Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
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- When the content is no longer available for retail purchase (i.e old games or shows that have been pulled entirely [see Infinity Train])
- You have a physical copy, but want a digital version.
Most people here arguing that the "ethical side" of piracy is when the media is not available elsewhere. Or if it's available but at an abusive price/requirements. To which I agree.
But I also believe that culture shouldn't be only for those who can afford it. Books, movies, videogames, tvshows, education, science is what makes a society culturally rich. This is exactly why we have libraries. It's a public service. I've seen teens become avid consumers and incredibly knowledgeable in certain subjects, to the point that they are making a living because of it. Because the internet allow them to explore and grow. Without a pricetag nor preassure on their families.
Heck! Even I pirated almost everything in my teen years. Nowdays I pay for a lot of media. Don't get me wrong, we should be supporting artists. Always. If possible.
If it's not possible, go ahead just pirate it. Piracy it's just the best digital library in history. With a heavy euphemism attached: "piracy" (the act of attacking ships in order to sack them, kill people, rape people). It has a bad connotation on purpose. Don't fall for it.
Edit: punctuation
i have downloaded tens of thousands of dollars of audio recording software. i always told myself that, if i were to ever make money from my efforts and usage thereof, i would be happy to pay the author.
i never made any money. but i hope the right people got paid by those that did.
IMO it's better to not pirate small indie content (mostly games in my case).
When the money goes to people who did not create the media. Support creators, not exploiters.
- Work where the original author is dead. (The money is not going to the author).
If it is not available to buy anywhere for me and the only way is piracy, I feel like piracy is justified. No one loses anything on this scenario.
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?
Physical media and digital media are different beasts. When he hands you that book, he no longer has it. I would also assume he didn’t steal that physical copy. Someone got paid initially for the physical media, which the person is now deprived of by giving it to you. It’s not quite “apples to oranges” but it’s definitely not a parallel situation.
This is assuming - like digital media - some one took the time to spend his own free time to make copies of a physical medium.
There is no way of knowing whether the person has copyright or stole the first copy.
Or compare school books: the whole class buys one copy together, makes copies for every person to share costs. Likewise, a whole family can chip in to buy a car - you wouldn't force them to buy a car each.
The two examples in your later paragraph are wholly different cases: the second is a completely different use-case and the first one is actually less morally unambiguous than you think.
- Content that you cannot acquire by any "lawful" means.
- Content that you already own a copy of (Yes, this includes "only" having a "license" to it; you own what you own).
- Content that is outrageously priced, and/or from large companies where the people who worked on the product will receive nothing from sold copies. (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, etc)
Content that isn't legally available in your geographic location
Most TV shows in foreign countries, and a billion movies are like this. Since they refuse to take my money, I can’t feel guilty for getting it for free.
I've been listening to A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs and let me tell you, the music industry can fuck right off. Small indie label? I'll probably buy it, but one of the major record labels? Set sail mateys.
That intrigued me, but the shit design of the website turned me off. I can't even find the first episode. There's no list, it's blurbs of each and every episode that you have to scroll through and it only loads like 15 at a time then you have to go to the next page.
I'm not going to spend ten minutes scrolling and clicking just to find the first episode so I can try it.
Yeah, it’s never advised to listen to a podcast on its host site. 80% of them are terrible, just load the RSS up or find it on your preferred podcatcher. I say this just so you aren’t too hard on them about it. It’s very difficult to find a service that is good as both a website and as a podcast host and even “good ones” are not great UX.
It is very VERY simple to set up a functional website these days. And this is an abomination of UX. It would take hardly any effort at all to improve it with a simple chronological list of links.
I don't think I'm being too hard on them at all.
For me the primary question is "Am I willing and able to buy this firsthand".
The latter is the most obvious. For instance, Nintendo won't sell me a game for the ds no matter how willing I am to buy. Therefore, I have no issues with pirating said game since they refuse to distribute it.
The former is more nuanced. Sometimes it's a matter of distain for the company and their business practices, such as Adobe. Sometimes it's a matter of the thing being incredibly overpriced. Sometimes it's just something that contributes so little value to me the only reason I'd interact with it is if it's free. Sometimes it's lack of knowledge about what I'm getting, and I want to try it first.
Also when it comes to Anime specifically, I try to support creators in other ways because my objections to the licensing companies in the US has nothing to do with the content itself.
If I may add, there's also things like "I have purchased this same album 15 times in my life, I just want to listen to my music".
For me personally, that falls under willingness to purchase. I only want to buy the same thing so many times.
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.
Regional prices are fair on one hand, but on the other, they open up opportunities for abuse leading platforms to implement region-locking, where you can suddenly find your library unavailable or even entire account inaccessible when noving between countries. That's the case with steam and spotify, and a few others I can't quite remember. But yeah, I feel your pain, I even felt bad for that one ps4 my friends used to share between them like that girl in 5 guys meme just because sony doesnt do regional pricing and the games were at times more expensive than their entire PC's.
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.
Question about this: if there's no IP, what is the motivation for creating media or game content?
Creative drive, I'd say. Some people simply like making stuff
But even people who like making stuff would be able to devote more time to their work if they were given the means to sustain themselves through their work without needing to work another job, wouldn't they?
to answer the opposite of your question i would say it’s unethical to steal things from indie developers and creators; the same way its more wrong to steal from a local corner store than it is to steal from Walmart
Even though I agree with you, I'd like to enphasize on piracy NOT being theft. Your analogy is great but I prefer to say it again just in case.
The one time I felt truly justified is when I bought quite a few vita games digitally and Sony took me not signing in for a few months as an excuse to wipe my account. They did email but I didn't see it until the account was gone.
So yeah hacked my Vita and downloaded everything I had owned and more.
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.
As long as you're not reselling or appropriating others' creations as your own, everything is ethical.