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.
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.
When the money goes to people who did not create the media. Support creators, not exploiters.
That’s almost everything.
Correct.
That’s why I pirate almost everything
You are saying that you would prefer to get paid per sale instead of per hour?
I did both and prefer my money per hour. No matter if the sales are low or high. The fluctuation of payment is an insecurity that i don’t want.
Many people already said stuff I agree with, but I’d also include low-income families being “justified” in pirating stuff, be it for work, study or entertainment (as entertainment is a basic right imo)
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.
If items in the physical world could be stolen like it is for digital materials then it would mean the world has created a duplicator. Which would be absolutely awesome and that society has really advanced in technology. So good news all around.
But, sadly we cannot steal stuff in the real world like we can for digital because there is no duplication machine. There’s no copier so real world theft is going to result in one person losing possession of the item they had.
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
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The only (ethical) reason not to pirate games is indie. But I still buy on Steam/Gog cause its convenient / I don’t risk malware.
Yeah, when the game won’t let you run it in a vm that is sketchy af.
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
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.
Pirating copies of games I have already paid for a “license” for is ethical IMO. I want to be able to have offline-capable backups that can’t be taken away from me.
Ive purchased monkey island on dos, iOS and GOG over the years. I refuse to buy it again. Sure, if they remaster, that’s something else.
I think something most folks can agree on is abandonware. If there is literally no way to purchase something and you want to buy it then I don’t think people should be angry that you “stole” it.
Great attitude and great user icon 😁
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.
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.
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.
Anything I’m legally not allowed to buy. So, old videogames (not just Nintnedo) or content of streaming services that show fuck you to my country.
I’ve always said this. The law needs to change to make products fall into public domain much faster if it’s not legally available.
