Here’s a table I adapted from Louis Rossman’s video on the levels of piracy, grey areas and his morals and ethics on it. (spreadsheet file)
I tried to condense each rank and make it less about a specific type of media like CD audio or DVD video, along with a table of simplified characteristics of each situation. Of course more levels can be added and there are many situations not covered. This hierarchy is simply the way Louis ordered it from more to less justifiable; he respects people can think about it differently and I do too. He suggests that he doesn’t really care about people that pirate without giving a shit about creators, and that he only has a problem with people who aren’t honest with themselves about their motivations.
Setting legality aside, what ‘level of piracy’ is morally or ethically acceptable to you?
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what ‘level of piracy’ is morally or ethically acceptable to you?
If I could, I would download a car.
Cars are bad for the environment, please download bicycles instead.
Good point … also I don’t have a driver’s licence anyway.
You wouldn’t download a driver’s licence.
That depends. Is it going to get me arrested the first time they pull me over?
You wouldn’t download a “get out of jail free card”.
You son of a bitch, I’m in
You wouldn’t download a Rick and Morty meme
…an electric car?
Setting legality aside, what ‘level of piracy’ is morally or ethically acceptable to you?
All levels. I think that human beings are morally and ethically obligated to do anything that causes a corporation to lose or miss out on profits. They exploit and disrespect our power as consumers by changing EULA after we purchase products, I see no reason not to rob these mfs blind.
If it’s an indie game I’ll pay for it after pirating, if I enjoy the game.
I hate opening this way, but, as an “artist,” DL everything. Art deserves to be pushed away from profit motives and i hate hearing, “but your fave musicians wont get ur money!” Theyre not getting money off of record sales anyway, they hardly ever did. Ill put out what i make for free download. If ever ppl seem crazy enough to wanna donate, ill look into opening up those avenues, but its not like thats happening anytime soon. Way i see it, its not like i could stop if i wanted to. Why ask for money and limit how many ppl i can reach?
@Pan_Ziemniak @JimboDHimbo not an artist, but i 100% agree art should never be for profit. Ethics and piracy aside, profit is the reason why every big IP ends up being dog shit eventually. When passion is over, move on to the next cool and fun project. I’d rather spend all my savings (if i had any of course) on some random indie dev or music producer on their patreons than throwing a single penny to [insert big tech/media company]'s endless need of money. They don’t deserve it both morally and artistically. Hell if art wasn’t for profit, we wouldn’t be discussing piracy, but “who should I invest to”
I’d say for myself it’s a tit for tat situation.
If the company I hypothetically pirate from is a total prick, mistreats their employees, donates a part of the money they earned from my purchase to lobby to my government to reduce the rights of minorities, I won’t give a single fuck. I may even just never touch their product out of spite.
Are they inoffensive and fairly neutral? I likely won’t pirate if I have the means to buy it.
Are they basically ConcernedApe? I will follow them to the ends of the earth showering them with praise and riches. Never pirate and would actively shame those who do
Are they basically ConcernedApe?
Literally the main person in mind when I was writing that last sentence 😂😂 he can have my money.
Edit: I pirated stardew initially, then bought three copies over the years on different platforms, either for myself or as gifts for friends.
this. no need for a complex system to justify it to myself either.
only caveat is that its not really ‘robbing’
I was raised on pirated copies of PS1 games and taught about torrents/P2P by my mother. I’ve been immersed in piracy since I was a child, It’s just normal to me. Never needed to make myself feel bad about it. if anything, once I got older and learned more about how the modern world works, I started to feel righteous about my actions.
Where’s the “Rent is 60% of my monthly wage, so I can’t afford a 120 euro game.”
piracy yes Simplified it a bit
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
I pirate be because I don’t have money, that’s why.
In a sense, not being able to afford it is itself a region lock on it.
If you assume they’re from countries with weaker economies. Meanwhile, I live in the US, and I survive under the poverty line. Nothing about the US is ‘region-locked’, I’m just treated like shit for being disabled. It’s a lack of income first and foremost.
Thank goodness LM can’t see this because that would be the cue for a corporate bootlicker to say “yOu dOnt HavE to PlAY thEm tO sURviVe”
Which of course makes no sense - if you don’t have the money to buy it either way, pirating has no effect on revenue.
I pirate because I want free shit
Couldn’t have phrased it better. Do people really care about ethics when pirating content ?
Rank 16: Pirating because I grew up with low access and got used to it.
Now I have enough money to buy things, but it’s no fun. I like the challenge of finding something for free, it feels like cheating capitalism.
I pirate because I dont earn my wage in dollaridoos, and I believe information and culture is a human right that shoudln’t have any impact on me being able to pay my bills.
If I can, and want, I’ll pay. Other than that big corporations that boasts about record sales every year could cry some more about me downloading an .iso for all I care.
Here’s a rough summary of my philosophy:
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Intellectual property as it is typically defined and legally defended is a self-contradictory concept.
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IP in an ideal world would protect creators from fraud, (others falsely claiming credit for their work.) And would ensure fair payment distribution to the artist and workers directly involved, (not allow giant multi-billion dollar corpos to control and profit off massive swaths of IP).
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You always have the right to do with your copy of media, whatever you want. Remix, trade, critique, promote, copy, etc.
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It is always preferable to pirate vs funding corpos.
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Pay for products that respect you, don’t pay to be abused or to help abuse others.
I always try to pay the artist and those actually involved directly.
As for the sound techs, producers, etc that work on a project, most of them are already receiving a salary/wages for their time. So I disagree with Louis that pirating media generally hurts those folks.
The artist usually has some conditional debt where the record label requires them to cover some portion of the production costs from sales before they start actually making money. This is frequently a very exploitative arrangement that favors the studio and label. (See points 4 & 5)
There is no perfect solution. If the artist is small enough, direct sales of merch and media is the best option. This is what I try to do as much as possible.
I think another point is that art is fundamentally not a commodity, or at least, shouldn’t be treated as such. Capitalism corrupts everything it touches, art is no exception. Artists who are truly passionate about their craft will create no matter what, as evidenced by the far larger portion of “starving” artists in the world vs wealthy ones.
I hate that music, film, paintings, and such are now treated as portfolios of investments by billion dollar corpos and rich fat cats who don’t give a shit about the purpose of art and just want to get rich.
Pay for products and services that respect you. Don’t pay to support abusive and exploitative industries if you can avoid it. Support genuine artists. Everything will always be fuzzy, make your best call. Copying is not theft. Corpos are scum.
Yeah, so it seems like some of the situations in the table would be acceptable to you but not all.
- You always have the right to do with your copy of media, whatever you want. Remix, trade, critique, promote, copy, etc
Not if the way they give you the media restricts you from exercising those rights.
Warner Brothers is a perfect example about an art industry giant that doesn’t give a flying fuck about art and artists. They’ll throw years of artists’ work in the trash if it makes them more money than not doing that.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Not if the way they give you the media restricts you from exercising those rights.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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I pirate because I’m broke, and when I’m not broke I pirate because I want to test before buying, or because fuck this company in particular (like with Disco Elysium or anything EA)
If you’ve got the means to pay for media and the company or person that produced it isn’t awful, you should probably purchase it. But I don’t particularly care either way, do what you want
I wish to live in a society in which this question is a moot point. Creators should have the freedom to create without having to worry about the goodwill of their audience, or worse, marketing strategies. Fans should have the freedom to access art without having to worry about the well-being of the creator, or worse, suffering guilt. Anything that is not aimed at creating and maintaining this state of being is inhumane.
Where’s I pirate coz it’s way more convenient?
Ah, Gaben’s “piracy is a service issue.”
I think that a system where we should abstain from things that are basically free to reproduce (i.e. things you can pirate) is dumb. There are many movies that I probably wouldn’t pay money to but that I’ve pirated. The companies that own the rights to the movie don’t lose any sale they would have otherwise made but I get whatever enjoyment I get from watching the movie at least, so it’s a net win.
When I pay may bills at the end of the month I also put some money towards paying for things that I’ve pirated that I like, usually with a focus on smaller creators. It doesn’t really feel meaningful to pay for a marvel movie for example. It’s not really a perfect system but neither is artificially limiting the access to digital media.
Warner Bros. is an example of a movie company that gives zero fucks to any of the artists producing their movies, not sure what good supporting them will do.
Copying is not theft. It does not remove the original.
If I send you a PDF copy of a book that I own, that I scanned into a PDF myself; that is not theft, that is ownership. So long as I make you pay nothing for that copy; and I do mean $0.00, I cannot charge you for any costs incurred while making that copy; I am not breaking the law until a judge summons me before them and tells me I am abusing my rights and are summarily breaking the law in another manner as is judge’s right to do.
I own the physical book and I am allowed to enjoy it in any manner I see fit…including loaning the book to you physically or digitally in perpetuity.
The law supports and recognizes fair use and ownership. It is up to us not to abuse that ownership. I do not recommend making 1,000,000,000 copies of a book and giving them away just because you are mad at the author. That’s an asshole move and likely to get the metaphorical judge I described involved in the matter.
Similarly; it is an asshole move for a content creator to sell you a copy of a book or some other media and then go about trying to tell you how you may or may not enjoy the material you just purchased. They can recommend ways to enjoy it; but they do not have an enforceable right, even through contracts, to tell you that you cannot exercise your ownership rights in a certain way…unless you overdo it to asshole levels and a judge and/or the police get involved.
I refuse to pay for pirated content out of principal. It’s bad enough that I’m infringing copyright (and boy do I!) but commercialized piracy rubs me the wrong way. I even prefer Bittorrent over Usenet and FOSS media software over commercial software. Yarr!
