this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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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.