Piracy is moral as long as it doesn't hurt actual people, corporations don't count
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
153 points (87.7% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
52591 readers
272 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
💰 Please help cover server costs.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Most people working on big media productions (movies, shows, games) get a fixed price or salary for doing so. The owners / publishers (maybe also big stars in movies which already are millionaires) get all of the rest when a production sells good.
So by buying / paying for subscription services you only support big c-suite assholes which sit on the rights to media which they have contributed nothing to, except for capital maybe. I won't pay some intransparent big corporation to be able to watch a 10 year old movie / show just to make those people richer.
Piracy is not immoral, but if it's too widespread it can destroy opportunities for people creating things to get paid for creating things, and so they may not be able to continue doing so. And that just makes the world worse.
Try to find a way to support the people that make stuff that you love. For example I won't pirate music from small bands, I only pirate games if they have onerous DRM or something (never indie games), and I'll only pirate books if they're ridiculously overpriced and I can't get a standalone DRM free version.
Just cos you're a pirate doesn't mean you can't have morals.
Gotta love itch.io bundles for shopping indie games on a tight budget.
Can you even buy ebooks these days without going though Amazon? Aside from an incredibly small amount of indie authors (who probably got kicked from Amazon for unknowingly pissing off some algorithm) there's no place to download them and support the authors.
There's the Google play store. I still prefer physical books though
FACTUAL
load more comments
(2 replies)
There's another one: access to media while in poverty
Access to culture itself if you think about it
fuckin well said.
This is basically why I do it. I can’t afford streaming services, especially since you need multiple these days. I used to just use Netflix back when it was a good option. It was cheap and good enough to be worth it.
If I didn’t pirate it, I wouldn’t be able to consume it at all at this point, it’s that simple.
But despite my own self being in poverty, most of the people I know are not, so by talking to them about the media I watched free, and getting them to consume it as well, it increases the chances of the company profiting anyway. Just not off me.
These companies think they are losing out on money due to piracy, but they aren’t. They just assume we’d all pay for it if we didn’t have a choice. They don’t seem to realize sometimes it’s about not being able to pay, not just not wanting to pay. There’s no additional money to be had from a lot of us.
I just listened to the Pirate Bay episode of Darknet Diaries, and I had never considered this. I couldn’t agree more.
Not this again. This discussion was spammed on Reddit continuously, there’s no need to.
Everyone has their own opinion on it. You’re on pirate community, we all pirate. That’s it.
I'm still pro piracy lmao
The only fact of the matter is does the creator get credit and whether their material needs are met. Everything else must be justified. There is virtually no media piracy that harms the first two.
load more comments
(6 replies)
Piracy is unmet consumer demand. - Gaben
Honestly it's also back to being a price thing for me.... Shit's out of control, "sales" are $30 for a 5 year old game.
It seems like since the pandemic everyone and everything is raising prices and somehow they all have a reason, yet my pay stays the same...
I'm not trying to be a jerk, but if your pay has stayed the same for 5 years, you have a you-problem on your hands.
Access to media that companies arbitrarily remove to cut costs in their billion dollar company.
Access to media since companies refuse to put out physical versions now in the age of streaming.
In my opinion, piratary is not immoral at all. The human knowledge was built socially, it's fruits should be shared socially.
I completely agree with you but would go one step further - piracy is not only "not immoral", it is ethically necessary. Without piracy the hard work people have put into their creations (e.g. for the Nintendo WiiU/3DS) could vanish at the whim of one small group of people (in this example, Nintendo C-level execs). Of course there are other reasons too. But this alone is sufficient IMHO.
Piracy is always moral against large companies. It hurts literally no one.
Between my server, NAS, fees, time spent and troubleshooting it costs me more to run my own setup than to subscribe to Netflix and Disney+.
I prefer the convenience of having my own digital collection.
We can distribute digital media for almost nothing, yet the way most people and companies make money of digital media is by creating incentives to not consume it. Taking part of digital media has a value and artificially creating barriers to doing this means destroying enormous amounts of value.
This is clearly a very bad system and piracy is a useful strategy for creating the possibility of something better long term and to keep companies from putting up too large barriers short term. The only reason why we have the convenience of e.g. spotify is because of piracy, without pirates we would likely have something more expensive and less accessible instead.
This is true.
Piracy exists as a functional alternative to corporate distribution. We are it's competitors and they should be required to innovate around making content easy to access.
When Digital Content is impractical to access; it is over-engineered and it deserves to rot on the vine
I'm not concerned with the 'morality' of copying files. I will because I can.
When you purchase digital media, you're purchasing a method to get past DRM to access the content. Nothing more.
When you pirate digital media, you're using other means to acquire a method to get past DRM to access the content. Nothing more.
We've decided arbitrarily that some methods of getting past DRM are better than others despite the result being the same.
You can't purchase digital media. All you're allowed to purchase is a revokable license to consume it under some corporation's terms.
There's no need to rationalise pirating though
I will do it regardless of what people think of it, I don't care if it is deemed ''moral'' or not.
They dont think it be moral, but it do.
Can you even buy ebooks these days without going though Amazon? Aside from an incredibly small amount of indie authors (who probably got kicked from Amazon for unknowingly pissing off some algorithm) there's no place to download them and support the authors.
At least in the EU there are plenty of alternatives. Big book retailers often have an ebook download shop as well as publishers running their own ebook stores. Google Play books, iBooks and others are also around, although much smaller than Amazon. Ironically it's mostly the indie authors that are only on Amazon because they made it "easy".
Barnes and Noble in the US sells eBooks in epub format on their website
I thought we let this type of discussion behind us when we left reddit
People here don't need convincing, I think, but I still wouldn't pay if piracy wasn't an option. I'll find another hobby. Besides, laws making it illegal are quite recent, thanks to greedy corporations. If it was immoral, there wouldn't have been that much discussion about it.
We live in a reality where corporation rule the world. They monopolize markets, pay little to no taxes, hold no accountability for their actions against people, communities, the environment. They cut off corners and feed you whatever bullshit is more profitable for them and this endless greed of theirs is only growing.
If you're not stealing some every-day, average Joe's work (looking at you fuckfaces who steal content and resell it on platforms like RedBubble), then piracy is always the (only) moral choice.
I do think you should give money to smaller creators, if you have it, but i don't think thats super controversial, pirating is most effective against the billionares.
Forget effectiveness, the little guys rarely screw you over for their own greed.
True dat
There should be a simple way to give money to workers for those of us who wouldn't give a single cent to faceless corporations.
Can you even buy ebooks these days without going though Amazon? Aside from an incredibly small amount of indie authors (who probably got kicked from Amazon for unknowingly pissing off some algorithm) there's no place to download them and support the authors.
Actually you can. Kobo for example has a great selection of ebooks. Those books will still be drm protected tho.
That's fair, I didn't specify DRM-free. Still probably better than buying through Amazon.
But I'd prefer to use my own ebook reader.
view more: next ›