Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Piracy makes up for some huge inequalities in the world. The prices for digital goods do not usually take into account the economies of certain regions. I live in Morocco and our money is really low compared to the dollar. 1 dollar is like 7 Dirhams. The average salary for a normal job is really low if you convert it to dollars. So services like Netflix and HBO would cost 10 times more if you factor in wages and conversion to dollars. Why should we pay that just because we live in another place ? Why do these services pretend to be global and yet they are enforcing US prices on the rest of the world. You can't even speak of physical goods because Amazon doesn't give a fuck about Africa. Books would cost 3 times their price in shipping and you have to wait a month or so, not to mention that there are limits on how much currency you spend internationally. The fees for an international card are so high also. In short, without piracy 90 percent of the world wouldn't be able to partake in anything.

All of it. By pirating you support other pirates and oppose copyright, which should be abolished. The more people disregard copyright, the closer we are to getting rid of it.

1. Work where the original author is dead. (The money is not going to the author).

The concept of intellectual property is incoherent IMO. Thus, in principle, it's never wrong to pirate anything because you're not actually stealing anything.

However, I personally have a principle that I never pirate anything from small creators, at least not without compensation to them. It's one thing to pirate from a multi-billion dollar mega-corp. But a small time creator who is trying to make a living, that is different for me. I always throw them money if they have a donation page or buy some merch, etc.

All piracy is ethical because Intellectual Property is a lie.

I will pirate from megacorps and indies, anyone who sets up a demand based distribution system for products.

The only products I will not pirate are those that have a needs based distribution system and are finite.

I change laptops frequently. Used to buy songs from iTunes and every time I changed laptops, transferred music over, I'd lose access to them. Would have to go thru insane process to be allowed to listen to the music I'd paid for.

Similar thing would happen with some software, Adobe especially.

If you're going to treat me like a criminal, then I might as well be a criminal. Same with purchasing movies on Amazon.

I tried to pay for minecraft, but 2 hours later, Microsoft wouldn't let me. Kept trying to make me an Hotmail account.

Growing trend in software I'm not happy with. No longer allowed to own the things we buy, and forced to hand over my email, phone number, address, name, create account... used to be, you could just buy things, simply. That was that.

Corporations are getting drunk with power, overreaching, infiltrating people life.

Also, if in poverty, no food, homeless, etc. If I can't afford what I need. And can get it another way, I will

On Anna‘s Archive Front Page there is a book "Against Intellectual Monopoly", I think it would give you an interesting perspective to consider too.

If you're not using it to make money it's never not OK. I can't see it as theft. It's just a different method of obtaining the same thing that doesn't harm anyone.

Not only are those making this choice unlikely to pay anyways, but all the regular people who worked creating it already got paid so nobody can say "oh the film crew, VFX artists etc will be out of a job". No they already did their job and got paid. The investors maybe want more money but they aren't hurting for it, I don't feel anything for them.

IMO piracy is ethical in general.

You can pay to enter a museum to look at a painting, or you can look at it online, even print a copy of it and non one will care.

How is that different than seeing a movie online instead of going to a cinema? Really the only difference is that we’ve gotten used to pay for copies of movies, unlike paintings. These days you don’t even get to keep the copy you pay for.

Edit: I believe if you like some content, it would be nice if you could financially support the creator.

I just don’t think it should be mandatory, and I actually think all this money does is make the content worse over time.

Books: if I can buy a digital version and if it's not priced over its paper counterpart, I buy. If it's out of print and there isn't a digital version from the publisher, I look for the digital version from anywhere. I did that once for a book series and when the publisher finally put out a digital version, I bought them.

It's about access. The paywall has to be reasonable and the publishers should digitize "out-of-print" regardless of the cost to them. They can recoup the costs over time rather than counting "profits" in a quarterly window.

Blind readers should get the forever exemption. They should have braille/audio of any book, sold or not.

In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something?

Never pay money for pirated content or ask someone to pay money for pirated content. Donations to keep a site running are borderline and iffy, depending on the implementation and transparency. As soon as you earn any kind of revenue or treat it as your 'job' it crosses into the unethical IMO.

Second point related to money: Pirating stuff you could easily pay for is probably bad, if the creator receives $0 from you. There might still be reasons to do so (not wanting to support DRM for example), but if you got the cash you better find a way to support the actual creators (merch, donations...). The smaller the author the heavier the moral responsibility to bring some money their way. This also weighs in the other direction: It's probably accetpable or even good to not give more money to giant corporations that abuse intellectual property for their own gains and who shit on creators.

Buying an ebook from Amazon but then pirating an epub version of the same book (Calibre currently unable to crack Amazon's newest DRM since earlier this year).

People are basically just renting their books from Amazon right now; you don't really "own" it if you can't read/listen to it on other devices and apps. That never sat right with me, and when I decided to leave the Kindle ecosystem, I couldn't read those same ebooks in other apps. So now I refuse to ever buy any of my books from Amazon and am currently using Libby for most of my audiobooks/ebooks and B&N for the physical artbooks I want.

Sadly a lot of the indie authors I read are part of Amazon's KU, so their books are not legally available outside of that ecosystem. =( So I've stopped reading them.

When I subscribe to the service, but the app freezes up... Looking at you Paramount+.

It is always justified to pirate something. Private property is a scam, and intellectual property even more so; there is no justification for these concepts that does not boil down to "because the current dominant economic paradigm requires them in order to function" or "possessions are more important than people." Information should always be free. Period.

I'd say all piracy that isn't bootlegging or otherwise profit motivated is pretty ethical. It's basically a decentralized museum of modern art that our tragically morally bankrupt society can't be bothered to allow for the legal preservation of.

Watching youtube with adblocker 🤣

Sharing knowledge and creative works is how society progresses. Scientific progress relies on open access to discoveries and data. Creative works are shared, remixed, and built upon. But restrictive copyright laws have allowed corporations to severely limit access to information and works of art to optimize their profits. They frame piracy as “stealing” to make it seem immoral, when in reality piracy often involves simply sharing creative works with friends or communities that can’t access or afford them.

To Read More: https://technomagnus.vercel.app/posts/piracythe-moral-imperative-of-sharing-knowledge

Any stream content. Any subscription. Anything that I can't access because of my nationality.

I'd pay for other things.

When I can't get something because it's no longer being made, or at least not for a sensible price.

Like, old games are fair to copy. They don't even make the hardware for that any more. Sony is making strides with PS+ Extra, but the catalogue there is nowhere near big enough.

I think the music industry has finally got to a point where piracy is pointless. A subscription to pretty much any streaming service gives you everything now. The TV/movie guys are struggling here, and even with three subscriptions, there's a ton of stuff missing. If there was one that had the kind of coverage that Spotify had for like £30/month, I'd pay that in a heartbeat.

Depends if I find the company that made that media ethical. I would be happy to pirate Autodesk, Adobe, EA etc. Just because they are predatory and unethical. I also "pirate" music (adblock on youtube) since recording labels are shit. Also I watch youtube with no ads, since I do not support Google. I do pay for Nebula though, since a lot of creators I like are there and the company is fair.

Content that should've been easily purchased, but it's stuck behind a subscription model. Photoshop. Lightroom. I don't understand why these have subscriptions. I should be able to buy it like any other software.

I believe it to be ethical, when publishers pay the actual creator's penny's for their work, not because they can't afford it but because of greed.

I would call ethical piracy any kind of data acquiring that would otherwise be unattainable. A more common example is any kind of software and/or content that you pay and therefore should own and for any kind of reason the seller/provider restricts your acces to it.

1. Whether it is a movie/series/book/song you payed and for some good forsaken reason you cannot access it because you changed your hardware or your country doesn't have access to it
2. Or it is any kind of software that you have to pay a subscription to keep a feature you previously had on a previous version (ex. Adobe)
3. or a video game that was removed from the service, has DRM and you can't access it anymore and/or the server shut down and the company doesn't release the source code
4. or an even older game you own but the cartridge/cd/disk/cassette is destroyed and or the console is not supported anymore and/or it is abandonwarevand the current owner is not know so it cannot be commercially distributed

Coprorations do not want anyone to own the hardware they sell by denying the right to repair, let alone software. The mere sence is unethical, so it's ethical to at least acquire software through piracy.

If there is no legal way to play a game due to the game being too old, require obscure hardware, not sold in your region, etc. In that case since the player had no way to give the developer money, might as well pirate it.

It is not okay to pirate just to resell to others. It is a huge red flag.

I pirate to save money and if industries are going to play hardball on making everything available.

For me it really depends on who created the content. If it was some big company that has tons of money anyways, I'll have no problem pirating it. But in case it's created by an individual who worked hard for it I'd want to avoid pirating it.

It's our culture. Everything we create, we create as a society, so to restrict access to our shared culture is the immoral act. That's the philosophical take anyway.

Practically speaking, we're living under ~~feudalism~~ capitalism, so we have to consider that the creation of art (movies, games, images, etc.) all comes at a financial cost, so acting as if those costs aren't borne by others is, I would argue anyway, unethical.

So the position I usually take is that if the group making the thing is small, the Right thing to do is to pay for it, while if it's a big multinational cultural glutton like Disney, they can eat a bag of dicks. As far as I'm concerned, pirate the shit out of that.

The interesting dilemma for me comes with the question: once you've purchased work from the Little Guy, is it ethical to seed it or just sneakernet it with others? Usually I fall on the side of "yes" on this, because small organisations also need exposure, and getting something for free is often the way in. I know that's how I got into a bunch of books for example.

IMHO whenever you actively need something and the owner either doesn't make it available or the price is prohibitively expensive, it's justified. That especially includes papers, books and other tuition material that's been paywalled or made expensive as hell without any actual reason, even more so if the author gets next to no compensation.

Downloading series and movies that aren't being streamed anymore, by all means.

When it comes to current movies, it depends on what's available. Unfortunately most streaming platforms don't have Chinese subtitles, and my wife often struggles to fully follow the original audio and the English subs often disappear too quickly.

For software, my personal stance is that if you use something every once in a while, pirate away. If you use it regularly and/or generate income from it, then pay your dues.

Suppose some dude on the street hands out books for free and gives you a copy. Does it make you unethical for accepting one? Would it be different online?

Suppose your government charges a "blank media tax" on storage devices to "compensate" creators with the assumption you already "illegally" download their content, didn't you already pay for it anyway?

What if you're downloading stuff as a hobby but you'd never pay for it if that would be the only other option, did anyone lose anything of value?

I look at it this way: A company's goal is to generate revenue from some product's sale. So, I could ask myself two questions regarding digital items:

Am I making money from the piracy of that product? Is this product something I would have otherwise purchased?

As I'm not making money from it and they are not being deprived revenue as I would not have bought it anyway, my actions are therefore ethical.

I don't know about "ethical" but justified yeah.

Certainly if media is not available for purchase I have no problem with people pirating it. But also if it's not available in a reasonably accessible format. For example, I wanted to show my son the original TMNT show. I would have happily bought it on Vudu, Amazon or Play Movies, but it's only available on iTunes. I have all Android devices and don't even have a personal Windows device, so I would need to jump through serious hoops to get it working if I bought it.