Lately I reminisce about the software that I had on my devices ten to fifteen years ago. I stumbled upon a screenshot of my desktop from 2010 last year and I barely recognized the environment that felt like home at the time.
Back then I used Aimp as my main audio player on a PC and PowerAmp on my phone. Both closed source and both made in russia. The latter being a final nail in both their coffins.
You absolutely never ever should trust russians and their software.
Back in the day, like in middle and high school, I got my content from torrenting. I did not have money to buy it legitimately, there weren’t any streaming services and catching something on TV was difficult for a number of reasons. Since like grade 7 or 8 I had some device I could use to watch stuff or listen to it and I did that. It was awesome. In my prime music listening years, circa 2010, my music library was large, but manageably so. And I had it on several of my devices. And played with different pieces of software. And those were the golden times.
Later I entered the university and got more into audiobooks, which I also had locally. And some time after that I entered the workforce and now had some disposable income to spend (carelessly). That began a new era in my media consumption. Primarily it consisted of streaming stuff. Which later led to the fade out of the (randomly) russian music players from my life.
Specifically it probably began even before the full-scale invasion of 2022, in 2020, when I built a new PC and (I think) just decided not to install Aimp, since I had a Spotify subscription with some of my favorite tracks saved there. For the same reason I did away with PowerAmp on my phone. My music library ended up buried somewhere in the depths of numerous file shares and file-dump-drives I used and moved to and from for last 15 years.
However, in current landscape of enshittification that creeps into each and every thing on the internet, I decided to do a 180. I will not be paying for Netflix, shitty excuse for a movie player that cannot play 2k or 4k, in my browser, even despite saying it on the tin. Louis Rossman had a video about that. And another one about ai ad integrations.
And that was the last straw for me. I will not be dripping my money into the ever growing enshittified, slopified and overall low quality services.
I see nothing unethical in ripping music CDs and movies on BluRay and preserving them for my home viewing. But that is a yesterday’s take.
Today I don’t think that it is unethical to straight up pirate movies and that Netflix (or Disney, or Amazon) made.
There, I said it. It is not unethical to pirate. Granted, there are some asterisks that come with that.
First and foremost, if it is an indie band or director, who have not given in to the marvelization machine and are not backed by a corporation, consider supporting them. Maybe even if you do not completely agree with the or if their work is not perfect, keep in mind that it is still better than marvel slop any day of the week.
As of right now I am unsubscribed from Netflix and Spotify. I still have active subscriptions for Megogo (alternative way to watch air TV for grandma) and Sweet TV, which I get for free from my banking package. But to be honest, Megogo are not that innocent themselves and I only tolerate them for my grandma’s sake.