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hpr_transcripts/hpr3991.txt

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+Episode: 3991
+Title: HPR3991: YOU ARE A PIRATE 
+Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3991/hpr3991.mp3
+Transcribed: 2025-10-25 18:24:20
+
+---
+
+This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3991 from Monday the 20th of November 2023.
+Today's show is entitled, You Are a Pirate.
+It is the 100th Show of Operator and is about 26 minutes long.
+It carries an explicit flag.
+The summary is a rant on about what I think about piracy.
+Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host
+Operator.
+I'm going to kind of do this from plot, but we're going to be kind of talking about piracy
+and how that's changed since I've grown up.
+So you know, going to have some contrasting things and there might be some elements of
+conflict within it, but should be pretty straightforward around how video games in piracy
+has changed and how like TV and movie videos piracy has changed as far as I've seen it.
+So I actually, what kind of sparked this was two things is that kind of piracy is hard
+now, in general, because you have things like content management systems and DRM types
+of things and these are all good and people should be, you know, I don't necessarily
+contend on piracy in any way, but I also think that they make it difficult for people
+to get the content they need.
+So if I could spend a reasonable amount of money in getting the content I need and not
+have to sign up for 5,000 different streaming services, then I would do that.
+And there was a very brief point in time, at least with movie and TVs, when we had, you
+know, we had Amazon and we had, you know, Hulu and we had whatever the other one was.
+And you know, you could have had those three and pretty much had most of your bases covered.
+But even then, you know, it's always been, the deal breaker has always been for me, you
+know, you get season two and season three.
+Like, well, I want to start the thing from season one.
+So allow me to have the content and I will, you know, gladly watch it or whatever.
+So there's always been that barrier to entry where, you know, I have to look at ads or
+I have to, you know, constantly be on b-bombarded, even though I'm paying for something, I'm
+still being bombarded by ads and that's just an absolute turn off.
+So my son doesn't even know really what ads are or commercials are or because, you
+know, we have ads skipping all the content that we have.
+And he has all the video games and stuff on the, on the actual switch that we have.
+So we have the, the rooted switch.
+So I'll first start, you know, it started back in the days, right, of copying games all
+you had to do was copy the folder, right?
+And you could pretty much play the game most of the time.
+Sometimes you'd have to do like a registry hack or whatever and that was great for land
+games where we didn't really play that specific game except when we played a multiplayer.
+So the only other time we would play that game is pretty much multiplayer and we wouldn't
+really play it single player because it wasn't really that good and we never really played
+it that often.
+So that's how kind of that started and then you got to where, you know, they would have
+copy protection and CD, they changed over time.
+And they had CD ROMs that had certain CDs where you had to have a certain kind of burner
+and then that got more complicated where bypassing the copy protection on CDs and then the
+same thing happened with DVDs and decrypting DVDs and backing up your content.
+So you know, in that regard, it got got a little bit complicated, but now it's, you know,
+as everything is more online, right?
+It becomes increasingly difficult to back up your own content that you paid for.
+So an example of my wife complaining is it's, you know, we had some kind of library check
+out thing or something and of course we were in the voonies and tried to play some content
+she had already downloaded, but it wouldn't let her play it because she wasn't on the internet.
+So it's, you know, it's a matter of convenience, sure, and whatever.
+But it's those types of things where you have the content but you don't really have it and
+if you're offline, you can't really do anything about it.
+So with that, it's like, we've got TV, same kind of thing over the air content.
+There was a brief moment in time.
+I don't remember the provider, but they basically recorded over the air TV and then sold you
+a tiny little antenna inside of a data center and it was like, you know, a TVO, but for
+over the air TV.
+And they lasted probably five or six years and then they got destroyed by, you know, that
+the networks because they were operating like a broadcast network, broadcast provider.
+So they got them on those on those terms, but you could basically record like, you know,
+all of Seinfeld and have for like $5 a month, you could have all your Seinfeld from any
+device, any time, anywhere and it was like a little PBR where they had, you know, the content
+for each channel you wanted.
+So that's becoming, you know, increasingly difficult to pirate content.
+So like, for example, on the, the switch, right, it's the switch you had to have an older
+version and to jailbreak it, you had to have an older version and then from there, you
+had to do a bunch, you know, a bunch of premarole to get it to go.
+So in regards to like pirated piracy, it's gotten kind of hard and almost extremely annoying
+at times to be a pirate.
+And there's easier ways to get content and things like that.
+But in general, you know, it's getting harder to do that.
+And if, you know, if there was a way for me to get the content that I want easily and quickly,
+and I would, without, you know, being bombarded with ads and advertising and spam and all
+that, I would do that.
+But there isn't one and it always frustrates me that when I do sign up for something and
+I go through the red tape to get the thing, I'm always bombarded with extra ads on top
+of it.
+For example, the fire stick, you know, I got a fire stick, I have Amazon Prime.
+But every time you idle for more than two minutes, it takes you back to the home screen
+and it closes out whatever app you're running, right?
+So like, it just, it's annoying in that regard because you've got your paying for a thing.
+You pay for a piece of hardware and the whole thing is being, you know, monitored and they're
+monitoring and capturing your data and selling it and whatever.
+And then on top of that, you're just constantly being bombarded with ads and things like that.
+So it's like, okay, I left it on this application, went away for two minutes and then now it
+goes back to the home screen with a bunch of ads on it.
+So and it's not even, it's not even content that you can even, you can even get without
+paying 90% of the time.
+So like, you know, I can understand, you know, having some kind of, you know, ads or whatever,
+but everything and there's just garbage.
+It's all just half of it is just a bunch of junk and spam.
+So every time I get into something or I pay for a service, I quickly get frustrated with
+being bombarded with ads and then I turn back into a pirate because with piracy, you don't
+have to deal with ads.
+You don't have to deal with, you know, being bombarded with shit that you don't want to
+see or hear, you know, and that's some of why I'm still, you know, kind of heavy in that
+space because it's just less fuss and if I can spend two hours a month messing with
+my flex server, then and not have to worry about ads, then I, I'll take that two hours
+and I will spend that two hours a month on maintaining the server and making sure it's
+working and all that stuff.
+It's, it's, you know, some of that is, is kind of a passion thing just because I like,
+you know, messing with computers and getting the content that I want on any device at any
+time, but, you know, it's some of that's hot so I'll give you another example.
+Last night, I purchased, I don't know what people's thoughts are on these resellers that
+will buy, you know, they're super shady ones for games, right?
+And likes, they're for activating games or getting a game, video game accounts.
+There's kind of two worlds.
+There's three worlds really.
+There's paying full price for the game.
+So was it Star, um, it's about Starfield.
+Starfield is the new defense of the game everybody's going crazy about.
+It's like $69 in Microsoft right now.
+My nephew gave me the free pass for a month or whatever from Microsoft and I activated
+it and quickly canceled it just to make sure I wouldn't be out of recharge if I forgot.
+So we started playing the game whatever and I've been playing it for maybe, maybe ten
+hours now and I've decided that I would like to purchase the game and, you know, we can
+argue that honestly paying $69 for a game is actually reasonable, um, considering, you
+know, some people play these games for 400 hours, right?
+Do the math.
+400 hours, you pay what, $10 for a movie, right?
+Even if you paid $5 for a movie, 400 hours at $5 per hour, that's like unfathomable
+that money to pay for a video game, but as far as entertainment to time spent ratio,
+you know, that's, that's some, that's some big numbers.
+So we're, I don't think we're paying enough for video games and I can, I can understand
+that too, but also the same thing.
+The first game, internet game base that I purchased was, um, like, Dragon Age or one of
+those RPGs and the first time I paid for it, I installed it, it took forever to download,
+took forever to install, I finally installed it and I walk into the whatever and I start
+the game and I start playing and the first thing I do, I get back to my house or get
+to back to my treasure chest or whatever, what is the first thing that happens after I've
+been playing the game for, you know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes?
+Oh, I get bombarded with DLC ads and ads to buy more content.
+When I haven't even played the game, but for like 40 minutes and it's just this constant
+bombarding and spamming of, of content, like, I don't, I just, it's just, I guess it's
+the generation of being, my generation is the generation that was just pop-up hell and
+having to deal with pop-ups and having to deal with ads and being bombarded with ads all
+the time.
+Um, I guess I went hyper the other direction and now that whole market is toxic to me and
+I don't, I just instantly have anger against all of that because, you know, I felt like
+a lot of that was just annoyances.
+Um, so I guess that's why I have some history with it, but anyways.
+I go to buy a Death Star feel and I'm like $69, that's a lot.
+I don't really have a lot of time to play video games, so half the time I don't ever finish
+anything.
+You know, all the games I purchased out of all the games I purchased the past two years,
+I've only finished Cyberpunk, um, and that was a great game and I pay full price for
+it.
+And, you know, I knew I was going to make myself go through that game, same, same for
+some of the assets and screen games, I will make myself run through those games and beat
+them.
+A majority of the games I just don't have the time to do it and I would like to play the
+game for longer, right?
+Um, but at $9 a month or whatever it is for the Microsoft thing, um, that's going to
+add up quick and from not paying attention, right?
+Um, things can get at a hand and I'll end up paying, you know, $300 for a game I've only
+played four times, um, because I just don't have the time anymore.
+So, um, I went off to go something like G2G and, you know, content providers and game folks
+will argue that these services are kind of toxic to the community, um, essentially what
+happens, um, the first camp is, like I said, you pay for the game, full price, whatever.
+The second camp is, you know, you find a friend that has it and you borrow his account,
+right?
+And you play through his account when he's not online, whatever, um, kind of the third
+camp is you buy these reseller accounts, um, and you purchase, maybe they bought them
+in bulk or they got a deal on them or they bought them with a different type of, um, a different
+type of money transaction and that's not particularly great, right?
+Um, if they're buying them in bulk, maybe they have a discount or maybe they have an
+in or some kind of code or whatever, um, they've, they've gotten codes or keys or accounts
+for these, um, they usually buy them at bulk and then they assign like a bunch of, you
+know, email addresses to them and randomness, um, so with that said, you know, it was like
+$69 for the game, I got it for like $34, I think, and it was a steam version.
+So you know, it's, now it's 11 o'clock at night, I've picked out whichever one is not
+region locked.
+There's also region locked ones where you can only activate it in a specific region.
+So like if you're, if you buy one that's region locked to say Russia, you have to try
+to proxy through, um, try to find like a tour exit node if they'll not block already all
+blocked or just sign up for a free VPN or something and come through somewhere close to Russia,
+um, usually, usually is a, is enough, which I've only done this like twice for two different
+games.
+And once you activate it, you can generally play it for a while before you get the tunnel
+back through for updates or something like that and you get forced, um, essentially forced
+to update the server or talk phone home or contact the mothership and, you know, that's
+another thing too.
+It's like, okay, you know, I've bought the game from essentially a reseller that bought
+stuff in bulk or whatever and you can argue that that's not great for the community,
+but that's what people do.
+People buy sell, it's a, it's a capitalist world, we buy stuff in bulk and we sell it and
+how, how that happens in whatever that's, it's not any different than buying anything
+else in bulk and shipping it over to the States and selling it for, you know, 500% markup
+what we do every day all day.
+So, um, you know, buying that, getting that set up activated is kind of frustrating, but
+so I got it, got it set up, um, got the steam account logged in, changed the credentials,
+changed the emails, set it to mine, um, a backup email that I had and they say they were
+saying that you can share it through the family access or whatever.
+So you do this authorized thing and steam and you authorize both sides, you authorize the
+computer and then each user you authorize and then the idea is if the game is actually
+able to be shared through the family, whatever family link, whatever it's called, you can,
+essentially take that, uh, game and borrow it from the other user and as long as they're
+not logged in and playing it, you can, you can play the game, um, I don't think maybe
+this count that flagged for some reason as not being able to be shared, there's a, there's
+a website called like family, it's like family steamcheck.com or something and you can type
+in the game and it'll tell you if you can share it through the family, the family view
+deal.
+So my idea was to, you know, give this other account, share the game and then just not
+really ever log into the account, um, much and just have, not have to switch accounts
+back and forth and just use my main steam account for whatever.
+And I know there's terms and services said that you can't do like the geolocking stuff,
+so if you buy like an account with a non-US currency or you buy in, you know, a regional
+locked and you go around the region locked stuff, um, you know, it's against their terms
+of service and they can ban your whole and not your account or whatever.
+But this, in this case, this was a, a US, um, non-region locked game, but when I got
+it all set up, I spent like an hour trying to install it and get it set up and do the
+family thing and watch videos and whatever, um, when it finally was ready to be shared
+or whatever it would work, it just said, like, purchase and there was no other option
+to purchase it.
+So it finally gave up and just started the game and went through and got a save file
+going.
+Um, I ended up, uh, finally getting the point where I could save the game and what happened
+was that, um, the Microsoft way that Microsoft saves the game is not the same way that's
+the team saves the game.
+So now I've got a bunch of these random files that don't look anything like the Steam
+save games and I'm like, what am I supposed to do?
+So I look online, um, and I'm actually using CXNG, which I don't think I've done an episode
+on, at CXNG, it's a local metadata search engine and I've kind of boycotted Google because
+Google has gotten kind of toxic and disgusting and they say that being is now better than
+Google.
+I don't know how that happened, but, um, so I, you looked, looked on CX and got some links
+for, uh, a tool that's called, um, XGP save extractor and this GitHub project and it converts,
+uh, I guess the Fezda titles, uh, from Microsoft to the plain normal save game files that Steam
+uses or any traditional, whatever, I don't know what it is about Microsoft, but they, of
+course, they have to do everything differently and chop it all up.
+Um, so luckily, somebody developed this tool, um, to convert the save games to the, the
+Steam, the Steam version or the Steam style.
+So I was able to have backups of my save games for Microsoft, convert them over and finally
+load up the game and get it going, um, but I will have to switch back and forth in between
+accounts.
+I don't really play anything on the main account anyways, um, every once in a while
+my son wants to play X-Play, um, but that's pretty much it or, um, what's the other game,
+uh, um, X-Playing and the, um, Kerbal Space would like to play that, but, you know, it's,
+it's, you know, when, and when it's all said and done, I've spent an hour and a half trying
+to, to play a game or get a discount on a game or whatever and not have to pay full price
+for a game.
+Is, is it worth the time?
+I don't know, but for me, it's kind of out of spite too, um, just because these platforms,
+you know, even, even the launchers to a point are wildly frustrating, you know, everybody
+has their own launcher.
+I think they've managed to consolidate some of them, but, you know, at one point in time,
+I had a screenshot of, of like five different game watchers being updated at a time.
+And when you don't play games that often, you go to play your game and it's like, oh,
+I'm forcing you to update right now.
+You have to update.
+I can't not let you play without updating, especially with the online games, they force
+you to update.
+I was like, I'm not even playing this game online, I'm playing the local, I don't want
+to update right now.
+I don't have the bandwidth or time to do it.
+So I basically had it set up where every time the computer started up, all the launchers
+I had start up to and have automatic updates all installed on all of them.
+So I, every once in a while, I would turn my computer on when I was playing games, everyone,
+now and then.
+So I would turn my computer on and start up, it would start up all the game engines and
+game clients, and I would make sure they were all updated and happy.
+So that way, next time I wanted to play, changes are I wouldn't have to install like every
+single patch for every single game.
+And you see that in consoles, too, it's the same way, just being bombarded by ads.
+You know, every time you go to play a game, this game needs an update, and I mean, I
+get it.
+If it's an online game, you got cheaters and stuff.
+And the thing about cheaters is that, you know, they'll go through a little bit of hoops
+to block cheaters and stuff, but they obviously don't care as much about cheaters as long as
+the, you know, people are playing the game, the amount of people playing the game are the
+number they want.
+And I don't know how they calculate all that, but at the end of the day, as long as people
+are playing the game, they're not super angry that their cheaters everywhere, they don't
+really necessarily care.
+They'd rather do silly stuff like region lock your games and do all these anti-piracy
+things and spend all their time doing that instead of actually, you know, trying to prevent
+people from cheating.
+And I know that's difficult, I know it's hard, but I gave up on video games, competitive
+video games, or just multiplayer video games in general for that reason because of the
+cheating.
+And there was so much of it, and I gave up the day they came out with multi-pack cheats
+for a single game.
+You could, like, download one binary and get cheats from multiple games.
+I just gave up.
+I was like, I'm not doing this anymore.
+This is, I don't know who's cheating, I don't know who's playing for real, I play with
+friends sometimes, but mostly, you know, towards the end I was kind of playing it by myself.
+So it wasn't really fun for me anymore and I just didn't have the time to play as much
+video games.
+And when I did, they are so competitive I couldn't tell if it was just me or, you know, cheaters
+or all the above.
+But anyways, all this is to say is that, you know, I guess some of my, you know, some
+of my piracy comes from growing up in the age of just being bombarded with ads and, you
+know, and just being completely bombarded with things all the time and I, you know, I struggle
+with concentration and staying on task and I have lots of things that I have to do and
+I live my life by calendar and to be distracted on top of everything that I'm trying to do
+and supposed to do, it doesn't help.
+So, you know, if I could pay for the content that I wanted and I didn't have to sign up
+for 15 different, you know, there's like 30 different ones, even in Plex.
+If you go in Plex and you open up add a, you know, streaming provider, there's like 30
+of them in there.
+Obviously, there's only probably 10 of them that are decent.
+But even with the 10, it's, again, it's more, just more ads, more ads, more ads, more
+ads, more ads, more ads.
+And, you know, they want you to pay for everything and they want you to always be paying for
+this and paying for that and just like throwing stuff in your face, it's all just garbage.
+Like, you know, these old movies and having to, like, try to find the content either
+want and they're throwing stuff in your face, it's like not even anything you would want
+to watch just because they want to, you know, get the viewer ratings up for something.
+That's still why I'm kind of in that space is because the whole thing is still toxic and
+it's, it's almost even more toxic nowadays.
+Anyways, it's kind of a rant and kind of a, you know, lesson in how we're, I feel like
+where we're at today is, you know, it's still at the bombarding of the ads, the, the, the
+stuff and having to deal with all that and the reason I'm in, you know, I still do the
+piracy thing is that it allows me to get the content that I want without all of the bullshit.
+And I would pay double if I could get, you know, the content I want for not having to
+watch commercials or any of that stuff, I would pay double, but that's not the thing
+that exists.
+It's pay us, we will bombard you with ads and try to upsell you and try to sell you more
+shit and whatever and then also not give you the content that you want and it just, it
+doesn't make any sense to me.
+We wouldn't, like I said, there was a brief point with like Hulu and Netflix and Amazon
+where you could actually pay for the content that you wanted.
+And I had Netflix and Amazon, I didn't have Hulu because there was stuff on there that
+didn't really want.
+But between those two, I could pretty much watch everything that I want.
+But even then, there were, you know, limits to that and you got that, you can only get
+the first season or you can only get the third season.
+It's like, okay, well, that's, that's not, it's not what I want.
+So at the end of the day, you know, that's kind of what turned me off of that stuff and
+then now, you know, it used to be like piracy and then it was Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.
+And then slowly but surely people started to figure out that they could have their own
+streaming services.
+And so the piracy kind of like went down and with the Netflix and the three combo, you
+know, streaming services, piracy went down, friends and family, technical people that
+I talked to, they're like, oh, I don't do any of the other stuff I just pay for my content.
+And I was like, wow, it's actually kind of cool.
+And I started, the more I got into it, the more I realized it's not what I, it's not
+what I want still.
+I'm not still getting what I want.
+I'm still having to be in the way by, you know, being, being sold tough all the time.
+So I'd ever switched over and then more and more and more.
+It got to where it just got worse and worse and worse and now everybody has their own
+streaming thing.
+And everybody's pirating it again because, you know, they've made the process so awful
+and painful and toxic that, you know, people don't even like my parents can't even get
+the content they need.
+They have to call me up and figure out, help me, you know, help them figure out how to
+get it.
+What they're trying to, trying to watch or whatever.
+But anyways, that's kind of my rant for today and kind of shoot from the hip and, you know,
+it's not easy to be a pirate today, but I still go through the motions to do it.
+And, you know, when we can't get the content we need, we pay for it and hope that whatever
+we interface we pay for it through, I can block ads with or block stuff, the content
+that I don't want to be shoved in my face.
+So anyways, appreciate it.
+You all have a good one and a good look.
+You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work.
+Today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself.
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+On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International