No, it’s not like stealing a physical item from a store.
“stealing” a digital copy of a movie, tv show or a game is like if the item you’re stealing from a store is infinitely copyable. Like the replicator from star trek…or that one episode of Sabrina the teenage witch with that box that can make a perfect copy of everything you put inside of it.
Of course I personally would never pirate anything, no matter how much streaming services increase their prices or how much they crack down on VPN usage to get around geo-restrictions, PIRACY IS BAD AND ONLY BAD PEOPLE DO IT.
I’ve never pirated anything in my whole life!
There are people who understand what I’m saying…but apparently most people don’t get it.
Of course that means I still would never pirate anything. That would be horrible to “steal” a copy of a movie or a TV show
Piracy is great because it helps you not support corporation’s greed. They can’t profit off of you 😄
People try to boil these things down to incredibly simplistic rules in an effort to justify what they’ve already decided they’re going to do.
I am pro piracy, as I imagine virtually everyone on this community is. But I also think people get way too reductionist because that is easier than engaging with the nuances of what it means to “steal” or “pirate” or when we are or aren’t hurting a creator.
I think the pros vastly outweigh the cons, the “victims” are few and far between due to it being so rare/situational as to make it ok to functionally treat it like there are none, and I also think all the people arguing they are “doing media preservation” who don’t even know what a proper 3-2-1 backup is are full of shit lol. I also think people need to accept the fact they just want free shit sometimes and trying to dress up their motivations/sense of entitlement to free media with high minded arguments about sticking it to corporations or whatever is disingenuous - just own the decision!
I use my server because it is convenient and because I don’t want my kids being visually assaulted and manipulated every time they turn on a tv. I used to watch one of them visibly become panicked when all the tiles of a streaming service would pop up in front of him, it was just so overwhelming. I went a solid seven or eight years without the high seas because there was a time when streaming services were reasonably priced, convenient, and not dominated by ads. Now that that is no longer the case, I have gone back to my server. Simple as that.
I don’t mind paying for a service, I don’t even mind the occasional advertisement in my life. But what we have right now is absolutely ridiculous and easily justifies so many reasons for pirating.
All of this is to say you’re not gonna find people here who disagree with your decision to pirate. But you’re also not going to find some airtight philosophical argument that works 100% of the time. You have to consider the ethical implications of your actions in your day-to-day life, there are no simple rules to avoid that.
Honestly if it’s a big setup like Spotify or Netflix or etc, “royalties” don’t mean shit to the production team / artists / whoever. Unless they’re Mariah Carey levels of replayed every year everywhere to the tune of sitting on millions in checks yearly, they aren’t going to get shit. Personally I’d rather support them in other ways such as buying merchandise, going to live shows etc but that’s just me.
Remember though this is in minecraft, don’t pirate irl because that is very bad and you will personally prevent executives at warn-a-brother from buying another learjet. Remember: “pirating is bad and you should feel bad” 😂
Even buying albums never netted the artist more than 20 or 30 percent unless they also owned the record label.
Buying their merch is the only real way to support an artist. They’ll make way more out of it than any other way.
I’m not going to say piracy is right or wrong.
What I will say is if everyone had access to that replicator, and everyone replicated everything in the store and left, the store would close down, and the products would stop being made.
Likewise, piracy is only viable because not everyone does it. If literally every person pirated the games or movies of any given company, that company would no longer be profitable and would close down.
Piracy is getting something for free because other people pay for it.
Except there are people who buy something AND want to have offline backup copies of it.
Do you think that is the majority of people pirating? Hell do you even think it’s 10%?
No but I think it’s me.
Hey just a quick note that I didn’t mean to say “how do you even think” I was using voice text I meant to say “hell…”
The other seems far more antagonistic lol
I didn’t even notice you typed hell, I read it as how. lol
Ha glad to hear it
Pirates constantly trying to “morally” justify their action is by far the worst part of all pirate forums.
Its embarrassing how many pirates need the validation of strangers on the internet.
Isn’t there a philosophy forum that these people could spam instead?
It’s good because otherwise we would have only shady characters and kids and that would be even more annoying to read. We have this illusion of doing something right, part of some greater philosophical stance and thanks to it you can read the comments without digging through slurs. The piracy forums are usually very hard on the eyes.
I mean people could just stick to actually discussing piracy instead of how people feel about piracy.
The community is a massive echo chamber. Its not like there is a vocal minority seriously arguing piracy is immoral or unethical. So its just copy pasta of a million other posts.
As I said I am glad they do that instead of some other things that often fly in the space where we don’t care about the morals at all. Those places are tiresome and draining much more than some random philosophy post. Good, if they think about those things that means they are human. Someone who no longer cares about anything what they do and its effects and consequences is truly lost and more like an animal than a human.
Me: this place is an echo chamber.
You: let me repeat the exact same thing I just said.
I am not super good at text communication with strangers online in non native language, I am afraid we will not understand each other properly this time
It is always morally acceptable?
Morality is, literally, subjective. There is no universal answer to that question.
I personally consider anything being sold by a distributor to be fair game, no questions asked. If I pay for mainstream music, films or games, most of the time, zero of that money goes to the workers who created those artworks. It just makes rich owners richer, because they legally own rights. I would go as far as to say it’s morally wrong to pay for those things, it’s not neutral, it’s supporting a cycle of abuse at your own expense. So that’s my perspective on your ‘giant corporations’ question.
Digital copying isn’t stealing, unfortunately, because those giant companies deserve to have their hoard of capital expropriated.
But if not a lot of sales are made, they won’t work with the same people again and will play more safely, and we’ll get less diversity
perhaps the only ethical consumption under capitalism is that which denies capitalists their profit.
So long as people are starving under the system while others have yachts, the system is unethical, and thus following its rules – insofar as they perpetuate this inequity – is unethical.
I mean…if the movie is good you should support it. Vote with your wallet.
If the movie is good, you should support it by making a donation to the strike fund of the unions that represent the artists that actually create the movies. You can support artists without supporting the amoral companies that produce these works.
