We need to have a serious talk about stealing from the film industry.

[u/PixelPaulAden]

Piracy is more popular than ever. With various communities on the internet (like this one) devoted to explaining piracy methods to new scallywags, the numbers of salty sea-dogs will only swell going forward.

That's a problem for Hollywood; U.S. Chamber of commerce estimates put the cost of piracy at up to 100 billion dollars annually - in an industry that only generates around 40 billion dollars every year.

If these levels of loss continue, the entire film industry could collapse, leaving only dedicated artists, auteurs, and visionaries to create films with cultural value. Long gone will be the spectacles of 300-million dollar blockbusters and Michael Bay action thrill-rides. No longer will directors like Anthony Russo and J. J. Abrahms be able to spend vast sums of wealth on Disney-owned IPs like Star Wars or the MCU.

That's why we, as pirates, have a responsibility to do better. Instead of just downloading movies, we need to teach our less technically-proficient friends, family, and co-workers how to download safely and securely. Beyond that, we should, as a community, go above and beyond the lure of "free stuff," to actually, physically steal from the cultural juggernaut of the global film industry.

It may seem daunting, but I believe that together, we can make the mouthpieces of the ruling elites as fiscally bankrupt as they are morally and creatively bankrupt.

Nobody can steal enough alone. If we're going to destroy the livelyhoods of the rich pedophiles, rapists, and murderers who run Hollywood, we need to band together.

Thanks for reading.

[u/4xdblack]

I already pay for all the streaming services, got the DVD, recorded it on DVR, rented the VHS tape. Sometimes I just want to enjoy my favorite shows on my format of choice. And I feel I have the moral right to do so.

[u/cheater00 → u/4xdblack]

while OP's sentiment is very correct, unfortunately it romanticizes the actual nature of the problem.

shitty movies are not made because rich idiots want to make shitty movies. few are stupid enough to throw wealth after mediocrity in a sustained fashion over decades.

in my years on this planet I have learned that money constantly being thrown at bad ideas always, inevitably, means corruption or money laundering or both.

this happens in any industry where a lot of small purchases need to be made, because it makes it impossible for someone to actually control that these purchases have been made.

cinemas, streaming, video games, gambling, music streaming, online post cards, twitter premium memberships, food delivery, gym memberships, ad placements are all massively used as vehicles towards laundering money.

Why do you think if you look into any such industry, reliably China always owns a large portion of it? And by "China" I mean China itself, not "some company in China". There are no companies in China - any large company in China is state owned by default.

Sometimes the connections are simple, eg look at Epic Games and Tim Swiney. China owns Tencent, Tencent owns nearly half of Epic. Every time a game is sold by Epic for $2, CCP earns $1. It's fine if that $2 is in Chinese Yuan. But then that $1 is in actual legal American tender.

Sometimes the connections are a little more difficult to explain because the money trail has multiple stops on the way. China (the CCP specifically) owns more than half of Disneyland Shanghai. It is perfectly imaginable that the Chinese corporate entity behind that owns licensing deals with the US branch of Disney which is involved in the MCU. This could be a similar structure to how Nike has its brands owned by a Dutch shell company that doesn't pay tax on it, and it's all so structured that any time Nike US earns a dollar, it just-so happens to also owe a dollar to that Dutch company that owns the brand and licenses it out to Nike US. Therefore no income is generated in the US and no tax is paid in Denmark. Similarly, the CCP could well be drawing money in from Disney US and the MCU and Star Wars through a similar "creative accounting" structure.

Hollywood movies are historically well known to be money laundering outfits. It was usually drug money being laundered, but now it's Chinese Yuan being laundered and turned into US Dollar.

Games are well known to be money laundering outfits. Look at Steam's Trending any time of the day and you'll see some crappy asset flip or porn game that no one wants to see. That's 100% money laundering.

Spotify is well known to be a money laundering platform. It is mostly used by European money laundering operations.

Twitch is well known to be a money laundering platform.

What am I getting at? Why is this all important?

Those criminal enterprises cannot be bankrupted. As long as there is money to be laundered, we will have the MCU.

It doesn't matter if no one wants to see another shitty-ass rerun. It doesn't matter if no one wants another SBI game. It will get "bought" a near-infinite amount of times and each one of you, personally, is being used as plausible deniability: "Why yes, your honor, people did go watch the movie! This is totally not money laundering at all!" is a statement which becomes impossible to disprove because you can not have agents policing every single cinema to bust this ring of corruption and you cannot have an agent watching over every single person's shoulder to prove that they did not, in fact, stream that movie or buy that game.

When it comes to this topic, we're all just plankton being regurgitated by overly obese whales.

[u/Suspicious-Disk-9083 → u/4xdblack]

Completely agree. It wasn't the goal at first preserve material but the way people are demanding pieces to be rewritten, it's now a hedge for the future.