Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Everything on a streaming service that attempts to limit password sharing. They made traveling with a streaming stick a completely unnecessary faff. Everytime I go to use a service they make me reverify the device multiple times a day. So, fuck you asshole now I'll stream your content for other sites and stop paying you!

If you couldn't afford to pay for it in the first place, then they're not losing any money.

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?

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.

I don't know about "ethical" but justified yeah.

Certainly if media is not available for purchase I have no problem with people pirating it. But also if it's not available in a reasonably accessible format. For example, I wanted to show my son the original TMNT show. I would have happily bought it on Vudu, Amazon or Play Movies, but it's only available on iTunes. I have all Android devices and don't even have a personal Windows device, so I would need to jump through serious hoops to get it working if I bought it.

It's only ethical if you need the thing you're pirating, which doesn't apply to much. Pirate of you want, but look for ethics elsewhere.

When I don't want to give money to a specific company that I dislike. EA is an example.

Paying for the product after viewing/using it if you like it or it's good.

Software wise, anything without a demo. The support from companies is dire at the best of times and if something doesn’t work on your system your screwed. In shops you can test the suitability of something by testing it (sitting on a couch, laying on a bed) but with software they take your money and run.

Also anything abandoned is fair game.

I'm not sure I can think of any examples of unethical piracy, except maybe bootlegging for sale as mentioned elsewhere.

I don't believe that piracy hurts anyone, so I can't understand any arguments that it's unethical.

Perfectly ethical:

• Content that is Inaccessible legally such as old games, abandonware, delisted media, banned stuff etc.

• Digital copies of physical content you own

• Digital Content that you already own such as ebooks or movies, but are restricted access due to DRM or single-copy rules or other dumb stuff. If I paid for something I should have the right to access it however I want (as long as I don't distribute it)

Gray Area:

• Pirating work that benefits a publisher but not the creator. Movies, Shows, and Songs released by studios that exploited the creators of that material and not giving them a cent. This includes scientific work and research.

Considering I'm pretty pisspoor at the moment everything is. And tbh if I had money I still wouldn't pay for movies but I would buy a lot on bandcamp(so I can make torrents out of it)

When you have zero money

I genuinely believe that stealing is stealing and anyone justifying it is doing so to not feel guilty about it.

I download things I haven't paid for. It's wrong. I can rationalize this because the stuff I'm stealing has already made their money and me enjoying it on my own time likely has zero impact on the content creators. Also, fuck the non-skippable intros and commercials on blurays.

The one exception to this, what I would argue is unquestionably "ethical piracy", is content that's actually important to the progress of humanity. Things like well researched scientific papers, studies about the humanities, psychology, the affects of technology, mechanization, artificial intelligence, etc. This should never be held behind lock and key. You whining about not having access to How I Met Your Mother is not a valid reason to steal content.

Also, people need to spend more time at their public libraries. If you want free shit, a lot of it is there explicitly for the purpose you all espouse.

Pirating anything from nintendo since they won’t release anything from the gamecube era and the new games never drop in price.

If the copyright holder no longer provides a legal way to acquire any piece of media directly from them, making it so that the only way to acquire it legally is in a manner that prevents the copyright holder from seeing any profit, and the legal option is essentially a grift where you’re sometimes paying 100x the sticker value for something where the copyright holder won’t see a single cent…

All piracy

Anything from Nintendo is fair game IMO.

If it is a product/software from a large company/corporation/organization that already has "fuck you" levels of money, then I feel it's way more than ethical since a few thousand people pirating their shit will absolutely not cause even the tiniest of cuts in their company for one, and because they treat their customers the same way an extreme germaphobe would treat the world record holder for dirtiest man in the world.

Same goes for any form of college/university textbooks.

For me, I mostly rationalize my piracy as something generally unethical that I choose to partake in anyways. People often cite piracy as an issue with the service being provided, but there's just a lot of instances where I'd rather pirate something than pay for it, not because the service is bad, but because "Why pay for something when I can just get it free, eh?"

Though I think there is one specific case where I'd undoubtedly consider piracy ethical, which is for products that are not being sold on the market currently. Take a retro video game for instance. If it isn't being sold by any company, then there is no way to legally play the game apart from getting a secondhand copy. Either way, the company that owns the rights to it won't derive profit, and they aren't involved in secondhand markets whatsoever, so pirating the game effectively results in 0 negative consequences for any party, compared to legally acquiring it.

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.

It generally comes down to convenience of access mixed with some ethical consideration for me personally. Out of print books, textbooks, and history or research titles that are in the hundreds I’m simply not going to buy. I use JSTOR where I can, but will get academic research as I need if it’s not readily available. I tend not to pirate indie publishers for any media if I can help it. Sometimes I do to check it out before I purchase it. I try to support creators wherever I can, whenever I can. I like that options are available, and I don’t think anything should truly be off limits.

Calling it ethical is a higher bar than calling it ethically acceptable. Ethically acceptable is a higher bar than practically acceptable.

If you are factually incapable of getting it otherwise, it is ethically acceptable. If, at the same time, you need the material, it is ethical.

Without the need and unavailability or unavailability, I would always be careful about calling it ethical - I would not call it ethical.

In those cases it is at least subjective and a weighing of various morals, costs, need or desire, and practicality. (By pirating you are a beneficiary without supporting the thing - which one should at least be aware of and weigh.)

When you are a student and cannot obtain a reasonably priced copy of software- as a company I would see this as a sure fire way to onboard a new generation into my product which will then be paid for with company money later on.

I wanted to watch the Clarkson-Hammond-May "Top Gear". Only on BBC iPlayer. Only in the UK.

The roundabout 22 series' and specials simply do not exist outside of that. What are you supposed to do? I would have paid the BBC, but they even discourage the use of VPN's themselves.