<story><title>Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content</title><text>I have a confession, I pirate a lot of content. Mostly TV&amp;#x2F;Movies. That being said, piracy is pretty expensive.&lt;p&gt;I built a computer with ~30TB of hard drive space. That, conservatively, cost me $1200. It&amp;#x27;s an older computer, with a lot of hard drives and it&amp;#x27;s probably costing me around $45 per month in power. I&amp;#x27;m going to want to add more storage space soon, and have about $500 slated for that. I pay a usenet subscription, and subscription to indexers, for let&amp;#x27;s say $10 per month...&lt;p&gt;So if I stopped pirating I&amp;#x27;d have saved $1200 and still have a budget of $55 per month for streaming services.&lt;p&gt;So why do I still pirate? Well one thing is show availability. There are some must-have shows that simply aren&amp;#x27;t available in my region (not the US), so I already have to have the piracy infrastructure in place if I want to watch them.&lt;p&gt;I also very much appreciate having a local copy. It&amp;#x27;s not like steam where I can just download whatever I want and play it offline (I do mostly buy steam content, if it&amp;#x27;s on steam I probably don&amp;#x27;t bother to pirate).&lt;p&gt;Streaming services still have significant service problems that need to be addressed.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>nunez</author><text>I am 100% against hoarding, but data hoarding makes a lot more sense to me.&lt;p&gt;I was looking for an album by a small punk band called Straighten Things Out called &amp;quot;Dawn Of A New Hope&amp;quot;. Loved this album; listened to it all of the time on Apple Music (where I discovered it). Went on a walk one day and tried to load it...and it was gone.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t even find this album on eBay, and you can find everything there!&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Milo Goes To College&amp;quot; by The Descendants, a more well-known pop punk band, was removed as well. Randomly, without warning. The Descendants are often credited as the &amp;quot;fathers&amp;quot; of Pop Punk; basically any mainstream pop punk band you&amp;#x27;ve heard of cites them as an influence. This album basically started this genre...and it&amp;#x27;s gone.&lt;p&gt;Fortunately there are enough vinyls of this record that make it easy to find when I one day build my epic vinyl collection.&lt;p&gt;Had I saved these to my iTunes Library or ripped them to a NAS of some kind, I&amp;#x27;d still have it. (Fun fact: Milo Goes To College _was_ in my Google Play Music Locker, which Google sunsetted when they launched YouTube Music, so I lost that &amp;quot;copy&amp;quot;. I&amp;#x27;m also going to guess that it was in my iTunes Music Library as well, which still exists as cloud storage, but albums that you add to your iCloud Music Library from Apple Music are pointers to tracks in the streaming service which can go away at any time.)</text></item><item><author>philistine</author><text>What you’re describing is data hoarding. I pirate a ton too, but you know what I do with a movie or TV show after I’ve watched it?&lt;p&gt;I delete it. Poof, gone. But it’s still in the most important dataset I have. My memory. To help with the metadata of my own memory, I write down a list of the films I’ve seen. I only keep the movies I really love and want to rewatch (Robocop). That TV show I just finished that was great but I won’t rewatch. Boom, gonzo.&lt;p&gt;Your piracy is an excuse for data hoarding, which is a problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vintermann</author><text>That small punk bands are a sensible target for data hoarding isn&amp;#x27;t surprising, but you know one I found out that&amp;#x27;s surprising?&lt;p&gt;Riverdance. Yeah, the Eurovision pause show from 1994 which became a huge hit and started a decade-long fad of various rhytmic dance ensembles touring the world and actually doing really well. Fantastic commercial success, of course. They did many CD releases, and there are a lot of differences between the recordings: the cast of performers, whether they have stepping noises mixed in, even the track listing. But you can only get the last of them on streaming services.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content</title><text>I have a confession, I pirate a lot of content. Mostly TV&amp;#x2F;Movies. That being said, piracy is pretty expensive.&lt;p&gt;I built a computer with ~30TB of hard drive space. That, conservatively, cost me $1200. It&amp;#x27;s an older computer, with a lot of hard drives and it&amp;#x27;s probably costing me around $45 per month in power. I&amp;#x27;m going to want to add more storage space soon, and have about $500 slated for that. I pay a usenet subscription, and subscription to indexers, for let&amp;#x27;s say $10 per month...&lt;p&gt;So if I stopped pirating I&amp;#x27;d have saved $1200 and still have a budget of $55 per month for streaming services.&lt;p&gt;So why do I still pirate? Well one thing is show availability. There are some must-have shows that simply aren&amp;#x27;t available in my region (not the US), so I already have to have the piracy infrastructure in place if I want to watch them.&lt;p&gt;I also very much appreciate having a local copy. It&amp;#x27;s not like steam where I can just download whatever I want and play it offline (I do mostly buy steam content, if it&amp;#x27;s on steam I probably don&amp;#x27;t bother to pirate).&lt;p&gt;Streaming services still have significant service problems that need to be addressed.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>nunez</author><text>I am 100% against hoarding, but data hoarding makes a lot more sense to me.&lt;p&gt;I was looking for an album by a small punk band called Straighten Things Out called &amp;quot;Dawn Of A New Hope&amp;quot;. Loved this album; listened to it all of the time on Apple Music (where I discovered it). Went on a walk one day and tried to load it...and it was gone.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t even find this album on eBay, and you can find everything there!&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Milo Goes To College&amp;quot; by The Descendants, a more well-known pop punk band, was removed as well. Randomly, without warning. The Descendants are often credited as the &amp;quot;fathers&amp;quot; of Pop Punk; basically any mainstream pop punk band you&amp;#x27;ve heard of cites them as an influence. This album basically started this genre...and it&amp;#x27;s gone.&lt;p&gt;Fortunately there are enough vinyls of this record that make it easy to find when I one day build my epic vinyl collection.&lt;p&gt;Had I saved these to my iTunes Library or ripped them to a NAS of some kind, I&amp;#x27;d still have it. (Fun fact: Milo Goes To College _was_ in my Google Play Music Locker, which Google sunsetted when they launched YouTube Music, so I lost that &amp;quot;copy&amp;quot;. I&amp;#x27;m also going to guess that it was in my iTunes Music Library as well, which still exists as cloud storage, but albums that you add to your iCloud Music Library from Apple Music are pointers to tracks in the streaming service which can go away at any time.)</text></item><item><author>philistine</author><text>What you’re describing is data hoarding. I pirate a ton too, but you know what I do with a movie or TV show after I’ve watched it?&lt;p&gt;I delete it. Poof, gone. But it’s still in the most important dataset I have. My memory. To help with the metadata of my own memory, I write down a list of the films I’ve seen. I only keep the movies I really love and want to rewatch (Robocop). That TV show I just finished that was great but I won’t rewatch. Boom, gonzo.&lt;p&gt;Your piracy is an excuse for data hoarding, which is a problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>exikyut</author><text>*&lt;i&gt;Yells at Google for a good 15 minutes&lt;/i&gt;*&lt;p&gt;...I&amp;#x27;m a tad surprised that worked as well as it did:&lt;p&gt;1. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vk.com&amp;#x2F;wall-112927118?w=wall-112927118_185&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vk.com&amp;#x2F;wall-112927118?w=wall-112927118_185&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;quot;Download&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;2. &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;metalbootlegs08.blogspot.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;descendents-milo-goes-to-college-1982.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;metalbootlegs08.blogspot.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;descendents-milo...&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;quot;Official Website&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;Oh, also - *&lt;i&gt;hands you a vacuum cleaner that tends to eat things in case they disappear later&lt;/i&gt;* - maybe go wandering&amp;#x2F;exploring? These types of sites are incredibly fun yet even more transient.</text></comment>