this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
341 points (96.2% liked)

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

63271 readers
320 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others



Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):

🏴‍☠️ Other communities

FUCK ADOBE!

Torrenting/P2P:

Gaming:


💰 Please help cover server costs.

Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 140 points 1 week ago (10 children)

the most important thing to have when pirating is common sense

the second most important thing to have is a vpn

[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago

Common Sense isn't common

third most important is a good torrenting application

[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 70 points 1 week ago (33 children)

Still don't know why I'd need a vpn. My country doesn't go after individuals pirating (yet). That's the only reason, as far as I understand, to have a vpn for pirating. So until they start to take come after individuals, I'm gonna save my money.

[–] BlueRingedOctopus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 75 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (5 children)

You only need a VPN in very few countries, some countries where it is needed to avoid fines/getting your internet connection cutoff from your ISP are the US, Germany and a few other countries somewhere in western Europe, also don't pirate polish films without a VPN if you live in Poland, the rest of the world doesn't care about people downloading movies online.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 week ago

I think you've exactly described why some people need a VPN. My ISP does 3 strikes when they get complaints :/

load more comments (30 replies)
[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 38 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (14 children)

the most important this to have when pirating is common sense

We disagree actually, it's to have well written tutorials and not to rely on the idea that people can just know things from nothing.

We get the frustration in this meme but honestly, we never liked this kind of attitude in tech spaces, it's exclusionary, gatekeepy and harms people. We understand not wanting to answer every single question but some well written tutorials etc to link to are better than having everyone starting in ignorance and getting in trouble or being harmed for it.

Especially if said tutorials keep up to date and add more answers to people's questions over time.

After all, being helpful actually helps the pirate community in that more people seed, so helping others is actually win-win. There's really no downsides whereas expecting others to know everything or being rude stops this from happening and thus is a loss for all of us.

load more comments (14 replies)
[–] curry@programming.dev 16 points 1 week ago

Dunno man. Common sense for us in IT is different compared to layman. For example, I thought it was common sense to treat incognito mode only as a shortcut so I wouldn't have to clear browsing history and local cookies everytime. Then I read about users thinking incognito mode actually protected them against snooping or fingerprinting.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] Uiop@lemmy.dbzer0.com 85 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I pirated this meme in the highest quality I could but lemmy compresses the image to 60-70% of its original quality, that's why it's so blurry 😅

[–] AccountMaker@piefed.social 42 points 1 week ago (4 children)

A serious question: what's wrong with pirate bay? I have been using it to download movies, shows and language learning content for over a decade, and I never had any problems.

[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 51 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Those aren't typically risky media. When you're downloading games though, you're downloading executable programs. You can do some serious damage if you execute the wrong things. You're not executing a mkv or a pdf, you're only reading it.

[–] BlueRingedOctopus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 82 points 1 week ago (5 children)

You're not executing a mkv or a pdf

You're half wrong and half right, .mkv files are completely safe but the same can't be said about .pdf files, attackers can embed malicious code, such as JavaScript or hidden executables, within a PDF file.

People really underestimate the capabilities of this .pdf file format. I remember some time ago, someone managed to run doom inside a .pdf file.

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 35 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Theoretically, there could also be a MKV file that exploits a bug in the video player to get execution.

Far less likely, but definitely possible.

[–] BlueRingedOctopus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There's a difference between exploiting bugs that haven't even been found and spreading malware through a method that's known by pretty much everyone and is still used to spread malware today.

It's also theoretically possible that your system is already infected by some Advanced Persistent Threats but does that happen that often, No, and have people been infected by running random pdfs they found online, Yes.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] BlueRingedOctopus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Don't download games and software from it and always check the file extensions and make sure they're not something like Movie.mp4.exe or Movie.mkv.exe, other than that you're good.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] darcmage@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 week ago

Nothing is wrong with it. I imagine you'd be the type to survive in the wild west because you're equipped to do so while people around you die of dysentery.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] teft@piefed.social 39 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This seems like a meme about piracy for script kiddies. These issues don’t really exist for anyone who knows what they’re doing.

[–] Blurntout@lemmy.ca 62 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Hence the “starter pack” lol they do indeed not know what they are doing

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] jbone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 week ago

It literally is a meme, an ironic one.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Unknown_0671@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

chrome, mcaffee, pirate bay, utorrent. am i back in 2010

[–] yoriaiko@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] Denjin@feddit.uk 2 points 1 day ago

One of my favourite things to do online is browse the comments of their torrents looking for the people saying "you're so pretty" etc

[–] ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 week ago

{intitle:game I wanted}{infile:*torrent}

This was how I used to format my piracy searches. 13 years later I recognize that forcing the search engine to generate direct links to the torrents instead of handing me pages I could get was probably where those viruses came from 😅

load more comments
view more: next ›