So truth. We’ve had so much times situations at home, when we wanted to watch a particular movie, yet it was not available on any streaming service, and you had to be subscribed even to check if it is present on the platform. Piracy just ended up the only available option that times…

I’ve been running ministral on CPU on a home-server: works pretty nicely, not very performant for everyday tasks and the savings were not sufficient for it to make sense. It still was cheaper and faster to just use Mistral API and get better models.

I know the feeling!

Though, I started recently to have less of it. I started reading for things I need to read on my standing desk, which makes it much easier to actually move in process of reading, which my brain happier, apparently. Also, I can just jump on and off reading in progress (and walk around room), with same result. Definitely recommend using a standing desk in such a way, if you have trouble focusing on reading that you have to do.

So although I understand those defending the right to keep their media, the publishers have the right to release it however they want.

I’ve been thinking about this exact thing for quite a while, and I think there is a gem hidden in this paragraph: the publishers have right to sell their product how they see it fit. At the same time, I as a consumer have a right to consume the product the way I like.

The availability of options 20-25 years ago made media truly free, where everyone could watch things however they liked: either it is a home projector, or have movie nights with friends on home TV, or is it watching on the go on crappy MP4 screen. Nowadays, though, it is moving back towards “we control how you watch it — period”. And that is infuriating: to get some freedom, and then get stripped of it just because there was a minor group called “pirate”, who started stealing it (taking into account that in most cases, those pirates had limited availability of the products: either financial, or governmental, ahoy from post-ussr country). I think, those corps are playing a blame game of moving responsibility for the harm to the consumers (similarly as it goes with plastics recycling). They basically are blaming people for making them to enforce those rules, while most of those malicious customers turned out more frequent buyers than regular paying customers, and provide invaluable intelligence on popularity of things[1], and made their products widely available at places they were not.

The problem is not about having bluray, it is about not having it available in any they cannot take away, because of “reasons”. That is exactly what happened to Office 2019, and that product was not released that long ago: 2019 is only 7 years ago. At the same time, people nowadays resurrect old games and software to make it work on modern hardware, take a look at GOG Preservation Program[2] as an example. They even had a conflict with Blizzard for selling WarCraft 1 and WarCraft 2 in original state and form, while Blizz decided to get more money on cheap remake[3].

I see that the Office 2019 story reminded us that the rights of buyer of digital media are inherently assymetrical to what publisher have. 'Cause when I buy a car, I can do with it whatever I want: I can tweak it, I can get it into various shops for service, etc. What happens with the software/media is “well, you paid us, but you still have to do things the way we want you to do them”: feels like a crappy leasing to me, for paying a full price.

That brings me to my personal rule: if I can buy it, I better buy it. If I cannot buy it without strings attached, then the piracy is somewhat justified. Exceptions can be small authors, but then I just try to find a way to finance them: either via patreon, or whatever else. People deserve to be paid for work, though people also deserve to be treated as entities of agency, not blind obedience.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmOPM1cSrY4, disclaimer: I couldn’t verify sources, take that into account too

2: https://www.gog.com/en/gog-preservation-program

3: https://www.gog.com/en/news/warcraft_12_will_be_delisted_from_gogwhat_does_this_mean_in_regard_to_the_gog_preservation_program

UPD: fixed bad links formatting