this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Piracy didn't start in 2006, before that there was limewire and Napster, and before that bootleg DVDs, and before that the MPAA spent billions lobbying to ban VHSs with a record function and get draconian punishments for recording movies.
I mean, if we're not restricting "media piracy" to digital, there was an entire subculture that ran bootlegs of live music events for the diehard connoisseurs, and the archivists had insane collections dating long into those pre-digital decades —including completely unpublished instances of world famous bands like The Grateful Dead, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, CCR, Jimi Hendrix, etc.
But, hey, it's not like modern day has seen corpo dumbasses scramble to recover data corrupted by time, shitty storage SoP, etc., only to tap one or more of these driven, fastidious, longtime collectors to ask if they could burn/dub/cut a copy... you know, like pirates. 🤣
I was downloading episodes of Jackass back in about 2001, using I think it would have been eMule.
You'd get a 240p MPEG-1 file, and you were happy with that.
Hilariously, for people who didn't own computers that could handle playing videos from CD-Rs, as my PC's video card had composite output I used to make VHS tapes from those files. And then put the adhesive label sheet for the tape cassette through the printer.
Y'know, normal stuff.
2001? Did you miss the CKY2K skate tape where they went to Iceland? That was my first and last Jackass vid, NGL.
I already knew plenty of trigger-happy, high-energy, rush-hungry, "epic" shenanigan asshats, and watching those rodeo-clown orphans do the same was pretty redundant, all things considered.
IMHO, it was the viewers/fans that figured they could improve on the method themselves that were the more clear & present danger.
Back then, you knew which white kid spent their childhood in a McDojo (thanks, Daniel-san), which one spent those years fishing/hunting w/ dear old dad/uncle/gramps, which one found proper metal early on, which one was gonna get hooked on glue, which one was a little too into Faces of Death... and which one thought anything could be a "prank".
Yeah, no. Bam's had an ass-whoopin' comin' for yeeears, but I guess he caught up with himself, after all. 🧏🏼♂️
(oof, sorry, that was much longer than I thought.😅)
It was so widespread that around 2004-2005 you could buy dvd players that supported avi/mp4 files with external subtitles. They don't create products like that for niche markets.
Someone in some boardroom somewhere actually listened to their techs at some point leading to to then, is all.
There was an enormous, fairly tight-lipped and self-sanitizing subculture dedicated to consuming their preferred media in that way, so of course they were super interested in an untapped profit source.
Even if that meant pivoting toward totally not condoning piracy, but here's a thing that could make that more enjoyable 🤣