this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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If I had to guess, I would say Manga 100% and if I had to put a second place, it would be DENUVO (~~fucked~~) games.

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[–] misk@sopuli.xyz 42 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Why would manga piracy ever get hard, unless they stopped printing it on paper?

[–] Dsklnsadog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 2 weeks ago

Even so. You can always make a screencapture.

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[–] Etterra@discuss.online 40 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Traditional. I mean when was the last time you even saw an armed sloop, much less a galleon?

I really think we're at a momentary historical nadir of maritime piracy. One of the big things that's going to happen as climate change fucks us is that satellite images are going to get less reliable.

Things like not-super-deep submarines are going to get easier, unmanned drones are already feasible at a municipal scale, and the technologies that have allowed statist navies to dominate the seas are already falling out of the meta in modern war.

I think the pirates've got this.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Personally, I'd have moved onto submarines. Just sneak up underneath a ship, cut a hole in the bottom and steal the containers without anyone ever noticing you. 😌

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's...

That's not how buoyancy works at all. 😅

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Are you suggesting they would be more worried about the containers being stolen than their boat sinking from the giant hole in the bottom?

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

If this is a serious question... There is an infinitesimal chance of puncturing a vessel of that size while underneath it to plunder its hold's contents via the same hole — especially at the aforementioned tech level of the time.

Even if you could avoid detection in the process of completing the hole, anyone sent through to retrieve the loot would be crushed in transit and arrive aboard as some variation of a frothed bio jam — with or without the membrane that otherwise held them more or less together up until that point in their presumably harebrained life.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Wait, I’m confused. Assuming you were able to make the hole and seal some sort of connection a-la boarding in a spaceship in a sci-fi show, why would you be crushed in the process of boarding the ship?

[–] remon@ani.social 1 points 6 days ago

Yeah, no idea what this guy is going on about. If the target ship is sufficently compartmentalised so that you don't lose buoyancy when just one of them is compromised, you don't even need any kind of seal. Just some diving gear.

Guess he must have gone to the school of movie physics or something.

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

🫣 😶

Stay in school, kids. 🥲

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

No, seriously. If you’re at or near the surface of the water, yeah there’s going to be some pressure, but nothing even close to the pressure needed to crush a human (ruling out water hammer and such since that wouldn’t reasonably be possible in such a situation.)

You’re aware things like the diving bell exist, right? And they deal with pressures many times the pressure we’re talking about here. Hell, you can free dive to the depths we are talking about, no equipment needed.

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'm sorry, do you have any concept of displacement? I'm having trouble pinpointing your level of cognitive disconnect, honestly.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

If you take a submarine down 100 feet and open the hatch, you’re not going to die (from anything other than drowning or maybe your superior strangling you.) You’re at around 3 bar or 43.5 psi.

That’s literally at the low range of pressure that comes out of your tap.

Even at 200ft you’re looking at pressure that’s just barely enough to cause damage to your house plumbing, but nowhere near the pressure needed to hurt a human.

At about 500 feet, you’re looking at pressure that would come out of a fire hose. Not fun to get hit by, but not necessarily lethal. Most injuries would be from being pushed into things, not the water itself. And you’re definitely not becoming a paste.

Are you under the impression that the moment the hatch opens, the water instantly normalizes the pressure inside the vessel? Because that is by no means what happens.

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Sorry, what era do you think the original hypothetical is in, exactly?

You seem to be assuming the human attempting to enter said vessel is somehow augmented to enable transit in those conditions (much less survive the initiating blast/breach), among other sophomoric assumptions.

I truly don't have time or bandwidth to hand-in-hand walk you through this. 🤌🏼

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Augmented? The current free diving record is over 800 feet. That’s just a human, doing human shit. No augmentation.

You’re inability to actually respond with anything more than “I can’t even! 💅” is really not helping your cause.

You’re quite literally claiming that the water pressure that comes out of your tap is enough to turn the human body into a “bio jam” instantly.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 7 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I'm talking about pirating goods with a submarine that can cut holes in the bottom of ships.

Of course I am 100% serious. /s

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[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I think as the atmosphere thickens and satellite images get more difficult, maritime piracy is gonna get a lot easier.

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

In general, perhaps, but in keeping with OP's implication of "harder to do" (from an individual standpoint), maritime piracy will become increasingly more challenging to engage in as (/if) it rises in prominence once again, culturally, as civilization falters in maintaining itself globally. 🤷🏼‍♂️ More people doing it, more people taking measures against it, more risk to one's person/lifespan, etc. I mean, by that metric on a larger scale: fucking everything's gonna get harder to do. 😅😶

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Well yes, but relative to, like, baking a cake, i think that old fashioned maritime good-good is going to become much easier.

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

On a scale of "baking a cake" and "ruffneck boarding party", how's your post-apoc future going? 🤣🤌🏼

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[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago

And if war breaks out and many countries are crippled (think post-nuclear apocalypse) that'll help that case too. Not saying it will happen but it could.

[–] remon@ani.social 30 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I would say Manga 100%

Why do you think that?

I feel like ebooks will always be considerably easier to pirate than any video/audio files, just because they are so much smaller and can be hoarded (and thus seeded) much more easily.

[–] incognito08@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

DMCA taking down manga sites at a greater speed and with more ferocity than Anime, and even though Nyaa is great there are a lot of mangas that are not delivered in torrents and It's easier to find a torrent of a rare and unknown anime with at least 1 seed than of a manga.

[–] IronKrill@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Not sure why you're being downvoted for expressing an opinion... an opinion based on current trends, at that. Mangadex just had a large chunk of work wiped out and many translations are only on Mangadex or translator websites with no torrent. This is a fact.

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[–] issas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Anything that requires an online service. Specifically, I'm talking about games that need a server to run and permanently shut down once it's offline -- these are becoming more common even among games with single player modes.

I don't see manga becoming harder, at all, even with all the crackdowns. Smaller files, and it's the type of stuff you can't reliably DRM. Denuvo is mostly a problem with companies like SEGA, honestly. Most publishers these days remove it after a while.

[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Anything requiring a server isn't going to become harder, because it's already impossible.

[–] issas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Exactly, the issue here is that online services for games are becoming a lot more common these days. Back then, it was mostly a thing for MMOs, for good reason.

If people let it be, it's really likely more and more games will require some sort of server, even if online play isn't necessary for one to enjoy it or if it's a mostly single player game with a few multiplayer functionalities. For now, most examples of this kind of thing are gatchas, but if people start accepting the idea that you don't "own" the games you buy (and believe me, some already do), I can see companies pushing that kind of thing into normal games, too. It's already starting, aint it?

Would make them more money, too, since they can pull the plug on a game and then 10 years later resell the same thing, and people will be forced to buy it again if they want to replay it. We do see this to lesser extend already.

[–] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Plus physical media on consoles is effectively worthless now, even on the Switch 2 with most of its library set to be downloads with literal license dongles ala the Game-Key Card which is targeted at third parties as a cheaper option than putting the whole game on a cart.

That Game-Key Card format will effectively render most of the Switch 2 library impossible to emulate assuming they need online access to run.

And even on PC, there's nothing stopping publishers from getting smart and using kernel-level anticheat as a DRM substitute for single-player games, EA already set a precedent internally within their operations for doing that with EAAC on the latest WRC installment, for example.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

there are more single player games out there than you could ever play and you can own them forever.

the move to always online is an attempt to compete with their biggest competition, their entire back catalogue.

if I still gave a shit about new consoles an empty box with a game code or anything with always online would be deal breakers.

PSA: PS3 has a ton of great games you likely never played and shops literally can't give them away right now. why pay over $100 for the remaster that you don't own when you can own the original for $1

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[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 19 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I am not so sure this type of pirate ship is gonna be competitive in a modern environment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pirate_ships

[–] anon5621@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Well if u would count games like NFS 2015 which hardcorely locked to server and mostly die forever with some exception like NFS World where people reverse engineered server.

[–] HelloRoot@lemy.lol 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Battleforge is another good example. It took about 10 years for the community to reverse engineer the server and host their revived version. https://www.skylords.eu/

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[–] SpaceScotsman@startrek.website 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Netflix's short stint with FMV / chooe-your-own adventure games highlights a perfect case of difficult preservation - all the runtimes are closed source apps, all the data is streamed from a server, and all the logic is held on the server.

In theory (big caveat) with enough time, effort, and determination you could reverse engineer your way around even the worst Denuvo has to throw. For simple streamed content like images and sound you can always analog-hole your way around preserving content.

But for anything where the key thing you want to preserve, like logic, that depends entirely on a server somewhere existing, that's a problem.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago

Netflix’s short stint with FMV / chooe-your-own adventure games highlights a perfect case of difficult preservation - all the runtimes are closed source apps, all the data is streamed from a server, and all the logic is held on the server.

Add to that the fact that a lot of these types of non-standard content have low engagement and interest. Which is what ultimately makes preservation and piracy harder. If you had a lot of interest it would be difficult but not impossible to recreate some of the interactive elements around them, and extract/decrypt the video content. But without interest it's more difficult. Also ironically the lack of interest is why these things are being sunsetted in the first place. It's kind of a perfect storm in that they are hard to preserve and there is also low interest in preserving them as well.

[–] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 11 points 2 weeks ago

Everything that is made with software can be unmade given time.

Denuvo is a temporary road block that had to go so hard to work it breaks games and compatibility.

[–] glitching@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 weeks ago

piracy didn't start with the internet and won't end on it. like with porn, it always finds a way.

Only games bcz of Denuvo

[–] deathbird@mander.xyz 9 points 2 weeks ago

It's always niche stuff. Music by non-headliners. Indie films.

I honestly think text/pdfs will actually stay easy. Text, even manga I suspect, is lightweight to host, so it's easier to keep online. By contrast a flac rip of a band that's never gone gold will be too heavy to host on a web page, but too niche to keep dedicated seeders on a torrent.

[–] Tregetour@lemdro.id 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Responses ITT have focused on legal and technical roadblocks. But if you can imagine a world where cultural production is even slightly less consolidated and corporate, where we start doing more of it for ourselves and our social circles, a cultural roadblock starts to emerge. How do I copy illicitly if the output is specialized and uniquely calibrated to the personal tastes of a hyper-small audience? Another way of asking the question might be: if mass markets don't mean much anymore and it's easy to make and propagate things ourselves, does piracy still exist? Or do we recognize that copying is a fundamental mechanism of culture, and there's no longer any point in encumbering it for the sake of the profit motive?

I think the remarks of Denuvo hardly mattering for Ubisoft titles because they're shitty games to start with, or jokes about Disney succeeding in making a film that will never get pirated (Snow White), start to get at this question

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[–] Ilandar@lemmy.today 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

More broadly, I would say public P2P stuff - at least in its current forms. I'm not sure it can survive some of the generational shifts that have been occurring in society, since it relies so heavily on community and sharing and demands general technological literacy (not just touchscreen/smartphone/app literacy). Those that do actually have the literacy seem increasingly interested in the instant gratification direct download or torrent streaming stuff, to the detriment of traditional methods of P2P file sharing.

[–] Slaxis@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That is absolutely the trend I’m seeing with younger people. I work hard to curate and maintain a high quality media library, but they’re happy to stream something in low quality from a sketchy site and move on.

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