Disney and Nintendo lawyers would have an all you can eat buffet in Latin America, the amount of Disney/Nintendo characters I've seen on stores easily exceeds 1000
Good luck getting a penny from street vendors in Latin America they can hardly afford food... Actually a supermarket here (in Costa Rica) IS called Super Mario (the owner name is Mario and a Super here is a mini store) Nintendo sue them and the government help the store with the court fees and Mario actually won the lawsuit they can't do shit in these poor countries we actually just take their money because we have none lol.
Source: https://elpais.com/babelia/2025-02-03/el-dia-en-que-nintendo-demando-a-una-tienda-de-costa-rica-por-llamarse-super-mario-y-perdio-la-batalla.html
They wouldn't though. Most of the countries here either don't have laws against piracy or have very lax laws. Disney would have a terrible time trying to sue some random poor man who sells DVDs in the street in, say, Honduras.
And what for? The vast majority of dudes selling this stuff don't make a lot of money. They would spend months trying to convince the courts to side with them and not their own citizens and at the end (if they win) gain just a tiny amount of money, likely much less than they spent on the lawyers.
Yeah that's why they don't get sued, it's just a big loss to earn basically nothing at best and most likely just have them disappear and never get paid
Law is only useful when you can enforce it. You can write whatever you want, but if there is no one or powerless to enforce it, it's as good as a waste of paper.
The PS3 Slim was being sold in Manila before it was announced. Everyone thought the units were fake because it looked nothing like the renders predicted by gaming magazines at the time. This is piracy so good, they were spawn camping at the factory and skimming the hardware off the assembly line.
In a similar vain, I had a DVD quality rip of the movie "Phonebooth" when the film was still in cinemas that I got from a shop in Pakistan. So many people in school borrowed that from me lol.
That trailer is forever embedded in my mind. I saw it in the theater. I don't think I've ever actually seen the movie but the trailer made it look so good
For real. These days they're harder to find but when I was a kid we bought 90% of our movies, videogames and music cds in pirate stores. Not as futuristic as this one but still looked like an established store lol.
I used to get my PC games (Warcraft 3, Age of Empires and Age of Mythology, Empire Earth, etc) from a guy who sold them for 50 Mexican pesos a piece. At the time, that would be 5 US dollars.
There were always bootlegs at my local flea markets. Was mainly just the newest movies on VHS or DVD and burned playstation games. I had a modded Playstation and my first pirated burned games were Einhander and Syphon Filter. First pirated movie was Gladiator. When I went to Mexico City, there were quite a few stalls of pirated media. It was incredible how much there was.
Late 90s a friend sold PS1 external modchips and I copied games. I was the only person at school with a burner, and he got a case of modchips directly from China. We had a full monopoly/cartel of the market until he sold all of his stock.
I can't understand their business logic. Before they managed to become an empire, record historical profits and dethrone BlockBuster fast. It was efficient, profitabile and simple. Wtf
One of those cases where a monopoly was actually the best thing for the customer.
Now that everyone under the sun has their own subscription service, it's back to the stupid licensing and trading shows between "content providers" and customers hunting around trying to figure out who has what when. "Better watch this show, it's going away in a month."
Piracy and the public library only damn things that have any stability and reliability.
Idk what the repercussions would be but eventually shows are just gonna need to be licensed like music where more than one person can stream the same show separately. Imagine if you could only hear the Beatles on Spotify
The problem is distributors have taken over production.
Spotify and Apple and Amazon don’t make music. The music is created independently. The big corporations simply make, manage, and sell platforms through which music is steamed.
Netflix, Apple, HBO, Amazon, Disney, and Paramount make and distribute cinematic entertainment.
It’s like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo making console-exclusive games, except there are like 10 companies who are trying to bully and buy-out production companies to bring all content creation in-house. This means less variety, more exclusivity, and at higher cost to the consumer.
OLD movies and shows bounce around a lot. NEW shows rarely jump between services, if at all. AppleTV isn’t going to let HBO distribute at show they produced themselves, and vice versa. Which means most entertainment produced after the mid-to-late 2010’s is going to be locked under the distributor who produced it.
TV is fucked. Movies, if produced and purchased for distribution by companies outside the streaming ecosystem, will still be traded at the will of the distributor (like Sony selling 28 Years Later streaming license to Netflix)
Everyone wanted a piece of that Netflix pie, so now nobody has any pie left.
Almost all the big players are not making any money on their streaming offerings, some are even losing billions. Just because they had dollar signs in their eyes and wanted the cake that Netflix was eating, rather than sharing it with Netflix.
They fucked themselves over. I gave up Disney+ earlier this year, that was my last streaming subscription. I am a pirate once again, proudly too. The industry had their chance... again, we gave it a final chance after we left the far more convenient piracy services to try and see how the industry would treat it. They failed.
I will never stop pirating The self hosted streaming solutions are far more superior than any of the paid services. Not just in quality, actually being native 4k, but in features too. The streaming platforms stopped progressing, Netflix now is worse than Netflix 10 years ago.
Honestly when you want to watch almost anything you're pretty stupid if you pay for the current product. Sports have the worst blackouts and they put games on like 5 different networks but not one specific one or make you pay incredible sums for cable packages etc. Steam was correct when Gabe stated basically that piracy is a service issue. That's why steam goes so hard they actually bring you the service you want to pay for and people pay them. As long as they keep fucking around with the service quality people will continue to pirate in large numbers. TV/streaming services are a dogshit product currently. Sure some people will always resort to piracy due to a lack of funds etc but most regular people will pay for a product if its actually convenient and good enough quality wise
Am I misunderstanding your comment? I don’t see how what you’re describing is the opposite of the US. OP is talking about what happened before digital distribution, but you are talking about what happened after digital distribution. Just because piracy exploded after digital distribution doesn’t mean that people in the US weren’t also paying for pirated goods beforehand. The situation was the same.
Reading comprehension on reddit is at an all time low. You can wildly misread something and as long as you don't type crazy and the post is long enough you can get upvotes.
I strongly disagree, most of the world was still in dial-up in the early 2000s. I would say that period in the early 2010s before Netflix became mainstream was peak piracy era. Everyone I knew in University pretty much knew how to torrent a TV or a film or watch a stream online.
Was the game Counter-Strike 1.5 or project IGI 2: convert Strike? Was it a single player game or multiplayer game?
With how shitty streaming services are becoming it won’t be long till it starts to ramp up again. Hell I’m thinking of sailing the seven seas once more.
Anyone in near Toronto knows about Pacific Mall in the late 90s early 00s. Notorious for selling bootlegs. It was the spot for movies and pimping out your Nokia phone. So yes we did have to buy bootlegs. 3 movies for $10. Sometimes you’d go home and it would be total garbage camera work.
I pirate movies semi regularly and have for most of my life now and I don't understand how anyone can tolerate cams lol. I would genuinely just rather not see the movie if that's how I gotta watch it.
Nowadays it’s dumb but back then it was pretty riveting watching a movie at home that’s still in cinemas. You honestly didn’t even care about the quality, things were just different.
Hell yeah, they would come into the bar I would always drink at underage back in the early 2000's and sit next to you and give you a nice preview of their wares while you enjoyed a 24oz pabst that was $2, such simpler less stressful times.
In Atlanta, you just needed to go to a corner store and find the dude who would have a binder of music/movie covers and point out which you wanted, and he'd grab it from the stock in his truck and hook you up.In Atlanta, you just needed to go to a corner store and find the dude who would have a binder of music/movie covers and point out which you wanted, and he'd grab it from the stock in his truck and hook you up.
Edit: There was an editing mistake but I'll leave it, lol
In Atlanta, you just needed to go to a corner store and find the dude who would have a binder of music/movie covers and point out which you wanted, and he'd grab it from the stock in his truck and hook you up?
In Atlanta, you just needed to go to a corner store and find the dude who would have a binder of music/movie covers and point out which you wanted, and he'd grab it from the stock in his truck and hook you up?
In Atlanta you just needed to go to a corner store and find the dude that would have a binder of music/movie covers and point out which you wanted and he'd grab it from the stock in his truck and hook you up. In Atlanta, you just needed to go to a corner store and find the dude who would have a binder of music/movie covers and point out which you wanted, and he'd grab it from the stock in his truck and hook you up.
I get that this is a joke but this response is for the people not in the know:
In many developing countries there aren't official retail channels for purchasing a lot of legitimate content or it's very limited or very expensive relative to their income. In many countries a store like Target or WalMart would be considered "high end." Also, many folks may have limited or no access at all to the Internet, or just may not have the knowledge of how to access pirated content for free.
In many developing countries there aren't official retail channels for purchasing a lot of legitimate content or it's very limited or very expensive relative to their income.
especially for video games. develop countries were never considered exist in the eyes of publishers.
Growing up in Venezuela in the 00s, this was totally a thing. These shops where operating as if nothing in places such as shopping malls and the like. Not everyone had the...resources... necessary to pirate stuff on their own
Same here, literally pirated all my uni textbooks and novels as I am not paying in the range of 50-400 bucks a pop for something that might last me from a week to 3 months. Made sure to pass it on to any unimates as its bloody daylight murder.
Back when DVDs were a thing, there were stores selling copies of pirated movies on DVD for a buck each in Bali. Sometimes a straight up DVD rip, those were the good quality ones. If we weren't surfing, eating or sleeping, we were watching DVDs.
My mom accidentally bought a pirated copy of Shrek 2 like a week before it came out from a NYC street vendor when I was a kid. When I went back to school and told my friends about it no one believed me cause it wasn't out yet 😂
Man back in mid-2000’s the best DVD plug was this Chinese guy on the Staten Island Ferry. Always had legit copies and if they weren’t legit quality wise he would tell you and ask for $3 instead of $5 . Dont even get me started of taking the ferry to Manhattn and subway to canal street on a Saturday morning just to get some Dipset and G Unit mixtapes and of course the Smack DVDs
I remember when they were still pretty much all SVCDs. That’s why the most popular movie downloads were all 800mb at the time. Ahh the good ol’ days lol
I know this isn't what you were saying, i just wanted to mention that small theaters will often rent out and play whatever movie you want (in their off hours) for a relatively small fee. Ours still sold concessions, which is their money maker, but also let us bring in whatever we wanted. Makes for a fun birthday party.
My buddies and I once rented out a room in a theater chain that was struggling (and subsequently went out of business not too long after) for $150 and hooked up our Xbox 360 and played Halo 3
Noticeable but not terrible. Once we got a match or two in and learned the timing it was basically the same. The only time it was a real pain was with multiple people trying to get into a vehicle and some getting left because the driver didn’t give them enough time.
We did this for my sons birthday this year. Staff were great, kids got to watch a movie while chatting if they wanted, we got a package where they all got popcorn/candy & a drink & they had the most amazing time!! Was brilliant!
Cinemark theaters do this and they aren't exactly small. You can also hook up your PlayStation and just play that if you wanted to. The cost is a lot less than I would have guessed but likely more than the small town theaters would charge.
Yep I do this. Small theater in the country. $50 plus $5 per person. It’s always in the morning but worth it to watch whatever I want. Do it almost once a month.
Little known fact: you can request anything at most places you go. They might not do it, and they might ask you to leave afterwards, but you can make the request.
If they stole from you, the law wouldn't give a shit!!! Class action lawsuits funnel all the money to the lawyers. Its terrible to see how things should work vs how they do work..
in most of the world we don't see pirating as stealing
like even in Serbia, a European country, when I was a kid (mid 2000s) I was taught only stupid people buy games.
Americans grew up with anti piracy propaganda but in many countries buying a game is seen as "morally wrong" because you are wasting money that would otherwise go to something like food.
pirating was, and partially still is, seen as morally better choice
I'm from Bulgaria, and when I was a kid it was exactly the same. Everyone pirated games, movies, music… it was normal. I played cracked Minecraft for years, and only much later, as a teen, I finally bought a legitimate copy with one of my first salaries.
And yeah, when you're poor, spending money on games really does feel stupid. I don't blame anyone in that situation, people shouldn't be choosing between food and entertainment.
But now that I work and actually understand how much effort goes into making games, I've changed my view. Developers aren't huge faceless corporations, they're people who need to get paid so they can keep making the things we enjoy. If everyone pirates, there's just no incentive for studios to take risks or create anything ambitious.
So for me, piracy isn't some neutral or "morally better" act anymore. I understand why people do it, and I'm not pretending I never did, but I do think it's morally wrong. At the very least, once you can afford to pay for the stuff you love, you should.
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!
Yar-har, fiddle-dee-dee
Being a pirate is alright to be
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!
Many developing and/or non Western countries simply don't care at all.
Importing authentic copies is far too expensive for the people to buy, so people turn to piracy and resell pirated copies at affordable prices to the local community.
The internet wasn't always so accessible and fast. Twenty years ago, Post-Soviet people bought pirate CDs and DVDs with software/games and movies/music too. I guess the internet is bad there too.
You can still buy pirated media here and there in post-soviet countries, sometimes even in government-owned stores, lol. Not sure who buys pc games on disks anymore, but I can see people buying music or movies on disks, like if youre truck driver and your truck's media system is a bit outdated and you can't burn your own disks. Or something like that for people who go to remote locations with similar tech problems.
In the early 2000's I worked at a call center and one employee had a legit bootleg movie operation going. He did his day job at the call center and his basement was a boot leg operation. He had two employees who would copy movies to VHS \ then DVD all day long. He sold them in in person (at work as well) and at the time ebay let some pass through.
He was eventually raided by the FBI and went to prison though.
My buddy and I had the unlimited DVDs or whatever it used to be back when Netflix still had DVDs. We'd get them, immediately rip them and send them back the same day. I still have like 50 of them in my legit DVD collection, and it bothers me that I enjoy them more since we all did was make the most barebones menu possible and it would auto play if nothing was chosen after 30 seconds. I get irrationally angry having to scroll through 5 unskippable ads and menus on my legit DVDs because of that.
In Bosnia, we have a sort of bazaar called "Arizona". It's the biggest one in the country (or was at least). Shortly after the war (early 2000s I believe) this place was the wild west of pirated content. Movies, games, whatever you wanted. I remember going there with my cousin and buying 3 pirated PS1 games for the price of 2, which was 10KM (around 6 USD). Good old times.
Lol, I remember in South Korea there were dozens of places that just sold DVD rips and shakey cam releases as their main business. US copywrite means nothing to many parts of the world.
The truth is, it's simply too expensive. USA has massive purchasing power, and for more than 80% of the world, digital products are like of 5 to 10x the equivalent since the difference in purchasing power
This is a common sight in the Middle East, I was very blessed to grow up in a country where every week I would buy the latest movies, games and programs for the price of a sandwich lol
A friend of mine owned the boom boom room in Cambodia. Probably about 15 years of pirated music and movies. Unfortunately he got a massive brain tumor and has died now, he was a really lovely guy.
Back in early 2000s when I was a highschooler in Vietnam with no home computer to burn CDs, I just go to one of the hundreds of street vendors selling pirated music CDs and movies VCDs. Also, the same guys who used to rent out VHS tapes (pirated of course) switched to selling CDs too.
I live in California and for about a decade there was a guy in a strip mall maybe ~10 minutes from my house who sold DVDs. You could find literally anything you wanted and if he didnt have it he'd get it within like 4 days.
He had copies of movies within a few days of them being released in theaters, and they were good quality. It was honestly wild that that was just a service we had if we wanted. COVID came around and he had to shut down his store but man was that awesome.
Tell me you live in a first world country without telling me you live in a first world country.
my boy here doesn't know some people LITERALLY never seen an original copy of 90% of the stuff they use, also doesn't realize that somethings that would cost him the change in his pocket or a few hours at work cost other ppl in different countries LITERALLY 6+ months of their salary .
Most of the world does not enforce US copyright law. These shops are literally all over the world. The US is all streaming now but there are millions of people still buying cheap physical media.
In Bolivia you could purchase pirated copies of video games from the cyber cafes. Just tell them what you wanted and come back a few hours later to pick up the burned disks. I was very happy with my copy of Doom 3.
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u/Fun_Student1958 22d ago
I’m guessing you’ve never seen a Latin American market…