Got another option:

Copos had a chance to stop piracy. Netflix demonstrated that. A full all-you-can-watch buffet for €10 a month with everything you need available caused piracy to all but disappear.

Then they got greedy.

Piracy is just as much of a natural result of asshole pricing and market fragmentation as unionization and strikes are a natural result of employers being assholes and underpaying.

I'm in between 3 and 4: both copyright and copying are amoral (they are just tools), but copyright as it exists today is obsolete, arguably to the point that it actively hinders the betterment of humankind.

The mental gymnastics people need to do to feel better about getting something for free against the wishes of the creator is so wild.

Just own it.

If I didn’t get into so many niche genres of music through piracy in the 00s, I’d not have a vinyl collection worth the same as a lower end luxury car today.

I wish piracy was stealing, because stealing from the rich is good

There is no "stealing" when we talk about digital goods, as copying files is virtually free of cost (just a littld bit of electricity).

So if the file gets duplicated and you get the copy you stole nothing.

Piracy is a service issue, plain and simple. It would be all but dead if media companies gave their customers what they actually wanted, but line must go up at the expense of literally everything else.

Digital “ownership” is temporary. Piracy is as permanent as the end-user wants it to be. I prefer the latter.

The copyright extensions in the 20th century are theft of the commons. Those corporations are taking from public domain and not paying back. They're thieves, and why should we care if large scale thieves become victims of theft?

Bring copyright back to the original 17 years plus a 17 year extension (max 34) in the US. Then we'll talk.

Here:

I miss the golden era of Netflix when they had everything. Now that all the streaming platforms balkanized... Fuck em.

I used to feel kind of bad.

Now? Fuck no. Corpo ai slop bots sucked up everything that's ever been done on the internet and are using it to their own gain. and guess what, creators didnt see a single fucking cent.

So, fuck it. Take it all. Do not pay corpo. Donate to artists you like.

Word of mouth does some heavy lifting here I reckon

Culture is our most important invention as a species. So important, in fact, that we’ve evolved to make it essential to our individual health and collective capacity to function. To deny someone access to interact with culture on the basis of their lack of wealth is cruel and anti-human.

Likewise, developing something like an LLM, which spews thoughtless pollution into the only shared infosphere we have, and displaces individuals’ ability to connect to each other to develop culture… that is an existential threat to the human race and should be opposed vehemently.

Honestly? At two, but I'll keep pirating everything, I can live with it.

I agree with three.

I know this sounds like a very stretched analogy at first glance, but it's like a baker trying to prosecute people for smelling their products from outside. But if you think about it, these media companies are literally sending their information out into the air and getting upset when people just listen to that information. Like a smell, internet data is just out there in the air and it's just unreasonable to prosecute people for either smelling or downloading stuff that's permeating the atmosphere. Maybe tape recording radio songs is a tighter analogy but it's the same idea.

Piracy is good, actually.

Come back when games become 1) strictly drm-free no launchers no nothing 2) more affordable worldwide 3) not subject to artificial obsolescence, then we can talk.

Copyright is useful for when you're protecting intellectual property from being stolen by big corporations as a smaller business or private citizen. It's actually the original intent for why it exists in the first place. The problem is that it's rarely used that way and is instead used by big corporations as a battering ram to extract as much wealth as possible from the ones below them.

Copyright laws are the perfect example on how our economic system is flawed. How can you pretend to get money on the abstract concept of someone copying some bites on their computer.

Practicing piracy shows the way for a better system.

Each time I torrent I murmur "This is the way".

piracy is stealing and stealing is good

tbh these days I'm only grabbing stuff I couldn't really get any other way (ie. no service offers said media here). if a creator gets upset because I consumed their media without the capitalist part, well they shouldn't worry; it'll trickle down

Support creators through word of mouth (telling other people to pirate it)? There's no one approach, but basically pay if I'm willing to, pirate if I'm not, and sometimes pirate even if I've paid because the experience is better.

Copyright is not valid, it is an unjustified form of tyrannical control. Piracy is pushing back against something that isn't acceptable or justified by refusing to play by their rules.

Anyone who voluntarily supports or apologizes for copyright is neoliberal dirt to me.

Companies want to squeeze us for maximum value while providing minimal effort. So they get what they give; they should be competing with "free" but would much rather fruitlessly put up roadblocks that only hurt paying customers, leading more people to piracy. Its delicious and theres nothing they can do to stop it.