Morality of Piracy - Yet another quality FuckedUp thread

[Never Scored]

On a practical level, I think copyright law is archaic and needs to be reworked in the age of the internet. I watch very little new TV, and I'm not paying for 20- 30 - 40 sometimes 50 year old shit in the case of Star Trek TOS. If you make something new I want to see I'll consider buying it. I paid to go see Joker because I thought it looked pretty good. I think a 20-year copyright then it enters public domain is probably the sweet spot for movies and TV. When everyone who made an original TV show is dead or out of the industry and the production company has changed hands ten times, you're just paying a company for existing and sitting on IPs which is asinine.

On a philosophical level, life is just a competition for resources. If I can get my kids a copy of Cars 2 without sending some of the finite resources I will earn over my lifetime to Disney instead using that $10 to pay down debt or put it into their RESP I'm going to do it, just like a coyote is going to get into the chicken coop if he can get away with it.

People who moralfag over downloading a TV show are retarded cucks. People who say it's the same as stealing a physical object are retarded cucks. You're telling me if I record a movie when it was broadcast for free OTA to watch later it's A-OK, but if I get that same movie over Usenet I'm morally bankrupt? That's the stupidest thing I ever heard.

 

[Aidan]

I don't even try to buy old stuff because the people getting that money are just leeches in my eyes at that point. Especially in the case of something like Star Trek or Twilight Zone.
I also pirate every gold game I've ever played because most of the time the people who made it no longer have anything to do with it and the people who still support it still maintain it just enough to make it purchaseable. Pirated shit often works better in the case of older software because it's effectively curated by enthusiasts and I appreciate that.

I personally store most things I pirate for the possibility of it going down so I can become the curator if need be.

 

[ConfederateIrishman]

 

[neverendingmidi]

I’m more likely to buy a physical copy and pirate the digital for books. I know in 30+ years that $7 paperback/$25 hardback, excluding disaster which destroys them, will still be readable with no weird edits or sudden disappearances from my library.

I have no such guarantee with ebooks. They even change the cover art, not to mention small little edits they can do whenever they please. Likely any and all current ebook formats will be incompatible with future hardware, leading to the same VHS-DVD-Bluray-1080-4k “nothing is backwards compatible buy it again suckers” we’ve gotten to enjoy with videos. Plus there’s already been cases where you buy an ebook on Amazon and they just decide to delete it without refunds. Not to mention the price gouging, where they charge $20 for the ebook version when it’s published as a paperback at $7, to the point there were class action lawsuits against publishers.

 

[Merried Senior Comic]

I do what I want, fuck you.

 

[Mortal Wombat]

Given the quality of modern Gaymes, It would be criminal to make anyone pay for the majority of shit getting shoveled out; Granted I am bias towards 6th gen games and earlier. I will concede regarding piracy of indie Dev titles being bad, unless they turn out to be a massive faggot (in personality/Behavior), lol.

Almost forgot to mention, it is infinitely easier to pirate games from companies that can't help but virtue signal (Especially if they are not even American, then they really need to fuck off with things like backing BLM); Shit may as well be tantamount to foreigners financially backing domestic terrorist.

 

[Ponchik]

me like free things and me see no point in coughing up some of the money i do not currently possess in the disturbingly common situation where the original creator(s) of said thing do not see a single fucking cent

if i have easy access to a hypothetical digital product that a. was created by someone that i like and feel like financially supporting, b. is being sold in a storefront where said person will receive at least some of my money, and c. if i have the money to spend on such a thing, then i will do so, but even then there's almost always a catch

if you want to debate the shittiness of physical theft (anything from mae borowski or sweetbeans99 stealing a pen from a locally owned art store to Fight The System, to a band of desert raiders looting and pillaging after a nuclear apocalypse) or how unimaginably fucked up us copyright law is, then fine, but cyberspace is its own beast and i legitimately cannot imagine why anyone would try to boast and moralfag over a 14 year old kid torrenting naruto.

in our lovably corrupt dystopian oligarchy where software piracy barely cuts into the elite's unimaginably gigantic bottom line and most poorly preserved older media is only easily accessible through public and private trackers, on top of so many other gotchas and caveats, i genuinely cannot envision fervent anti-pirates as anything other than literal clowns and glowy cia grunts. there are better things to tardrage on the internet over

 

[Teadrinkr]

I don't care. Free shit is free shit. I feel maginally worse about smaller creators and will buy their shit if I try it and like it tho.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

i dont have to justify my reasons for piracy fuck you i'll do what i want

 

[PaleTay]

I do think the idea that you own anything you post on the internet is stupid, technically I own this post. There's been a push against curated content but without it a lot of stuff is just lost to the ether and didn't have anything worth monetizing in it either.

Most of the people who complain about piracy or copyright infringement, don't create a product that's worth the money.

 

[A Pox]

I have no such guarantee with ebooks. They even change the cover art, not to mention small little edits they can do whenever they please. Likely any and all current ebook formats will be incompatible with future hardware, leading to the same VHS-DVD-Bluray-1080-4k “nothing is backwards compatible buy it again suckers” we’ve gotten to enjoy with videos. Plus there’s already been cases where you buy an ebook on Amazon and they just decide to delete it without refunds. Not to mention the price gouging, where they charge $20 for the ebook version when it’s published as a paperback at $7, to the point there were class action lawsuits against publishers.

This is why you break the DRM with Calibre, steal books from Overdrive and load them up on your Android eink ereader you bought off of aliexpress.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

"why buy it when you can get it for free?"

thats has been my philosophy since i was a kid and it wont change now. will still not prate indie video games out of respect.

 

[Crass_and_Champ]

Owning a parrot, carousing with wenches in Tortuga, drinking rum, plundering helpless landlubbers? Screw morality, piracy is awesome!
...oh, it's about computer stuff. Never mind.

 

[Pissmaster]

Plus there’s already been cases where you buy an ebook on Amazon and they just decide to delete it without refunds.

That's a big problem with apps, too, but fucking nobody's making a stink about it.

 

[Kiyoshi's Wristbrace]

After years of arguments, I have realized that I simply don't care about the morality of it. I have better things to care about. I will pirate what I like because fuck you, that's why.

In fact, I have gotten to the point where I am so sick of people whining about not getting money for their infinitely-reproducible creation that I now pirate out of sheer spite.

It's hard for me because, dammit, I like physical copies, to now buy my games and movies physically, when I was always a pirate on the open seas when I was younger.

I mean, I still do it simply when I can't by other means, but yeah.... I've grown to actually like buying now that I can afford it. (For the cheapest price though; I still can't half Jew out)

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

I pirate what I can because I'm poor.
I wish I could download a car...

A downloadable car

 

[Bumblino]

Plenty of early access cunnie indie devs leaving games unfinished so I say it merits the pirate act. Honestly the gaming industry is pretty shady and if you're in a situation where 60 bucks is a twice in a year occurrence to your budget then you gotta be very careful with what you buy and what you don't buy. I used to hold no qualms buying stuff (I even pre-ordered like a mong) but with all the current practices I say go ahead and knock yourself out, pirate everything and if you ever find something that's good enough to support then give them your money. They have done nothing to merit the trust of buying blindly their products, and it wouldn't be the first time when you buy a potato and it gets patched into a carrot.

 

[JamusActimus]

Piracy allows me to try a game without having to pay and when I made up my mind, I can decide if I want to pay it or not.
If a game is disappointing, I just don't pay it.
If I liked a game a lot I show support and even buy 2 copies to help out (I am an indie game nerd).
Less money for shitty cash grabs, more of great daring passion projects.


And sometimes the prices and quality of some games is just straight up insulting.

Octopath traveler on steam being a pc port one year later and being priced like 80 dollars.
You know why? Because they spend a lot of money buying the best denuvo software
It took one year to crack the game.

 

[round robin]

Piracy is not moral or immoral, it is amoral. Literally nothing is lost if you download a file off the internet. Comparing it to physical theft is fucking retarded.

 

[Van Darkholme]

I'm cheap and most forms of entertainment aren't worth the prices they ask for them.

I still buy actual books because I don't like reading them on a display.