Asklemmy

1. Yeah, sometimes.

2. I justify it if it's me getting free stuff from rich and greedy game dev companies, publishers, streaming services, large record companies, etcetera. They were never going to see my money anyways, so it's not like they are losing any money (despite the fact they claim that they lose money from people who were never gonna buy their products in the first place).

3. Again, they were never gonna see my money, so why should I care so long as I don't get caught? Hell, even if piracy somehow became impossible, they'd still never see my money. With music, it's more complicated since I usually just download songs off of YT to listen to on my phone or desktop.

Though, I will say that I will never buy into music streaming since I cannot say with certainty that whoever I'm listening to will get even a percent of a percent of a penny off me listening, while the service gets pretty much 100% of the profit and leaves the artists in the dust.

I think copyrights are a heresy, a cancer for humanity. So I don't care about pirating.

But I don't pirate much these days because it became more difficult with torrent and I can easily pay for video games and support the studios I like.

It's super interesting to me that piracy is generally considered immoral, but going to the library is considered pious. Obviously there's some differences with these things... But in general I find it incredibly frustrating and depressing that we have developed the tools to copy and share information pretty much instantaneously across the globe and that we have decided that this is a bad thing instead of a miracle. Obviously I still want people to be able to make things and make a living, but I wish we could find a better way to do this while providing access to more people. We can have kick-ass libraries with modern technology, but it's stunted for legal and capitalistic reasons... I'm not saying I have all of the answers, but I wish more people could at least recognize that as a shame.

I download ebooks that I already own the physical copy of. I pay for 4 (yes 4) streaming services. if a movie i want isnt on any of them, high seas. a few years ago things were better and i almost never had that situation come up, now it seems its every other movie either isnt on anything or on some niche service

If I can access ALL content from a provider for a reasonable monthly price then I'd happily do it.

But no, we can't have nice things. I'm watching a show and halfway through the show is removed. Now what? Well, you can now watch it from this other provider, just pay extra!

Fuck that.

I pirate music to archive it. I use youtube revanced to listen to music but the songs just disappear from my playlists with no way to know what dissapeared, spotify is nice but I still like to keep my music locally.

I pirate movies to also keep them, I don't have a DVD player so paying just for digital copies where ownership is questionable seems not worth it. Better to pirate and have it forever then to buy it and lose is it due to changes in policy or regional blocking. Streaming services are just not worth it, small roster of movies so you have to use different services for each movie. So simply not even worth the hassle

I pirate most book, finding books I want in English is not possible and the best alternative is amazon which I'd rather not feed money.

For games I have basic rules:

1. Indie games are mostly offlimits, I'd rather support the studio (I might pirate indie games to see if I like them, since most don't have demos but I would buy them if I liked them)

2. Pirating bigger games I look at the developer and publisher. I pirate games made or published by companies I don't like, for examle: EA (generally disliked for squeezing every ounce of profit out of games, too many micro-transactions) or blizzard/activion(Sexual harassment allegations, corporate greed). No need to support such companies just take what they make while they're here.

Publishers can also ruin games, look at how deep silver betrayed metro fans and signed and exclusive contract with epic last minute.

As lord Gaben did say, piracy is just an issue of convenience but I would like to also add the factor of security of keeping them.

Any case where I do pirate my philosophy is “Man I tried as hard as I could to give you guys money for this but you didn’t make any way for me to do so”

My opinion on piracy is extremely dependent on what is being pirated.

Pirating a game published by EA, made by a studio that hasn't existed for twenty years? Go right ahead, the people that made the game won't see any money either way and EA fucked them over anyway.

Pirating a new game from an indie studio that is asking a fair price? Yeah that isn't cool imo.

So let's say you want to buy a painting for your house. You've got a few options. You can go online, look at various items and choose to buy it. You could go to a gallery, look around and decide to buy whichever one suits you.

But crucially, you get to what you're buying before you commit to the ownership. You may not own the rights to the paintings (its probably a print), but you know what you're getting. Why would I pay for a movie if I don't know whether or not it's worth it.

Netflix, Hulu, amazon, etc. Are like galleries. They have an entrance fee and that's ok. But what most of them don't have anyway for me to actually buy a copy. Netflix movies require you to pay month over month to maintain access. So you are forever required to go to their gallery.

Like your friend, I'll pirate to watch a movie and if I like it, then I'll buy it. I try to buy physical discs, but they are becoming more and more rare. I pirate because I want ownership. Subscription models work because they are more convenient than physical purchases. But that convience is getting smaller every day.

There is a few reasons why I want physical copies. License deals expire and thus the content may disappear from the service it's on. My internet may be out. Yes, I can download, but that requires inconvenient forethought and you're always limited in the number of downloads and quality of those downloads. Having a large collection of movies in my home means I'm never without option.

Basically, I pirate because I'm not going to buy something that I don't know if I want it, and because I'm a doomsday prepper who has no other option 90% of the time.

In this post they asked what one considers ethical piracy, and this is how I commented:

Calling it ethical is a higher bar than calling it ethically acceptable. Ethically acceptable is a higher bar than practically acceptable.

If you are factually incapable of getting it otherwise, it is ethically acceptable. If, at the same time, you need the material, it is ethical.

Without the need and unavailability or unavailability, I would always be careful about calling it ethical - I would not call it ethical.

In those cases it is at least subjective and a weighing of various morals, costs, need or desire, and practicality. (By pirating you are a beneficiary without supporting the thing - which one should at least be aware of and weigh.)

I often don't consume what I don't deem a reasonable price for a reasonable offering. I occasionally (or maybe rarely?) buy music on Bandcamp because I can download and own it in high quality. For movies and series, there is no such thing, which is a requirement for me to pay. So I don't buy or rent individual movies and series at all. (Bundled streaming can be a reasonable offering. It's not about individual products then.) Overall I buy videogames for reasonable prices, to a higher degree than I play (or even can play) them. When it's a good or great price for something that interests me, looks good, and I want to support, I buy it. Software has many free and open source software available - so I don't see a need to anything in that regard.

I pirate cause I want free stuff. No need for me to try to justify it.

I pirate old stuff and overpriced stuff permanently. I refuse to pay an ebay seller $200 for an old GameCube game and I refuse to pay $700 dollars for all the Sims 4 dlc. You may also catch me pirating movies and shows as I strongly dislike subscription models.

I never pirated much, then I pretty much stopped when online services became usable and cost effective.

Now I really feel the urge to go back to pirating, services have become extremely fragmented and difficult to use. There are less shows/movies available than ever. And the cost is sky rocketing.

I pay for all the cable channels, netflix, hulu, d+. I had HBO Max before they started doing whatever it is they're doing. At this monthly cost, I should have access to everything that existed 6 months ago and older. The fact that they can't sort out all greed and multi-million dollar media exec paychecks is none of my concern. If I were to keep copies of everything that I like, I find it REALLY hard to feel bad about that.

I used to Pirate everything when I didn't have any money, once I started making some money I pirated the things that I didn't want to afford quite yet, these days I only pirate on occasion for testing things out before I buy them

Yes I pirate everything.

I don't really understand the justification question. What is there to be justified? I'm not hurting or harming anyone.

Supporting content creators by paying for access is just idiocy.

It's a bit like disabling your ad blocker to pay content creators by viewing ads - happy to let idiots do that on my behalf.

No, I don't, because I can afford stuff and pirating in this situation would be just pure stealing which I believe is morally wrong. Yes, being a billionaire is usually morally wrong too but I don't think it just cancels out.

Justifying piracy by saying capitalism is bad sounds like a hypocrisy to me. You want to use something that exists thanks to capitalism without participating in it. You want to eat your cake and have it too.

Now, the case is different for people that can't afford stuff, especially when they genuinely need it (but I don't draw the line at entertainment, after all people NEED entertainment too). In that case, please pirate away. Everyone deserves a decent life. In general, I largely agree with OP's friend.

I pirate things because crime rules. I stole a tiny pumpkin from a corn maze recently, that was cut into a THIN BLUE LINE ALL LIVES MATTER shape. Fuckem.

There is no such thing as piracy (in this context). No such thing as "intellectual property". There are only copyright, trademark, and patent. And I violate them like a Thanksgiving Turkey.

It's capitalism, the free market at work.

Personally, I've been boycotting plenty of things during the years because of the crusade against piracy. If Big Media is spending so much effort into ensuring that people that can't pay don't have access to their works, then fine, I'll boycott those works just to prove their actual point - that what they want is to earn more money, not to have their artwork locked in a box due to lack of buyers.

my philosophy is that it's 1s and 0s and it's harming absolutely nothing.

companies push malignant restrictions all the time, geolocking being one of the grossest, drm, the no-screenshot thing, price increases, random rights bullshit, etc. pirating is simply better. better than buying the disc, even! [special features aside], you just get the file, no fuss, no case to put somewhere, no annoying menus, etc. unlike vinyl, having the disc doesn't really enhance the experience as much, i find.

My rule of thumb is this: if I perceive that the IP I want, was created by an individual who must have spent their blood sweat and tears creating it, I'll pay for it to encourage that work. If, on the other hand I'm being made to pay extra for something just because there's a queue of corporations that just want to profit for providing something made by others, I pirate it as a form of protest. As an example, I'll gladly pay for an ebook being distributed through an author's website even if I'm not sure I'm going to like it. But I will not pay for a cable subscription just to be able to watch sports programs. Another example: I've paid money for mobile games when I see a lot of effort being spent in making the gameplay engaging, but I will delete or try to cheat or pirate games that I perceive as pay-to-win.

i mainly pirate games because it usually works way better. like i own gta v and with pirated copy the game starts as soon as you click on the exe. with steam version, it takes like 1-2 minutes to connect to servers and shit. also like some aaa games are really expensive for my income even after regional pricing.

i have never bought a subscription for a streaming service or paid for any movie/tv show/music. why do it when you can pirate it and dont have to look for which streaming service its on and pay for it.

as for 'you claim to hate capitalism, yet you want to take advantage of its treats' is such a dog shit argument. Do I see capitalists in the C Suite making video games or movies? No its the fucking actors, vfx graphics, programmers etc. did anti-monarchists during feudal times not eat food because it was produced under a feudal system? the argument can be flipped just as easily, if you love capitalism so much why do purchase games made by workers?

Well, my friend, he's kinda poor he can't afford some books and some streaming services, so he pirates.

Good on your friend. Poor or not, you should too.

Do you pirate?

Yes

And do you justify pirating? i.e., what is your piracy philosophy?

Justify it ? you seem to suggest it's wrong or something

I pirate when getting a copy of something is otherwise too inconvenient and/or ridiculously overpriced and I REALLY need to watch it. I used to pirate basically everything. Nowadays very often I will wait for and then rent a movie on iTunes because that is the most convenient way and the price is fine. My FOMO is not as strong anymore. I also rarely watch any series that is not on a streaming service.

My friend only pirates 80€ games to try them out before buying.

As a fledgeling author, I could only be so lucky and actually get my poor excuse for work pirated: free publicity and a sure way to reach another potential reader ~~market~~ public.

I still buy physical media every now and then as gifts or to collect, but generally it just doesn't make sense to pay for data that can be freely and easily copied. I need that money for things that aren't freely and easily copied.

Specifically for books I pirate because I get a better product this way. I prefer reading on my phone and downloading an epub means I can open it in any app I want, add chapters and share it with whoever I want. If I could easily pay for a book and get the same experience without any drm or online account bullshit I would probably do it.

Physical books are also ok but buying anything not in my language means possibly waiting forever for it to arrive and paying more for transit costs. I may still do it if I really want to support the author but I'd rather have a way to pay them directly tbh.

I pirate ebooks, especially textbooks, when I can't get something through my library. I don't watch enough television to bother pirating shows and movies. With video games, the circumstances that would make pirating a game worth it rarely come up for me; pirating games means losing out on updates and bug fixes, multiplayer, Steam cloud saves, and more. For new games, not getting bug fixes and updates makes my experience worse, and older games usually go on sale for cheap enough that I might as well buy it

I pirate because i want to own something. For example, if i buy a physical book or cd, its mine forever. i can make digital copies for myself to archive or enjoy on different devices, this is legal. if i pay the same price for a digital copy, i am buying the temporary privilege of enjoying the media in the format that they specify for thw time period that the seller has a license to distribute, before i understood this, i spent good money on digital goods that just went away, furthermore, i had bought books and tapes and cds that were destroyed by time, rain, a flood, etc. i feel i am just exercising my rights and getting what i am entitled to. and fuck the big companies that shit on the actual producers to make money copying bits and bytes.

If unemployed: Pirate EVERYTHING.

If employed: Pirate EVERYTHING (excluding: indie games)

If I have legally purchased content or an application, and that content or application is no longer available for some reason, then I feel justified pirating.

A game that requires an online connection but the company took down the servers and won't release the code for example.

There is no legitimate way for me to use the thing I already bought.

Other than that, I'm just too lazy to do it any more.

When I was young and poor, there was various software I did pirate, but now days there is nothing I need that the company won't pay for.

I never pirate games from indies or smaller publishers, but from the likes of EA, Activision, Take Two, etc? Since they're always going to use, abuse and discard their workforce so they can keep giving the C suite their multi-million dollar annual bonuses, I will pirate their shit without an ounce of remorse.

With music, I never pirate simply because it's more convenient to stream the music at a reasonable price. If there's an artist or album I really love, I will buy it and/or some merch to support the artist directly.

I just pirate everything because it's easier.

I believe all information should be free. Be it of cultural or academic importance no one deserves to be left out because capitalism screwed them. If the system cannot adequately compensate the people that make they should change the system or stop making the thing. I make my pirating decisions with that in mind. The vast majority of movies and tv I would rather not exist than exist only for the rich so I pirate it.