For ethical piracy, I would say definitely if the content is no longer available through official channels.
Other situations include:
- downloading a copy of equal quality to one you already have a physical copy of, but don’t have the equipment to rip it
- really old stuff that should be public domain, but isn’t because copyright law is broken
- downloading the cracked copy of a game because DRM in your purchased copy makes it unusable
I personally avoid DRM protected digital purchases unless I can strip it out. I prefer ripping movies myself, but I don’t have any issues buying DRM-free music. I also wouldn’t mind paying for a kindle book given that I can always import it into Calibre and end up with a DRM-free copy.
IRC really needs a discord styled client.
Something where if you drop an image or video onto it, it’ll automatically upload it to a private imgur link and share it.
If you want to share a larger file, maybe it uploads to wetransfer or something automatically.
Discord is basically IRC and more, but it’s also easier for non-techies to join a discord server, and you have a common identity across all servers.
The beauty of something open like IRC though is the fact that you can make and use any client you want, including an old C64 if you really wanted to… with additional adapters of course