Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

We need to stop calling it "purchasing"

so they're going to refund all the people that purchased this stuff, right?

An jus as one piece is kicking off not only it's final saga but more of its successful live action. The Great Pirate Era is really upon us!

fuck it, pirate everything.

if they lost respect for our money, i dont see why we should respect theirs.

if buying is not owning, then piracy isn't stealing.

There needs to be a registry service that allows people to show they have a license for any digital media we purchase.

Buying a digital copy of something you cannot download is an oxymoron. It only makes sense if you subscribe to a service.

For smart people, piracy is a financial problem.

Why pay more for things you can get for free? It's not like the businesses you're supporting wouldn't rob you blind if they thought they could get away with it.

Even the 'creators' don't get the vast majority of the money you spend; their landlords do. When they make more money, rent goes up.

I wish this generation wasn't full of useful idiots with more money than sense.

Very hard to convince people to buy things "legitimately" and have any trust in any of the "legit" options when they just go away so fucking easily. Stuff like anime has been a real weird example of both how horrible the corps on the Japanese side just squeeze every single fraction of a penny from stuff (fucking like two eps of a show on a modern DVD or even Blu-ray). But also feel zero reason to expand options in the first place. They were so fucking slow to get digital or streaming options. Same goes for the foreign outlets that get rights outside of J-land, but I am sure they were more likely to want to combat piracy via stuff like streaming. Funny thing about anime piracy is that it is literally the reason so many shows and movies were even seen and is the main reason so many people got into all of it. Back in the early 00's when I made friends with people that had cable internet and ready to burn as many eps as they could fit on a CD-R and later DVD-/+R.

It was just so amazing to see all these shows that weren't just completely altered by lazy US companies or ever likely to be translated. No US companies thought that Americans would ever understand or get into this weird Japanese stuff and not put money into it. But they sure started caring when torrents got going and the numbers were growing. One thing that has really pissed me off with legal digital copies of anime comes down to how it is still behind on basic shit. We have had multi-audio/subtitles on pirate copies and even on legitimate physical discs. But the legal versions of digital copies still have to be either bought in sub or dub. It is a slap in the face of fans to have to buy two different copies just to have multi-audio in Japanese and English. I thought that shit would have been left behind with VHS.

All of these companies demand our money and often charge prices that are just too high for their target audiences (especially teens that don't have jobs like so many of us have lived through). And yet they seem to do everything possible to make the options for purchase so much less usable compared to pirate versions. I would take a fansub that might be a bit off but has actual passion for community and accessibility over legit copies every single time. But I am also more than happy to pay for things if I don't keep being treated like I already stole it and should be grateful for being "allowed" to pay for it. I would love to pay for these things and know that the actual workers are able to live, and not just so overworked and not able to afford rent. But the entire media industry treats both the workers and the customers so fucking bad. They are making things worse for themselves by showing how we can't trust our purchases to even be around from one day to another. So why shouldn't we just take it and know that we will have it?

Given how lots of smaller shows and other things will never get re-prints or re-masters on modern media. It is also our jobs to preserve these things that the companies feel aren't worth the money to do so if they aren't. If I ever have kids, I would like to be able to know I can show them my favorites. Looks like I will also need to show them how to sail the digital seas and that "legit" options should always be treated as liars that steal your money AND take away what you paid for.

🏴‍☠️

They're charging people higher prices and refusing to allow them to keep their digital content? They're basically just handing out the pirate hats and eye patches at this point.

Disclaimer: this absolutely sucks and I'm baffled that they've made this move at all.

That being said, I don't think folks have noticed the very specific situation where this is the case:

Users who redeemed digital copies of a Blu-ray or DVD purchased from Funimation were granted access to the streaming service, where they could store and stream the purchased program or film.

They are very specifically removing the free digital copies that came with buying hard copies via Blu-ray or DVD. It still sucks, but no one is losing a digital product they outright bought.

I literally wouldn't advocate "sailing the high seas" if companies didn't all aggressively accelerate enshittification and run toward consumer-hostile, short-term, endlessly greedy practices. And then there's this, which is on another level. Storage is crazy-cheap these days, people...

You'll own nothing and be happy

funny, i dont feel too happy

This is why I never bought a subscription to these services.

If anyone has this stuff it would be good to add them to i2p too.

What the hell is that thumbnail?

Sony deleting purchased items from a person's library?

Shocker.

Any tools to rip stuff from Funimation?

Maybe this way folks will preserve it.

Trust but verify folks, if you bought it and don't have a copy you fully control you're renting at best.

I forgot Funimation even existed tbh. I've been torrenting for ages now and I have no use for Funimation or Crunchyroll. Yo the seven seas guys!

Class action lawsuit for contract violations

just use Aniyomi with the Yomiroll or Aniwave plugin

A simple solution is to stop consuming the work entirely. "Okay, you want to make it expensive and difficult to access your content, we're going to stop liking your content. The market for your product has now completely ceased to exist."