I don't care about copyrights, and although I'd agree that I'm not entitled to someone else's work, I'll counterfeit it without a single qualm. I'm poor and would rather not have to choose between being well fed but bored as death, or hungry but entertained/educated. As much as possible, I try to support the little guys though; concretely, I'll eventually buy a game made by Octavi Navarro or Unspeakable Pixels, but Activision won't ever receive a kopeck from me.
for legal reasons, I don't pirate anything.. but a friend told me that piracy is more convenient, and that it has more benefits (like, retain 'ownership' of content without annoying DRM)
train of thought (legal): what streaming service do I need to subscribe to to watch this? okay lemme go grab my wallet and sign up for an account
train of thought (piracy): click download
if companies don't want you to pirate their media, they should make it more convenient and flexible to purchase legally. adding DRM and making things subscription-only will push more people towards piracy.
My self justifications are thusly...
I typically don't try to "keep up with the latest or greatest" of things. So I feel zero guilt at finding ROMs of all the video games from my childhood and emulators. Neither do I feel bad about hunting down old PC games that are abandonware instead of trying to find some Steam version (which will stop working soon with my ancient computer anyways soon so... pppfffttttt).
Most of the books (comic, fiction, nonfiction) are of old stuff that has been out for years so whomever was going to make money off the sales has already made their money. The only people who are being denied any potential income are the resellers.
Most streaming services, whether I pay for them or not, run adds that had about a 90% chance of freezing my old entertainment computer to the point of requiring a restart. This dropped to practically zero after moving from windows to linux. Also, most of my devices are so old that the services I had been paying for wouldn't work on them anyways... so... :shrug: ... fuckem.
I've never felt that something "wasn't worth it" because I got it for free as far as media. Usually when I go on a download spree of video games its because I've gone a bit manic and decided that I want to try to play every Final Fantasy game up to FF9 or all the MegaMan games or something and I'll just burn myself out after playing the crap out of them.
I have, however, purchased books because I kept reading/hearing them referenced as being worthwhile or interesting and found myself thinking... "wow... that's 25 bucks and a week's worth of reading I can't get back." I also, have had a bad habit in the past of just purchasing books because they looked halfway interesting on impulse, tossing them into one of several trunks full of books, and they'll sit there for 10 years before I even realize that I had the book.
Another thing that I have considered after years of thinking about it. These items were never going to be purchased by me, so me reading a scanned copy of a comic book from 20 years ago or me not reading it effectively results in the same amount of money leaving my pockets to go... somewhere. I say "somewhere" because I'm not paying the comic book writer/artists/inkers or the actual development teams of video games, I would be paying some other intermediary who pays their intermediary who pays their intermediary who might be required to pay some sliver of their revenue to the people who actually made the thing I'm playing/reading.
It also doesn't hurt that I'm middle aged and barely make enough money to make ends meet on a good month even though I live a pretty frugal life. I've come to accept that its not worth beating myself up too much about.
I pirate media only, not games. Simply because I don't want to risk getting malware. Also too cheap to bother with streaming services; I want to own my media.
I used to quite a bit, for random, hard to find songs. I also did it to get in digital format, what I owned on vinyl. A few older classic movies here and there. I can’t remember the last time I pirated anything, but I still use torrents for bootleg concerts.
Your friend has a similar belief to me it appears. Companies don't care about piracy as long as it doesn't stop a quarterly profit. Of course don't pirate a book or video game from a small author or devs. If the game or book is hard to come by there isn't much to do any way.
I however rarely do pirate things for various reasons. Namely I don't have time for reading or playing a new video game. Maybe once in a while. If you're friend is doing it every day I would be concerned but probably not care
I don’t pirate at the moment but my philosophy is that if something is not available to buy, it is free to pirate in my book.
Otherwise, every company that makes a game and rakes in more than 100% profit from it is fair game imo. (That would be revenue devided by the engineer’s salaries, machines and office related stuff times 100. explicitly leaving out ceos overinflated salaries. They should not be tax deductible anyway.)
I just started pirating again in the last couple of months after basically not pirating for years. Now fuck corporations lol.
I pirate books for a few reasons, first is because knowledge should be free, second is because buying books gets expensive real quick and third because I can't find everything I want to buy, sometimes pirating is the only way to get it. I like to have it physically when possible, tho.
Entertainment (Series, Anime, Cartoons, Movies) I pirate because I'm sick of being a second class citizen of nearly every streaming service just because I'm a Linux user. I can watch netflix at 1080p with an extension on Firefox, and Crunchyroll doesn't limit me in any way, but everything else is 720p or lower. By pirating, I even have 4k available. Also, fuck streaming prices and fuck netflix for charging extra for sharing an account.
Software I don't pirate because I prefer to use FOSS and in the case of games I don't really wanna gamble if I'll get a malware or not. Besides, I have a huge respect for the medium and I buy a game whenever I can.
For music Spotify and Youtube is too convenient, I only pay for Spotify, tho. Revanced for Youtube on mobile and ublock origin + sponsorblock + return youtube deslikes on desktop is great.
Besides all that, everyone should have access to knowledge and entertainment, it's 100% justified for people to pirate, specially those that can't afford it.
Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn't pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it? i.e., had you paid for the book, you would have more likely read that book.
When I used to pirate heavily a decade ago yeah, today not really, buying or not my ADHD is so bad I can't get through easily anyway lol.
Copying is not theft. Stealing a thing leaves one less left. Copying it makes one thing more; that’s what copying’s for. Copying is not theft. If I copy yours you have it too. One for me and one for you. That’s what copies can do. If I steal your bicycle you have to take the bus, but if I just copy it there’s one for each of us! Making more of a thing, that is what we call “copying”. Sharing ideas with everyone. That’s why copying is FUN!
I do, movies and TV shows. Occasionally books, but I buy them much more often than I do pirate. When I was in my teens and early 20s I also pirated games, but I'm too lazy to do that anymore. Movies and TV shows are too fucking expensive for the value they provide. I also pay for a few streaming services, so I only pirate stuff that isn't there.
Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn't pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it? i.e., had you paid for the book, you would have more likely read that book.
Not really, with books and movies I only buy/download when I want to watch/read. With games I buy a lot more than I play, but I don't pirate those, so it's not relevant.
I was 14 and just got a cable modem when Napster came out. I just got introduced to modern music, had no way to pay for it other than asking my folks. Let's jump on the pirate ship!
Now I'll let you do the math on my age, I have very stable income, and a fair amount of disposable savings, and I still pirate pretty much my ears will be hearing. Plex has equal or better tools for watching/listening than every other service I've tried (shuffling episodes is my favorite)
I go to concerts, watch movies in the theatre, read physical books and support creatives in other ways.. so I feel different about that..
I also started noticing this when itunes came out. You could only listen to music YOU PAID FOR on devices you've authorized. Then soon after I saw this, a friend was down on his luck but had a very good and varied cd collection. He started selling them to second hand shops and his friends.
I ended up seeing this dichotomy and thought to myself.... this sucks. Let's just pirate it..
I should note the amount of physical unread books I have on my shell are similarly rationed to the amount of music I haven't listened to or movies I haven't watched yet that I've also pirated
Your friend's situation brings up the question of ownership. Do you actually own a persistent thing if you can't later sell it and pass ownership to someone else?
I think media companies want to ideally have us think of their products as candy bars, we buy it and consume it. If we want that experience again, we have to buy another. They want us to buy the opportunity to read, look, listen every single time, or buy a pass that gives access for a limited time.
But a lot of us consider media like a personal, well loved library or museum. We buy books and things in order to revisit again and again. We replace or repair if worn out. If it's one of a kind, we take actions to safeguard it. We search for rare and unique things and acquire from other private collectors if it's no longer publicly available. The value of our collections increase if the media stops being published and goes out of circulation.
But these entities would rather see everyone's personally owned copy spontaneously combust just because they didn't want to sell it anymore. And it's what they have done to digitally sold and DRM'd media, or by deleting from streaming services while also cutting the creators off from being able distribute independently.
We are at a major crossroads as to what ownership and ongoing availability and access means. Piracy is currently a failsafe until property can be safely bought and protected - for the purchasers.
I pretty much only pirate content that's not readily available in my countrys streaming services.
If something is not for sale, I have no qualms about pirating it. Disney vault, abandonware, obsolete versions, etc.
People that pirate shows and movies don't do it necessarily because they can't afford to pay for it or want to "stick it" to the corporations. They pirate because they're human and humans get a level of joy from not getting caught doing something they're not supposed to be doing. I may be experiencing a level of joy right now but won't confirm nor deny it here.
Working minimum wage or struggling with money for any reason shall not mean you cannot have nice things in life, never. So I do the thing. Sometimes. Normalizing spending money into things you physically cannot touch is one thing i could get over with, like buying GOG (DRM free) games i'll actually end up playing, but licenses to play a dang video game that is valid for god knows how long? This is where I draw the line.
Your friend is right: when them corpos suck us dry, we gotta suck em back. It is easy as that.
Furthermore: It's not piracy when paying for it is not owning it.
I'm not the pirate I once was when it comes to gaming but there's always EGS exclusives, games whose lack of regional pricing make them impossible to reasonably buy here, things like that. I'm a patient gamer for the most part so most of the time I can just get it a few years down the line but sometimes even that doesn't cut it. I avoid doing it to indie developers, but those are usually the few that follow Steam's recommended pricing guidelines so they tend to be fine anyway.
I pirate unbelievable amounts of tv and movies on a regular basis though through the *arr apps and whatnot, mostly because I refuse to pay for a dozen different streaming services with their rotating content and usually terrible apps. I self host whatever I can to avoid relying on the whims of a few corporations, and the one surviving service so far is Spotify.
Sometimes he buys books he likes a lot out of loyalty to the author
Your friend is pretty damn cool. I personally pirate whatever I feel like and then buy the stuff I like and want to support. I used to avoid pirating indie games then I realized I bought more indie games when I pirated them first to see if I enjoyed them.
I just do whatever's easiest -- just signing up for some of these services takes way too long to watch one 2 hour program. The money's not an issue at all in my mind, im happy to pay $70 for baldurs gate 3 with a dedicated download server and installation package. But im not willing to spend half an hour downloading and installing some streaming service.
About the only thing I pirate these days is stuff that isn't available to legally pay for in my country.
I pirate things because it's free and easy. My actions are not intended to serve any greater cause. There are some things I pay for out of convenience: pirated video games typically mean no official servers; Android apps are better managed automatically by the Google Play store.
It's only piracy if you grab a cutlass and storm the local shops. It's time to call it what it is = digital theft / running unlicensed software / whatever. If someone hacks into your accounts, I doubt you'd call them a pirate for stealing all you personal videos and pictures, taking over your steam account, 'borrowing' your netflix, and so on. The whole thing is deeply uncool.
Personally I wish the laws would change to make copyright non-transferable from the original artists, who deserve reward for their efforts but shouldn't be a meal ticket for others. I'd also like to see abandonware legitimised - if folk can't buy it then it should be fair game.
I'm not gonna pay $200 just to play an old pokemon game. I do buy other games at my local shop though.
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