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.
- When the content is no longer available for retail purchase (i.e old games or shows that have been pulled entirely [see Infinity Train])
- You have a physical copy, but want a digital version.
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Any piracy related to scientific papers I consider ethical. That kind of knowledge should NEVER be hidden behind a paywall
Abandonware is a very clear cut case of ethical piracy, too. Without it, a lot of digital stuff “wouldn’t exist” anymore. Mainly games, but also loads of productivity programs, doubly so for discontinued platforms, like Amiga computers.
OG Neon Genesis Evangelion is a good example of this
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
- Work where the original author is dead. (The money is not going to the author).
If it is not available to buy anywhere for me and the only way is piracy, I feel like piracy is justified. No one loses anything on this scenario.
IMO it’s better to not pirate small indie content (mostly games in my case).
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When the money goes to people who did not create the media. Support creators, not exploiters.
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i have downloaded tens of thousands of dollars of audio recording software. i always told myself that, if i were to ever make money from my efforts and usage thereof, i would be happy to pay the author.
i never made any money. but i hope the right people got paid by those that did.
- Content that you cannot acquire by any “lawful” means.
- Content that you already own a copy of (Yes, this includes “only” having a “license” to it; you own what you own).
- Content that is outrageously priced, and/or from large companies where the people who worked on the product will receive nothing from sold copies. (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, etc)
Content that isn’t legally available in your geographic location
Most TV shows in foreign countries, and a billion movies are like this. Since they refuse to take my money, I can’t feel guilty for getting it for free.
Suppose some dude on the street hands out books for free and gives you a copy. Does it make you unethical for accepting one? Would it be different online?
Suppose your government charges a “blank media tax” on storage devices to “compensate” creators with the assumption you already “illegally” download their content, didn’t you already pay for it anyway?
What if you’re downloading stuff as a hobby but you’d never pay for it if that would be the only other option, did anyone lose anything of value?
Physical media and digital media are different beasts. When he hands you that book, he no longer has it. I would also assume he didn’t steal that physical copy. Someone got paid initially for the physical media, which the person is now deprived of by giving it to you. It’s not quite “apples to oranges” but it’s definitely not a parallel situation.
This is assuming - like digital media - some one took the time to spend his own free time to make copies of a physical medium.
There is no way of knowing whether the person has copyright or stole the first copy.
Or compare school books: the whole class buys one copy together, makes copies for every person to share costs. Likewise, a whole family can chip in to buy a car - you wouldn’t force them to buy a car each.
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Whether someone spends their personal resources to copy a medium digitally or physically doesn’t really matter to the copyright holder or author. They won’t get paid either way
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The two examples in your later paragraph are wholly different cases: the second is a completely different use-case and the first one is actually less morally unambiguous than you think.
to answer the opposite of your question i would say it’s unethical to steal things from indie developers and creators; the same way its more wrong to steal from a local corner store than it is to steal from Walmart
Even though I agree with you, I’d like to enphasize on piracy NOT being theft. Your analogy is great but I prefer to say it again just in case.
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Just hypothetically, someone walks into your house, picks up a table and leaves with it. What do you do?
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Any instance in which I’m purchasing through a publisher or producer. Wherein I have no reasonable belief that my money is actually going to the people who developed the work.
Do just to dig into this a little, I’m assuming that’s the Apple itunes, Spotify, Amazon etc levels and probably ticketek, we’re it plausible (now there’s a fantasy!!).
Where do you sit with regards to the better players such as bandcamp or gog.com?
It really depends on the particular developer right? Like, CDPR for example, whose parent company owns gog.com, pays its employees based on contractual obligation and initial sales. Beyond that, however, all money gets fed into the publisher and into the pockets of executives. Executives don’t make games. Executives do next to nothing and make nothing for it. I personally consider it patently unethical to support parasites like that.
I completely agree to the pyramid scheme of managers.
I’d like to believe they funded the development while it was happening, but I suspect that’s rather naiive…
