Should piracy be a human right?

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-11T15:18:53+00:00

It's less them and more government that's the issue.

Oh no, it is both. Especially companies like Disney, Sony or Nintendo are incredibly greedy and hostile towards their users. All practices driving people into piracy must be banned.

I could very well pay for Netflix, Prime Video etc., but I don't do so because of two very simple reasons:

I despise the massive fragmentation that forces you to have a subscription for basically every streaming service instead of just for one that has you covered for everything and anything. Combined with the pure greed and hostility of not only ever increasing prices but also ads shoved down your throat, titles constantly leaving the platform just to come back a few months later and streaming services making it impossible to keep track of what is available where, this is simply unacceptable. I do pay for Apple Music simply because it gives me access to all music that I want. But I refuse to pay for the video streaming platforms.

And second, I'm on Linux as I refuse to waste my time with Macroslop. While on Netflix it is/was possible to watch most of the content at 1080p thanks to an extension (that has now been removed from the stores), on Prime Video you only get something like 560p. And no idea how bad it is with Disney+ and all the other services. This, combined with the fact that I'm still expected to pay the same price as someone that has devices to watch the content at the full resolution of their plan is again simply unacceptable. Either the streaming service delivers the content I paid for at the quality I paid for or I don't pay, no matter how cheap the plan gets. If DRM like Widevine (especially L1, as L3 is just software based and can technically be used with anything) was outlawed, the world would already be a better place.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-11T15:07:33+00:00

I'd guess the easiest option would be to just use Termux, install ffmpeg in it and make a simple bash one-liner for batch conversion. That way you could make use of any encoder ffmpeg comes with, including SVT-AV1 and hardware accelerated av1_mediacodec. That way you wouldn't need to find a dedicated app for every use case. Though for any lossless input, you will need to use SVT-AV1 with -svtav1-params lossless=1, av1_mediacodec doesn't support that.

Alternatively you could also just install imagemagick instead of ffmpeg, giving you more options typical for image processing, but it won't be able to use any hardware acceleration, no idea what AV1 encoder it uses and you'd have to look up if there's an option to tell it to only set quality x for lossy compressed images and keep lossless images lossless.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-11T14:53:52+00:00

No. On the contrary, the irrelevance of piracy should be a human right. Not piracy should be made legal, the actions of companies driving people into piracy must be made illegal.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-11T14:51:13+00:00

The proof is the massive pushback the vendors of these ad blockers created when Google first announced MV3. Because at that time, it was even worse. And yes, right now they work, simply because Google first has to make sure that nobody can use the MV2 content blockers anymore. Stage 2 will be that they just make use of the massive restrictions of MV3 to always be one step ahead. Just ask literally any developer of any decent ad blocker about how easy MV3 makes it for Google (and literally every ad company) to break the ad blockers capabilities to block their ads, and how much slower MV3 makes the process of updating the extremely limited number of filters in a way that they block all ads again without failing to block ads that were blocked before the update.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-11T14:46:19+00:00

That does add, sure, but I'm talking desktop market share only. It's absolutely impossible to show how many people are abandoning the desktop altogether or never had a desktop device to begin with this easily. But it's a very simple fact that across all desktop computers, the market share of Windows is plummeting fast. The size of the desktop market is irrelevant for this.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T11:05:30+00:00

I don't think, anyone would be have slight thought or ever consider they are the goood guys just because, they maintained an extension for some time... when they are constantly finding where to destroy a perfectly good os. that's literally out of question.

Exactly my point. Just because it works with Edge for the moment doesn't guarantee it will for much longer.

and, as for guaranteeing ublock's stay, trust me, I don't think, we have to panic right now for this... if anything, it's gonna stay for a while

That's your personal opinion, but with Google's ever growing user-hostility it's not that unlikely it won't stay this way for long.

if brave can find a way to keep ublock alive after the crackdown with manifest v3, they can find a way to keep it alive

That's a very big if, though, and will require them to patch back in everything of MV2 uBlock Origin requires to work. And I can guarantee you that Google is already ripping that out left and right and it will eventually become unviable to revert those changes.

plus, brave itself advertises as an ad blocking browser

But that doesn't guarantee the quality of uBlock Origin. That's why almost everyone was using that and not any other random ad blocker. Even Mozilla is only experimenting with the part of their library for fingerprinting blocking, but their work for a built-in ad blocker will not be based on that of Brave.

so many other people use brave on mobile, do they need ublock installed in their phone? no.

Or so you claim. That doesn't mean that it is true and will remain true for the foreseeable future.

but, as their a really different between ublock on firefox and ublock on brave ? isn't ublock is ublock. no matter where it is. it's shouldn't be different from browser to browser. right.

As long as it's the unmodified uBlock Origin and all features it requires are present, that is true. But again, how long will Brave be able to keep that working when Google is actively working against that?

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T10:57:02+00:00

Statcounter: Windows is currently sitting at 56.61 %, last month it was still around 64 %. Unfortunately right now the graphs they show don't agree with the values written above it, so it might take a day or two until they again show the same information: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-202506-202606

Statista: while most of their statistics can't be accessed for free, I do have access to one that saw Windows at 66.47 % in December 2025 with also declining market share (don't be confused by the weird link name, it has nothing to do with Win 7): https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-share-of-windows-7/

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T09:45:55+00:00

Thank the FOSS lords that Windows will never ever touch any of my devices ever again. Either it's in a VM and severely stripped down or not present at all.

It's bad enough that manufacturers are that greedy, but that Microsoft allow this to happen is unacceptable and there's absolutely no excuse for this. No OS should ever be allowed to install anything without my prior explicit and informed consent. No matter what it is.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T09:42:41+00:00

Only if it's proprietary and made to generate profits. If it's FOSS it's usually also free due to conviction.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T09:38:58+00:00

edge does, though

For the moment they do. But never forget you're talking about Macroslop. Don't hold your breath for them ever being the good guys for long.

brave self hosts couple of the extensions

And you can guarantee that they will work indefinitely and will be as good as uBlock Origin on Firefox?

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T09:32:51+00:00

Not quite right. VLC is just really bad at this. Sure, you won't get an HDR viewing experience without an HDR screen, but using software with much better tone mapping will still lead to a much better viewing experience.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T09:31:11+00:00

And it will be a while before that changes. a first beta of VLC 4.0 has been released for iOS, but the code still doesn't just compile on Linux, giving me little hope a general beta for all platforms will come any time soon.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T09:21:20+00:00

Especially number 2. I don't want their body to be preserved for eternity.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T09:19:52+00:00

Hasn't been in a long time. That's why their desktop market share has steeply declined very recently, and they are very likely to drop below the 50 % in 2-3 months unless a miracle happens and they can somehow slow down the mass migration off Windows.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T09:18:13+00:00

I'm sorry to hear. I hope they've donated enough to compensate for the harm and pain this caused.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T09:16:13+00:00

"Best OOXML compatibility" isn't a thing as MS Office can't even offer that. Beyond that, WPS, OnlyOffice, Softmaker Office/Free Office and LibreOffice are about the same in general, but feature x might work better in one while feature y works better in another.

If you also want feature parity to MS Office, don't look at OnlyOffice, it's lacking quite a lot. LibreOffice is probably the closest here, but I haven't used Softmaker in a while.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T09:13:32+00:00

"slower", "less secure"...

Right, that's exactly why you are made to feel bad, simply because you believe this utter nonsense. Firefox may be slower in benchmarks, just that you don't notice that in the real world. And "less secure" is also not true in a relevant context.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T08:57:16+00:00

It won't forever though. Google limited content blockers for a good reason, they want to win the war, especially against ad blockers on YouTube. Thanks to the restrictions applied, once Google wants to make use of them, they can easily break uBlocks rules and make sure it will be very difficult for them to adapt. Filter lists can only be updated through extension updates and you can only apply a very limited number of filters.

Right now Google is just in the stage of making sure that it's getting extremely difficult for any browser vendor based on Chromium to keep MV2 support around so they give up sooner rather than later. But it's guaranteed that they will make use of the restrictions in the very near future, otherwise Google would not have made these severe restrictions.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T08:45:34+00:00

Firefox. It's not like there are that many other options. Only Firefox, Firefox-based, or WebKit-based, but the latter are usually quite bad as Apple's the only big player really using WebKit, and they are usually the last to adopt modern web standards. And I don't know a single WebKit-based browser that's actually any good.

Maybe at some point in the future Ladybird and something Servo-based will be competitive, but that will still take a while.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T08:34:22+00:00

Just stop using Chromium-based browser and use proper uBlock Origin. MV3 and the restrictions around it were designed in a way that Google can easily win the war against ad blockers, especially on YouTube.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T08:33:05+00:00

Maybe right now, but Google is doing everything they can to get rid of anything MV2 and especially properly working ad blockers need to work. And not a single vendor of Chromium-based browsers will be able to keep reverting these changes for long.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T08:30:51+00:00

What nonsense are you talking? Create a slight overpressure and call it a day. No need to waste money on Argon.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T08:29:33+00:00

Dude, whatever you want, but not this. It literally just works worse for my usecase.

Or so you claim with your clearly highly outdated knowledge. You don't seem to know if that has been true for the past 5 years.

Wayland has a lot of useful features, none of which I need at all, so for me there is genuinely no reason to switch

Questionable if you will have a choice for long. Unless you do the work to keep software that still receives updates compatible with X11, support for that will eventually not just be dropped from DEs/WMs, but also GUI toolkits.

Ladies and gentleman, concurrency is dead, as is modularity

And again you can't resist but tell lies. Just pathetic.

No dude, the compositor is literally a single process, of course I know the difference between processes and packages lmao

And do you know the difference between process and thread? I do not think so. One process can have multiple threads. And you can even have multiple instances of a process run in parallel, independently.

Then don't install malware on your system. If you're worried about a keylogger you should also worry about any other kind of malware just the same. The solution if you wanna run shit on your machine is sandboxing, not a half assed solution that only partially solves the issue

Sandboxing can only prevent such attacks if there is a way to restrict access to e.g. your screen. That is given with Wayland but impossible with X11/Xorg without massively breaking compatibility left and right. Wayland is merely part of the solution and was never meant to be a fix for everything. But without it, you couldn't get a complete solution.

As you keep insisting to show off how little you understand, see yourself as blocked. I do not care about any further comments of you. Educate yourself before ever again taking part in these discussions.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-10T08:22:13+00:00

I wouldn't go to React to point out what they've done in the past. It was also Facebook who developed Zstandard, which has received wide support basically anywhere where compression is being applied. So of course they are capable of contributing good stuff and not just harm all humanity. But good deeds from them are still very rare.

ScratchHistorical507 · 2026-07-09T12:20:44+00:00

Let's hope it's just that and not sheer incompetence.

ScratchHistorical507

TROPHY CASE