What would you considered "Ethical Piracy"
What would you considered "Ethical Piracy"
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.
- 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)
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.
Permanently Deleted
-Not available to buy or only second hand for exorbitant prices (cough cough Nintendo) -Overpriced subscription (cough cough Adobe) -Getting a version of a game you already bought free of invasive or resource-heavy -Trying out a paid program/game/etc. with the intent of buying it if it you like it and it runs well
There should be a way to pay only the workers when you buy something. In that case, you could pay them but only after pirating and making sure you enjoy it. Since there is nothing like that, I think you should pay only content from small creators. Big creators already have plenty, and paying for anything else just gives money to greedy executives who then lower the quality of the content to make more money. Of course, if you have the means and don't pay anything, you are just making sure there will be less of that content made in the future. It isn't scalable; if everybody pirated content without paying a single cent, there would be no content made except by hobbyists who don't want to make a living out of it.
if you owned a game but your license got pulled for no reason (assassin's creed)
although pirating triple a titles is always ethical imo, devs usually get paid the same no matter how the game does
also pirating to try a game. steams 2 hour refund policy isnt enough, as 2 hours often is not enough to get into a game and see if u like it
pirating retro games
if the only way to play a game legitimately is to pay $500 for a cartridge, it's ok to pirateif you can't afford a game (ex. low income countries), it's ok to pirate. there are places where a full months salary isn't enough for a single triple a titile
Music Producer input here. It's sort of been a general rule of etiquette in production that piracy is fine if you intend to buy the product.
A lot of the better plugins can be very expensive and prior to subscription models, were limited in free trials. It can take some time to know if a particular plugin works with your workflow and gives you the results you like over multiple different projects.
I've always stuck with this. If I see something I like the look of, I'll pirate it, use it over a bunch of projects and if I find myself relying on it then I'll save up to buy it legitimately. Of course, there's a fair bit of trust involved there, and a lot of people will be happy enough to keep the pirated version and try to find a new crack every time the DAW or plugin requires an update,
No chance I would have been able to afford half of the software I use in my workflow when I first started out, nobody can. But I eventually found my flow then caught up and paid it back.
I consider that ethical piracy. Or maybe I'm just justifying it to myself. But that's how it was implied when I first started out in college and it's a good system where you can still eventually support the small companies that make quality products that work for you.
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
When it comes to video games, if I cannot legally buy new copies of games for that system, then it becomes open season on Piracy and emulation. Recent example, the 3DS eShop
I’d say that there’s a scale
‘pirating’ an abandonware PC game that has long been left by the original devs, and isn’t for sale anywhere legally - this is still illegal under most laws, despite their being no legal routes to buy it at all legally. Most sane people don’t think this is unethical.
But downloading a hacked version of an app or game developed by a tiny independent team that truly care about the product, and invest the profits back in it - I say that this is unethical, as the people you are stealing from are directly affected by your actions. If you bought this game or app, your money goes directly to them, and they are more likely to keep developing other things.
Adobe, MS and the like have billions, so piracy has less of a direct impact on them -
So yeah, for me it’s a scale of ethical piracy - and you have to draw the line where you feel comfortable
If the product is no longer available to buy officially.
If the product required prohibitively complicated methods to play it (VPN, specific hardware requirements) which can be circumvented by pirating means, so, by extension, I mean region locked software or media in general.
When the quality I want is not available; a stream of a movie in 1080 or very compressed 4k which I want to see in the best quality possible.
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.
Well, starting with, if you own an original copy. Sometimes companies put stupid DRMs in some digital stuff that just make the life of buyers miserable, games love to do that. For me is always ethical to pirate these ones.
Second, anything that you don't have money to buy, if you will never buy this stuff I can´t see why is bad to pirate, you are not stealing anyone, and I know a lot of cases (me included) that a person pirated something to test and then buy the thing after.
Education, similar to the prior, if a book or anything is not affordable to ppl that are willing to study an area, for me is totally ethical to pirate, this is a very common situation in third world countries where the dollar is very expensive causing books that are imported to be too expensive to students.
Piracy is a service problem. They keep making it harder for people to watch things, and piracy gets easier every day.
For me it concerns the intersection of privacy and piracy (and ownership).
My conceptions of ownership: I give money and receive a product in return. That ends my relationship with the seller.
But, increasingly (or almost exclusively on online marketplaces) businesses expect we will pay them for, essentially, the privilege of becoming their products. They control digital media as a means to record every action and behavior about us, the users, in order to bundle and sell our information to data brokers and other ad partners.
So, essentially, if buying something does not give me full ownership (possession of media) and is simply a means for a business to spy on me and harvest my data by controlling that media, then I'll pirate.
It's unethical and dangerous to use a transaction to spy on customers.
Anything by a company in the S&P 500. No reason to pad corporate earnings.
E.g. Minecraft years back no. Minecraft now that it is owned by Microsoft. Go for it.
Ethical piracy is a reddit fallacy(which I used to believe too) where people think showing a company a middle finger is acceptable.
The solution is to use FOSS, and kill their stranglehold on the market
Take adobe's crap for example... they are big because of the students pirating it, expecting employers to pay for their license in the future. Creative cloud is all they learn and then it's hard for them to switch to freemium or libre options, so they pirate it.
This happens with ms office too! We were taught how to use word, excel, powerpoint as kids, and now are forced to use those since everyone around us uses those...
For ethical piracy, I would say definitely if the content is no longer available through official channels.
Other situations include:
- downloading a copy of equal quality to one you already have a physical copy of, but don’t have the equipment to rip it
- really old stuff that should be public domain, but isn’t because copyright law is broken
- downloading the cracked copy of a game because DRM in your purchased copy makes it unusable
I personally avoid DRM protected digital purchases unless I can strip it out. I prefer ripping movies myself, but I don’t have any issues buying DRM-free music. I also wouldn’t mind paying for a kindle book given that I can always import it into Calibre and end up with a DRM-free copy.
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.
- Work of art no longer sold.
- Creator(s) and/or production company involved with the making are garbage human beings.
- You don't have money and you don't just want to stare the ceiling.
- Work where the original author is dead. (The money is not going to the author).
The concept of intellectual property is incoherent IMO. Thus, in principle, it's never wrong to pirate anything because you're not actually stealing anything.
However, I personally have a principle that I never pirate anything from small creators, at least not without compensation to them. It's one thing to pirate from a multi-billion dollar mega-corp. But a small time creator who is trying to make a living, that is different for me. I always throw them money if they have a donation page or buy some merch, etc.
On Anna‘s Archive Front Page there is a book "Against Intellectual Monopoly", I think it would give you an interesting perspective to consider too.
I change laptops frequently. Used to buy songs from iTunes and every time I changed laptops, transferred music over, I'd lose access to them. Would have to go thru insane process to be allowed to listen to the music I'd paid for.
Similar thing would happen with some software, Adobe especially.
If you're going to treat me like a criminal, then I might as well be a criminal. Same with purchasing movies on Amazon.
I tried to pay for minecraft, but 2 hours later, Microsoft wouldn't let me. Kept trying to make me an Hotmail account.
Growing trend in software I'm not happy with. No longer allowed to own the things we buy, and forced to hand over my email, phone number, address, name, create account... used to be, you could just buy things, simply. That was that.
Corporations are getting drunk with power, overreaching, infiltrating people life.
Also, if in poverty, no food, homeless, etc. If I can't afford what I need. And can get it another way, I will
If you're not using it to make money it's never not OK. I can't see it as theft. It's just a different method of obtaining the same thing that doesn't harm anyone.
Not only are those making this choice unlikely to pay anyways, but all the regular people who worked creating it already got paid so nobody can say "oh the film crew, VFX artists etc will be out of a job". No they already did their job and got paid. The investors maybe want more money but they aren't hurting for it, I don't feel anything for them.
IMO piracy is ethical in general.
You can pay to enter a museum to look at a painting, or you can look at it online, even print a copy of it and non one will care.
How is that different than seeing a movie online instead of going to a cinema? Really the only difference is that we’ve gotten used to pay for copies of movies, unlike paintings. These days you don’t even get to keep the copy you pay for.
Edit: I believe if you like some content, it would be nice if you could financially support the creator.
I just don’t think it should be mandatory, and I actually think all this money does is make the content worse over time.
In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something?
Never pay money for pirated content or ask someone to pay money for pirated content. Donations to keep a site running are borderline and iffy, depending on the implementation and transparency. As soon as you earn any kind of revenue or treat it as your 'job' it crosses into the unethical IMO.
Second point related to money: Pirating stuff you could easily pay for is probably bad, if the creator receives $0 from you. There might still be reasons to do so (not wanting to support DRM for example), but if you got the cash you better find a way to support the actual creators (merch, donations...). The smaller the author the heavier the moral responsibility to bring some money their way. This also weighs in the other direction: It's probably accetpable or even good to not give more money to giant corporations that abuse intellectual property for their own gains and who shit on creators.
Books: if I can buy a digital version and if it's not priced over its paper counterpart, I buy. If it's out of print and there isn't a digital version from the publisher, I look for the digital version from anywhere. I did that once for a book series and when the publisher finally put out a digital version, I bought them.
It's about access. The paywall has to be reasonable and the publishers should digitize "out-of-print" regardless of the cost to them. They can recoup the costs over time rather than counting "profits" in a quarterly window.
Blind readers should get the forever exemption. They should have braille/audio of any book, sold or not.
Buying an ebook from Amazon but then pirating an epub version of the same book (Calibre currently unable to crack Amazon's newest DRM since earlier this year).
People are basically just renting their books from Amazon right now; you don't really "own" it if you can't read/listen to it on other devices and apps. That never sat right with me, and when I decided to leave the Kindle ecosystem, I couldn't read those same ebooks in other apps. So now I refuse to ever buy any of my books from Amazon and am currently using Libby for most of my audiobooks/ebooks and B&N for the physical artbooks I want.
Sadly a lot of the indie authors I read are part of Amazon's KU, so their books are not legally available outside of that ecosystem. =( So I've stopped reading them.
When I subscribe to the service, but the app freezes up... Looking at you Paramount+.
Sharing knowledge and creative works is how society progresses. Scientific progress relies on open access to discoveries and data. Creative works are shared, remixed, and built upon. But restrictive copyright laws have allowed corporations to severely limit access to information and works of art to optimize their profits. They frame piracy as “stealing” to make it seem immoral, when in reality piracy often involves simply sharing creative works with friends or communities that can’t access or afford them.
To Read More: https://technomagnus.vercel.app/posts/piracythe-moral-imperative-of-sharing-knowledge
I'd say all piracy that isn't bootlegging or otherwise profit motivated is pretty ethical. It's basically a decentralized museum of modern art that our tragically morally bankrupt society can't be bothered to allow for the legal preservation of.
It is always justified to pirate something. Private property is a scam, and intellectual property even more so; there is no justification for these concepts that does not boil down to "because the current dominant economic paradigm requires them in order to function" or "possessions are more important than people." Information should always be free. Period.
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.
Depends if I find the company that made that media ethical. I would be happy to pirate Autodesk, Adobe, EA etc. Just because they are predatory and unethical. I also "pirate" music (adblock on youtube) since recording labels are shit. Also I watch youtube with no ads, since I do not support Google. I do pay for Nebula though, since a lot of creators I like are there and the company is fair.
Any stream content. Any subscription. Anything that I can't access because of my nationality.
I'd pay for other things.
When I can't get something because it's no longer being made, or at least not for a sensible price.
Like, old games are fair to copy. They don't even make the hardware for that any more. Sony is making strides with PS+ Extra, but the catalogue there is nowhere near big enough.
I think the music industry has finally got to a point where piracy is pointless. A subscription to pretty much any streaming service gives you everything now. The TV/movie guys are struggling here, and even with three subscriptions, there's a ton of stuff missing. If there was one that had the kind of coverage that Spotify had for like £30/month, I'd pay that in a heartbeat.
I believe it to be ethical, when publishers pay the actual creator's penny's for their work, not because they can't afford it but because of greed.
I would call ethical piracy any kind of data acquiring that would otherwise be unattainable. A more common example is any kind of software and/or content that you pay and therefore should own and for any kind of reason the seller/provider restricts your acces to it.
- Whether it is a movie/series/book/song you payed and for some good forsaken reason you cannot access it because you changed your hardware or your country doesn't have access to it
- Or it is any kind of software that you have to pay a subscription to keep a feature you previously had on a previous version (ex. Adobe)
- or a video game that was removed from the service, has DRM and you can't access it anymore and/or the server shut down and the company doesn't release the source code
- or an even older game you own but the cartridge/cd/disk/cassette is destroyed and or the console is not supported anymore and/or it is abandonwarevand the current owner is not know so it cannot be commercially distributed
Coprorations do not want anyone to own the hardware they sell by denying the right to repair, let alone software. The mere sence is unethical, so it's ethical to at least acquire software through piracy.
It is not okay to pirate just to resell to others. It is a huge red flag.
I pirate to save money and if industries are going to play hardball on making everything available.
For me it really depends on who created the content. If it was some big company that has tons of money anyways, I'll have no problem pirating it. But in case it's created by an individual who worked hard for it I'd want to avoid pirating it.
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
feudalismcapitalism, 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.
If there is no legal way to play a game due to the game being too old, require obscure hardware, not sold in your region, etc. In that case since the player had no way to give the developer money, might as well pirate it.
Any Nintendo game.
If you couldn't afford to pay for it in the first place, then they're not losing any money.
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.
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?
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!
For me I have rules I set for myself when pirating, and generally try to reserve it for if it's something I'm unlikely to see or get otherwise (like how stuff is exclusive to a million different streaming services now, or older games that don't have an official re-release) or there's ethical reasons I don't want to support it (Like some EA stuff and Adobe, though so far the only [arguably] accessible PC games I've pirated are the Sims 3 and 4)
If it's indie stuff and [non-text]books I try to avoid it if possible.
I look at it this way: A company's goal is to generate revenue from some product's sale. So, I could ask myself two questions regarding digital items:
Am I making money from the piracy of that product? Is this product something I would have otherwise purchased?
As I'm not making money from it and they are not being deprived revenue as I would not have bought it anyway, my actions are therefore ethical.
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.
IMO pirating media from anybody but indies is moral, correct, and good. The big companies have trade representation and lobbyists which they use to push their insane copyright agenda. Consider the Mickey Mouse act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act which extends copyright to such an absurd term, only corporate lawyers could have devised it. Which they did. Disney is a great example, in fact, since much of their media empire relies on adaptations of public domain works which are then copyrighted basically indefinitely. If our copyright laws today were more similar to what copyright laws were back then, we could have a lot more remixes, adaptations, and takes on well known stories and media.
Anyway, by purchasing from these copyright pushing companies I am funding their agenda, which is against sensible patent law and copyright law, and against me. They also promote vile DRM schemes, as their industry pushes ever onward away from personal ownership of anything and toward rent seeking behavior. If it were up to them we would all have tivoized boxes that we not only have to pay rents for, but must also consume ads on. Literally against my own interests to give them money, ever.
It's too bad that so much of our media is produced by a shrinking number of companies, because pirating their shit isn't even worthwhile. Most of their garbage is unwatchable slop.
As for any other form of piracy, I consider intellectual property to be mostly bullshit. But I can appreciate the time that goes into creating a work one wishes to sell and having some domain over that for a period of time after initial publication. But like many other things about our world, it's the stupidest version we have to live with.
P.S. and that's just one aspect of copyright law. Imagine trying to copyright the fundamental advances of human knowledge and science. God bless Sci-Hub!
IMHO whenever you actively need something and the owner either doesn't make it available or the price is prohibitively expensive, it's justified. That especially includes papers, books and other tuition material that's been paywalled or made expensive as hell without any actual reason, even more so if the author gets next to no compensation.
Downloading series and movies that aren't being streamed anymore, by all means.
When it comes to current movies, it depends on what's available. Unfortunately most streaming platforms don't have Chinese subtitles, and my wife often struggles to fully follow the original audio and the English subs often disappear too quickly.
For software, my personal stance is that if you use something every once in a while, pirate away. If you use it regularly and/or generate income from it, then pay your dues.
I expect to pay a fair price for things. Unfair pricing are profits made from monopolies which are illegal. Copyrights exist to enforce monopolies, and thus are unethical in my view. It is especially evil when lobbying pushes laws that develop mass surveillance, private militia and automatic justice. While these laws exist, piracy is an act of resistance against oppression.
And it must be mentioned : science should be free. Especially medical science.
What pisses me off with copyrights is that the unethical or outright evil behaviour come from the copyright owners, but they turned the laws so the evil behaviour is legal and we now have these questions about the ethic of so called piracy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
When you have zero money
Perfectly ethical:
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Content that is Inaccessible legally such as old games, abandonware, delisted media, banned stuff etc.
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Digital copies of physical content you own
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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.
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All piracy
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.
Pirating anything from nintendo since they won’t release anything from the gamecube era and the new games never drop in price.
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.
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.
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…
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.
As long as you're not reselling or appropriating others' creations as your own, everything is ethical.
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.)
If I’ve paid for it once, but the Powers That Be make it unavailable or want to charge again to continue using it, I have no problem with finding a copy that works to make my purchase whole.
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A lot of folk bring up (correctly, imo) indie creators and end up mentioning Stardew Valley as an example - especially within the first couple years of its release. SV as an example has fell off, as it's had it's years to rake in cash.
But I absolutely pirated SV for YEARS, multiple times. I was in a place where I was utterly broke, could not always afford food, and only had internet because of assistance programs. My laptop couldn't run much, not even minecraft at that point. It could, however, run Stardew Valley. So I re-downloaded it multiple times over the handful of hand-me-down hard drives that I used in a laptop that kept frying hard drives. (eyeroll)
I did eventually get to a place financially where I could afford to buy SV, so I did. Then it went on sale on console so I bought it again, knowing I'd never play it (console without the aiming mod is awful), but it helped pay it back how much play time I'd enjoyed back when I couldn't afford the game.
That, to me, is ethical.
For me anything Nintendo is fair game, I also dont bat an eye at any movie or show piracy.
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.
Pirating content with the intent to buy it after trying it out using the pirated version (e.G indie games)
Whenever EA or Ubisoft releases a half assed game with stellar marketing
I believe online piracy is the uploading part, not the downloading. I think uploading has a much more narrow use case, but if everyone stopped we wouldn't be able to download.
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I stopped going to cinema when the Hollywood movie cartel started messing with freedom on the internet, and I don't feel any remorse pirating Hollywood movies.
When I started earning enough to have disposable income, I made sure to buy ebooks and audiobooks, as well as supporting my favourite musicians on Bandcamp or by buying merch.
I purchased Zelda BotW when it was 6ish months old. Didn't like it, didn't finish it.
I'm working on getting it now on the steam deck because it's critically acclaimed and I'd like to understand what other people like so much about it. It's also my young nephew's favorite game. Totally legal emulation if I were actually dumping my own firmware.
When I pirate Tears of the Kingdom afterward, I'll have several different reasons;
The switch is underpowered. I'm done buying games for a device that can't keep up with modern game development. I'm not some performance purist either, I'd just like 60 frames at 1080. Zelda still looks good at that res. Also the hardware just kinda sucks. The joycon issues remain unaddressed and and the facebutton mapping should at least be mappable on a system level if they insist on being backwards.
Nintendo has pathetic online gameplay support, and a history now of gutting their digital stores. If I'm going to lose access to my switch purchases in the same time frame that the cartridges give out, I'm not paying. The walled garden they've created as a children's toy company doesn't serve me at 30.
If they'd throw these games on steam or epic with some industry-standard sales on occasion I'd just buy them outright.
If nintendo sold a box closer to a PS4/5 in power I could call my emulation unethical, but they don't. Their game runs better as an illegitimate product and that's on them.
everything and nothing
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.
I'll pirate music via Soulseek. If I listen to something a lot I may pay for the music but more likely I'll see them when they tour then buy stuff from their merch table. This is small stage stuff, the big mega acts not so much
I find it's very context dependent. In the 3d model/printables, a lot of people who release the pirated content so a 3-4 month embargo to allow the creator a chance to let people get it legally before it's available everywhere.
Piracy is always ethical unless you undoubtedly show proof that it harmed someone.
I give you a hint: it almost never actually does.
It's a tautology.
I'd like to ask myself the opposite, when is it unethical to pirate? Because it's just data, and how many copies there are of it shouldn't change anything. If I want to support a developer I'd 'buy the product', regardless of already having it or not, and I would never in my life buy a product (Not a service, just the data) just because I cannot get it otherwise. I believe it's pretty much the same for most people that knows how to download pirated content.
But I believe that early leaks are strongly unethical, as you end up interfering in the creative and production process before it's ready. Furthermore, a lot of people whom usually won't pirate will jump at the possibility of doing so just for the hype of getting the product NOW, and maybe will not feel the necessity of buying later. I cannot think any case in which a leak is ethical or even beneficial for anyone, and I'm surprised that I've never seen much push against it by pirates.
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There was a television show from another country that I wanted to watch. It wasn't available to stream in my country from the source, and wasn't available on any other streaming platforms. I even tried making an account, but they wouldn't accept my credit card because of the billing address.
Pirating that would be justified; the argument isn't just that, if I can't buy it then I should be allowed to take it, but that if I can take it without causing financial stress on the artists, then it's OK. They are refusing my money, so pirating it wouldn't deprive them of a sale.
I also strongly agree with what others have said, that my ethics require me to purchase something once.
Where I get fuzzy is on the right for producers (studios and distributors) to make profit. Money going to artists is clear to me; and production studios need to fund projects, some if which will fail. But the existing, purely profits-driven, risk-averse, homogenizing movie production industry... I'm not sure I agree that they deserve the lion's share of the profits.
There is no value in spending money anymore, you used to get some long term benefits. You bought movies, music and games for example and got to use them however long you want to. Now you pay significantly more under the guise of: "it's only x amount per month" and own nothing.
For me, something like Spotify is far too expensive, considering i could buy an album from the discount bin for like €2 and play it for a full year until i got slightly bored (you still owned and got to use it after that). Spotify is €11 a month, times 12 compared to a single €2 permanent purchase. I usually only bought one or 2 albums per year.
I'm not saying you need to agree with this, but for me it makes absolutely no sense to pay this much especially when i look at my wage not going up and the cost of living having doubled over the past few years.
Everyone wants us to subscribe. This a.m. I listened to some guy on the internet rant about HP shutting down his printer remotely b/c he'd bought a subscription, when he bought the printer (didn't read fine print in contract/TOS--that's another rant), to a certain number of pages/month. His credit card number changed, HP didn't get their tithe, so they remotely disabled his printer. Entertainment moguls suck up all the money in that industry, leaving little for artists--to wit, the strikes--and streaming subscriptions are expensive. Cable prices are ridiculous. Corporate greed and having every subscriber subsidize sports channels probably account for that. Everything costs too much, and my budget is small. Original Star Trek and original Doctor Who were broadcast over the air. In exchange for commercials, we got to watch for free. If I could subscribe to iplayer, that would satisfy my needs. Alas, I don't live in UK, and BBC's arrangements with multinational entertainment corps preclude my subscription. So I pay for a good VPN. That's still more than it used to cost to watch. Tropicana OJ used to have a commercial showing people sticking straws right into an orange to suck its juice. I often feel like the orange. Piracy is ethical.
To me it's like buying a physical book, but then downloading a drm version of the ebook.
Even in the very strict sense of "ethical" (pretty much a simpleton's "Ethics == Law"), I would say that Abandonware is abolutely ethical to pirate.
By its own definition it's software that is not being commercialized anymore, so nobody "loses" (if you use the current intellectual property legislation to defined winning/losing) any copyright income when somebody else copies it without paying them because there are no options for those people to get it by paying - even by the most fantastical definition of it, it's not a "lost sale".
Now, if the copyright owners resume commercialization of it, then it stops being abandonware hence stops being ethical to pirate it under this definition.
That said, for me anything that's outside the copyright length in the original legilsation (14 years) before Disney bought themselves extension after extension until the current "lifetime of the author + 70 years" (which adds up to around 150 years) is absolutelly ethical to pirate (or if you want to ponder on the Ethics of it: "Is it ethical to obbey a Law or a change of it which was bought?!").
When I can't buy it in a reasonable way lol
Simply wanting to save money is a valid enough reason to pirate. The only time you should have any second thoughts is if its a product you REALLY want to see more of or if its made by a smaller group that could really use that money.
Even then though, you can always help without spending money. Easiest way is to spread the word.
You enjoyed that game?
Tell others its a good game worth getting. In many cases, that might help more than buying the game and saying nothing about it.
Hoo boy, opening up a can of worms with this. I'll give the "hot take" here and don't bother replying because I'm not going to be drawn into (another) debate. Feel free to downvote away.
I think most piracy is unethical but it depends on exactly what you're pirating.
The top comment here is about scientific papers. I think that's also totally unethical unless the research is publicly funded. You are not entitled to that information. It usually requires a large amount of funding and wouldn't be possible without it.
I think piracy is okay for items that are otherwise unavailable for purchase, or put behind arbitrary hardware limitations (looking at you Nintendo).
Also I pirate from YouTube (ad blockers) because Google is an incredibly unethical company and the official app is abhorrent and even if you pay for Premium the "official" method of watching videos (YT app) is abhorrent and does not respect any of your input on what you actually want to see. There are unofficial apps made by nerds in their Mom's basement that are 10x better at showing you that, while also respecting your privacy and not logging your activity for use in profiling you and showing ads, so that's what I use. I budget $30/mo to donate directly to my favorite creators on other platforms.
I used to be a lot less lenient in the past, but as I've gotten older and DRM and streaming services have gotten worse I've been sailing the high seas more. Now I'll do it if there's no reasonably easy/convenient way to buy it in my country, if the work is old/big enough that nobody creatively involved is going to notice, or if I already bought the same or similar version in the past (such as wanting a movie for my Plex server that I know my parents have on DVD somewhere). Sometimes I'll "acquire" something and end up financially supporting it down the line if I like it.
I do agree with some of the other comments though, that for things like software where there's an alternate FOSS or independent version, I'll go for that. I've begun getting in the habit of donating or paying one-time purchases (such as ad removal) on software I use a lot.
Anything under a proprietary license, never support people who do that
The title of the post and the body of text ask opposite questions. Edit something.
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Hard for me to say. In most cases I pirate the game first and only then buy it if I think it's worth the money. Sometimes I finish the game completely on the pirated copy, buy it and never play again. Some games I buy the original game but pirate the dlc since I despise the dlc model.
Hard for me to say. In most cases I pirate the game first and only then buy it if I think it's worth the money. Sometimes I finish the game completely on the pirated copy, buy it and never play again. Some games I buy the original game but pirate the dlc since I despise the dlc model.
Hard for me to say. In most cases I pirate the game first and only then buy it if I think it's worth the money. Sometimes I finish the game completely on the pirated copy, buy it and never play again. Some games I buy the original game but pirate the dlc since I despise the dlc model.