Skip Navigation
125 comments

  • People pirate for different reasons, and the legal definition of it changes nothing really. There's...

    • People who will absolutely not ever pay for anything
    • People who will pay as long as they get their money's worth, who may also be open to supporting the creator directly (Patreon, Nebula, Bandcamp, Floatplane, Liberapay etc.)
    • Preserving content in a usable format (e.g. vinyl record plastic breaking down, old 8track players becoming uneconomical to repair and rare to find, playstation magazine CDs that will never be available online despite being susceptible to CD rot)

    I'm in the last two camps personally. I wanted to also share my opinions on the points you mentioned directly...

    It is illegal and immoral

    I think It is illegal and immoral to sell consumers a license to use a product, under the guise of them owning it without explicitly and clearly stating such at the point of purchase, i.e. consumer electronics where you may "own" the device but only have a license to use the operating system, digital game purchases on consoles which can be revoked at any time by Sony/Microsoft or the publisher, services like Amazon Prime Video where a digital box set you purchased (that can only be watched via Amazon's website) can be deleted by Amazon at any time, leaving you no recourse.

    It steals the rightful intellectual property of directors

    In my opinion, it should not be right for directors at the likes of UMG to profit from music made by artists who have died.

    and developers who are only trying to make a living

    The developers do not make anywhere near as much money as they should for their efforts, and quite frankly they are going to get paid regardless of whether you as an individual decide to purchase or pass on a product.

    If you want to be a thief so badly, then rob a federal bank.

    IMO the people in the first camp probably aren't interested in money if they have chosen not to purchase their media to begin with

    I'm curious as to the reason behind the post though, has someone pirated your content before?

    • Thank you for an actual intellectual rebuttal. This may actually make me reconsider the morality aspect, but it is still outside of my moral bounds and therefore I can never condone it.

      This started because of a post that I saw about a big piracy community being shut down.

    • People who will pay as long as they get their money's worth, who may also be open to supporting the creator directly

      The point is, isn't the producer right to make the price? You can always not consume what they produce. This category is the most obnoxious; would you ever go to a restaurant and expect to decide the prices?

      It's the very same argument for producers that willingly release their contently freely and let you support them, eventually. It's their choice.

      Of the three you quoted preservation is the only one I find acceptable. If the producer no longer care to distribute their product, then they probably don't care to what it happens to it either.

      I think It is illegal and immoral to sell consumers a license to use a product, under the guise of them owning it

      For me the main difference is that nobody is forcing you to accept the transaction. I could accept this kind of argument for drugs for example, where you either take it or die/have serious repercussions. But pirating a movie you would have very much lived without just because is easy to do so it's particularly problematic.

      they are going to get paid regardless of whether you as an individual decide to purchase or pass on a product

      Except they aren't. Or at least, of course they're payed the same, at the moment. But in our economy prices are signals. If a market will appear smaller then it is because of piracy then after some timesfewer developers will be hired, and each of them will be payed less because you're "falsifying" the signals. Or even worst, the producers will start to use alternative form of monetization. That's one of the reason the modern web is based off ads or free-to-play games with microtransanctions are so damn common.

      IMO the people in the first camp probably aren't interested in money if they have chosen not to purchase their media to begin with

      The people in the first category should also think about the allocation problem. Those products which they like to consume but not pay for, still had a cost of production. The problem is they want ti consume, without supporting production, and that's not gonna work for a society.

  • I can't get most of the content legally. What is my option?
    When my friend wanted to watch “Breaking bad” a few years ago, he subscribed to a streaming service, it had only the second and third season. He paid for it, but piracy is the only option for him.
    Even if you are in the USA, 87% of video games before 2010 are currently impossible to buy.

  • So on a morality point of view, I've downloaded epubs of books of an author where I've previously bought copies of their books multiple times, either because the originals wore out or I gave a copy away. I still have copies on my shelf or in storage, I just want to have copies on my Kindle.

    I've bought things (or had bought for me) things on VHS and DVD formats and no longer have a player for either. So yeah I downloaded stuff I wanted to watch again

    There are things only available on DVD and not available to stream. There are things that were available to stream which have since been removed and have been taken down. Why not pirate stuff to watch it again?

    For a long time the Beatles weren't on Spotify etc. I had their stuff on their official paid for tapes growing up, then on CD when I was older. So in the interim I pirated it when I lost the original digital rips I made from the CDs. And until they release their mono albums officially I'll be hanging on to my pirated copies.

    Notice a trend in the above? I very rarely pirate new media. But I treat the internet like an archive (I've not even gone into the stuff that is no longer available anywhere except YouTube or piracy). Quite often I've paid the creator('s masters) more than once for their work. I feel no guilt.

  • If the product studdenly stop release, then it sometimes could be count as moral, because, when there are lots of digital products rely on the digital distribution (e.g. online game shop) then suddenly shut down, people will no longer to enjoy the digital products on that specific devices.

    Please search "3ds eshop closeure"

    Edit: "rely on", not "relay to"

  • As a general rule I actually agree, even if it’s a bit complicated and not black & white

  • Theft has a very strict legal definition. Piracy is not legally theft. It is legally infringement, a separate crime. Conflating one with the other is propaganda by the largest IP holders.

    These largest IP holders want nothing more than to lock up all culture and rent it back to you for a price, indefinitely. They would happily steal from you without a moment’s hesitation. In fact, they have stolen from you. They’ve successfully extended copyright terms to an absurd length, preventing works from entering the public domain for decades.

    Many of these IP holders also don’t care about preservation. They’ll happily let their works be lost to history. Some are actively fighting against preservation.

    Is it immoral to infringe? Yes. But IP holders don’t have the moral highground. They’re just as bad, if not worse. (I’m talking about the multi billion dollar companies here, not the small business persons struggling to get by)

  • And I agree. However, when youtube decides to make you watch an ad every 2 minutes, you stop caring

  • Piracy does not steal from the directors and creators, but from the distributors whose have already bought the rights. The distributors who attempt to create artificial scarcity, excessively monetize your attention, and in generally act hostile to their consumers. There used to be a pact between distributors extracting money from consumers while leaving the content in a desirable state, but greed ruined that. I don’t mind some ads, but we’re way beyond reasonable. I don’t mind phased rollouts, but actively preventing people from watching just because of their location? I don’t mind things not being shown, but the whole concept of stoking FoMO “before it goes into the vault for next generation”, is just wrong. I don’t mind attempts to copy protect, but paying your politicians to turn a civil matter into criminal and use govt resources to protect your artificial scarcity is just so wrong.

    I prefer not to pirate. I used to think policy was wrong when there was some balance between distributors and consumers. However greed ruined that. Greed made distributors take and take. It is not wrong to steal from such corrupt unethical businesses. They’re not worthy of respect

125 comments