Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

No, I don't think it will go like that.

But if piracy would go away, then it would mean we live in a great world:

• Software: FOSS/Freeware/Donationware software prevails. People want to use this kind of software, and this is the go-to for any appliance. People would be deeply affected if they could not use free (as both in freedom and/or money, as mentioned before) software - gone will be the days of everyone needing Adobe products or MS Office for their professional work, and the year of the Linux desktop would be in the history books.
• Movies and TV shows: They would be available anywhere, on demand, in any format. Or there would be this website where you would go to and watch whatever you would, without ads. It would kinda be the same with music.
• p0rn: I don't have enough knowledge in this field, I just go to certain websites when I need. Guess it would be like on the previous point? idk.

As long as those points are not achieved, there will always be a need for piracy, and people will always find new ways to get their content. So far, I do not see us being somewhere even close to that ideal world, so there are plenty of reasons for piracy to exist.

I personally try to pirate things more ethically, for example I try to buy music and games whenever I can, but I know several people that pirate stuff just because they can.

Post-piracy? There will only be darkweb piracy that untraceable and unkillable. Everything will be available anonymously through I2P and there will be a jump in its popularity. Every normie will know that in order to download the new blockbuster, all they have to do is install I2P, an eDonkey clone, QBittorent, or Popcorn Time (which will run on I2P's anonymous torrents).

I pray that they shut down every single clearweb streaming and download website for us to finally all move to the darkweb.

More brazen crackdown of piracy, DNS-level or maybe even IP-level blocking. Complete overhaul of the infrastructure of the internet to make it more "corporate friendly."

We got to remember that piracy, whose backbone is the bittorrent peer-to-peer network, exists because the current infrastructure of the internet allows users to open their ports and allow people from all over the world to request media from them. The internet infrastructure is controlled by the government, who is controlled by corporate overlords. As of right now, the government has (imperfectly) worked hard to retain the neutrality of the internet, but we might be losing this battle folks.

I've always advocated for i2p (https://geti2p.net/en/) because it allows us to be more resilient to the current infrastructure, with the added bonus of not needing a VPN to download stuff. It would be lovely to see you all at tracker2.postman.i2p :-) Yeah, speed might be an issue but it'll get better once there are faster nodes in the network. I2p allows people to participate in the network even when behind a CGNAT and unable to forward their ports, as is the case with a lot of restrictive ISPs.

More detailed tech information to be found : https://geti2p.net/en/docs/how/tech-intro

Dumb.

To me, the term "post-piracy" means that piracy has taken over and is the norm; not that it's been abolished. "After piracy has taken over..." I suspect wearing parrots on your shoulder would be much more in vogue.

Hahahaha

Can't wait for the highly dystopic future where we transfer files via smoke signals

*Software: Idk, never really messed with pirating software, that's how you become part of someone's botnet.

*Movies and TV shows: Torrents and Usenet.

*Adult Content: Torrents and Usenet.

*Music: Slsk and yt-dlp.

Honestly my friends ask me tonnes of questions like this, including "what happens when AI takes over", or "when everything mines your data".

I don't think people realise how close me as an IT person is to going and living in an off grid cabin in the woods.

As somebody who only got back into this recently (thanks Amazon, you sticking ads into Prime gave me the push I needed), it involves a lot of subscriptions and unavailable content.

I think 1) and 2) have already been that way for at least 15 years. Software copy protection used to be very simplistic and is getting improved constantly. Also when I grew up games didn't yet talk to servers and they do it for quite some time already. Every new physical video format gets a new copy protection mechanism... DVD, BluRay,... now streaming services with DRM... Illegal sites get shut down all the time.

The piracy scene also adapts, changes their methology. I'm pretty sure it'll continue that way. I asked the same question 10 years ago and yet here we are.

The adult content is getting worse though. But i think mainly for the big and well known commercial streaming sites. Maybe there are still torrents of that around and pirating adult content will get similar to pirating a tv series.

[??Uh, you're getting downvoted for asking a straight question? WTF lemmies??]

I think your examples apply only to a specific use case. In particular, for movies and TV shows — illegal streaming sites only account for one part of pirated material. I would assume many more simply download film/TV.

Can't speak to the others but I'm fairly sure that pirates will find a way to pirate no matter the obstacles.

"You'll own nothing and be happy"

There has never been a better time to use free open source software. Software piracy is actually less convenient today. Game piracy is really only dead for big multiplayer games, which makes sense since they rely on online services.

Pirate streaming sites were a stupid thing to begin with. I'm happy to see them and the malware they push die. Torrents and P2P will always be king.

Porn piracy is absolutely huge. I think you're just doing a bad job downloading it.

A post piracy world can only be one thing: crushing authoritarianism. That's the only way piracy dies.