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.
This is quite reasonable
OG Neon Genesis Evangelion is a good example of this
When I can’t buy it in a reasonable way lol
Simply wanting to save money is a valid enough reason to pirate. The only time you should have any second thoughts is if its a product you REALLY want to see more of or if its made by a smaller group that could really use that money.
Even then though, you can always help without spending money. Easiest way is to spread the word.
You enjoyed that game?
Tell others its a good game worth getting. In many cases, that might help more than buying the game and saying nothing about it.
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
If I have already purchased a copy of the physical media, I don’t think it is piracy to acquire a digital copy of the same media for personal use
No matter you purchase it or not, acquiring something for personal use is ethical imo
A car? you wouldn’t!
Stealing a car is not same as copying a car.
yea… your sentence was pretty generic, anyway it was a joke
YOU WOULDN’T COPY A CAR
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.
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There should be a way to pay only the workers when you buy something. In that case, you could pay them but only after pirating and making sure you enjoy it. Since there is nothing like that, I think you should pay only content from small creators. Big creators already have plenty, and paying for anything else just gives money to greedy executives who then lower the quality of the content to make more money. Of course, if you have the means and don’t pay anything, you are just making sure there will be less of that content made in the future. It isn’t scalable; if everybody pirated content without paying a single cent, there would be no content made except by hobbyists who don’t want to make a living out of it.
I know someone who’s pirated books and then donated directly to the author or signed up for their Patreon for a few months.
Oh yeah I was thinking more along the lines of video games or movies where there are too many people creating it. For books, etc you can definitely donate.
- 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.
- Work where the original author is dead. (The money is not going to the author).
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.
I’ve been listening to A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs and let me tell you, the music industry can fuck right off. Small indie label? I’ll probably buy it, but one of the major record labels? Set sail mateys.
That intrigued me, but the shit design of the website turned me off. I can’t even find the first episode. There’s no list, it’s blurbs of each and every episode that you have to scroll through and it only loads like 15 at a time then you have to go to the next page.
I’m not going to spend ten minutes scrolling and clicking just to find the first episode so I can try it.
Yeah, it’s never advised to listen to a podcast on its host site. 80% of them are terrible, just load the RSS up or find it on your preferred podcatcher. I say this just so you aren’t too hard on them about it. It’s very difficult to find a service that is good as both a website and as a podcast host and even “good ones” are not great UX.
It is very VERY simple to set up a functional website these days. And this is an abomination of UX. It would take hardly any effort at all to improve it with a simple chronological list of links.
I don’t think I’m being too hard on them at all.
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What kind of complicated UX do you think is necessary here? I literally said “a simple chronological list” is all they need to improve the experience enough to make me listen.
That should take ten minutes of coding. And it is applicable to every podcast ever.
This such an elaborate excuse for such a simple mistake that would be so easy to fix.
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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…
