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As socialists, we recognise intellectual property is a harmful artificial scarcity. As technology evolves, information has become easier to distribute. Now, with the advent of everyday computers and phones, we can share writing, pictures, videos, 3D models and even computer tools in mere seconds at effectively no cost. We have unprecedented potential to own and share knowledge, download entertainment for free, and to own the means of digital labour by using community-developed 'free and open source' tools.
Remember, if you are committing piracy in a country that attempts to stop it, always wear a VPN! Research them before picking a shit one.

SEIZE OPEN INFORMATION
The concept of libraries has been extended globally with the internet. Of course, with the complexities of international copyright law, and the difficulty of censoring distributed information, many of these are 'shadow libraries', operating without respect for bourgeois copyright law. Famous examples are Z-Library (z-lib), Library Genesis (LibGen) and Sci-Hub. Another virtual library, the borrowing system of Internet Archive, attempts to work openly and within the law, but has recently been attacked by a coalition of publisher companies.
There are also other open datasets, like the widely-used OpenStreetMap.

SEIZE ENTERTAINMENT
Don't waste money on streaming companies.
Don't waste money on film distributors.
Don't waste money on games publishers.
Get all of it for free through online piracy. In cases where you do wish to compensate a creator, donate directly to them instead of letting the distributor exploit them by taking a huge cut of the income.
The online piracy scene is active, and easy to search. Torrenting is easy to learn. Direct download are often available too. Community resources like https://rentry.co/megathread and https://rentry.co/piracy-faq will have good, neat lists of which sites to search and how to stay safe, this should help with finding anything popular.

OWN YOUR TOOLS
Not everything is copyrighted. Alternative 'free' licenses include Creative Commons licenses (for art) and GPL and MIT (for software), allowing you to share and modify content legally.
The Free and Open Source Software movement (FOSS) is a major online paradigm for making free (as in 'freedom') tools. Many of them are already popular, including Firefox, VLC, 7-Zip, Krita, Blender, Godot, Audacity, OBS, Handbrake, LibreOffice, Linux operating systems (instead of Windows/Mac) and the Android base system.
On top of tools for your own computer, many online services are based on FOSS, including Mastodon and Lemmy instances, the many tools at https://disroot.org/en/#services and even Nuclear Change (running fusion, a fork of jschan imageboard software). Other online services include alternate frontends to commercial services - Piped/Invidious, Libreddit and Nitter (for accessing YouTube, reddit and Twitter without ads or commercial tracking). If you want to download videos from sites, consider installing yt-dlp (despite the name, it works on most websites including reddit and twitter).

The FOSS movement presents an interesting overlap with the socialist ambition of seizing the means of production. While this obviously isn't going to overthrow capitalism, it does function comparably to a worker co-operative and provides highly-accessible ways to become independent of for-profit fuckery.
This also has material benefits for the anti-capitalist movement, by reducing the amount of commercial (and therefore state) tracking, allowing independent encrypted communications, by leaving platforms which encourage division, conflict and addiction, avoiding services which can secretly comply with feds, and moving away from platforms that can deplatform and censor at will, whether for their own capitalist agenda or to placate mass media flak and discontent. By creating our own independent services, we can run them as we want and to further our own wants and needs.
Last edited by discomrade
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It really does annoy me that even today, so many orgs and events are organised and publicised on those commercial services. I get it, that's where the people are, but they're for-profit capitalist platforms and these groups are making no effort to move people away. Manufacturing Consent 101.
Popular websites inevitably begin to deplatform socialists. They're subject to capitalist's desires. They're subject to venture capital pressure. They're subject to advertiser pressure. They're subject to mass media flak. And through that, they're subject to society's mainstream anti-communism. Add on top of that, most of them are directly subject to US jurisdiction and the demands of their law enforcement system.
Replies: >>71
>>70
>so many orgs and events are organised and publicised on those commercial services
Social media stuff like Facebook? Yeah, it's a bummer.
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I'm surprised by the lack of presence piracy has in the online left

This isn't like the 'commies with smartphones' argument, where there's a legitimately socially necessary technology is controlled by capitalists and can't be obtained without supporting the booj or getting chucked in a cell and shipped to Australia
Online piracy, on the other hand, is a whole movement saying TAKE THIS NEW SHIT FOR FREE with basically no risk. You have more control over what you receive (especially with censored or geo-blocked content) AND you don't help pay for the middle-man publisher's new yacht
>b-but what about the creators
If they're getting a cut from sales, which they usually aren't, you can most likely donate directly if you want to financially support them. You can literally pay less and give them more
Replies: >>130
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>>84
>If they're getting a cut from sales, which they usually aren't
This is typically true for sales, such as purchasing a film or album. Streaming services, on the other hand can pay royalties.
Picrel shows the royalties of common streaming platforms, which vary by region, I'm assuming these were US figures.
If someone created a product and you oblige the distributor to pay them less than a cent, don't pretend you're being noble. Even a begger would be offended by that little amount. The word I've heard is musicians typically make money from merchandise, physical copies and touring, not streaming royalties.
>Famous examples are Z-Library (z-lib), Library Genesis (LibGen) and Sci-Hub.
I've had great experiences with Anna's Archive, it acts as a search engine of shadow libraries (instead of having to check each one individually)
Replies: >>232 >>303
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Do what you want cuz a pirate lives free!

>>131
bookmark'd
That rentry megathread link is a good catch, I'd add their FAQ page to the OP too.
Replies: >>262
>>256
Thanks for the tip, I've updated the OP.
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>>131
>Anna's Archive
I just find it super convenient whenever I need a PDF which isn't on marxists.org, no logins or anything.
I've only had one PDF so far which I haven't been able to find, but it was very niche and I could find it for free on a university server using a regular search engine anyway.
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Ultimately, moving away from paying publishers gives you more money to fund the revolution, and moving away from ads and for-profit platforms provides a better user experience.
It really is sufficient to say "it's free."
Youtube is currently nuking invidious across the board
Big Tech is becoming united in its repression
Facebook/Meta started a long time ago, Reddit and Twitter have done it, Now Google is doing it 

Big changes coming. Core web v darkweb/P2P polarization
Pretty reflective also of the class contradictions within society ramping, multipolarity, by extension the "internationality" of the "Internet" (ARPANET) dissolving as we leave the peak of the neoliberal era.
Replies: >>320
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>>316
I didn't notice because I only use Invidious to search and use yt-dlp+mpv to play them. That sucks, and after nitter issues it feels like Sillicon Valley is finally cracking down collectively on alternative frontends. At least redlib is still working for me, even if the API was a disaster.

popular meshnets when?
Replies: >>321
>>320 
>redlib 
thank you, I was not aware of this libreddit fork 

In return, have https://viewtube.io which is only frontend that seems to work for youtube currently, most probably due to it being so obscure.
From viewing the invidious github it seems a lot of work is being put to fixing it through their front eventually, they're talking of reworking a new proxy solution https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/4498 ,  so in due time invidious, piped and Freetube will probably be usable again.
Replies: >>332
Just updating with that invidious team have fixed it already, incredible lot those are
Replies: >>326 >>332
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>>325
Truly a gift. Unconditional support for the People's War on Enshittification!
>>321
>>325
>In return, have https://viewtube.io which is only frontend that seems to work for youtube currently, most probably due to it being so obscure.
>Just updating with that invidious team have fixed it already, incredible lot those are
Piracy truly is the infinite Hydra. Artificial scarcity just can't survive at scale in the digital world. I don't even think we'll ever have to start using darknets like I2P torrenting, piracy just can't be stopped in any meaningful way, even with easier targets like alternate frontends. They're so easy to host and enough people care that a skilled team will probably always be available to push past any hurdles a DRM team can throw at them. Plus, if it's anything like other piracy scenes, there's a decent chance of an industry insider moonlighting to crack whatever they're paid by Silicon Valley to patch.
Replies: >>383
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>union organizer mentions that a historical event relevant to our unions was made into a film
ofw
Replies: >>384
>>332
Well that's exactly it – they can do all the DRM they want, but you just can't give someone high quality media without them being able to just copy the pixels. It has to get pretty unusable before stopping this is even on the table. Even yt-dlp, with all of Google's/music companies'/new corps' ad revenue at risk, can't stop it.
Replies: >>385
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>>372
It's pretty funny whenever people say "I'm going to check which streaming services have it". I just go straight to a torrent site and am already downloading it. It just werks, and I'm paying less.
Replies: >>437
>>383
Still
Somebody puts in all the effort to make the DRM
Another puts in all the effort to undo the DRM

Future historians will be confounded  by this ritual.
Replies: >>386 >>388
>>385
It gets even zanier when you realize sometimes it's secretly the same person.
>>385
True, but if it drains porky's wallets than I can't help but smile at the mad little dance.
>>384
I also appreciate that the torrent sometimes gives nice surprises, like commentary tracks or DVD bonus videos.
Something I've noticed is a lot of streaming services don't even bother to be worth having. Aside from the cost, they usually are full of spyware that slows it down, don't actually render video at full resolution, and make navigating the catalog extremely painful. It's like most of them were designed to try to scare people back to using cable. Maybe they also don't feel like it's worth trying to appeal to people with standards, because it's assumed they'll just pirate anyway.
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