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.
Slightly more gray: content I’ve already paid for in one form or another. I spent like $100 going to the theater to see Mario with the family. I’m not losing sleep over adding it to my Plex when it hits VOD.
I pay for a smattering of VoD services, I don’t lose sleep over watching something that isn’t available on them.
If corporate greed didn’t force a hundred different services on us, then it might be different.
You say you don’t want 100 different services, but do we really want all media content to be under one roof or just a few players? Consolidation is also terrible for media/art. That’s basically why so many people are against the Actibliz acquisition.
@hoodatninja @majestictechie @vis4valentine @Kushan @charles Isn’t it obvious? They want many players to have all of the content. Which is possible, because content doesn’t run out if one service plays it too much.
All media content under all services.
I’d love that but it’s just not realistic because of how the media publishing landscape currently is. Happy to advocate for that but moving that needle will take decades. My response is it’s usually somewhere in the middle. 5-10 major players, maybe some smaller ones as well. I don’t need access to literally everything ever made. Libraries already have a wonderfully large free collection as it is (for anyone reading this Hoopla is amazing and countless libraries have massive catalogs on it)
Sure, it’s not an easy thing to achieve for sure, but I won’t lose sleep over them losing revenue because they can’t figure it out quickly enough.
Even moreso where it comes to media that’s just not available any more. If you, a content IP owner, don’t make that content available for purchase, then you have only yourself to blame if people pirate it.
If you, a content IP owner, don’t make that content available for purchase, then you have only yourself to blame if people pirate it.
I don’t think we are entitled to someone creative work just because they made it. That opens way too many doors.
This is doubly true for games, which tend to be re-released over and over again on different platforms. This is true to a lesser extent for things like movies, but it’s much worse with gaming where each console is a closed ecosystem that’s incompatible with other systems. At least with Blu-Ray, you can expect any Blu-Ray player to play the movie you’ve purchased. It’s not like a Toshiba player will only play Toshiba brand Blu-Ray discs.
Companies love to use the “you don’t own the game, you own a personal license to use the game” line when revoking rights to play games you’ve legally purchased… But that goes both ways; If you own a personal license to use the game, it shouldn’t matter what platform it’s on, because it’s the same game regardless of whether you’re playing on PlayStation or PC.
Paying for a ticket isn’t the same thing and I’d argue that’s not morally justified piracy. You went from a rental to ownership at a rental price.
I thought you were going to say something like “I already bought a copy of Star Wars thirty years ago, then THEY made the way I watch it obsolete, so I don’t feel as bad getting another copy since I already paid for it once.”
That would be closer to moral than “well I watched it in the theaters once, so I totally own a copy!”
We’ve all got our lines, mate. That’s the point of this post.
Straight black but I still consider ethical:
The entire “going to the movies” experience is terrible for me and my wife, only going to get worse with a runt on the way. It’s certainly a fault of the theater I try and attend, but I’m not driving 2 hours for a decent viewing experience.
I pirate like CRAZY. BUT if I find a film/TV show I really enjoy, I certainly do my part in word-of-mouth or digital marketing for them. It’s certainly once it’s left the theaters but I wasn’t going to that anyway. It also gives a chance for older films/series to get some funding that I may not have picked up otherwise.
Occasionally if there’s a film/show that’s a standout, I’ll buy a physical copy. Honestly I never open them as I have a more convenient digital copy on plex but I do put in some for it.
That said, watch Grave Encounters 1 (not 2…) and Cabin in the Woods. I believe they’re both on Netflix but absolute top tier movies if you’re into horror for GE or horror parody for CITW, cabin possibly being in my top 5 of all time.
Also that said, I’ve seen way too many episodes of MTV Cribs for me to care about it too much >:(
Or content you have purchased and have now lost access too, or shit if you buy something at all you can ethically pirate it. You already paid!!
Concerning the first point there is also the case of content getting altered. For example TV shows that switch songs because of licensing.
- You have a physical copy, but want a digital version.
Kind of similar but I feel like pirating content you have legal access to (Steam, Spotify, Amazon, Netflix, etc.) in a way to get around DRM is ethical.
For example wanting to listen to songs you have on Spotify on an iPod or reading ebooks purchased from Amazon on your PC.
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.
This is quite reasonable
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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.
I know someone who’s pirated books and then donated directly to the author or signed up for their Patreon for a few months.
Oh yeah I was thinking more along the lines of video games or movies where there are too many people creating it. For books, etc you can definitely donate.
If a product is no longer for sale on any storefront, or the edition for sale is lacking content had by previous versions of the same product, piracy is morally correct for the sake of archival and preservation
On a tangential note, this is the same reason I will not buy a phone without expandable storage. The cheapest statistic of a phone is now the difference between a $800 phone and a $1200 phone. For $30 I can double my storage, but that is not ok for manufacturers, especially when they can make $5 a month for 1G of space, that requires internet access, from millions of people. Learning that most people have to pick and choose memorable pictures and videos just because they run out of space is horrendous to me. The companies know that data storage will increase over time for every user, and they are banking on everyone banking their data in a more insecure manner, with them, at an ever increasing rate. I refuse to have my memories and heartfelt data held hostage by bullshit companies that can’t even support their own devices for more than 5 years.
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Have you heard of the Fairphone? Repairable, modular, and expandable. I have three generations of it at home and they’re all great.
Do iphones have SD cards? And yes, you drive a good point. Expandable storage is a must and super convenient
No and most android companies are also doing away with SD card slots. I have spectrum mobile and the only phones they offer with SD slots are low spec Samsungs.
Gotta love the companies’ sorry excuses for ditching things that are good. “It’s hindering design progress! We need to move away from these outdated standards! We can’t make them work with new hardware!” - On removable batteries and backs, audio jacks, physical keyboards and repairability.
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 like this take a lot. Noone should be kept from educating themselves due to their financial means or lack thereof, especially since a lot of e.g. research is financed through money from the state i.e. money that belongs to the public.
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
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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.
These are all really great points I tend to forget about. As a Linux user, it’s a main driver for me too.
Piracy is a service problem. They keep making it harder for people to watch things, and piracy gets easier every day.
Here is a quick hot take: If a company ever advertised a product in a public setting and the content is no longer available for purchase in a retail setting/manner anyone should be free to acquire it via non-retail means. Full stop.
Like Activision and Fuser, or Nintendo and all their old games.
cough cough 3ds cough cough
Scientific articles. You’re not robbing the authors of a single penny, because they don’t get a cut of the sales by the publishing house anyway and the journal reviewers are volunteers.
many, if not most, authors of such papers are more than happy to provide a copy if you were to ask them directly.
That indeed should be the preferred route when you’re not in a hurry and the contact info is up-to-date, but when you want to binge very quickly through a dozen articles as I used to do a lot that becomes impractical. Sometimes authors are unresponsive too, or deceased in the case of old articles.
Isn’t there an archive site for scientific papers that are freely distributed? I forgot what it was called, should bookmark it.
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As some else said, you really should just reach out to the authors. You would be surprised at how many will gladly send you it. Plus, you now have a direct line to the person to ask questions and are showing them that people want to read their work. Academics really appreciate that generally.
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.
If it comes from a large corporation, its probably ethical, since they are exploiting you (or others) in an unethical way.
If it’s an indie team (or one man team for that matter) then it’s probably unethical.
If I would buy it, I consider it unethical to download it to save the money. If I wouldn’t, my Utilitarianism side is kicking in and it’s actually MORE ethical to pirate than not. I also see no ethical problem with trialing something even if it’s indie.
I something is “I don’t like enough to buy, but would play if it was freeware”, that’s the grey area for me. My Utilitarianism side says pirating it is the correct decision, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t agree.
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.
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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.
