People try to boil these things down to incredibly simplistic rules in an effort to justify what they’ve already decided they’re going to do.

I am pro piracy, as I imagine virtually everyone on this community is. But I also think people get way too reductionist because that is easier than engaging with the nuances of what it means to “steal” or “pirate” or when we are or aren’t hurting a creator.

I think the pros vastly outweigh the cons, the “victims” are few and far between due to it being so rare/situational as to make it ok to functionally treat it like there are none, and I also think all the people arguing they are “doing media preservation” who don’t even know what a proper 3-2-1 backup is are full of shit lol. I also think people need to accept the fact they just want free shit sometimes and trying to dress up their motivations/sense of entitlement to free media with high minded arguments about sticking it to corporations or whatever is disingenuous - just own the decision!

I use my server because it is convenient and because I don’t want my kids being visually assaulted and manipulated every time they turn on a tv. I used to watch my son visibly become panicked when all the tiles of a streaming service would pop up in front of him, it was just so overwhelming. I went a solid seven or eight years without the high seas because there was a time when streaming services were reasonably priced, convenient, and not dominated by ads. Now that that is no longer the case, I have gone back to my server. Simple as that.

I don’t mind paying for a service, I don’t even mind the occasional advertisement in my life. But what we have right now is absolutely ridiculous and easily justifies so many reasons for pirating.

All of this is to say you’re not gonna find people here who disagree with your decision to pirate. But you’re also not going to find some airtight philosophical argument that works 100% of the time. You have to consider the ethical implications of your actions in your day-to-day life, there are no simple rules to avoid that.

Theft from the wealthy is morally right, period.

Should you feel bad? No. Will there always be people who want you to feel bad? Yes.

myth: ~~cable~~ piracy is wrong.

fact: ~~cable~~ companies are big, faceless corporations which makes it okay!

Honestly if it's a big setup like Spotify or Netflix or etc, "royalties" don't mean shit to the production team / artists / whoever. Unless they're Mariah Carey levels of replayed every year everywhere to the tune of sitting on millions in checks yearly, they aren't going to get shit. Personally I'd rather support them in other ways such as buying merchandise, going to live shows etc but that's just me.

Remember though this is in minecraft, don't pirate irl because that is very bad and you will personally prevent executives at warn-a-brother from buying another learjet. Remember: "pirating is bad and you should feel bad" 😂

They promised they would go out of business if I pirated their content, and that was a lie.

I'm not going to say piracy is right or wrong.

What I will say is if everyone had access to that replicator, and everyone replicated everything in the store and left, the store would close down, and the products would stop being made.

Likewise, piracy is only viable because not everyone does it. If literally every person pirated the games or movies of any given company, that company would no longer be profitable and would close down.

Piracy is getting something for free because other people pay for it.

If "buying" is not owning, then "piracy" is not stealing.

No, it’s not like stealing a physical item from a store.

I'd argue stealing physical items from massive corporations is also morally acceptable. If you shoplift from a small mom & pop store, you're actively hurting your community, however, if you shoplift from Wal-Mart, you're actively hurting an entity which is hurting your community, therefore helping your community.

It is always morally acceptable?

Morality is, literally, subjective. There is no universal answer to that question.

I personally consider anything being sold by a distributor to be fair game, no questions asked. If I pay for mainstream music, films or games, most of the time, zero of that money goes to the workers who created those artworks. It just makes rich owners richer, because they legally own rights. I would go as far as to say it's morally wrong to pay for those things, it's not neutral, it's supporting a cycle of abuse at your own expense. So that's my perspective on your 'giant corporations' question.

Digital copying isn't stealing, unfortunately, because those giant companies deserve to have their hoard of capital expropriated.

[src]

There is no "stealing from corporations"

It's as easy as that

If they keep raising my food subscription I'm gonna start pirating from supermarkets too

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If buying isn't owning, then pirating can't be stealing.

perhaps the only ethical consumption under capitalism is that which denies capitalists their profit.

Piracy is a response to various kinds of market failure, inequality.

Why do you have to take a moral stance?

Do it because it’s cool

Given that no one makes a fuss about it when corporations do the stealing, I think so.

I would like to suggest an alternate perspective, that digital media be beholden to protocols not platforms.

In other words lets focus on the drivers of competition...most evidence suggests that piracy goes down in response to easily accessible and affordable market conditions.

And yet you can borrow anything from the local library for free and its considered totally fine and not pirating.

It is always morally acceptable to pirate things ~~made by giant corporations~~

Fixed it for you.

No but i dont care

I've been pirating for years. I just don't want to pay for things

It is always morally preferrable to pirate things made by giant corporations

Fixed It For You.

Regardless of what is regarded as a crime against the state, it is wrongdoing against the public to support corporations that seek to extract more wealth than value they produce.

Intellectual property rights were a (very) temporary monopoly to give creators an incentive to create in order to build a robust public domain.

Copyrights, patents and trademarks no longer do that. So charging for content is now rent-seeking

Corporations, their share holders and the plutocrats who own them pull wealth out of the economy by hoarding it. The whenever you buy from anything but directly from the creator, you are reducing the wealth in the economy since your money goes straight into Scrooge McDuck's swimming coffers.

And our public domain only contains stuff from a century ago. Steamboat Willie became public domain just a year or two ago. Copyright holders and courts even assert all content should be owned and licensed, including SCOTUS. (Though the US Supreme Court is a traitor to the United States and its constitution.)

Pirate everything. Steal from companies for they have already stolen from you.

The number of examples of media becoming unreachable to paying consumers keeps growing.

Warner Brothers (Max) is the greatest example of this. Years of content from Cartoon Network just disappeared, leaving the consumer no legal avenue to enjoy some of their favorite shows.

I do not advocate for piracy. I advocate for archiving.