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.
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.
Third category also contains works so old that only the people hoarding rights to said works profit from giving out licenses to them bc they never worked on them.
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.
IMO it's better to not pirate small indie content (mostly games in my case).
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)
Culture should be available to everyone, I agree.
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.
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.
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.
Archival of information and software that is no longer available, such as NES games.
Any and all book piracy is ethical. It's just like a library. If libraries are ethical libgen is ethical.
-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
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.
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 pirate
if 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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
Media not available for purchase in any format. Final Space for example, it got pulled from Netflix and there's no physical copies at all. The only way to watch it is to pirate it.
Any streaming content that gets pulled from a service and isn't available elsewhere.
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
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.
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
Piracy is a service problem. They keep making it harder for people to watch things, and piracy gets easier every day.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All of it. By pirating you support other pirates and oppose copyright, which should be abolished. The more people disregard copyright, the closer we are to getting rid of it.
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:
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.
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.
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