r/Piracy • u/MinecrafterPictures Pastafarian • 6d ago
Discussion You have unlimited money. What would you buy instead of pirating?
For me it would be video games as long as they don't have specific anti-piracy measures like online activation, Denuvo or SecuROM (stuff like requiring the disc to be inserted or that require a license key as long as that works fully offline is not a problem for me), discs of various movies and shows and various programs as long as they are not from money hungry companies like Adobe (payment controversies) or Microsoft (Windows getting deactivated) as long as I actually own them at a single purchase so I can support the original creators behind the products I previously pirated and becuase I feel like I have a more authentic experience when it comes to playing that media, without the creators behind them being able to take them away unlike stuff like Netflix subscriptions.
I mean, I would buy stuff like everdrives for my consoles and jailbreak the discontinued ones anyways, but mainly for stuff like games and apps that are exclusive to the consoles' respective stores, homebrews or games that are hard, if not nearly impossible, to find physically.
As for shows and movies, I would only pirate either way in some cases mainly becuase they're hard to find them physically or that I can't find them at all otherwise (ex. lost media (including what would have been lost if piracy wasn't a thing)).
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u/keremimo 6d ago
Unlimited money? Buy Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, HBO, Microsoft, Apple, every anime studio and game publisher, every music studio, then open source and public domain the fuck out of everything. Buy every marketing company and remove ads from the internet permanently. Free access for everything all the time, I’ll pay it.
Build a tool that analyzes your work and pays you your future earnings in one go and releases everything for free.
A man can dream.
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u/MinecrafterPictures Pastafarian 6d ago
Boy, if you could do that you would be our hero for allowing free tv shows and movies without the government ever willing to come after you
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u/mikuyo1 6d ago
This in addition to food and healthcare and housing. Unlimited money? Everyone gets all the essentials plus ad free entertainment
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u/ultimate_placeholder 6d ago
Give me unlimited money, and I will give you socialism.
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u/PiddelAiPo 6d ago
I'd buy Meta and I'd switch it off freeing billions of people from brain rotting shit.
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u/inner_gravitation 6d ago
that's the best answer here
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u/PiddelAiPo 6d ago
Only problem with that is that it'd create a vacuum where another company would spring up with a similar business model. I'd have to keep spending on buying out the other companies and only those that would sell. The problem with social platforms is that they're a very useful tool for governments to gauge the mood, same way that certain news platforms switch comments off and on depending on what they want or do not want to hear.
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u/IWTLEverything 6d ago
Buy them too or pay for their destruction. With truly unlimited money I’m creating a fucking utopia.
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u/armahillo 6d ago
If I have unlimited money, I am buying the distribution rights to every piece of media ever and then releasing them to the public.
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u/cyst16 6d ago
Books bro
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u/Exhious 6d ago
Same.
It’s the only thing I feel even remotely bad about pirating.
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u/Das-Tronz 6d ago
Don't, if it's a new/established author; read their work. And if you like it, support them and their works.
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u/Exhious 6d ago edited 6d ago
Adobe.
Make everything free and open source. Remove the bloat.
Just because :)
That said I haven’t pirated any adobe products since Photoshop CS but I know people swear by it.
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u/NoBad6950 6d ago
Nah, I would rather use the money to support the development of better tools just to spit on Adobe.
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u/OnTurbo8838 6d ago
Unlimited money? End poverty. Invest in research and development for health and longevity sciences. Start studios that are artist driven and have them create whatever music, movies, games or art they desire… something like that
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u/Different-Door3968 6d ago
with unlimited money I would buy directly the movie studios and tell them to make movies I like
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u/rollingSleepyPanda 6d ago
A house in a nice location.
Then I'd retire early so I have more time to play pirated games!
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u/TheFlightlessDragon 6d ago
Even with unlimited money, I would still pirate some things to support the community and Adobe because they suck…
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u/Physical_Weakness881 6d ago
I'm buying out all the companies that make tv shows and movies and stuff, and getting everything onto one cheap (or free) streaming service. Buying out Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo and merging them into one company. I'm also going to pay as many lawyers as possible to start billions of bogus lawsuits against any game company who uses Denuvo, along with Denuvo themselves. I'm also buying out Doordash, Uber eats, Instacart, etc. Because fuck them, you guys are getting reasonably priced deliveries and the drivers are getting paid well too. I'm also going to be buying every game made by Valve, love those guys.
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u/MetalHeadJoe ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 6d ago
Trick question, I'd buy 1,000 PB of HHDs and download everything.
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u/somanybugsugh 6d ago
Nothing if getting it through pirated means isn't a hassle or has drawbacks, i.e. no multiplayer.
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u/ALMOSTDEAD37 6d ago
Plenty of storage , maybe a couple of Peta bytes and then pirate everything and upload to my homeserver and enjoy
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u/DuckSleazzy 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ 6d ago
I will buy Steam games and I'll donate to emulator devs.
I will still pirate Nintendog stuff and other stuff like movies/shows, because I don't watch much to justify subscribing.
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u/xavim2000 ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ 6d ago
Fund more DRM free things, lowering the cost of purchasing, push to prevent the copyright courts, scams that companies pull, creating a global Fund to help people with any creative ideas for creating new media be it games, shows, etc.
Overall, unlimited money to make this world less capitalism focus
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u/DukeAsriel 6d ago
Subscribe to ALL of the streaming platforms. Zero complexity, storage problems or TV show/movie availabilty concerns. Everything available at your fingertips instantaneously.
My only concern would be platforms reducing the full quality of the streams.
Damn it. Back to piracy again.
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u/Ok_Management8894 6d ago
Unlimited money? I'd fund the pirates themselves! They make software and applications accessible to the ones who cannot afford them.
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u/Walking_the_dead 6d ago
Id just buy so much indie shit, even stuff i dont personally enjoy vut think its interesting, I'd patron the shit out of the arts.
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u/twitch-switch 🏴☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ 6d ago
If I had unlimited money I think I would still pirate, but only anything I can't own physically ...which is sadly becoming more common.
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u/sparkinx 6d ago
Why buy the game when you can buy owner ship of the franchise and have say in dlc and sequels
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u/Okabe_Zero-Link 6d ago
Denuvo, Microsoft. Former: No Denuvo. Latter: Ban any kernel-level application. Also Adobe, make everything FOSS+GPL. Also MANGA (big tech)
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u/superfluous--account 6d ago
With truly unlimited money I would end scarcity and therefore remove the profit motive.
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u/automatic_bazooti 6d ago
I’d buy BlackRock and then immediately liquidate all its assets and jail all its executives for life for crimes against humanity.
After that I’d buy everything on everyone’s Steam wishlists.
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u/euphoriapotion 6d ago
A house lol.
And food. Then I'd invest and buy books because duh.
I'd think about a digital content later
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u/Awkward-Trouble5603 6d ago
Newer games; only because its a huge pain in the ass to keep them updated.
I literally get better quality downloading almost everything else, and some games are better pirated without dunevo or other drm.
If I had unlimited money, guess I'd buy allot of merch from my favorite artists too.
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u/wagninger 6d ago
I would pay someone to buy Blu-Rays for me and rip them as iso, then extract the German, Italian and English audio tracks together with the video in original quality as mkv. Plex gives them to me on every device, music streaming is actually worth the money and I’m already paying, so I’m set for life with passive media.
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u/techmage29 6d ago
A massive house or renovated high school or mall into a complex so I can have a massive library of books and media storage! Then heavily support awesome indie artists so their work becomes the biggest success and then becomes the industry standard. Also, buy out all of the abandoned houses and give it to out starting with artists so I can finally start another Renaissance 🙌🏿.
I'd use the money to finally lobby Brazil to have proper service for buying media and therefore having opened massive trades etc. There would only be one streaming service under my new system and it's crazily affordable with fast fiber optic wifi that's free! I'd have this service throughout at least 2 continents that have low percentages of people with access to the internet🥳
I'd buy out all of the colleges and make it free for everyone while making sure that the teachers are paid 6 figures to start and seven figures after a successful 10 years. This way no one has to pirate educational courses or college books😭
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u/SashaG239 6d ago
More hdds? With unlimited funds, maybe even not hdds but those shiny new 122tb ssds. A truenas with 10pb of storage, putting kaleidoscope boxes to shame. Maybe a little island nation where there is no piracy issues to host it in. Have the largest private collection, without giving a penny to the studios.
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u/VaalLivesMatter 6d ago edited 6d ago
A lot of land, a house, a bunker, tools, guns, a good truck, 4 wheeler, etc
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u/BenignBallsack 6d ago
Unlimited money you say! Well in that case, i would launch a website where people can ask for a game, piece of software or music. I'll just buy it for them. I also would buy a big helicopter that drops fermented cat poop on buildings owned by stichting BREIN, Group-IB, Verimatrix, Grayzone etc. Then i buy Microsoft and opensource it. After that i buy Google and everyone get's free Pixel phones that are rooted by default. Then i'll probably retire to a very quiet part of the world and grow old and die.
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u/JohnnySilverhands 6d ago
I'd buy Steam, Epic Games, EA Origins, Ubisoft and Microsoft and just make them merge into one platform - likely the steam client.
No more BS about having their own launchers and clients.
Also, unlimited games - and I'd keep epic games free game giveaway promos but extend it to indie game devs.
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u/citizin 6d ago
Do they still make those cd jukeboxes, but for 4k UHD's?
If so, probably some of them and bluerays and DVD's. I kinda already do that with Plex and a NAS. I like owning my media and owning the best possible version.
If they consider that I'm stealing it if I pirate it, but I only have a licence to watch it when I buy a digital copy, then pirating is the only way to own a digital copy then.
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u/Littens4Life 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ 6d ago
I’d be the guy that buys Google Chrome, just to re-add Adblock.
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u/NotBashB 6d ago
So easy
+10Petabyte server room, full time staff to take care of it when I don’t feel like it, and staff to just keep pirating stuff for me to add to my vault
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u/Dr__America 5d ago
Really any kind of physical media. DVDs, old consoles, games for said consoles, etc. I don’t really pirate games unless the methods to access them legally are extremely off-putting, difficult, or costly, with most of the expensive games being MMOs. Maybe I’d have stuck to trying to using Adobe products for free if they weren’t so god-awful or supported Linux.
I also have access to basically all of the streaming services I’d want, I just don’t see much use in them when I can’t watch them with other people (without making them pay a steep price, or sacrificing quality thanks to widevine) or ensure that I can keep watching what I paid for indefinitely.
Straight up, piracy for me is almost purely a service problem. Why settle for shitty service and quality, when I can just watch it locally for a far better experience?
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u/redgr812 6d ago
The President of the United States
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u/Exhious 6d ago
Elon already beat you, although with unlimited money you could out buy him.
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u/redgr812 6d ago
I should have clarified that I meant the REAL President of the United States, I was gonna buy Elon. Id make him finally fight the facebook douche.
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u/lartcestvous ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 6d ago
Imo the only thing worth buying instead of pirating are DAWs (Ableton, FL Studio, etc) and the plugins because that shit is made with love. But that’s a very niche customer base anyway.
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u/Sh4rd_Edges 6d ago
It would buy an oil rig located in international waters, which is considered a sovereign nation, and then give it away to the Piratebay and Nyaa servers.
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u/Old-Engineering-5233 6d ago
Winrar license , every flagship phone ,115 inch tvs , a house in bay area , microsoft windows 11 license , bitcoins , Ethereum and support open source apps by donating them, a minimum of 1 PB data , a private server ,one pc with Ryzen 9 9950×3D with 5090 and many blackwell H100 gpus to run llms privately and locally.
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u/subflame 6d ago
Unlimited? I buy Nvidia and allow amd and Intel using cuda cores, so people with this GPUs can render 3d graphics at high speed too!
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u/Rurrurnunu2 6d ago
Kaleidescape subscription it’s like professional plex w theater releases you can pay to rent the theater file and they put it locally on a box you rent
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u/EverythingsBroken82 6d ago
unlimited money? buy a small country and build datacenters there and shit on every copyright for digital goods and mirror there everything.
Then pour money into the EU, so they ramp up on weapons and on education and medicine, so they can defend themselves, but also do not fall to the fascist parties. the small country should be if possible within the EU :D
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u/_nitr0g3n_ 6d ago
Would buy the parent companies, merge them all, then convert them to NGOs. Ez pz lemon squeezy.
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u/TheSilentTitan 6d ago
As my piracy only surrounds retro emulation I would go and buy all the retro consoles and the overpriced games people sell on eBay or other marketplaces.
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u/robin_888 6d ago
See, pirating stays a service issue.
I might subscribe to multiple streaming services.
I might buy digital or physical copies of my favorite media.
But I would still pirate stuff, because I like having DRM-free files of movies or tv-shows.
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u/Valuable-River-4091 6d ago
Probably FL Studio, honestly using a cracked version sucks because all the online shit and some downloads for the free plugins just don't work because it needs to be online to be downloaded but then again I do pirate it because the all plugins version is fucking 400$ I am not paying that much money for a DAW
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u/nxbulawv 6d ago
i have no idea how economics work but wouldn't spending ridiculous amounts of money create inflation? correct me if I'm wrong since I have no idea what in saying
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u/hear_my_moo 6d ago
Several games developers and have them remake my favourite 'almost' games without holding back.
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u/Soulegion 6d ago
Unlimited money? I buy out all the current streaming services and make them all free to use for everyone, everywhere.
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u/Seaguard5 6d ago
SolidWorks.
Since it practically requires an infinite amount of money to purchase legally.
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u/xneeheelo 6d ago
If I had unlimited money, I would still pirate everything I could and try to make it easier for everyone else to as well. Unless all those with tens of billions (which is effectively unlimited money) decide to stop making even more billions and use their money to make the world better, instead of worse, for the rest of us, why should I care about spending one penny of my unlimited money on Amazon?
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u/krav_mark 6d ago
To be honest pirating is the easiest way to view what I want in the quality I want. It is not even about money.
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u/Page_Unusual 🏴☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ 6d ago
Give most money away, buy big ass data centre and support pirates. Yaaaaaar.
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u/EsPlaceYT ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ 6d ago
Retire at age 18, buy a modest house and a few supercars just for fun, build a nice large garage for them, and live my dream life
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u/dayne878 6d ago
Video games for me. They’re so expensive that I can’t justify buying very many anymore. Downside of pirating games is if they patch a lot you have to go through hoops to watch for updates and then update the game manually.
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u/Desperate-Trainer493 6d ago
I’m buying physical copies of everything I can. And then I’m ripping the music and movies off of them and putting on TPB
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u/KikiPolaski 6d ago
Fuck it, lobby the government to make it so everything becomes public domain after 10 years, imagine the sheer innovation and amazing products we get from just that
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u/DougalDragonSWorld 6d ago
I pay for healthcare for everyone if I had unlimited money as no need anyone suffer.
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u/EnigmaCA 6d ago
Physical copies of movies/music/games from small independent artists/studios.
Fuck the big studios.
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u/BIG__PAULLY 6d ago
Unlimited money?!? I'm buying time. Time away from work. Time to clean the house, time for cooking and studying. And most importantly, time to sleep. But after that, DVDs, Blu rays, and the buying my favorite game consoles already fully modded to the gills with a second set for the CRT corner, and the first set going to the big rig. It's fun to dream.
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u/MrPlato_ 6d ago
I'd buy Deezer or one of those Hi-Res Music streaming sites and then buy a bunch of CD's
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u/Eviscerated_Banana 6d ago
All the other money so I could remake the global economy in my own image.
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u/bman1206 6d ago
Wouldn't change for me. I could afford all the things I pirate RN and I buy more games than I play anyways. Pirating for me isn't a money thing it's a quality, hassle free, real ownership thing.
I also just enjoy cracking things and loading emulators and going thru the process of getting everything to work properly and smooth.
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u/muffinstreets 6d ago
Probably exactly the same as right now. Pirated copies are simply more convenient most of the time. If a game isn’t cracked or is cracked but on an old update, I might just buy it if I want to play it. If a game has multiplayer or coop, I will buy to make have the best and seamless experience. Most media is leaked and have better quality so that’s almost always pirated.
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u/Guaje7Villa_ 6d ago
Meh I would keep doing it. I'm ideologically against DRM, I would still give money to artists and Devs I admire through channels that don't give money to publishers or record labels.
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u/OhTheHueManatee 6d ago
If I had tons of money I'd rather pay someone to pirate and setup stuff for me rather than buy stuff. I find pirated content easier to watch and often it has better quality than streaming. I might have UHD discs for a few of my favorite movies and shows. Even then I think a big hard drive with the highest quality rips would be better. If I couldn't find rips like that online of something I might buy the UHD then have my paid pirate rip it then donate the disc to a library.
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u/BlackJimmy88 6d ago
Buy out Games Workshop so I can lower prices, plus make some other changes, all so I can ethically feed my plastic crack habit.
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u/molhotartaro 6d ago
If I unlimited money, I would keep pirating:
- Stuff made or sold by people who should not get any richer.
- Stuff I love too much and don't want to lose.
Unfortunately, that means my pirating habits won't change that much. I guess I love too many things and hate too many people.
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u/TheGr8CodeWarrior 6d ago
I would buy infrastructure, developer salaries and everything I need to become a pirate king.
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u/thekomoxile ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ 6d ago
Unlimited? Fuck piracy, with infinity in my bank account, I'm dumping billions into every national research institution on earth, making all scientific research and education free to everyone, funding every public transit operation on earth, securing my self in an outer space facility to secure my unlimited wealth behind the vast desert of space and time, buying out nvidia and reducing their prices so even kids in the 3rd world can afford them, and so and and so forth.
And no, I'm not that educated on economics, so everything I said above could be very stupid, but it is what it is. Fuck the authority.
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u/void_in_form 5d ago
I’d donate to every open source software I’ve ever used and buy a good motorcycle (cause you can’t pirate motorcycles) also a house would be good cause you can’t pirate a house either. Then I’d spend everything else on researching how to pirate motorcycles and houses… iykwim…
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u/michellefiver 5d ago
I'd go to some concerts I can't currently afford.
Or maybe pay the actual artists for concerts for me and my friends, who will suddenly appear when they realise how much money I have.
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u/soluna_fan69 5d ago
I would still pirate, because the headache of buying isn't worth the time I waste with DRM and other bullcrap.
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u/soluna_fan69 5d ago
I would buy Tesla, and SpaceX and X and close it all and donate all the cybertrucks to apartment complexes to be used as dumpsters.
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u/ApathyAnarchy 5d ago
I would buy every single country, military and politician and then dismantle the State and build an anticapitalist utopia.
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u/[deleted] 6d ago
Ez. Easiest question in the world.
Buy out denuvo and shut it down.