Asklemmy

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.

Not at all. This is not a moral judgement about anyone else. Just answering the question.

I guess I've reached a point in my life where I can easily afford to buy something if I want it, especially in the price range of a video game or book. I used to do all that stuff, not to get back at the man, but because it was the only option that was accessible. Eventually the hassle factor of piracy kept going up while just paying for it became an accessible choice.

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.

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 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

Gabe newell once said “piracy is not a problem of price its a problem of service" after people kept pirating valve game titles. So he made sales more frequent and games cheaper. Piracy is usually frowned upon but it also teaches businesses what the customers don't like. AE like with adobe and there photo shop suite aswell as the newer unity game engine dispute. As a consumer I have no problem paying for a service unless it is inherently difficult to cancel as discussed by Louis rossman in mulitible videos aswell as company's nickle and diming the consumer.

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.

Convenience and lack of ads

I pirate what I can't get by reasonable means within my boundaries.

I pay for three streaming providers constantly. If the one series I want to watch is on a fourth provider, they can fuck off and I'll just download it. Same if the offering gets moved out of a provider I use (because their license expired or whatever).

Games I typically don't pirate, since Steam is just too damn convenient. Epic Exclusives though... well, if possible I just avoid them.

Most books can be bought via Kindle store so that's also convenient and I just do that.

Music is basically close to equal on all streaming providers so I am mostly good with that. If something isn't I either buy them on beatport or just rip them off youtube (so pirate).

I basically live GabeN's theory: piracy is a service problem. Give to me without having to bend over and I gladly pay. Try to fuck with me and I shrug my shoulders and go elsewhere.

I pirate content that is not in print within my region. Fan subs of Japanese TV shows, emulated games for discontinued consoles, things like that.

Media in English language are either inaccessible or overpriced while translations vary in quality. I'm also a little fan of how individuals in seed-peer networks keep content alive just for the sake of it. I don't see how piracy hurts artists as much as it's said to.

Games, no. Honestly, my limit at this stage of life is time and energy to play them. As a kid, I'd have boxes of pirate floppies and CDs.

I have Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime subscriptions. All three have taken a quality nosedive. Amazon shoves ads in, Disney gets little added apart from it's own releases, and Netflix struggles to get anything before the others.

I've recently started using the streaming pirate sites just because there's more choice. Not just for new movies, but things like Children of the Corn, or Timecop. Older stuff that really should be on one of those three services, but isn't.

It's become a service problem. Everyone wants to run their own streaming service, nobody really has the content to justify it, it's now even more fragmented than cable and satellite were.

They need to take a hint from the music industry. Every service there has just about everything.

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

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 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 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.

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.

If unemployed: Pirate EVERYTHING.

If employed: Pirate EVERYTHING (excluding: indie games)

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Yes, I pirate. But I don't justify it. 🤷‍♂️

Intellectual property isn't real, it's a self-contradicting concept. Thus, it is impossible to steal it, just like it's impossible to poach a unicorn. If you had the magical ability to point to an object and clone it, that wouldn't be stealing either.

I only pirate things from large corpos. I don't pirate stuff from indie developers or small artists. I usually buy some merch from them too so they get some extra money, I try hard to support the little folks.

There are rare times where I feel that big time developers deserve my money, like No Man's Sky. Indie devs that made it huge, screwed their fans when the game dropped initially, but have redeemed themselves fully by being honest, transparent, and providing incredible value since their flop to their customers.

I bought their game even though I don't really play it, just to show my support of a game Dev studio that truly cares about their players and product.

TL;DR support the small-time folks, screw the corpos.

Not much thought goes into it. I've never bought a copy of windows in twenty years of using it because they don't need the money. I buy small pieces of specialist software from small and independent developers. I've got a streaming video service but if it doesn't have the thing I want to watch I find it online.

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'll pirate anything I have owned but for various reasons I now can only license so all my old games I bought I'll have ROMs of as well as albums whose labels no longer exist or are not in circulation such as obscure Punk tracks.

I do not pirate. I occasionally like to go out to sea, but I feel like spending long stretches of time out there would suck. I'd get sunburnt, I would eat like shit, my ship would probably not have decent internet access... like, there are so many cons, and I probably would make less money doing that than I am as an attorney. Not a great career path.

I do download movies I want to watch if I can't find them streaming. But I don't do anything that I'd call "piracy."

I don’t pirate anymore, it’s more convenient for me to purchase in most cases, but I fully support the right of anyone to pirate anything, and in the few cases where I can’t find what I’m looking for I have no qualms with trying to pirate it. P2P file sharing is honestly the coolest part about the entire internet. Social Media, Web 2.0, it’s all mediocre compared to the absolute wonder that is p2p file sharing. Lemmy and other decentralized non-crypto web 3 projects are the first time I’ve been excited about the internet since I discovered p2p 20 or so years ago, and it’s because it feels like an evolution in peer to peer community. I hope one day we don’t have to rely on centralized servers too because p2p finds a way to have paper light websites run distributed across everyone’s devices.

Tv and movies: streaming services have buggy and badly developed apps, random connection issues and sometimes shitty quality because of browsers DRM madness (looking at you Prime Video). Regular televion has too much ads. If I want to see something comfortably sometimes it's just better to browse your folder of .mp4, in full quality and with no interruptions.

Games: either 2000s era games you literally cannot buy anymore or games that keep releasing broken and unfinished remasters and enhanced versions and that pump up so many DLCs you would end up broke to have a somewhat complete experience. Or games you can buy but with the original price and that are more maintaned by the community than the developers (looking at you 25€+DLC codMW2 full of hackers with iw4x servers working perfctly)