with modded iPods, everyone else just streams music. You can stream it in lossless quality on some platforms and download most played songs to your device if your mobile bandwidth is limited.
Hell I’m a weird hipster who likes to have local copies of things and even I’ve given up.
Music piracy is just so much harder than streaming.
I use Foobar and Plexamp to listen to my FLAC collection. I have a lot of magazine CD inserts not readily available on the streaming platforms. Just feels really good knowing companies like Spotify aren’t making a dime off me.
Never heard of foobar, and honestly surprised it doesn’t have a linux version. It has a windows phone version, but NOT linux.
I know I shit on linux a lot on this site for having a small userbase, but COME ON!!! You make a windows phone version but NOT a linux version??? At least linux has something like 5% of the pc market userbase. And while that may be mockingly small, windows phone probably only ever had 5 users total!
You know it’s bad when I’M the one insulting a program for not having a native linux port.
For you and anyone else curious to find something similar to Foobar2k on Linux, there’s DeaDBeeF. I used to use it way back before I switched to ncmpcpp
Well, Foobar is ancient software and barely has any developers. It’s intended to be a WinAmp clone. I’m sure there’s an equivalent piece of Linux software that does something similar.
Most personal computers run Linux.
Because most personal computers are phones.
Audiophiles like me listen to local .flac files through external DAC’s for better sound. And I’m not a hipster. Also lots of music I like isn’t even on streaming.
it’s better if you hear this sooner than later but you are the dictionary definition of a hipster
They would sentence you to death while demanding that you pay for your own execution.
Libertarian police
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
Original Credit: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department
Thank you for this. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard on my lunch break ever
This made me audibly sigh. They won’t put it like this but this genuinely the future some people want.
People wouldn’t pirate your shit if it was easily and cheaply available
And won’t disappear the moment someone decides they won’t pay “licenses” for it to be on the service you paid for it.
And, thinking specifically about Sony, doesn’t include rootkits or similar invasive security nightmares.
Well streaming shouldn’t have fucking won
We were trying to be reasonable and compromise… I know, how naive of us
Now that the streaming industry plunged head first into enshitification, we are back to our previously held practices
I Personally refused, I bought every CD I could even digitally. Hell I’ll still buy some but it’s getting annoying and I don’t want to support certain platforms anymore. So now it’s like I’d rather pirate the albums, buy merchandise, and use Vanced versions of streaming services
Oooo a fresh take on the reality of the situation.
Yeah, that’s the notion I think I most identify with. I was like “support better behavior for a relatively low cost? Hmmm I guess so, there’s a huge value here and it feels like an olive branch”
And hoooo how wrong we all were. Never again will I ever trust one of these companies. Now, it’s me as a user and everything is transactional and always with a free alternative.
I may or may not have been pirating media for over 20 years and this song and dance will never end.
Sure, the well known torrent sites have marginally less content and seeds than before but my Plex server may or may not still be packed full of classics and the latest releases.
The above may or may not be purely fictional and victimless. And no, I wouldn’t “steal a handbag.” Handbags aren’t infinite digital replicas, and handbag owners don’t drive supercars.
(I draw the line at software largely due to the risks, and partly due to Mac apps and Adobe suite being locked down pretty well. I’m happy to pay for software regardless. Netflix and Amazon on the other hand…)
Shit, I didn’t just pirate all the movies and TV shows I consume, but I also stole the server that hosts my Servarr stack that I download them onto from my last corporate job.
Yo ho ho, mateys, and a bottle of VPNs!
I pay for Netflix and get other shows that interest me elsewhere, they are few and come out every two years or so.
Shut up, Sony. Stop pirating Adobe Apps then.
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So you’re saying you have a choice in ISPs? Sounds pretty cool.
My area has around 3 or 4 competing ISPs. (Canada)
I think they can also catch you seeding it.
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Is this true? You actually have to seed in order to download?
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hm, if you set your seed ratio to 0, maybe not though
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I’ve never tried it either. It would be kind of an asshole thing to do. Torrenting only works because everyone contributes their fair share.
All this with a VPN?
I’m not aware of any way they can catch you with a VPN.
420,696,969% tariffs on VPNs who let you connect outside the US.
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Sony would be in the running. But i think nestle would beat them on the top spot.
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Maybe Sony should have some things cutoff for that root kit, hmmm?
I’m so glad the internet hasn’t forgiven them for that.
I’m a bit sad that not everyone remembers when they made up a movie critic so they would have good quotes to put on ads for Sony Pictures movies.
I also haven’t forgiven them for trying to sue people for simply watching the Geohot video, or removing alternative OS functionality from the PS3, or for trying to reinvent MMC/SD memory cards in a different shape and charge more for for them. Hell, I still haven’t forgiven them for SonicStage.
I won’t buy anything from Sony for any reason. I don’t care what it is. I made damn sure my most recent camera purchase wasn’t a Sony, no matter what the reviews said. That’s because they pissed me off 20 years ago and haven’t demonstrated any improvement in behavior since. Nerds have long memories.
Fuck I still hate them for the minidisc
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“You wouldn’t SteAL a gUilLotINe!”
You stole a bottle of sprite from the store?
No running water for you.
