To buy no longer means anything :(

As a fun aside, unauthorized sharing is the only reason I tried and bought the game back in early beta days before there was a demo (friend A owned, friend B didn't, I tried it from friend B's unauthorized copy of friend A's game and got the copy too, later gave friend A $20 and info to activate my account because I didn't have internet at home).

Same. I played MC in early Alpha when you could play free in a web browser. And then I used a cracked game for another year or so. Once I had adult money I bought it. I've since bought it probably 6+ times over between Java, Bedrock, consoles, mobile and accounts for my kids.
I probably would never have bought it otherwise, or at least not for a long time.
Pirated Minecraft was a staple of my childhood. Basically everyone I know had it pirated too. I thought that, when I am an adult with my own money and my own debit card, I would buy the game since I liked it so much. Well, I guess that isn't happening.

The only times I'd excuse piracy are if the original product is outright unavailable in your region, or if digital rights management leads to a vastly inferior or unusable product for paying users (i.e. strict installation limits, always-online DRM in a single player game.)

I don't condone pirating Minecraft, regardless of Microsoft's anti-consumer bullshit.

I've paid my upvote tax

Meanwhile everyone screaming AI is stealing from them.

in this case, microsoft just decided that they didn't have to bother supporting legacy accounts because they didn't feel like it, so they pulled them without consent or compensation
in the case of ai generated media, companies just decided that they just had the rights to use existing published media, so they harvested it without consent or compensation
both complaints are the same complaint: that businesses are just deciding on contracts unilaterally and then imposing them on people without the need for consent
- Microsoft has a history of doing so, both with Minecraft customers and others. They just don't care.
- in the case of ai generated media, companies just decided that they just had the rights to use existing published media, so they harvested it without consent or compensation
  Have you read the ToS of your favourite social media site lately?
  In any event, it might well be that companies (and you yourself) have the rights to use existing published media to train AIs. Copyright doesn't cover the analysis of public data. I suspect that people wouldn't like it if copyright got extended to let IP owners prohibit you from learning from their stuff.
  
  You mean before or after all the sites updated their ToS it so that they were legally in the clear to sell user posts to AI training companies? Implying that they weren't before? Also, are we exclusively talking about cases where sites gave consent to provide data? Rather than just having it be harvested without their knowledge or consent?
  And in any case, you're missing the key point, which is that legality doesn't matter in either case. You can't fight a megacorporation just doing whatever they please unless you happen to have an army of lawyers lying around. Most consumers don't.
  I suspect that people wouldn't like it if copyright got extended to let IP owners prohibit you from learning from their stuff.
  Learning from things is a very obviously a completely different process to feeding data into a server farm.
  Quite why proponents of AI-generated media still think this argument holds any water after 2 minutes of thought, let alone after almost a full year to consider it, is beyond me.
  
  You mean before or after all the sites updated their ToS it so that they were legally in the clear to sell user posts to AI training companies? Implying that they weren't before?
  Being more specific is not the same as changing something from illegal to legal.
  
  the update to the legal contract they have you agree to was in no way legally motivated?
  
  CYA is not necessarily the same as changing the substance.
  LLMs were a big paradigm shift. They're not necessarily something that could've been imagined when writing the original TOSs
  
  CYA is not necessarily the same as changing the substance
  why would they need to cover themselves against the scenario you're arguing they were already covering themselves against?
  that could’ve been imagined when writing the original TOSs
  or when agreeing to them, which is literally the problem here
  you can't meaningfully consent to every arbitrary hypothetical future scenario
  
  You mean before or after all the sites updated their ToS it so that they were legally in the clear to sell user posts to AI training companies?
  The ToSes would generally have a blanket permission in them to license the data to third-party companies and whatnot. I went back through historical Reddit ToS versions a little while back and that was in there from the start.
  Also in there was a clause allowing them to update their ToS, so even if the blanket permission wasn't there then it is now and you agreed to that too.
  Learning from things is a very obviously a completely different process to feeding data into a server farm.
  It is not very obviously different, as evidenced by the fact that it's still being argued. There are some legal cases before the courts that will clarify this in various jurisdictions but I'm not expecting them to rule against analysis of public data.
  
  you agreed to that too
  you know that a company putting a thing in their terms of service doesn't make it legally binding, right?
  hence why they all suddenly felt the need to update their terms of services
  It is not very obviously different, as evidenced by the fact that it's still being argued
  people continuing to use a bad argument doesn't make it a good one
  I'm not expecting them to rule against analysis of public data
  tell me you haven't followed anything about this conversation without telling me you haven't followed anything about this conversation
  
  you know that a company putting a thing in their terms of service doesn't make it legally binding, right?
  And you know that doesn't necessarily imply the reverse? Granting a site a license to use the stuff you post there is a pretty basic and reasonable thing to agree to in exchange for them letting you post stuff there in the first place.
  hence why they all suddenly felt the need to update their terms of services
  As others have been pointing out to you in this thread, that also is not a sign that the previous ToS didn't cover this. They're just being clearer about what they can do.
  Go ahead and refrain from using their services if you don't agree to the terms under which they're offering those services. Nobody's forcing you.
  
  companies don't update legal documents for fun
  you're also continuing to pointedly ignore what this conversation is actually about, so i'm guessing you don't really have anything relevant to say in response

Piracy is piracy.

But the only one that owns Minecraft is Microsoft, since they bought it for over 2 billion dollars. Everyone else just bought a license to use it. Just like in all the other cases of buying music, video, or software. Unless lots of lawyers were involved, you only bought permission to use it, in a certain way at that. Pretending otherwise or not knowing in the first place has never been a legal excuse.

You're getting downvoted, but you're right. And that is the reason that using proprietary software and SaaS is a problem. If I'm only buying the right to use a copy of something as a company sees fit, then I'm not really buying anything. I'm essentially paying a company a tribute to use their software in their way.
Decades ago, it was the same way, but it felt different. We got physical media, and we could do what we wished with the files: modify them, delete them, etc. Hell, the EULAs for some '90s and early '00s software even said you could use the software in perpetuity, and we could use software in anyway we saw fit. The biggest constraint was on selling copies. Back then, and even now, that seems pretty reasonable. (Though, as an aside, it would have been better to also get access to the source code, but I digress.)
Now, we have to use company's software exactly how they want us to use it. Personally, I refuse to go along with this (as much as I can), so I have migrated most of my digital life to FLOSS.
- Then the button shouldn't say "buy now" but "license now"
- Joke's on them, my instance doesn't allow downvotes, so my comment is happily at +9 from where I'm standing ;)
  Ain't got no time to worry about popular opinions.
Yes, BUT...
There is buying a licence to use.
\ And there is buying a copy you can use.
This is very much different. Maybe buying a copy of music with a tag attached saying you cannot distribute it further is ok, but saying they can take this copy you bought at any time and make terms how you can use it is another level.
Some video games are open source; you can modify and redistribute it or even sell it. We need more of those and less fat cats playing a trading card game of copyrights while they erode ownership rights.
- I'm sure there are exceptions if you'll look hard enough. However, even in the case of most open source software, you'll never become the owner of the intellectual property, you're just free to use, modify and share it.
  
  We don't own the patients to our hardware but we still say we own an item becauee we are in control of it. Users don't need the copyright of software they use to control it - to modify and share software is to own it.
  (The only thing they may lack is the option to relicense the software if it's copyleft, but I'd argue that ensures software freedom for 3rd parties).
  
  but we still say we own an item becauee we are in control of it.
  Yeah, that's where misconceptions like the one in this thread stem from. Repeat a lie enough, and you'll start believing it.
  
  Two people can speak the same language in name and yet the same word can mean something different to them. Words do not have innate definitions, they have usages.
  In my possession are many things which I presume have copyright/patent and fewer things which do not. It seems to me we just draw the line of "ownership" around different things.