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preach
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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I don't think piracy needs to be justified because different people have different reasons.
Sure you could argue that you're not actually stealing but creating/downloading a copy of something it already exist. I always found that anti piracy commercial "you wouldn't steal a car" ridiculous as that's not how piracy works.
For example, I do it because I don't agree with how segmented the video streaming industry has become in recent years with this many different services that force you to buy a bunch of subscriptions while continuosly pulling content. Unlike the music streaming industry where all the most popular content (the majority of it) can be found on pretty much every serivce. You could have Spotify or Apple Music, not much difference (if any at all) in content or quality.
When I was a teenager I did it because I couldn't afford to buy any sort of media content and options were limited. Pretty much everyone that owned an MP3 player was pirating music.
I've never understood the "piracy is morally acceptable" argument, personally. Best I can agree with is that piracy is not morally bad in some cases. Especially since me pirating something has no impact if I never would have paid for it in the first place. But it can often times be morally wrong (people who refuse to buy games from indie studios despite having the money to do so would usually fall into this category imo), and I can't imagine any scenario outside of the preservation of media where it's actually morally good to pirate things.
Like, I'm all for people not buying things that they don't support. And I feel no sympathy for large companies that make more money in a day than I'll make in a lifetime losing out on sales. But when did it become my right to play Hogwarts Legacy or watch a show without paying for it?
If piracy were legal (just the download for personal use, not redistribution), let's pretend for a second. I bet the majority of people wouldn't even be here asking these questions.
"If it's legal then why not". That's how many people think. However the morality aspects still stand and shouldn't be skwed by the legal aspect. When you made the example of pirating indie games, if piracy is legal, people would legally download those games from third party sources, even the people who wouldn't do it if piracy were illegal (like it is in reality).
At that point it'll become some sort of "if I can afford it I will support the studio and buy the game, if I can't I will get it for free because people won't think I'm stealing regardless". Kind of like a donate if you can sort of system some software developers have in place.
In reality nothing prevents the same people from thinking that way right now. It's just the stigma behind pirating even those indie games which is still skewed and dependant by the legal aspect of the situation.
The truth about digital products is that if someone doesn't want to pay for something they won't pay regardless and it doesn't rob anyone else from being able to purchase and downloade the same exact content the legit way. The mistake is seeing pirates as otherwise potential paying customers if piracy wasn't an option.
That is actually the case in some countries, like the Czech Republic. But, torrents aren't because you are also uploading