Basically: should i care about ethics?
You can be the judge of that.
First of all: Decide a code of ethics for yourself.
(Piracy is equivalent to going to a book store and taking pictures of the books as you flip through pages. Ask yourself: Is this ethical?)
And if that’s okay for you, then:
Second: If action is unlawful, weigh in on potential consequences and then ask yourself if you want to risk the consequences.
Piracy is not murder, cops would probably be too lazy to investigate.
That’s a very ambiguous and loaded question.
No. Take what you like and burn the rest.
Fr tho basically what /u/AnimalsDream said
fr fr, I’d shoplift too if it weren’t that easy to get caught
For the authorities: Definitely not the second.
When society does I think its valid to. So right now - everything if you want. If we get back to wealth disparity levels from 50 years along with decent rights and working democracy. Then maybe tighten the ship. Certainly at the least money and corps need to be out of our democracy.
Depends which d&d alignment you’re shooting for but I think empathy is necessary for ethics and moral reasoning. Reciprocity is a good moderator to prevent being a door mat, treat people how they treat you.
Technically you rented that what you think you bought and when the licence expires the game,movie, etc. will be deleted from your library, best recent example is The Crew by Ubisoft and there was that whole debacle with Sony and their Discovery Channel licence where people lost a ton of documentaries, was later restored… mostly, but it showed how fragile this digital ecosystem is and why people turn to piracy eventually since you basically don’t own anything you shouldn’t feel guilty about it.
Freely pirate everything without guilt. If you use torrent then seed how much you can. It will help your fellow human beings.
BUT if/when you have money to spare invest them into creators/art that bring you something. It seems antithetical because they taught us real art should be free from capitalism’s shackles yadda yadda, but art and artists needs money to flourish. Find indie artists and wacky projects and fund them.
As I’ve made more money in life, I pirate the same amount of stuff, basically (besides games). But I also spend a shitload of money on the stuff I like. Instead of paying Netflix or Spotify, I buy DVD/BD box sets, collector’s editions, vinyl, bandcamp my favorite albums, and way too many concert tickets. Avoid the middleman and support the creator.
besides games
Yeah, same here. I haven’t pirated games since I was a broke university student. There’s simply no need to when digital storefronts make it easy to get the games I want in the format I want. Some even offer DRM-free offline backups, or in the case of Steam the games stay in my library even if the publisher decides to remove the title from the Steam storefront.
TV and movies are completely different from this, and so much worse. So many different streaming services, some with intrusive ads, and every one wanting their own monthly subscription. I shouldn’t need to search “where is X streaming.” Ever. Titles disappear from these services all the time. Even if you “buy” a digital movie or show, the rights holder can yank it back from you because… reasons?
TV and movie distribution is such a garbage deal for consumers that open source developers have created a complete software stack (the servarr stack) to automate the process of finding and downloading media. Once you get it set up, it’s about million times more convenient than corporate streaming services.
TL;DR: Getting digital games is easy and feels like a fair deal for the average consumer. Getting movies and TV shows is a pain in the ass and feels like an absolute shit deal for the consumer. I’ll continue to pirate movies and TV shows because as Gabe Newell famously argued, piracy indicates a service problem.
it depends.
I’m old enough to remember when PC demos were a thing and essentially if a demo didn’t exist, the game likely wouldn’t sell well. Hell there used to be entire websites that ONLY had demos for download of upcoming releases. So now game companies don’t do demos anymore, I pirate the games as a demo. If it’s something I think I’ll play through and come back to in a month or two or even a year then I’ll buy it. If it’s an indie dev I’ll buy it because I want to support them.
If it’s something I’m no likely to finish or will finish and never pick it up again, high seas.
Music is different. I just soulseek everything. I’m not paying some crappy streaming service to then provide pennies to the artist. I can support artists I like via other means. Merch sales, going to concerts, etc that’s where they get their money.
TV and movies? fuck em. I’m not paying for that crap when 9 times out of 10 something that I like is just going to get cancelled after 2 seasons. They don’t need my money.
Books? nope, always pay for those.
Ethics are very important to me so I say always support worker owned companies/ small indie teams, always support books, but never support evil mega corps like Amazon, Disney, EA, Activision, etc.
Also, any company that has donated to the Republican neo-fascist party? Fuck them. If you wouldn’t give money to Putin then you should never ever give money to anyone who will give that money to Putin’s puppets (conservatives)
You do you.
I try to stick to Indy games and pay for them. I have d+ nf Hulu atv and cable with all channels that aren’t premium. I keep copies of any series/movies I like. If they lose the license or drop anything I’m not losing it. VCR rules, I paid to play it, I can record it/torrent to get it.
Stuff that’s not on the air anymore, of I can’t stream it paying that much, also not gonna feel bad about torrenting.
Qwest network had a commercial in 99.
Guy pulls up to a dirty motel in the middle of nowhere
“What kind of rooms you got?” “King size.”
“You got room service?” “Donuts and coffee.”
“Got entertainment?”
“All rooms have every movie ever made in any language, anytime, day or night.”
By now we should have that for a couple hundred a month. Definitely for less than I’m paying for all those services. Wanna put a limit on that? Everything over 6 months old is on it. But there’s no reason outside of massive greed to get to the state of fracture where at with service provision.
I have apple Music and Spotify, I’m also keeping copies of music.
Books are a mix, I pay for new audiobooks from authors I like, I buy hardback for newish stuff I really like,
Old stuff, classics, textbooks, stuff with the rights going to an estate I pirate.
More or less, I want to pay a reasonable price that I can bear to make sure my authors in studios actors keep making new stuff. If the fat cats eat it all, I’m not giving them more.
Do what you want. No need to overthink things!
IMO support indie creators when you can. Aside from that, ahoy!
I like to think about ethics. I still pirate some random stuff here and there, but one thing I like to do is make sure I’m getting some money to the creators of what I’m enjoying, skipping the middle man as much as can be.
this is mostly only relevant with music, but if I can buy an album or song directly from the artist, that’s awesome. it not, i try to five what service benefits them most.
Pirate everything, and share as much as you’re able.
