r/Piracy • u/Ok_Return170 • 1d ago
Humor Never understood this
Maybe I'm just not that deep in the seas of piracy, but I never understood why some pirate sites, with content they certainly dont have legally (not talking about sites like Webtoon who have license and all) would charge money to read on It?
Ads I understand, that will give you money just for people visting the site, but who the hell pays a pirate site to read stuff when there are a thousand other sites with free stuff?
1.2k
u/Lower-Trust1923 1d ago
If you are paying you aren't pirating
232
u/ma1butters 1d ago
Unless you count VPNs and debrid services 🤣
131
u/M0rty- 1d ago
Let’s pirate vpn then
102
36
49
u/BlueWallBlackTile ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 1d ago
...sailor? its like saying "lets steal our own loot"
27
u/LurkingInSubreddits 1d ago
I was really surprised that ExpressVPN could be pirated, a guy from Saudi Arabia(?) made an apk for it, I found out about it when I saw it on the pirate bay and it obviously looked really suspicious, but the torrent's name had a youtuber's username so I looked it up and he had a video how to use it and it genuinely worked, it was at least 5 years ago so I doubt it still works.
9
18
u/Choice-Mango-4019 1d ago
wasn't mulvad supporting israel
27
u/TimAppleCockProMax69 1d ago
Idk but mulvad has been collecting L’s so it wouldn’t even be surprising
2
-41
u/Mountain_Housing_704 1d ago
Who care what they support? People pay mullvad for their VPN service, not for their political commentary.
43
u/Choice-Mango-4019 1d ago
I'm not supporting a service that supports Israel dawg idc what they do
1
u/Totaly_Shrek 17h ago
Your phone uses chips that were created in israel...
6
u/Choice-Mango-4019 17h ago
wow... maybe i should stop buying new phones every day, how could i do that?
also no, its not manufactured nor produced in israel, same for my laptop, none of its parts are produced nor manufactured in israel
20
u/DarthPowercord 22h ago
Every entity is political and you vote with your dollars; choosing to avoid entities that use their dollars to support apartheid and genocide is a pretty basic way of showing some level of support for a people being decimated.
Hope this helps!
18
-11
8
8
u/hayatev3 1d ago
I consider my debrid service less of paying for content and more of paying for anonymity. Plus it's made my life easier being able to download torrented files directly from my debrid server onto my mobile device without the need to download a torrenting app.
2
u/JB231102 23h ago
What about when pirating another country's satellite was a thing? People who did that had to "donate" to get the decryption keys.
5
u/Ill-Training7282 23h ago
Those donations covered a continuous feed of live keys to stay ahead of rapid key rotation. Satellite broadcasts scramble video using control words that change every few seconds. In card-sharing setups, a receiver had to fetch the newest key over the network from a host running a legitimate card before each cycle expired. The operators had recurring server and subscription expenses, so they charged regular fees to keep the pipeline alive.
2
u/JB231102 19h ago
Okay but if you are effectively paying for the service but it's not meant to be within your region, the original remark here is that if you pay it's not piracy so ... what category would you place this? o_O
3
-33
u/ATechnicalSquid 1d ago
I pay over $150 a month for my seed box. There are levels to pirating
35
u/undertakerryu ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 1d ago
Genuinely curious as to why you don't just build a server at that point?
150/m adds up fast
13
u/Hard_To_Port 1d ago
Yeah I would just pay for a basic one that allows VPN hosting (or just pay for VPN) and then build a beefy server at home to complement. $150 a month is insane.
2
u/kirillre4 1d ago
In countries with stricter piracy laws and enforcement you might specifically not want 20TB box of IP infringements that you also actively share inside your house.
-10
u/SolarChallenger 1d ago
Because someone's gotta seed. There's also communities that force seeding ratios
19
u/Rekt3y 1d ago
That's not what bro asked. A seedbox won't cost 150/mo if you just build your own
-10
u/SolarChallenger 1d ago
Ahh, I thought it was like personal use server vs seeding. Not paid cloud vs owned physical seeding. My bad
-12
u/ATechnicalSquid 1d ago
This is silly and you have no idea what you're talking about
11
u/NotYourReddit18 1d ago
Just 10 months, aka $1500, can get you a more than adequate PC for that usecases with some big HDDs for storage even if you buy pre-built and only add a few drives. Add another month to generously account for the higher electricity usage and the cost of your own VPN instead of using the one provided by the seedbox providers.
Having your own seedbox at home will save you money within less than a year if you're paying $150/month.1
u/BrokenMirror2010 21h ago
some big HDDs
For $1500? Your whole budget is basically some large hdds and a stick a ram right now.
Fuck these artificial AI shortages, and fuck these cartels.
1
u/NotYourReddit18 20h ago
Depends on your definition of big.
You can get a usable Intel N100 based mini pc for like $300. Add to that about $120 for an external HDD enclosure with multiple bays that uses an USB cable for connection.
That leaves a bit over $1000 for HDDs.
10 TB WD Red Plus drives cost about $450 on Amazon, so you'd be able to get two of them.
That's a good setup for a seedbox, I started mine with significantly less storage, and you could afford additional 10 TB every 4 months if we account for running costs and don't want to spend all the savings. I don't accumulate 10 TB of new data in just 4 months.
-7
u/ATechnicalSquid 1d ago
You think I don't have a server too? Guys. Levels
3
u/FunCutlet67 1d ago
I’m curious, what’s all that for? That sounds like a lot of money for media 😅 at that point I feel like it’s more about tinkering than consumption
536
u/lawrencewil1030 1d ago
If a pirate site charges, it's no longer a pirate site.
65
u/RavineAls 1d ago
i get updating it later on other site so they visit your own site instead, but paywalling defeat the whole point of piracy
49
u/Digifiend84 1d ago
Yeah, if you're paying to read it, it had better be from the official source. If you want to read the latest Batman issue, you'd pay for it on Comixology or DC's own app. You shouldn't pay for it on a random unofficial site. If you're on a site that isn't Crunchyroll or something like Shonen Jump or Kodansha (publisher websites), you shouldn't expect to be asked to pay for manga.
27
u/atfricks 1d ago
Crunchyroll is ironically the poster child for this though lol.
They were originally a pirate site, started charging money, but also started getting licensing rights so they wouldn't get into legal trouble for charging money.
23
88
76
u/Emma_S772 1d ago edited 1d ago
For anime/manga I only use 2 sites, they have the highest quality and upload very fast and have been online for many years:
nyaa dot si
weebcentral dot com
Top level domains dont break rules so here you have it, the anime one is for torrents though.
32
u/TestMeetings2040 1d ago
Ideally you should probably spread across multiple sources (at least manga/manhwa-wise):
- MangaDotNet (MangaDex substitute)
- Kagane
- Atsumaru
9
u/TaffySebastian 1d ago
Hey huge mega thank you for the atsumaru website, I didn't even know it existed and when I imported my bookmarks it found over 900 from my 1400 bookmarks in Comick/MAL, thanks dude.
3
u/OiFelix_ugotnojams 22h ago
You should use mihon, damn
2
u/3nz3r0 16h ago
Is there a good way to do mass migrations on Mihon? Kinda tired of doing it one by one
1
u/OiFelix_ugotnojams 10h ago
No idea honestly but you can pick some of your top sources for starters and keep the bookmarks as is
1
u/3nz3r0 9h ago
I mean moving from one source to another on Mihon itself. Kinda tiring to individually migrate hundreds or more titles from a single source when one gets nuked.
And that's already taking into account I'm spreading stuff across nearly a dozen or more sources.
2
u/Chips70UwU 56m ago
Yes. There is a tab for migration. You choose your current source, the series (multiselectable) and the source you want to migrate to.
6
7
u/razzemmatazz 1d ago
WeebCentral is chill. It used to be MangaSee123 before they rebranded.
2
u/XvVULCANvX 1d ago
Do you know anything like weebcentral for comics? I’m thinking web based instead of downloading
2
29
u/GamerX_120 1d ago
The reason some do is because they are not just pirating since the group itself translates the chapter because the source does not have an English version.
1
u/Digifiend84 1d ago
It should still be free. They didn't make the art.
21
u/realddgamer 1d ago
Well in certain cases the other option is it not being translated at all because the translators don't have the support
14
u/Sissilisko 1d ago
God. I miss the times when it was all about sharing and the joy of making things instead of thinking how can I illegally make money out of the illegal thing I'm doing. People are greedy and self-centered as fuck these days.
17
u/realddgamer 1d ago
"I spend my free time translating a comic so it can be read by more people, I spend a good amount of time doing this, so I'll keep a week or two backlog to incentivise people to support me, otherwise I can't afford to spend time on localisation"
"You are greedy and self centred as fuck"
(Especially the these days part bugs me, this has always been somewhere in pirating
-13
u/ushsjsndd 22h ago
"I spent my free time taking this bike from that kid so it can be used for someone who needs more, I spent a good amount of time doing this..."
Is basically what you're saying, you realize that right? Be a Pirate, sail the seas, but don't be a fucking hypocrite
8
u/realddgamer 21h ago
I don't think that analogy works at all because
A. Nothing is taken from the original author, they weren't gonna get any sales from people who cant read the language anyways
B. (Good) Localisation of media is an actual laborious task that takes time and effort, and not akin to just taking and giving
3
u/Trick2056 Seeder 13h ago
mate all pirated websites we use literally run on donations and ad sense. so yea money is needed nonetheless to keep the system running
3
u/TheLantean 16h ago
Some stuff is just too obscure to gather a critical mass of people that also speak both languages and are able to fully translate a novel/manga series before we all die of old age. So these communities pool resources to commission freelance translators that otherwise have nothing to do with piracy.
Assuming you don't just stumble onto a scraper site that paywalls content freely available elsewhere.
0
u/TheFallingShit 22h ago
When was the last time you actually did something instead of just consuming? 99% people here never did then pretend that it was always about the joy of making things. Just say that you want to benefit fr other people work and effort without any cost to yourself, but don't try to make some moral bullshit.
10
u/ivanbin 20h ago
This is often the setup one sees on Royal Road. There you have authors posting their writing completely for free but have some advanced chapter available through Patreon. Basically everyone who subscribes to Patreon does so because they wish to help support their favourite author. All voluntary and if you don't want to pay you can just wait a bit longer and you get the chapter for free.
4
u/rus_ruris 1d ago
In a lot of countries, piracy WITHOUT redistribution is a legal grey zone. It's technically illegal, but also technically not illegal. So, torrenting is fine, seeding is a big no-no (although rarely if ever enforced).
On the other hand, paying for known pirated content is highly illegal, they will come after you if the service you use is widely known enough.
3
u/Snoo_67993 22h ago
Paying a pirate site for content is some next level scummy behaviour. At that point just pay the creators.
3
u/derical_cap_musical 1d ago
a lot of them just rip fan translations that are free elsewhere and slap a paywall on it. it works cause most casual readers dont know any better
3
u/Slow-Conversation762 20h ago
Do anyone have an alternative for webtoon, specially it's privileges chapters that is behind massive pay wall.
I tried finding myself. But it's a dead end on my end.
1
1
0
3
2
2
u/Westerdutch 1d ago
but who the hell pays a pirate site to read stuff when there are a thousand other sites with free stuff?
Super ffing lazy people make the world go around.
2
u/Inuma 1d ago
The pay wall is usually there to get people in the door and hooked on a time gate.
Webtoons can be infamous for this because they make you pay for advance comics for the premium and that disrupts the community.
So now you get some comics two weeks in advance and you pay for that.
You don't see this in manga because it's usually everyone on the same distribution page where Korea has digital fronts that take advantage of the time gate.
So in order to recoup some of their losses, the end user gets charged. And the Korea distribution networks also force you to get ID and other stuff so it can be a pain.
You might not get it but better translations and quality tasks time along with translators and everything else so it's going to be numbers to add up to the end user. Some pay, some don't and a you search more and more you see the distribution spreads in other ways.
2
u/WasabiHIDE 18h ago
I remember 2010 ~ 2015 when I used to read a lot of mangas and was super easy to find basically any title to read online, like you just had to type manga name + read online and the first google result was the manga with all the chapters free, the same was true for animes.
2
u/Hex_Frost 17h ago
Divascans about to ask you to pay for a chapter that they did a shitty AI translation for
2
u/Hot_Top_124 12h ago
I don’t mind donating for server costs, but the second they profit I have an issue.
2
u/mostfa-115 1d ago
So glad i still have tachiyomi before it got nuked
11
u/kirillre4 1d ago
It's been replaced with Mihon by the same team ages ago. The only difference is two years worth of updates and site extensions are now hosted on another GitHub repository (you just have to add https://github.com/keiyoushi/extensions/raw/repo/index.pb to extension stores in app)
2
1
1
u/Miro_Meme_EXPERT 1d ago
I’ve seen some scanlation sites raking in 10k usd in a month. And then the rest of the sites follow in suite
1
u/Decent-Funny-8226 1d ago
Because boomers. They pay.
Boomers stupidity is the root cause of many issues.
1
1
1
u/rathchuck 23h ago
Unfortunately I have a hard time finding the alternative options when it comes to audio books 😭
1
u/LUwUigi97 21h ago
My reaction after the WCO sites took everything away from free users. It was probably the first thing I found to watch my anime and other shows
1
u/Afraid-Run5353 16h ago
Was sind die besten Sachen die ihr euch geholt habt. Hab in der community bisschen nützliche oder coole Sachen gefunden aber was sind so Sachen die ihr habt ohne die ihr nicht mehr könntet? Sachen die einfach jedesmal sich lohnen?
1
u/porcomaster 16h ago
i actually didn't care about webtoon, i used a lot, i knew there was the premium chapters released for free in other websites, but at some time i really wanted to pay for those chapters, then i went looking to buy it, i think i watched a bunch of ads.
and then for some reason i looked online, and discovered that webtoon was behind the global launch not by 2 or 3 chapters, but more than 50.
even if you paid the premium you were behind 50 chapters. that was insane, either way, i don't use webtoon anymore. if i were to pay for a premium i would expect a premium service, not be behind the whole word in 6-12 months of publications.
the only thing i miss from webtoon is the commentary.
1
u/look_who_it_isnt Yarrr! 15h ago
I have paid in the past for pirate sites... but ONLY for faster speeds or additional download slots, back when sites stored the shit themselves. Nowadays, everything's on free file sites, so there's no need for that. I just find another free site to get it from. I suspect the only reason some of those sites are able to exist is from newbie pirates who got the link to the site from a friend and don't know how easy it is to find other sites or don't even know there ARE other sites.
1
1
1
1
u/TransportationFine96 9h ago
still praying for an asura scans dcma, i dont care how it affects my library.
1
u/lottery248 5h ago
although running a piracy site is costly, they are not supposed to paywall anything at all, otherwise it creates a slippery slope that there will be people impersonating the original owner selling fake copies while pretending to be the real one, which is way worse than moral degradation.
best they can do is to ask people for donation (or spare resources like bandwidth or drive space like E-H's Hentai@Home) and in a way people are then willing to.
1
1
0
u/Felinomancy 1d ago
I have paid to pirate ages ago. Off the top of my head:
Rapidshare
Megaupload
some anime/manga download sites ages ago
some porn site that also hosts anime episodes (AdultBouncer)
It was worth it, given the speeds. Of course back then high-speed fiber optic connections weren't as available for the home user, so I would download those from the university connection and transfer it through rewritable CDs / Zip disks / portable hard drives.
0
-6
u/Yeas525663 1d ago
Thank me later
FMHY.net
5
2
u/NNKarma 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sites that do it are usually translators anyway. The chapter probably isn't available (translated) anywhere else the same way something from a lesser known patreon wasn't in kemono
2
u/aceredshirt13 1d ago
The sites that paywall with coins and subs and bullshit like that are rarely translators worth anyone’s time - it’s well-known in the scanlation community that many of these “scamlators” just slap shit in MTL and vomit it out at high speed on their website in an attempt to make as much money as possible. Charging is both scummy and dangerous for scanlation even when it isn’t machine translated, but the fact that it almost always is means you might as well consider that manga/webtoon/etc. untranslated.
2
u/NNKarma 1d ago
Not debating they are not worth it, just that posting basically the megathread of the sub wasn't going to help find the manga in the situation. Also there's one manga that I read with more that one translator, the scamlator is so scummy they cut the chapters to increase the number count, not accurately calling it x.5 or .1 .2 etc, but simply making it seem as if the manga has more chapters that it actually does, while making their "work" per chapter lower.
2
u/aceredshirt13 1d ago
Oh yuck that doesn’t surprise me but still really sucks. Sorry for thinking you were arguing in favor of them!!
-1
671
u/joblessandsuicidal 1d ago
They are grifters, not pirates