Hi guys, first of all, I fully support Piracy. But Im writing a piece on my blog about what I might considere as “Ethical Piracy” and I would like to hear your concepts of it.
Basically my line is if I have the capacity of paying for something and is more convinient that pirating, ill pay. It happens to me a lot when I wanna watch a movie with my boyfriend. I like original audio, but he likes dub, so instead of scrapping through the web looking for a dub, I just select the language on the streaming platform. That is convinient to me.
In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something? And where is 100 justified and everybody should sail the seas instead?
I would like to hear you.
Most people here arguing that the “ethical side” of piracy is when the media is not available elsewhere. Or if it’s available but at an abusive price/requirements. To which I agree.
But I also believe that culture shouldn’t be only for those who can afford it. Books, movies, videogames, tvshows, education, science is what makes a society culturally rich. This is exactly why we have libraries. It’s a public service. I’ve seen teens become avid consumers and incredibly knowledgeable in certain subjects, to the point that they are making a living because of it. Because the internet allow them to explore and grow. Without a pricetag nor preassure on their families.
Heck! Even I pirated almost everything in my teen years. Nowdays I pay for a lot of media. Don’t get me wrong, we should be supporting artists. Always. If possible.
If it’s not possible, go ahead just pirate it. Piracy it’s just the best digital library in history. With a heavy euphemism attached: “piracy” (the act of attacking ships in order to sack them, kill people, rape people). It has a bad connotation on purpose. Don’t fall for it.
Edit: punctuation
I can’t really trust that a game is worth the price tag anymore. So I treat piracy as a extended demo. If I feel the fun to price ratio is solid I’ll buy the game.
I think the system of Steam letting you try out a game for 2 hours/2 weeks is pretty fair. You can return it without further reasons.
Two hours isn’t enough for most games, at least for me. I couldn’t count how many games I’ve plunderer and never touched again after a few hours.
I get you, there are some games where you can barely pass through the tutorial in 2 hours, other games are super complex let’s say Paradox strategy games. On the other hand, 2 hours is much more than nothing. And it’s hard to balance, think of some indie games where 2 hrs is like 25% of the game, it can be abused easily.
The system is especially useful for shitty games that were hyped but get released as unstable alpha or old games that just won’t run on your system for whatever reason. I know, a lot of publishers are pure evil with their release and DLC policies and I can understand people develop anger towards the whole industry. But all in all I think it’s a nice-have.
IMHO whenever you actively need something and the owner either doesn’t make it available or the price is prohibitively expensive, it’s justified. That especially includes papers, books and other tuition material that’s been paywalled or made expensive as hell without any actual reason, even more so if the author gets next to no compensation.
Downloading series and movies that aren’t being streamed anymore, by all means.
When it comes to current movies, it depends on what’s available. Unfortunately most streaming platforms don’t have Chinese subtitles, and my wife often struggles to fully follow the original audio and the English subs often disappear too quickly.
For software, my personal stance is that if you use something every once in a while, pirate away. If you use it regularly and/or generate income from it, then pay your dues.
Any streaming content that gets pulled from a service and isn’t available elsewhere.
I believe it to be ethical, when publishers pay the actual creator’s penny’s for their work, not because they can’t afford it but because of greed.
