Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Devil's Advocate: Many pirates would have not paid for access to that media so to say it takes away from the creators profit isn't exactly true since one act of piracy does not equal one lost sale.

Devil's Advocate Part II: There is s significant amount of research that supports the notion that pirates actually spend more money on media than the average person.

I personally am an example of part II. I pirate a lot of music but I refuse to use Spotify because of how little it pays artists and I have also spent significant amounts of money buying music from artists I enjoy via Bandcamp or buying from the artist directly.

Cool argument, except a huge quantity of pirated works aren't "owned" by the creator or even a group that funded it, but instead by parasitic companies that abuse capitalistic tools to actually steal value from those creators.

I have thousands of purchased games. 3 categories here:

1: obtained as part of a pack (humble gog etc)

2: purchased AFTER trying out via pirate copy to know if it is my kind of thing

3: picked up early access due to demo or general interest from being a known smaller dev/studio (hare brained for example)

With less and less access to shareware and viable demos, piracy is often the only conduit to prevent me getting ripped off of $80 for something that looks like a shiny sports car but end up being another "buy $800 in dlc for the full story!" Ford pinto.

Additionally, I now flat refuse to fund the likes of Denuvo, and wish that piracy actively hurt the bottom line of companies deploying that kind of anti-user shit.

Piracy is somewhat similar to vigilantism to me. My ability to consider it a negative is directly related to how fair I consider the legitimate methods available to be.

If similar efforts were focused on consumer protection laws as we do IP protection, I don't think pirates would have much leg to stand on, and they'd be seen in more of a negative light.

But since consumers are regularly fucked by corporations, all I see is two sides both doing bad shit and I'm not feeling all that charitable for the faceless megacorp. I also dislike pirates who pirate from small time creators. But that's about as far as I can care given the state of things.

We should be focusing on stronger consumer rights to truly fix the problem for all sides.

having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire for people to obtain paid copies of the data.

According to who?

Adding on to say: no. It doesn't cost the creator anything when a pirated copy is made. They potentially miss a sale, but if their item wasn't in a store where someone may have made a purchase you wouldn't call that actively harmful, right?

In addition, most media the creators don't actually make money from the profit. Most of the time they're paid a salary, maybe with a bonus if it does particularly well. The company that owns the product takes the profit (or loss), not the actual creators.

Also, a lot of media isn't even controlled by the same people as when it was made. For example, buying the Dune books doesn't give money to Frank Herbert. It goes to his estate.

Would you download a train?

The idea is that you support creators out of the appreciation and not because you're forced to.
This seems to work as a model for YouTubers and podcasters. They usually have most of their stuff available for free, and people pay them money, and more often than there is no reward for the money, other than satisfaction of supporting the creator.
This is obviously one example, and it only works for periodic installments, but it is a working alternative to the system, where people who don't want or can't pay don't do that

Nah. Id pay artists if i could.

And in fact do tip them pretty well at the jobs they take to pay rent when im in LA.

What we need is for parasitic creativity destroying shit stain ip-troll ghouls to get the guillotine, so they arent parasiting on every fucking artist.

We need a society that values humanity and art.

Because as is, there kind of isnt a reliable systemic way to support them. Capitalism prevents it.

Nah, I want all those companies to burn. If they can't afford to make new stuff because of piracy then there won't be stuff to pirate. I am totally fine with that. There is a life to live beyond just consumption, you know?

YoU WoUlDn'T dOwNlOaD A Car!?!?!

You're damn right I would; get me a 3D printer big enough...

I think pirating scientific papers is a good thing all around. The research isnt funded by the selling of access to those papers, much on the contrary.

Just admit that you could pay for the content if you wanted to, you just choose not to, because you are a pirate. You are depriving someone somewhere from a sale or some other form of revenue.

I usually can't, actually. Not immediately anyway. But that doesn't stop me from paying for it when I can. Done it with plenty of games. And if I didn't have that option, which I primarily use for games I'm not entirely sure I'll stick with, well... I just wouldn't buy it. Full stop. Wouldn't be a consideration at all. There is no lost sale here, only the potential to fall in love with it enough to buy it when I eventually can.

Not saying this is some moral high ground. It's not. But plenty of folks just can't afford to gamble on whether or not they like something and end up paying it forward when they can.

When I return from the library instead of the bookstore it is with the deepest shame.