Hi guys, first of all, I fully support Piracy. But Im writing a piece on my blog about what I might considere as “Ethical Piracy” and I would like to hear your concepts of it.
Basically my line is if I have the capacity of paying for something and is more convinient that pirating, ill pay. It happens to me a lot when I wanna watch a movie with my boyfriend. I like original audio, but he likes dub, so instead of scrapping through the web looking for a dub, I just select the language on the streaming platform. That is convinient to me.
In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something? And where is 100 justified and everybody should sail the seas instead?
I would like to hear you.
- 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.
deleted by creator
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
Any piracy related to scientific papers I consider ethical. That kind of knowledge should NEVER be hidden behind a paywall
Abandonware is a very clear cut case of ethical piracy, too. Without it, a lot of digital stuff “wouldn’t exist” anymore. Mainly games, but also loads of productivity programs, doubly so for discontinued platforms, like Amiga computers.
OG Neon Genesis Evangelion is a good example of this
deleted by creator
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.
- Work where the original author is dead. (The money is not going to the author).
When the money goes to people who did not create the media. Support creators, not exploiters.
deleted by creator
- 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.
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.
IMO it’s better to not pirate small indie content (mostly games in my case).
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.
Any instance in which I’m purchasing through a publisher or producer. Wherein I have no reasonable belief that my money is actually going to the people who developed the work.
Do just to dig into this a little, I’m assuming that’s the Apple itunes, Spotify, Amazon etc levels and probably ticketek, we’re it plausible (now there’s a fantasy!!).
Where do you sit with regards to the better players such as bandcamp or gog.com?
It really depends on the particular developer right? Like, CDPR for example, whose parent company owns gog.com, pays its employees based on contractual obligation and initial sales. Beyond that, however, all money gets fed into the publisher and into the pockets of executives. Executives don’t make games. Executives do next to nothing and make nothing for it. I personally consider it patently unethical to support parasites like that.
I completely agree to the pyramid scheme of managers.
I’d like to believe they funded the development while it was happening, but I suspect that’s rather naiive…
If I have already purchased a copy of the physical media, I don’t think it is piracy to acquire a digital copy of the same media for personal use
No matter you purchase it or not, acquiring something for personal use is ethical imo
A car? you wouldn’t!
Stealing a car is not same as copying a car.
yea… your sentence was pretty generic, anyway it was a joke
YOU WOULDN’T COPY A CAR
If a product can be offered without much issue on a pay once and own-as-is forever model, then I think there is an ethical imperative to pirate it.
I would be willing to pay a few hundred bucks for a perpetual license to look 2023 version of Adobe Lightroom. Unfortunately the only place to find such a product is on the high seas. Adobe will only let you buy a subscription based equivalent. I like the actual software product, and I’ve gotten good at using it, but if I can’t just buy it, I’m not going to pay for it.
I actually have a plug-in for Lightroom called topaz Labs AI enhancement suite. I pay for a single year’s worth of updates, but I can still use the software as of the final update forever. If Adobe actually offered something like that I would be all over it.
