It is always morally acceptable to pirate things made by giant corporations
It is always morally acceptable to pirate things made by giant corporations
No, it's not like stealing a physical item from a store.
"stealing" a digital copy of a movie, tv show or a game is like if the item you're stealing from a store is infinitely copyable. Like the replicator from star trek...or that one episode of Sabrina the teenage witch with that box that can make a perfect copy of everything you put inside of it.
Of course I personally would never pirate anything, no matter how much streaming services increase their prices or how much they crack down on VPN usage to get around geo-restrictions, PIRACY IS BAD AND ONLY BAD PEOPLE DO IT.
I've never pirated anything in my whole life!
There are people who understand what I'm saying...but apparently most people don't get it.
Of course that means I still would never pirate anything. That would be horrible to "steal" a copy of a movie or a TV show
Piracy is great because it helps you not support corporation’s greed. They can’t profit off of you 😄
But of course, piracy is bad. That's why you shouldn't ever do it! Why do you think every corporation has to get government handouts from the tax payers? Because we keep stealing from them....I mean...You keep stealing from them. I would never do that and I certainly don't ever do that. I haven't paid for any movies in over 10 years, so obviously that means I just don't watch anything that costs money to see.
I use a privacy friendly VPN that allows P2P because I play games online and no other reason
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 one of them 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.
good comment
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.
Shoplifting from Walmart hurts my knees because the boss won't believe that our onhand numbers are wrong and makes me check high and low before I can nil pick it 🥲
This isn't an ethical argument against shoplifting btw, this is an ethical argument in favor of nuking Walmart
Stealing sustinence from societal cancer is practically an immune response.
If you shoplift from a small mom & pop store, you're actively hurting your community
Unless you're part of a riot, then it's okay.
Terrible bait. I'm disappointed.
They promised they would go out of business if I pirated their content, and that was a lie.
And of course, they did go out of business. That's why they need welfare from the government now.
You should never pirate anything, that would be bad.
There are people who understand what I'm saying, and then there's the idiots that downvoted me on some of the comments I posted
Theft from the wealthy is morally right, period.
Piracy is not theft.
How do you define "wealthy"?
Stealing from a millionaire that actually operates his or her own business is not the same thing as stealing from someone like Jeff Bezos who doesn't lift a fucking finger to contribute to the operation of the dozen or so businesses he owns.
You have to have nuance. Not everything is as simple as you made it sound.
Should you feel bad? No. Will there always be people who want you to feel bad? Yes.
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.
But if not a lot of sales are made, they won’t work with the same people again and will play more safely, and we’ll get less diversity
But maybe the people who were working in big studio movies would shift to independent film making with lower budgets and more diversity.
Obviously it's also not a good solution, but do we need the big studios to make yet another avengers or minions?
If "buying" is not owning, then "piracy" is not stealing.
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.
¿Por qué no los dos?
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" 😂
Even buying albums never netted the artist more than 20 or 30 percent unless they also owned the record label.
Buying their merch is the only real way to support an artist. They'll make way more out of it than any other way.
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.
So long as people are starving under the system while others have yachts, the system is unethical, and thus following its rules -- insofar as they perpetuate this inequity -- is unethical.
I mean...if the movie is good you should support it. Vote with your wallet.
If the movie is good, you should support it by making a donation to the strike fund of the unions that represent the artists that actually create the movies. You can support artists without supporting the amoral companies that produce these works.
I mean…if the movie is good you should support it
What is 'it'? The movie is a published work, it can't be financially supported. Who is being supported with the money you pay?
Vote with your wallet.
Unfortunately, consumer boycott (and conversely, support) usually isn't an effective strategy at this scale you're talking about. Unless you and all your friends are voting with a few thousand dollars, it's hardly going to make a dent in the numbers.
myth:
cablepiracy is wrong.fact:
cablecompanies are big, faceless corporations which makes it okay!If they keep raising my food subscription I'm gonna start pirating from supermarkets too
There is no "stealing from corporations"
It's as easy as that
Given that no one makes a fuss about it when corporations do the stealing, I think so.
Piracy is a response to various kinds of market failure, inequality.
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.
most evidence suggests that piracy goes down in response to easily accessible and affordable market conditions.
The assholes know this too. We're about due for another round of deshitifcation, just long enough to restore complacency.
Why do you have to take a moral stance?
Do it because it’s cool
No but i dont care
I've been pirating for years. I just don't want to pay for things
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.
I do not advocate for piracy. I advocate for archiving.
Exactly. And if the assholes make it illegal for librarians, well then yo ho ho.
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.
It is always morally acceptable to pirate things
made by giant corporationsFixed it for you.
I mean. I remember an article about an Amiga program that everyone used cracked, that only sold 1 copy. Sucks to be a small author in such a scenario.
Stealing a physical item from a giant corporate store is also always morally acceptable.
Having power neurologically suppresses empathy. Therefor resources controlled by the powerful will on average be used more harmfully. Taking resources from the powerful reduces total harm done.
You will use a loaf of bread less harmfully than Walmart will use the profit from it.
Stealing a physical item from a giant corporate store is also always morally acceptable.
not really, it makes the store lock everything up behind plexiglass creating more friction for paying customers too.
Of course, theft wouldn't happen nearly as much if no one was desperate the survive, but even then there'd still be entitled assholes that want even more.
not really, it makes the store lock everything up behind plexiglass creating more friction for paying customers too.
That's not really harm in the way that hunger or poverty or lobbying against workers protections is harm. That's more like a temporary inconvenience that doesn't stop anyone getting what they need, right?
And yet you can borrow anything from the local library for free and its considered totally fine and not pirating.
My moral is always on match with that of the company so in most cases everything is acceptable.
I decided on my moral beliefs on piracy back during the days of Kazaa and Limewire. Back then the RIAA was shaking down teenagers, threatening them with statutory liabilities of a quarter million dollars per song, simply because the law allowed it. They would threaten low-income families with lawsuits in the millions and get them to settle for a still-ridiculous settlement of few thousand dollars. Even the settlements were far in excess of the full retail cost of purchasing these songs.
I decided then that if the law allows this kind of thing, then copyright law as it exists now is fundamentally immoral. And immoral laws are not worthy of respect.
I mostly take a pragmatic approach to copyright. Whether I pay for something is a combination of the quality of the work, the reputation of the company selling it, the customer service provided by the legitimate product, the probability of getting caught for violating copyright law, etc. An indie publisher that treats their people well? I'll buy it. Mass market schlock made by criminally underpaid artists for rent-seeking megacorps? I'll pirate that all day, every day.
But morality literally plays no part in it. I learned long ago that copyright law exists outside of the realm of morality. The decision to buy or pirate is an entirely practical one; morality simply isn't a factor.
Pirates constantly trying to "morally" justify their action is by far the worst part of all pirate forums.
Its embarrassing how many pirates need the validation of strangers on the internet.
Isn't there a philosophy forum that these people could spam instead?
It’s good because otherwise we would have only shady characters and kids and that would be even more annoying to read. We have this illusion of doing something right, part of some greater philosophical stance and thanks to it you can read the comments without digging through slurs. The piracy forums are usually very hard on the eyes.
Meanwhile, your morality is just the bandwagon effect.
non sequitur much hahah
Piratescommenters constantly trying to "morally" justify theiractionopinion is by far the worst part of allpirateforums.Its embarrassing how many
piratescommenters need the validation of strangers on the internet.Isn't there a philosophy forum that these people could spam instead?
Ftfy
Lol so butthurt
For real
my view on it lies in two seperate buckets:
- if the thing being pirated is vastly overpriced for its function i don't see it as immoral
- if the thing being pirated is no longer available or was never made available for private ownership, ie only able to be streamed and only available on said service so long as the host streamer still has rights to do so, it isn't immoral.
and just to be clear, i don't see piracy as inherently evil or anticapitalistic. there have been several books and apps that i pirated that i liked and converted to an actual buyer to get more books in the series or get updates to the program.
PIRACY IS BAD AND ONLY BAD PEOPLE DO IT.
I’ve never pirated anything in my whole life!
Good thing you said that, I was about to send some agents to have a "nice chat" with you.
When you download music online for free and prevent the company from making a profit off of a creative work by the artist, that they prevented from making a profit & royalties, is that wrong? Doubtful. You can always send the artist money directly if you want to support them.
the DMCA doesn't protect the artists or any of the singers, it protects the shitty record labels and the money that the executives at those companies get
Rage bait. Yawn.
Personally I don't really care too much about whether it's moral or not. I pirate when I feel like it and don't when I don't feel like it. I also pay for some things that I pirated before and enjoyed as long as it isn't too expensive.
Private property is theft piracy in all forms is morally exceptable. DMCA actively harms progress, and this isn't some techbro take as I disagree with AI.
Big agree, also now I want to rewatch Sabrina the Teenage Witch lol
and steal other things as well
I mean, the replicator is making food out of SOMETHING. I'm guessing it's some kind of waste produce from the engine room. It needs matter to operate. It can't create ex-nihilo.
The replicator from Star Trek makes matter out of pure energy, not out of other matter. It can make almost anything out of matter, so long as it has the molecular pattern on file, and the ship has enough energy available to power the replicators. That energy comes primarily from energy storage dedicated to replicator production, but in emergencies where a massive amount of matter need fabricated, additional power can be provided by the warp core.
So they're using several hiroshima's or nagasaki's worth of nuclear bomb's energy to produce a cup of Earl Gray, hot? Seems like using garbage or human waste would save a lot of energy?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the power required to produce a small amount of matter?
While we're at it, is a transporter actually transporting me? Or is it technically really replicating me?
Because what I assumed was happening was they essentially had a transporter like device that would take some matter (say a big pile of human dung) transport it (i.e, convert it into the atoms/energy/whatever the transporter uses run it through a pattern buffer that's stored in the transporter for say, Earl Gray hot) and beam it into the Captain's quarters as Earl Gray hot instead of poop.
"stealing" a digital copy of a movie, tv show or a game is like if the item you're stealing from a store is infinitely copyable.
What if it's a physical Blu-ray? Those are infinitely copyable.
physical media is a physical finite item. digital media can be copied infinitely
the reason why physical media is getting harder and harder to find is because the copyright nazis can't control it. If they want to memory-hole a scene, they can't change the content of that blu-ray disc with the original version on it
Can you further expand on why you think it's bad? I'm generally curious.
PIRACY IS WRONG AND IMMORAL! YOU SHOULD NEVER PIRATE ANYTHING! FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS PIRATE THINGS!
Was this in the Bible or something? Why is it immoral?
Let me ask this. Imagine 1 person owned many farms of food. They sell their food and they own a huge house on top of the hill. There is more than enough food to feed every person in town. The only way for anyone to get food is to buy it from this one person since he owns all of the farm land and if anyone tries to farm their own food, he uses his money to push them around and makes them stop.
A family is struggling to find work. The father asks the farm owner if he could get some food to eat. The farm owner obviously says no. Pay or no food, he says. The family ends up starving to death.
Would it be wrong for the family to steal food in this case so they can survive? Or is that immoral? Is the farm owner immoral for not helping them? He has plenty of money to last him 100 lifetimes, his belly is full, but he keeps eating. Who is wrong here?
It literally depends on your morals… it’s a question only you can answer.
The only person stealing is the one who circumvents the DRM and shares it. It’s not stealing to see or hear something.
