I cannot comment publicly on whether I am a digital pirate but I can tell you that I condone it. I fully support piracy, especially software piracy.
To quote Gabe Newell, cofounder of Valve, “…piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue”. I hate software subscriptions with a passion. When I want to buy software, what service do I get? Subscriptions. Everything is a subscription.
I hate that the capitalist Americans drove the global software industry to adopt predatory subscriptions but I am certain that investors love their sight on a balance sheet. Microsoft will sell you Microsoft Office, the de facto standard office suite, for 169 Canadian dollarydoos. Alternatively, you can rent MS Office for $ 11.50 per month. Approximately fifteen months into this rental, you have paid the outright cost but own nothing. Cancel your subscription and the Microsoft financial boffins deny you access. Meanwhile, if you bought the software, as I did, you can keep using it as long as you desire. This very blog post was written using the 2016 version of MS Office. I bought this copy for 25 Euros and I see no need to upgrade.
Microsoft at least allow you to buy MS Office. Adobe, the original thieves behind this practice, no longer allow you to buy Photoshop. You must rent something called “Creative Cloud”. Setting aside the fact that clouds on earth are too dispersed to create anything tangible, this renting means you never own your software. I encourage you to pirate Adobe’s software because they are bad people. MBA-types are likely responsible for this situation but I will save my rant about MBA-types for another time.
This is why I encourage piracy. MBA-types deny me the option to purchase and own my software. I do not want to pay rent to American rent seekers. Instead of delivering complete and working software, these clowns have “pivoted” to a model where they sell you broken software and are then perpetually “fixing” it.
I encourage you to pirate music as well. You can buy a CD of Metallica’s album 72 Seasons for approximately $ 25 and own your music. You can also buy the digital version from iTunes for approximately the same price but you are not buying the actual music, you are renting a license from Apple who can take it away at any time. The exact same problem exists with video games which is why I will continue to buy used consoles and used game disks. Gabe Newell’s own company – Valve – also use this exact model of licensing, not ownership. It is very frustrating that I cannot run games with Valve’s launcher software Steam. My own views on Steam are more complex. I buy and own video games where I can but that’s not always possible. My computer has no disk drive and most games are digital only i.e. you cannot buy physical media. Prices on Steam are often close to the price of games on physical media, even including inflation!
I encourage you to watch sports streams via illegal streaming sites. They are almost always free and can deliver any game to you, live, without the nonsense of wondering whether Fubo or Dazn or ESPN own the rights to the Champions League in Canada. Who cares? Not me, that’s for sure. If you love ice hockey and the NHL, you are likely familiar with this problem via certain teams signing exclusive streaming rights for their games. If your NHL stream comes from an different provider, bad luck. Why worry about that? Simply expend your effort in finding an illegal streaming site.
Digital ownership is a complicated issue and it does not help that the lawmakers with the power to fix this situation have only a tenuous grasp on the complexities. Worse, the average age of 52 in the Canadian parliament means that most of these folks are not digital natives. TechBros have us convinced that convenience is a sufficient trade-off for their preferred model of renting everything but I disagree. I spoke yesterday to someone selling software to electricity utilities. Rental software. I do not want my electricity company to rent their software.
There is one more annoying aspect of many modern software – the “cloud”. The cloud just means someone else’s computer. If that entity ceases to exist, the “cloud” ceases to exist. If your software relies on validation via the “cloud”, you’re screwed. If your “smart” thermostat relies on the manufacturer’s servers to work, you are entirely dependent on that manufacturer existing to use your thermostat. Think about how absurd that sounds. That, by the way, is how the Canadian thermostat manufacturer ecboee runs their business. To access your own data, you must obtain it from their servers. Yes, a thermostat in your own home cannot make your own data available locally. Everything must be a subscription.
This infection has also spread to the automotive world. BMW wants you to rent the ability to use heated seats. Yes, the hardware already in your car requires a rental fee. Tesla, whose CEO is a Nazi, tie their cars’ features to owners meaning that if you sell your Tesla, you sell the car but not the software licenses. This is also why so many modern cars require a constant internet connection. The day is not far when your car will refuse to work without an internet connection, obviously for “safety” reasons.
I encourage you to jailbreak your cars where possible and your phones as well. Disconnect your car from the internet. You don’t need random weirdos in the USA viewing the camera output from your car. You need a car, not a two-ton computer on wheels. Don’t trade control and privacy for convenience.
Smash the subscription model. Return TechBros and MBA-types to their rightful place in the dustbin of history.