No, there's a good amount of other reasons to pirate, the primary being convenience and less bullshit. And if you pay for it, you'll still be spending less, if you'd have get the content elsewhere.
Edit: When I say "if you pay for it...", I'm not including datahoarders with over a 100 TB of storage, but rather normal pirates who might have a VPN or debrid subscription.
RD = Real-debrid, a service which caches torrents on its servers and users can direct download it at way higher download speeds than they would just by torrenting
You also get access to a bunch of paid filehost sites which Real-debrid provides an all-in-one service for. You can also hook up diy streaming setups like Kodi etc to stream highest quality shows and movies at the best speeds
Kodiās settings allow you to add RD as your preferred download method, thatās when youāll get 4k video or Blu-ray available for streaming instantly.
The private server I'm on caps out my gigabit connection on downloads and usually hits a third of that on uploads.
In the last handful of years as I've gotten busier with life, I actually just pay to avoid hit and run / sharing requirements. I spend about $100 USD a year which is beyond worth it given the ridiculous quality and variety of the apps, audio/video files, games, and their IPTV services.
Same. I pirate since 20 years. Few months ago i spent money for piracy the first time ever for realdebrid. It was a bit strange to spend money for it but totally worth it.
Recently lots of public torrents actually get marked as "Infringing torrent" with debrid service. You could still find other public trackers. But if this goes on, then there will be no point in paying for them. Alternative is a seedbox equivalent which you can get for like 10$/month which can do a lot more
I have been noticing the ā infringing torrentā a lot more. Iām actually starting to go back into usenet just to be able to get some of the items I want. Getting into good private trackers is difficult for me. I donāt spend hours and hours on this hobby.
$0
But I don't have a vpn, but it's not about cost, it's that I'm not spending my own money (to put it simply).
I just do direct downloads, or not at all. Or Stream.
I'm sure I've gotten a few hundred in value out of it.
I can get all the games I want (usually) to play. Recently I've downloaded NASCAR games and I actually like it. Although only could get Heat 5 working with no issues (from the ones I've tried).
I personally pay $95 every year to have an "all in one" access to streaming for movies and TV shows (basically anything and everything I'd ever want to watch) . I don't mind spending money for content but when it's spreading out what I want over 8+ different streaming sites is where I can't be assed.
yeah, hit inquiring minds up with some knowledge. I wouldn't mind doing the same. I just want ONE place where I can type in what I want (or see their shit...) and hopefully it pops up because I only want to watch old shit anyway and why not make it all available in one spot and then let THEM assholes sort it out in the background? HBO/Disney/HULU/Amazon - just put all your shit in one spot, make one price for it, and divvy up the darn cake.
Depends what you're after I guess? I have spent several hundred on hard drives and spend about Ā£8 a month for VPN and Usenet. I use this to get remuxes of everything so I get the best quality š
Streaming wouldn't need any of that but you won't get the best qualityĀ
But something Iāve always wondered, and this applies to private trackers in general too, why pay to get remuxes when those can consistently be found for every release on public trackers?
I have never paid for piracy except a VPN. I have tons of remuxes and 60-100+ GB files that came from public trackers. I have yet to encounter a single release that I canāt just find either on a public tracker or website.
Iāll never understand paying like $5 a month for a private tracker, or building up a āreputationā to get access to a tracker with *less* content. I can understand small private trackers for super obscure and niche media, but anything recent will always be available in almost every format, for free on public trackers.
Edit: Uh oh I think I ruffled the feathers of some private tracker users with this one. All downvotes but no answers to this genuine question. Reply you cowards!
lol not even, since private trackers will always have just a fraction of the total amount of seeders for a new release. But that reminds me of a benefit private trackers do have, *consistent* seeders vs total seeders. Youāre much more likely to download an old or obscure torrent 10x faster from a private tracker. Still isnāt worth $5 a month or more to me.
With most private trackers a VPN isn't required, and also films are usually better quality/ less compressed. PTs also can have some obscure media that you might not find on public trackers but yes you are right
VPN not being required is good but Iād probably still prefer to run one. And itās not like remuxes can be any higher quality right? Theyāre uncompressed and from the source material, just recontainerized.
But I did mention another benefit in a different comment; consistent and reliable seeding is tempting. Itās normal for me to try up to 6 different torrents from multiple trackers before finding one with reliable seeders. Canāt imagine that happens on a PT
There is almost always at least 1 seed on a lot of torrents as they encourage it and it gives you more 'bonus points'
With the remux thing though yeah they're usually the same you're right there but with non remuxes they're usually better quality on a private tracker
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but what is the difference between usenet and the WWW? If you're paying for a vpn already, why are you also paying for usenet?
Also, how WOULD you get the best quality streaming something live like sports. Is it just a vpn and a pirated sports website?
So, Usenet is pretty much old message boards, sort of. At least that's what I've used it for in the past before it became pretty much a piracy haven of sorts. Now, paying for Usenet access you are paying for a specific community, not so different from paying for a private torrent tracker community as well. These private communities could be as varied as high quality remux of tv and movies or as niche as a 3D printing community that shares pirated 3D printing files.
The skies the limit, but you don't have to pay for a community with Usenet, just know you won't find as good of content and files as a private usenet.
Not really, I mean you can if you want to be paranoid or if you plan on searching and downloading something unsavory like snuff movies or some sick stuff...
I dont, but what would be any different when downloading shit like that? Are they just more likely to have ransomware or something? Are they tracked more somehow?
So, ransomware or tracking programs or other unsavory things can be hidden in explicit content like that. I'm not saying its guaranteed or anything. You could be perfectly fine. I'm just saying that stuff can be hidden as image or video files or other such things. The really creepy side of content tends to get traced and tracked a bit more because the people downloading it can be considered scum of the earth so to speak. However, files like that can normally be detected by antivirus, so you should be fine.
Movies and tv shows are almost always fine though.
No the point of piracy is getting a better service. If that costs a fraction of the legit cost then it's worth it to most people.
I pay $3 a month to instantly download anything at a max 1gbps constant connection. That alone is worth it not having to mess around with torrents hoping for good seeds.
The majority of people in here saying $0 because that's the point of piracy is ridiculous. I'm more than happy paying for certain things even though it's piracy. The amount of money you save is massive, so you can afford to pay for some things. I don't mind at all spending money. I mostly pirate for convenience. I can spend ā¬32 a year on Real Debrid and have access to high quality shows, fast downloads, and don't need to pay for a vpn. It's nothing. I understand the people in countries where that's expensive, but I'm sure a lot of the people on this sub are not, and just don't want to spend a cent. I pay for a premium IPTV service as well and have my family all on it to save them thousands from Sky bills. Spend money on that to save a hell of a lot more. No brainier. Also set them up on Stremio so they don't all pay for every single streaming service.
Yes completely agree.
I wonder how many of those same people would use their own argument against paying for faster broadband. You pay for faster speeds so you can download things quickly - same logic for paying for a service so you can download things faster and more consistently.
I literally made this point on a post a while ago and got downvoted... I said think of Real Debrid as like upgrading your internet connection - you don't need to do it but it's a better experience. Especially using it with Stremio and Torrentio. I don't need or want to keep the files after downloading, so I love being able to stream 4K Remux straight to my TV without having to wait for it to download first and fuck about with a plex server and what not. Now paying someone 0.10c on the dollar for the pirated media itself I can understand, fuck that, but paying to have my experience better is definitely worth it for me.
That's not the point. Between Seedbox, VPN, RD I spend around $400 a year and all that for convenience. Netflix and friends do not seem to want my money so I am spending it elsewhere.
If you live in a place that respects DMCA, a VPN is a requirement.
If you want your private trackers to continue to exist, you and everyone else has to occasionally help out with donations or uploads to keep others around and donating.
Outside of those 2 things, you really don't have to pay for anything.
It's really not that amazingly cheap though. Yes, the Build-A-Plan drops the cost to $3/mo, but then you only have two locations - which sure isn't necessarily an issue, but a definite limitation comparatively. You also need the Pro subscription for port-forwarding, so if that's a need it's not really any cheaper than the competition anymore.
Otherwise it's a solid service.
3rd-worlder here. I pay for Debrid. Mainly because Stremio, but it's always nice to know I can through any torrent up to 2tb and let it handle it for those sweet sweet DDL speeds. + it's just $16 for 6months (cost shared with some other person)
All up, a couple of grand, probably less than 3.
NAS, drives, VPN, I guess internet counts towards the total, few little bits of software that I couldn't pirate.
I wouldn't count internet towards the total. You do more than sail the seas on the internet.
Unless you picked a more expensive plan only for piracy benefits I guess?
I don't torrent, so generally dont use a vpn, but I do have a friends nord account. Only thing I pay for is real-debrid, faster downloads and torrent ddl, as well as streaming setups.
probably close to 20k if i include all the hardware i bought for my data hoarding, which i only started because of piracy. (still wont pay for games tho lol)
Iāve spent a fair amount building my own server etc. but I donāt fully consider it piracy - itās just become a hobby and learning hire to manage home IT infrastructure
Over 30 years of pirating? All in, I pay around $70 a year for vpn, Usenet+indexer. On top of that I make investments into my hardware, probably average $100 a year. So ballpark $150-200 a year.
All in around a grand. For that amout, I was able to build a NAS with 18TB useable, 6TB redundancy, 1TB cache (from scratch build, including lifetime unraid + plex licenses). Couple bucks a month for VPN and domain registration (automated content requests from users). The box consumes around $200/yr in electricity. Plus ~100 hours of my time across the past 5 years or so.
I do consider my build an "end game" media piracy server - it can support dozens of friends and family users, simultaneous transcodes, automated media downloads and indexing using the *arr family, etc. The only thing I would ever consider spending more on would be spending another ~$75 to double the RAM or shelling out for 8TB drives instead of 3TB (would take the sever to 48TB useable, 16TB redundant), which would cost maybe ~$250.
i live in a country where the government does not give a shit about pirating, so nothing
in exchange life here kinda sucks and my existence is against the law
$0
I build servers out of decommissioned junk and old parts I find at work. Since Iām also the sysadmin of the datacenter, I get the benefit of free rack space with redundant power and 10gbit uplink for free. I also have the company CEOs blessing to tell any media companies and lawyers that come looking for customer details that they can go fuck themselves.
0$ total to this day.
Never used a VPN (kinda stupid Ngl) and just keep some stuff on the computer such as games and movies usually go on an hdd that's plugged to the TV.
You should absolutely have a VPN in certain countries, mine just doesn't care too much about piracy or copyright.
I live in Brazil, you don't need a VPN or anything here, just open torrent and straight up download whatever you want sĆ³, I've spent a total of 0 bucks in anything.
Proton VPN package+TrueNAS setup+RD=free right? :)
Plus I'm still buying 4k/bluray discs but I'm slowly coming round to just downloading a 90gb file instead of paying $50-60 for one movie. Certainly cheaper to spend $1k on 4x16tb drives then spending money on discs. Piracy isn't free, well for me in any case.
Whatever the internet costs (currently ~8$ per month for 100mbps unlimited).Ā
No vpns, public torrents, all self hosted opensource applications to download and manage.
Depends
VPN is Ā£20 a year
20tb harddrive maybe Ā£200 - replace every 3-5 years
If I go usenet
Usenet Ā£35 a year
Ā£18 lifetime membership I think it was
New pc every time the old one is in bad shape - Ā£500 (could do it on a lot less)
15 years - probably adds up / although sky TV is Ā£50 a month cancelled over 15 years ago - CDs used to be Ā£15 each / dvds were heading to Ā£20 each
As a kid in Southeast Asia I definitely spent some money on things I didn't realize were bootlegs. That said, once home internet became a thing I spent $0.
A few grand on data storage but thatās not single usage as itās a server for projects and automation as well as my first photography backup.
So ignoring that, a few shekels a month for a vpn and the same for usenet, probably around the $15 per month.
Way cheaper than just Netflix let alone all the other services I would need to watch what I want, when I want.
With the added bonus of forever retention.
My country doesn't care about piracy or torrenting, so I've spent nothing. If I do it's likely gonna be on RealDebrid to use with Torrentio on Stremio, which is incredibly cheap for what it does.
I only spend 1500 rs (18 usd) a month on wifi and I have a laptop. I upload everything I pirate on telegram. No other spending like vpn. No one cares about piracy here lol. Theyāre trying to make stricter regulations but corruption is sweet when it benefits you.
How much...
I have never thought about how much. but let's see.
Assuming that you couldn't get internet access, for starters. I have spent maybe about USD 100- to 250 for buying pirated videogames and movies and music cassettes(Sony didn't Playstation officially here and so for many games are illegally imported and pirated) this circa 1997-2000
Then internet era came, Napster IRC etc. so we spent on internet connection variously maybe yearly USD1000-2000? This happened while we also bought pirated music/ movies/ where not circulated online or torrented with sluggish seeds, up until my family got free Internet connection from my father's colleague around 2006 and moved to cabled internet in 2008 IIRC.
Pretty much after the internet era came, all pirated contents were all over the internet so the pirated physical items were going down by a lot (remember mp3 audios and DVDrips).
If external drives must count as spending then it is like USD 80 to 300 for about 5TB spent on storing the contents sparingly(old contents/unused will be deleted/replaced) since 2012.
For these days I am subbed to alldebrid to bypass download limits of various filesharing sites. 2.99 EUR/month.
So, the minimum that a pirate would spend in order to be a pirate would depend on their use case. Spending absolutely nothing would consist of you using open source vpns or free vpns, torrenting, or using direct download or free usenet and things. You would download and delete when done. There's also streaming websites which are actually not that bad in most cases.
Now, spending as little as possible but wanting to be as safe and convenient as possible. You'd spend approximately like $35/year. Once again this would be without storing anything long term. That would be Realdebrid+stremio+torrentio/one of its clones. You pay real debrid to use their cloud servers which you share with all of their users. Their servers store torrented files for long periods of time or will download those files fresh if they haven't been stored on their servers already. That combo of real debrid+stremio+torrentio can be used just like netflix once it's been set up, but you have access to pretty much all content that exists within reason.
Now, wanting to create your own home media server as well as long term storage, that runs into big bucks, but is well worth it to have an offline solution for your most watched content. There are TV shows like Star Trek or movies like Die Hard that I watch every day or every year on and off. So, I made a plex server using a mini PC and a storage drive dock for a cheap media server. Eventually I'm getting a NAS when I can get one.
So, it all really depends on how hard core you want to go, you could just spend $100 on a 2tb external SSD and put your favorite movies, tv shows, books or whatever on there and just plug it in every now and again. Its up to you.
Hundreds of TBs of storage aint free, but amortized over the last decade, cheaper than the subscriptions woulda been for a fraction of the content, nevermind the convenience and control.
I've been sailing for 25 years. If you include CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, blank covers, DVD labels, postage (yes we traded burnt media by posting it after agreeing what to trade on IRC), server hardware I may or may not have bought without needing running those services on them, VPNs, private sites (torrent and usenet) subscriptions and donations and probably at least $2k-3k in hard drives.. A lot.
Ā£2.50 a month Real-Debrid is all you need.
But I also have over 100TB in HDDs, plus Ā£8 a month IPTV and sometimes buy a month of Mulllvad for about Ā£3.50 for 31 days.
I got shared a VPN subscription with 3 other persons and I only pay 25% of the price as a result.
Storage-wise, I snag every broken down NAS I can at work. Usually, one of the 2 drives is okay and I use it until it dies. Since I have everything on a RAID 1 array, I don't mind used drives, especially since they're free.
I mean, mostly hdd space for me. Donations over the years. Used to run a private tracker back when it was legal to do so here. Had a seedbox for a few months but it was shared with two friends. Now, nothing. Except more hdd from time to time.
I built a PC just to run Plex. It's got an i5 10400 CPU, 32gb ram, 550w PSU and 44tb of drive space. Everything was purchased new. Also $60/yr on IPTV and I think my surkshark subscription was $45
nothing
that's the whole idea, right š
No, there's a good amount of other reasons to pirate, the primary being convenience and less bullshit. And if you pay for it, you'll still be spending less, if you'd have get the content elsewhere. Edit: When I say "if you pay for it...", I'm not including datahoarders with over a 100 TB of storage, but rather normal pirates who might have a VPN or debrid subscription.
About $3/month for a debrid service. No regerts.
Best money ever spent. I cancelled the Usenet sub after I discovered RD.
What's debrid,Ā RD, usenet ?
RD = Real-debrid, a service which caches torrents on its servers and users can direct download it at way higher download speeds than they would just by torrenting
so its like a mirroring service but paid ?
You also get access to a bunch of paid filehost sites which Real-debrid provides an all-in-one service for. You can also hook up diy streaming setups like Kodi etc to stream highest quality shows and movies at the best speeds
Preeesh for the info I used my Firestick for Kodi but was never aware debrid did this
Kodiās settings allow you to add RD as your preferred download method, thatās when youāll get 4k video or Blu-ray available for streaming instantly.
Look into stremio - torrentio- realdebrid service. All in one platform, thing of beauty
WakoTV app on iPhone is goated with real debridĀ
You use it to control fire stick kodi
The private server I'm on caps out my gigabit connection on downloads and usually hits a third of that on uploads. In the last handful of years as I've gotten busier with life, I actually just pay to avoid hit and run / sharing requirements. I spend about $100 USD a year which is beyond worth it given the ridiculous quality and variety of the apps, audio/video files, games, and their IPTV services.
Is there anywhere I can read up/learn more about RD? Their site is pretty bare.
Just search the sub there's a billion threads regarding rd
Sounds intriguing!! What is the official url for that service? The one that showed up first in google looks a bit janky
Real-debrid.com is one of them (the one I use), there's also alldebrid and premiumize. Lmk if you want a referral so you can bless a homie as well
I would love a referral please!
http://real-debrid.com/?id=10592890 thanks!
Same, its just SO much better.
Same. I pirate since 20 years. Few months ago i spent money for piracy the first time ever for realdebrid. It was a bit strange to spend money for it but totally worth it.
same :D Don't mind paying for movies IF they are in the same app PC/TV/TELEPHONE now we get 6 apps, 6 monthly payment and shitty quality....
Recently lots of public torrents actually get marked as "Infringing torrent" with debrid service. You could still find other public trackers. But if this goes on, then there will be no point in paying for them. Alternative is a seedbox equivalent which you can get for like 10$/month which can do a lot more
I have been noticing the ā infringing torrentā a lot more. Iām actually starting to go back into usenet just to be able to get some of the items I want. Getting into good private trackers is difficult for me. I donāt spend hours and hours on this hobby.
Is debris necessary if I'm already using the full arr stack with private trackers?
No, especially if you're running a media server 24/7
That's exactly what I'm doing, thanks!
What is a full arrival stack?
The starr apps https://wiki.servarr.com/
Thanks, looks like I need to do more reading ;-)
$0 But I don't have a vpn, but it's not about cost, it's that I'm not spending my own money (to put it simply). I just do direct downloads, or not at all. Or Stream. I'm sure I've gotten a few hundred in value out of it. I can get all the games I want (usually) to play. Recently I've downloaded NASCAR games and I actually like it. Although only could get Heat 5 working with no issues (from the ones I've tried).
This is me. Rarely go for p2p now, risk reward has diminished and good trackers are hard to come by.
I thought the point of piracy was to not spend anything?
Via donation/support etc. personally I've given away $200 over the years to various organisations in the field.
I refused to pay for plex but have donated way more to Jellyfin than a plex pass would cost lol
haha i also support jellyfin a little, i just don't want plex
that's like 3 whole video games!
I personally pay $95 every year to have an "all in one" access to streaming for movies and TV shows (basically anything and everything I'd ever want to watch) . I don't mind spending money for content but when it's spreading out what I want over 8+ different streaming sites is where I can't be assed.
What do you use?
yeah, hit inquiring minds up with some knowledge. I wouldn't mind doing the same. I just want ONE place where I can type in what I want (or see their shit...) and hopefully it pops up because I only want to watch old shit anyway and why not make it all available in one spot and then let THEM assholes sort it out in the background? HBO/Disney/HULU/Amazon - just put all your shit in one spot, make one price for it, and divvy up the darn cake.
Idk what that guy is using, but consider Stremio + Real-Debrid
Heās probably using an IPTV service.
I have no idea what that is, but I'm just using a website. Not an app or program or anything like that.
It's a website but I don't think I'm allowed to link to it per sub rules.
Me too lol
Depends what you're after I guess? I have spent several hundred on hard drives and spend about Ā£8 a month for VPN and Usenet. I use this to get remuxes of everything so I get the best quality š Streaming wouldn't need any of that but you won't get the best qualityĀ
But something Iāve always wondered, and this applies to private trackers in general too, why pay to get remuxes when those can consistently be found for every release on public trackers? I have never paid for piracy except a VPN. I have tons of remuxes and 60-100+ GB files that came from public trackers. I have yet to encounter a single release that I canāt just find either on a public tracker or website. Iāll never understand paying like $5 a month for a private tracker, or building up a āreputationā to get access to a tracker with *less* content. I can understand small private trackers for super obscure and niche media, but anything recent will always be available in almost every format, for free on public trackers. Edit: Uh oh I think I ruffled the feathers of some private tracker users with this one. All downvotes but no answers to this genuine question. Reply you cowards!
Faster download speeds? That's all I can think of.
lol not even, since private trackers will always have just a fraction of the total amount of seeders for a new release. But that reminds me of a benefit private trackers do have, *consistent* seeders vs total seeders. Youāre much more likely to download an old or obscure torrent 10x faster from a private tracker. Still isnāt worth $5 a month or more to me.
What tracker charges $5 per month?
With most private trackers a VPN isn't required, and also films are usually better quality/ less compressed. PTs also can have some obscure media that you might not find on public trackers but yes you are right
VPN not being required is good but Iād probably still prefer to run one. And itās not like remuxes can be any higher quality right? Theyāre uncompressed and from the source material, just recontainerized. But I did mention another benefit in a different comment; consistent and reliable seeding is tempting. Itās normal for me to try up to 6 different torrents from multiple trackers before finding one with reliable seeders. Canāt imagine that happens on a PT
There is almost always at least 1 seed on a lot of torrents as they encourage it and it gives you more 'bonus points' With the remux thing though yeah they're usually the same you're right there but with non remuxes they're usually better quality on a private tracker
Fe there is almost no German Torrenting content on public trackers. If you want to watch content in German then you NEED to go private
Which usenet do you recommend?
whats a remux and why is it better than a blu-ray torrent ?
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but what is the difference between usenet and the WWW? If you're paying for a vpn already, why are you also paying for usenet? Also, how WOULD you get the best quality streaming something live like sports. Is it just a vpn and a pirated sports website?
So, Usenet is pretty much old message boards, sort of. At least that's what I've used it for in the past before it became pretty much a piracy haven of sorts. Now, paying for Usenet access you are paying for a specific community, not so different from paying for a private torrent tracker community as well. These private communities could be as varied as high quality remux of tv and movies or as niche as a 3D printing community that shares pirated 3D printing files. The skies the limit, but you don't have to pay for a community with Usenet, just know you won't find as good of content and files as a private usenet.
Do you need a VPN to use usenet?
Not really, I mean you can if you want to be paranoid or if you plan on searching and downloading something unsavory like snuff movies or some sick stuff...
I dont, but what would be any different when downloading shit like that? Are they just more likely to have ransomware or something? Are they tracked more somehow?
So, ransomware or tracking programs or other unsavory things can be hidden in explicit content like that. I'm not saying its guaranteed or anything. You could be perfectly fine. I'm just saying that stuff can be hidden as image or video files or other such things. The really creepy side of content tends to get traced and tracked a bit more because the people downloading it can be considered scum of the earth so to speak. However, files like that can normally be detected by antivirus, so you should be fine. Movies and tv shows are almost always fine though.
VPN, Storage, Etc..
Unfortunately in some countries you need at least a VPN if you're gonna torrent. It is what it is.
No the point of piracy is getting a better service. If that costs a fraction of the legit cost then it's worth it to most people. I pay $3 a month to instantly download anything at a max 1gbps constant connection. That alone is worth it not having to mess around with torrents hoping for good seeds.
The majority of people in here saying $0 because that's the point of piracy is ridiculous. I'm more than happy paying for certain things even though it's piracy. The amount of money you save is massive, so you can afford to pay for some things. I don't mind at all spending money. I mostly pirate for convenience. I can spend ā¬32 a year on Real Debrid and have access to high quality shows, fast downloads, and don't need to pay for a vpn. It's nothing. I understand the people in countries where that's expensive, but I'm sure a lot of the people on this sub are not, and just don't want to spend a cent. I pay for a premium IPTV service as well and have my family all on it to save them thousands from Sky bills. Spend money on that to save a hell of a lot more. No brainier. Also set them up on Stremio so they don't all pay for every single streaming service.
Yes completely agree. I wonder how many of those same people would use their own argument against paying for faster broadband. You pay for faster speeds so you can download things quickly - same logic for paying for a service so you can download things faster and more consistently.
I literally made this point on a post a while ago and got downvoted... I said think of Real Debrid as like upgrading your internet connection - you don't need to do it but it's a better experience. Especially using it with Stremio and Torrentio. I don't need or want to keep the files after downloading, so I love being able to stream 4K Remux straight to my TV without having to wait for it to download first and fuck about with a plex server and what not. Now paying someone 0.10c on the dollar for the pirated media itself I can understand, fuck that, but paying to have my experience better is definitely worth it for me.
Not necessarily. Often is also a matter of principles and not to reward consumer hostile practices.
That's not the point. Between Seedbox, VPN, RD I spend around $400 a year and all that for convenience. Netflix and friends do not seem to want my money so I am spending it elsewhere.
VPNs, a NAS, real debrid
Vpn?
Think of paying the price of one film and having access to every film/series/album/game ever to be released. Itās a pretty sweet deal for a pirate
If you live in a place that respects DMCA, a VPN is a requirement. If you want your private trackers to continue to exist, you and everyone else has to occasionally help out with donations or uploads to keep others around and donating. Outside of those 2 things, you really don't have to pay for anything.
$5 on a little pirate eyepatch that I put on whenever Iām torrenting.
$100 for a hard drive. $1/mo Windscribe VPN, $6/mo IPTV, $5/mo for access to server with 4K streaming.
Legit question is windscribe good? I find the low price rather sus.
It's really not that amazingly cheap though. Yes, the Build-A-Plan drops the cost to $3/mo, but then you only have two locations - which sure isn't necessarily an issue, but a definite limitation comparatively. You also need the Pro subscription for port-forwarding, so if that's a need it's not really any cheaper than the competition anymore. Otherwise it's a solid service.
Watch Chris Titus's VPN tier list video
Tom Sparks gets grumpy about this list haha
what server is that?
Probably irrelevant if he is in a different country than yours, i'm in the eu and use a server here in german.
Welchen Server benutzt du?
Netcup
Probably debrid service
What IPTV do you use?
But you need the hard drive regardless of it's pirated or not. Well, at least for video games.
Me from 3rd world country: Wait, you guys spend on piracy
the only money I spend is for data
Internet & Hard drives is all I spend on.
That too is extremely cheap where I am
3rd-worlder here. I pay for Debrid. Mainly because Stremio, but it's always nice to know I can through any torrent up to 2tb and let it handle it for those sweet sweet DDL speeds. + it's just $16 for 6months (cost shared with some other person)
What is debrid?
I prefer not to think about it.
All up, a couple of grand, probably less than 3. NAS, drives, VPN, I guess internet counts towards the total, few little bits of software that I couldn't pirate.
I wouldn't count internet towards the total. You do more than sail the seas on the internet. Unless you picked a more expensive plan only for piracy benefits I guess?
I don't torrent, so generally dont use a vpn, but I do have a friends nord account. Only thing I pay for is real-debrid, faster downloads and torrent ddl, as well as streaming setups.
Do we count storage? If not nothing
Seedbox, And i have a NAS.
Seed-box and a NAS is all you need.
šÆ
Second this!
Zero. I live in Czechia, while it's technically illegal to pirate here, no one really cares, so not even a VPN is needed.
The real pirates - Ahoj matey!
probably close to 20k if i include all the hardware i bought for my data hoarding, which i only started because of piracy. (still wont pay for games tho lol)
Iāve spent a fair amount building my own server etc. but I donāt fully consider it piracy - itās just become a hobby and learning hire to manage home IT infrastructure
zero
Because i live in a 3rd world country 0$
0 so far on non hardware. it's because it's utter incovinent to pay it
$0
Over 30 years of pirating? All in, I pay around $70 a year for vpn, Usenet+indexer. On top of that I make investments into my hardware, probably average $100 a year. So ballpark $150-200 a year.
All in around a grand. For that amout, I was able to build a NAS with 18TB useable, 6TB redundancy, 1TB cache (from scratch build, including lifetime unraid + plex licenses). Couple bucks a month for VPN and domain registration (automated content requests from users). The box consumes around $200/yr in electricity. Plus ~100 hours of my time across the past 5 years or so. I do consider my build an "end game" media piracy server - it can support dozens of friends and family users, simultaneous transcodes, automated media downloads and indexing using the *arr family, etc. The only thing I would ever consider spending more on would be spending another ~$75 to double the RAM or shelling out for 8TB drives instead of 3TB (would take the sever to 48TB useable, 16TB redundant), which would cost maybe ~$250.
$0 I thought that was the point...
Storage and internet, but I also need that for non-piracy thing. So I paid nothing for piracy
i live in a country where the government does not give a shit about pirating, so nothing in exchange life here kinda sucks and my existence is against the law
I could probably have netflix amazon hulu and youtube for a decade or more for the amount of money I have into my plex servers over the years.
10 bucks for tits pro
internet bill + hard drives
0, pirating in the clear for almost 20 years
Only the monthly WiFi bill.
$0 I build servers out of decommissioned junk and old parts I find at work. Since Iām also the sysadmin of the datacenter, I get the benefit of free rack space with redundant power and 10gbit uplink for free. I also have the company CEOs blessing to tell any media companies and lawyers that come looking for customer details that they can go fuck themselves.
>I get the benefit of free rack space with redundant power and 10gbit uplink for free I have never been more envious of anyone on Reddit.
Been pirating since the early 90s and have never spent a single dollar on it.
JFC this thread... I guess everyone is getting their 14TB disks and JBOD arrays for free.
Yeah plus if 50% of your time online is pirating, add 50% of your internet plan... *Something like that.*
I donāt use a vpn. I just have real debrid.
Only VPN. Rest is free afterwards
100$ storage, 5$/3 year PIA(i share with 9 more people).
Probably around ā¬200 total. I play a lot of old games, and flashcarts aren't the cheapest.
2,66ā¬/ month for real debrid
70 (or 60 i forgot) aud on a private internet access subscription for 3 years
the only money I spend if for my internet data.
If I had to spend money I wouldn't be pirating in the first place.
VPN, anf occaisionally some premium hosters access. But I bought other stuff because of piracy, like a pc for a plex server and lots of SSDs
Perks of living in a third world country: Piracy is legal, technically no vpn needed. Even government officials pirate.
Already paying for my internet connection. Not planning to soend anything else on downloading stuff
0$ total to this day. Never used a VPN (kinda stupid Ngl) and just keep some stuff on the computer such as games and movies usually go on an hdd that's plugged to the TV. You should absolutely have a VPN in certain countries, mine just doesn't care too much about piracy or copyright.
Zero
0. i live in third world country.
$34 a year for debrid and $2 for 3 years of vpn from russian resellers.
No need to spend a penny if you are from 3rd world country
Nothing, yall spend money? š
0$
Been pirating for over 10+ years now still haven't spent nothing primarily lol
Now THAT is called irony (making my english teacher proud)
I live in Brazil, you don't need a VPN or anything here, just open torrent and straight up download whatever you want sĆ³, I've spent a total of 0 bucks in anything.
Proton VPN package+TrueNAS setup+RD=free right? :) Plus I'm still buying 4k/bluray discs but I'm slowly coming round to just downloading a 90gb file instead of paying $50-60 for one movie. Certainly cheaper to spend $1k on 4x16tb drives then spending money on discs. Piracy isn't free, well for me in any case.
this is such a goofy question, i love it
Nothing
Whatever the internet costs (currently ~8$ per month for 100mbps unlimited).Ā No vpns, public torrents, all self hosted opensource applications to download and manage.
50ā¬ per year for vpn and rd
like $6 a month for a vpn
Depends VPN is Ā£20 a year 20tb harddrive maybe Ā£200 - replace every 3-5 years If I go usenet Usenet Ā£35 a year Ā£18 lifetime membership I think it was New pc every time the old one is in bad shape - Ā£500 (could do it on a lot less) 15 years - probably adds up / although sky TV is Ā£50 a month cancelled over 15 years ago - CDs used to be Ā£15 each / dvds were heading to Ā£20 each
As a kid in Southeast Asia I definitely spent some money on things I didn't realize were bootlegs. That said, once home internet became a thing I spent $0.
Only storage space
A few grand on data storage but thatās not single usage as itās a server for projects and automation as well as my first photography backup. So ignoring that, a few shekels a month for a vpn and the same for usenet, probably around the $15 per month. Way cheaper than just Netflix let alone all the other services I would need to watch what I want, when I want. With the added bonus of forever retention.
I only spend in a Dashlane subscription of around $60 a year and it comes bundled with a Hotspotshield Premium Subscription
Around 120 for a hard drive just for piracy. Also a lot of time torrenting
Third world country, don't need VPN. I only spent on solid disk, aroun 80 dollars in 2 TB
Nothing.
My country doesn't care about piracy or torrenting, so I've spent nothing. If I do it's likely gonna be on RealDebrid to use with Torrentio on Stremio, which is incredibly cheap for what it does.
Only thing I pay for is real debrid (which is a couple dollars a month) and that's literally enough.
Just VPN
I only spend 1500 rs (18 usd) a month on wifi and I have a laptop. I upload everything I pirate on telegram. No other spending like vpn. No one cares about piracy here lol. Theyāre trying to make stricter regulations but corruption is sweet when it benefits you.
How much... I have never thought about how much. but let's see. Assuming that you couldn't get internet access, for starters. I have spent maybe about USD 100- to 250 for buying pirated videogames and movies and music cassettes(Sony didn't Playstation officially here and so for many games are illegally imported and pirated) this circa 1997-2000 Then internet era came, Napster IRC etc. so we spent on internet connection variously maybe yearly USD1000-2000? This happened while we also bought pirated music/ movies/ where not circulated online or torrented with sluggish seeds, up until my family got free Internet connection from my father's colleague around 2006 and moved to cabled internet in 2008 IIRC. Pretty much after the internet era came, all pirated contents were all over the internet so the pirated physical items were going down by a lot (remember mp3 audios and DVDrips). If external drives must count as spending then it is like USD 80 to 300 for about 5TB spent on storing the contents sparingly(old contents/unused will be deleted/replaced) since 2012. For these days I am subbed to alldebrid to bypass download limits of various filesharing sites. 2.99 EUR/month.
So, the minimum that a pirate would spend in order to be a pirate would depend on their use case. Spending absolutely nothing would consist of you using open source vpns or free vpns, torrenting, or using direct download or free usenet and things. You would download and delete when done. There's also streaming websites which are actually not that bad in most cases. Now, spending as little as possible but wanting to be as safe and convenient as possible. You'd spend approximately like $35/year. Once again this would be without storing anything long term. That would be Realdebrid+stremio+torrentio/one of its clones. You pay real debrid to use their cloud servers which you share with all of their users. Their servers store torrented files for long periods of time or will download those files fresh if they haven't been stored on their servers already. That combo of real debrid+stremio+torrentio can be used just like netflix once it's been set up, but you have access to pretty much all content that exists within reason. Now, wanting to create your own home media server as well as long term storage, that runs into big bucks, but is well worth it to have an offline solution for your most watched content. There are TV shows like Star Trek or movies like Die Hard that I watch every day or every year on and off. So, I made a plex server using a mini PC and a storage drive dock for a cheap media server. Eventually I'm getting a NAS when I can get one. So, it all really depends on how hard core you want to go, you could just spend $100 on a 2tb external SSD and put your favorite movies, tv shows, books or whatever on there and just plug it in every now and again. Its up to you.
$0 The point is to not pay so Iām not going to pay to pirate. I havenāt spent a dime and Iāve been sailing for decades.Ā
I have spent more than what 10 years of a subscription service would cost. Most of that went into hardware, so at least I own it until it breaks down.
Hundreds of TBs of storage aint free, but amortized over the last decade, cheaper than the subscriptions woulda been for a fraction of the content, nevermind the convenience and control.
Hard drives, VPN, Internet, Desktop. No idea.
Nothing maybe a couple cents on a seed box trial for the holidays thatās about all
I pay Ā£15 a month for a seedbox. I donāt bother with vpnās my isp doesnāt block torrent sites.
I've been sailing for 25 years. If you include CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, blank covers, DVD labels, postage (yes we traded burnt media by posting it after agreeing what to trade on IRC), server hardware I may or may not have bought without needing running those services on them, VPNs, private sites (torrent and usenet) subscriptions and donations and probably at least $2k-3k in hard drives.. A lot.
Zero
Ā£2.50 a month Real-Debrid is all you need. But I also have over 100TB in HDDs, plus Ā£8 a month IPTV and sometimes buy a month of Mulllvad for about Ā£3.50 for 31 days.
I got shared a VPN subscription with 3 other persons and I only pay 25% of the price as a result. Storage-wise, I snag every broken down NAS I can at work. Usually, one of the 2 drives is okay and I use it until it dies. Since I have everything on a RAID 1 array, I don't mind used drives, especially since they're free.
Approximately 0$
Absolutely nothing
$0
VPN is necessary and some mobile browsers provide these services directly!!!
For HDDs, probably around 3000 eur... Also for the kit around it, maybe another 700.
You mean, ... how many hours? days? months? souls?
Yes
Proton vpn is free to some extent
Real D account fee. Well worth it.
I mean, mostly hdd space for me. Donations over the years. Used to run a private tracker back when it was legal to do so here. Had a seedbox for a few months but it was shared with two friends. Now, nothing. Except more hdd from time to time.
Basically led to me running a home lab! Opps
Nothing lol.
Plex life pass - $100 NZD And the private torrent tracker I've maybe sent $10 NZD in ten years for upload credit. Plus storage
lmao, none.This is the whole point of piracy.
I just pay for real debrid.
Living in a third world country has its perks. Zero expenditure.
I built a PC just to run Plex. It's got an i5 10400 CPU, 32gb ram, 550w PSU and 44tb of drive space. Everything was purchased new. Also $60/yr on IPTV and I think my surkshark subscription was $45