The decentralized nature of torrenting plus being in a country that doesn’t care counts for a lot. After that, you pretty much just get the cheapest storage you can, maybe even use reclaimed e-waste drives. You’d be amazed what some people just toss.
On a side note I pulled 2 complete older PCs out of a literal trash can, added a $100 video card and rebuilt and sold them for $700. I still have a new $100 motherboard I found in that trash.
People be stupid.
Valid question, I’ve heard of people just dumpster-diving and getting computers with working components but I’m sure there’s places that just wholesale old PC’s from schools and businesses for cheap, presumptively after wiping them (one hopes).
Imagine what the internet would look like if legislators prevented that particular monetization strategy (targeted advertising). For example, classifying it as behavior influencing technology—we could start to analyze a lot (social media algorithms, advertising, news feeds, …) for its potential to become propaganda and influence our fellow citizens. Free speech is protected, sure, but you can’t shout “bomb” in an airport anymore than you should be able to harvest heroine data and use it to lure addicts to your marketplace.
Imagine if we saw things like Amazon and said, “woah woah woah. We as a society left feudalism behind. You can’t own the land (the “platform”) that everyone sells on, monetize the exchange of products on your land (taxes, or “platform fees”), and have control over which exchanges should occur in the first place (the “algorithm”). That’s just too much power and doesn’t follow the same free market principles that got us here in the first place.”
Imagine if the government saw things like web3.0, blockchain, federation, and said: “you know, it was public funding that built the internet. Maybe now, public funding should secure the democratic process of the internet. Let’s research the potential for using the internet as a platform for building and supporting a digital space that helps propel society into its next stages of human development.”
Instead, we got something where technology was allowed to develop into an alternative form of control. We regulated the land, so they made new land in unregulated territory while moving all the goods over there. Capitalism allowed feudalism to sprout from within if. We are the peasants who “work the land.” That’s why these platforms are free to us, because (just like in feudalism) they need us there for any of this to work. We work the land, comment and like posts, only to teach their algorithms how to better influence us. It’s not what I was hoping for back in the early 2000s.
Truscape’s answer is pretty comprehensive but to recontextualize it: In some places there’s functionally zero risk, in fact degrading the US entertainment/media economy might actually be seen as a national benefit. In most western countries it actually is sticking their neck out, though how much depends largely on the location. I think Sweden (or Iceland?) actually had a political party called the Pirate Party which espoused it on some philosophical grounds.
Some disgruntled people who are just frustrated with the current ecosystem of software/media gouging (Piracy of Nintendo and Sony ROMs are the first thing that come to mind, along with things like Adobe product cracks). Slogans would be things like “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”, and “It’s always morally correct to pirate Nintendo games”.
Places that ignore Western/International copyright law and don’t seriously prosecute their citizens, who are then able to host databases where anyone can download/stream from, with income from ads and donations (Basically China/Russia, and some countries outside like Brazil)
Places where the price of purchasing legitimate media is just so insanely high (compared to average income) that having an online distribution network hosted no matter the risk would be the most accessible option (most notably Brazil with their high af import taxes, along with other LATAM nations). This is even seen in places that have no distribution officially period, such as Cuba’s “paquete” (Literal HDDs and flash drives being smuggled with foreign data through informal networks)
“Software Cracker”/“Aaron Swartz” ideologists who believe information should be free and accessible to anyone, no matter what and who pride themselves on releasing protected media not out of financial gain or hatred for the publisher, but for online street cred and to “Democratize” information. This is most notable through shadow libraries like Anna’s Archive.
There are probably other cases I have not mentioned, but these are the big ones.
Donations and ads sweeten the pot a lot. Also you don’t really need to buy media if someone else already made it available for download, and you don’t need to store it if you’re uploading to external hosts. So if you’re running a video game repacker site, and you get all your games from scene releases, you upload all your files to various external file hosts, and you run ads on your site + inject pay per click links, you could probably turn a profit from your hobby.
The decentralized nature of torrenting plus being in a country that doesn’t care counts for a lot. After that, you pretty much just get the cheapest storage you can, maybe even use reclaimed e-waste drives. You’d be amazed what some people just toss.
On a side note I pulled 2 complete older PCs out of a literal trash can, added a $100 video card and rebuilt and sold them for $700. I still have a new $100 motherboard I found in that trash. People be stupid.
Are there reasonable places to get e-waste? one of my drives is skowly failing and id love to get some e-waste to rebuild the rsid storage
GovDeals.com in the us and canada
Valid question, I’ve heard of people just dumpster-diving and getting computers with working components but I’m sure there’s places that just wholesale old PC’s from schools and businesses for cheap, presumptively after wiping them (one hopes).
Yeah, but like why do these websites stick their neck out for us? Is it because their sense of sharing media is that strong?
Advertising revenue.
Imagine what the internet would look like if legislators prevented that particular monetization strategy (targeted advertising). For example, classifying it as behavior influencing technology—we could start to analyze a lot (social media algorithms, advertising, news feeds, …) for its potential to become propaganda and influence our fellow citizens. Free speech is protected, sure, but you can’t shout “bomb” in an airport anymore than you should be able to harvest
heroinedata and use it to lure addicts to your marketplace.Imagine if we saw things like Amazon and said, “woah woah woah. We as a society left feudalism behind. You can’t own the land (the “platform”) that everyone sells on, monetize the exchange of products on your land (taxes, or “platform fees”), and have control over which exchanges should occur in the first place (the “algorithm”). That’s just too much power and doesn’t follow the same free market principles that got us here in the first place.”
Imagine if the government saw things like web3.0, blockchain, federation, and said: “you know, it was public funding that built the internet. Maybe now, public funding should secure the democratic process of the internet. Let’s research the potential for using the internet as a platform for building and supporting a digital space that helps propel society into its next stages of human development.”
Instead, we got something where technology was allowed to develop into an alternative form of control. We regulated the land, so they made new land in unregulated territory while moving all the goods over there. Capitalism allowed feudalism to sprout from within if. We are the peasants who “work the land.” That’s why these platforms are free to us, because (just like in feudalism) they need us there for any of this to work. We work the land, comment and like posts, only to teach their algorithms how to better influence us. It’s not what I was hoping for back in the early 2000s.
Truscape’s answer is pretty comprehensive but to recontextualize it: In some places there’s functionally zero risk, in fact degrading the US entertainment/media economy might actually be seen as a national benefit. In most western countries it actually is sticking their neck out, though how much depends largely on the location. I think Sweden (or Iceland?) actually had a political party called the Pirate Party which espoused it on some philosophical grounds.
Essentially yes. Though ‘sticking it’ to the Disney’s of the world (and their regulatory capture of governments) is also motivating.
Well there’s a couple factors at play:
There are probably other cases I have not mentioned, but these are the big ones.
Donations and ads sweeten the pot a lot. Also you don’t really need to buy media if someone else already made it available for download, and you don’t need to store it if you’re uploading to external hosts. So if you’re running a video game repacker site, and you get all your games from scene releases, you upload all your files to various external file hosts, and you run ads on your site + inject pay per click links, you could probably turn a profit from your hobby.