Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Do what your ethics dictates. There is no right or wrong answers.

Basically: should i care about ~~ethics~~ capitalist ideology?

No.

The system is literally genociding people, destroying the planet, etc. It's a major mistake to take their "ethics" seriously. It's just another grift. Enjoy the natural freedom of information while you still can.

Support the creators who deserve support. Otherwise you will end up with nothing good to pirate, because all the creators who deserved support and made your favourite creations, starved to death (or got other jobs, effectively the same thing)

Your single act of piracy is not likely to make a difference either way, but on the other hand, your single act might indeed be the straw that breaks one particular camel's back. And collectively we have to take some responsibility for that. It's not even just about ethics (although it is ALSO about ethics), it's about self-interest. You can be an individual freerider if you want, but eventually the freeriders overwhelm the system and it shuts down.

Realistically there will always be plenty, plenty of games to pirate. But the key question is, will enough of those be good games, the really enjoyable ones that you want to play? The AAA slop and rehashes will never stop, oh they''ll churn and froth and lay people off and blame pirates but they're effectively self-sustaining, it takes money to make money and it takes money to lose money and there's enough money in the system to keep them churning out sequels and derivative "new IP" until the heath death of the universe. There will always be some good games to pirate and to play no matter what you do, no matter what we all do.

But it's not a binary condition whether our financial support or piracy matters. You vote with your dollars. Your dollars guide the AAA studios in their desperate chase to steal the dollars from us, and your dollars literally enable indie developers to continue their projects at all. If too many people are not rewarding the kinds of novel and well-made games they want to see from AAA studios, and not supporting people's passion projects that they've poured years of their lives into, you're not going to see as many novel and well-made games or passion projects like that happening, and odds are good that at least one of the ones you won't see happening will be one you really would have enjoyed.

Do whatever you want I personally live in iran and I have a 160$ salary previously 300$ but snapback mechanism sanctions something something and 2 AAA games are 160$, also do not buy from key selling websites that harms the developers but piracy doesn't its the same as nobody buying

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.

Up to you. I'm comfortable with:

• buying smaller or indie games
• subscribing to lesser known / low profile / niche content creators
• pirating anything old, hard to buy, or incredibly popular (like people who make 100k+ per month on Patreon)
• avoiding AAA games altogether, with rare exceptions (those I usually buy, or they are F2P)

I'm also comfortable with pirating some content first and later buying/subscribing if I see I keep enjoying the content.

It's not pirating if you bought it. That's just downloading.

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.

Ask yourself: what would an evil, monopolistic megacorporation that owns all this IP do in my position?

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Only you can decide the answer to this question. If you aren't too busy preventing forest fires. /joke

That's a question for you, I don't think there is a universal answer for everyone.

pirate whatever you want, but just know that you're not voting with your dollar if you don't put your dollars anywhere.

it's really hard to make a living with a passion project these days.

you could buy music. and ethical/indie shit. books. things that you actually care about existing. or not, i guess. whatever

Pirate everything, and share as much as you're able.

IMO if you cannot get it in a format that's appropriate it's warranted.

For example ebooks that only come with drm so you can't add it as an epub to your ereader.

I usually buy the book and then acquire the epub

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.

When it comes to music I try to buy the stuff I like (mostly flacs) on bandcamp Fridays (certain days of the year where bandcamp charges 0% fees from the creators).

If it's indie/small/mid-sized creator I'd like to see more of. They also sell vinyl and other merch which is rly cool

1. If X was not available to pirate, would you pay for it?
2. If you would not have paid for X, does pirating X cause any actual loss to its owner? If you would not have paid for it either way (even if that were the only option) and you haven't caused them a loss of revenue by pirating it, did you impact the creator at all?

The counter to this is always that just because someone wouldn’t pay doesn’t mean the creator’s work has no value. To that I would yes that is completely true. The creator's work has value, but maybe not monetary value. You can't always conflate value to money (ex. FOSS, canonical sci-fi lore, protest symbols, etc).

There is also a morality component used against my argument that would say I'm ignoring the intent, consent, and ownership the creator has. Its usually worded that I'm using outcome-based morality and that the ends always justifies the means by that logic. But I pay for X, not for access to use X. If the creator can opt without my consent to remove X from me, I'm not longer obligated to follow that moral constraint. Morality is a two-way street.

That's a very ambiguous and loaded question.

No. Take what you like and burn the rest.

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.

I look at it this way, if I made a copy of this work irl would the person who made it go without their needs met? If I bought it IRL already then it is always fine IMO. If it is a independent person I try to buy it in a way that they get most or all the money and I get files that are not DRM. It really a case by case thing. Like I will never give Nintendo or Disney any money ever again so I have to find ways to get what I want most of the time it is second hand or pirating it.

Everything.

Like, i pay screenwriters by bringing them lunch while they collect cans around town and actors by tipping on lunch, but you, by paying at a movie theatre, generally do not.

Whatever you want. Copyright was literally invented to steal from creators anyway.

I pirate what's any good that I cannot find legally for streaming, as well as educational stuff that I want available should I and/or my family find ourselves without internet access.

Sometimes I'll go so far as to pirate things that I cannot find without ads(even with premiums*), but mostly if it'll let me see the first few minutes before playing an ad, I just live with it.

* The only reason I still have Amazon Prime is for the free shipping. I pay extra for no ads. I pay extra for HiDive. There appear to be things available on Prime with HiDive that aren't available on just Prime or just HiDive. Magically, those shows(Ranma 1/2, for example) have ads. WTF?

None of these companies have ethics. Why should you get hung-up in ethics for a victimless crime?

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.

Just pirate everything, more money for you to invest, bring food to your table, support your family, go on trips etc.