Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I know this sounds like a very stretched analogy at first glance, but it's like a baker trying to prosecute people for smelling their products from outside. But if you think about it, these media companies are literally sending their information out into the air and getting upset when people just listen to that information. Like a smell, internet data is just out there in the air and it's just unreasonable to prosecute people for either smelling or downloading stuff that's permeating the atmosphere. Maybe tape recording radio songs is a tighter analogy but it's the same idea.

Piracy is good, actually.

Come back when games become 1) strictly drm-free no launchers no nothing 2) more affordable worldwide 3) not subject to artificial obsolescence, then we can talk.

Copyright laws are the perfect example on how our economic system is flawed. How can you pretend to get money on the abstract concept of someone copying some bites on their computer.

Practicing piracy shows the way for a better system.

Each time I torrent I murmur "This is the way".

Support creators through word of mouth (telling other people to pirate it)? There's no one approach, but basically pay if I'm willing to, pirate if I'm not, and sometimes pirate even if I've paid because the experience is better.

Mostly, because DRM sucks, especially on wine. But the other reasons are also good.

Somewhere in between the bottom two.

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I am at step 3, but if you only start piracy when it is already gone, well then it is already gone..

So we have to archive earlier to avoid lost media as well as start seeding earlier to ensure redundancy to avoid lost media

In my opinion, it is very important to give our history of art to the future of humanity. Proactive piracy is the only way to achieve this in times of sudden complete delistings and removal of access to already bought games.

Private property is theft.

Got another option:

Copos had a chance to stop piracy. Netflix demonstrated that. A full all-you-can-watch buffet for €10 a month with everything you need available caused piracy to all but disappear.

Then they got greedy.

Piracy is just as much of a natural result of asshole pricing and market fragmentation as unionization and strikes are a natural result of employers being assholes and underpaying.

I wish piracy was stealing, because stealing from the rich is good

I'm in between 3 and 4: both copyright and copying are amoral (they are just tools), but copyright as it exists today is obsolete, arguably to the point that it actively hinders the betterment of humankind.

If I didn’t get into so many niche genres of music through piracy in the 00s, I’d not have a vinyl collection worth the same as a lower end luxury car today.

The mental gymnastics people need to do to feel better about getting something for free against the wishes of the creator is so wild.

Just own it.

Piracy is a service issue, plain and simple. It would be all but dead if media companies gave their customers what they actually wanted, but line must go up at the expense of literally everything else.

The copyright extensions in the 20th century are theft of the commons. Those corporations are taking from public domain and not paying back. They're thieves, and why should we care if large scale thieves become victims of theft?

Bring copyright back to the original 17 years plus a 17 year extension (max 34) in the US. Then we'll talk.

Digital “ownership” is temporary. Piracy is as permanent as the end-user wants it to be. I prefer the latter.

There is no "stealing" when we talk about digital goods, as copying files is virtually free of cost (just a littld bit of electricity).

So if the file gets duplicated and you get the copy you stole nothing.

Culture is our most important invention as a species. So important, in fact, that we’ve evolved to make it essential to our individual health and collective capacity to function. To deny someone access to interact with culture on the basis of their lack of wealth is cruel and anti-human.

Likewise, developing something like an LLM, which spews thoughtless pollution into the only shared infosphere we have, and displaces individuals’ ability to connect to each other to develop culture… that is an existential threat to the human race and should be opposed vehemently.

I used to feel kind of bad.

Now? Fuck no. Corpo ai slop bots sucked up everything that's ever been done on the internet and are using it to their own gain. and guess what, creators didnt see a single fucking cent.

So, fuck it. Take it all. Do not pay corpo. Donate to artists you like.

I miss the golden era of Netflix when they had everything. Now that all the streaming platforms balkanized... Fuck em.

Word of mouth does some heavy lifting here I reckon

tbh these days I'm only grabbing stuff I couldn't really get any other way (ie. no service offers said media here). if a creator gets upset because I consumed their media without the capitalist part, well they shouldn't worry; it'll trickle down

Here:

Honestly? At two, but I'll keep pirating everything, I can live with it.

I agree with three.