Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Pirate what you need unless you are one of them archiver preppers.

This ain't about "legality" this is about fighting the class war against owner class.

Do what you want. No need to overthink things!

I am just going to buy from the actual bands when I buy music. If they do not have DIY from now on, I will just listen to something else. There are plenty of bands that do their own production.

I generally make sure to spend my money one contemporary artists or authors (who are not already filthy rich, if they are already super well-off i dont contribute to increasing that wealth and instead buy something else) and try to maxmize the amount of money that falls to them. You could also find ways to donate directly to these artists and then pirate their stuff to your hearts content (from my ethical point of view anwyay, law will not agree with me). Ive also first pirated stuff and then bought it later and just replaced the files on my media server.

I dont really care about big corporations or some random rights holder long after someones death. So any big studio movie or old rock bands get pirated.

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

Personally, I think it depends. For me, I like to pirate games that there's no way for me to legally buy a copy of and if possible are way too overpriced. Think multi hundred dollar retro games.

For media, I would absolutely support buying used media second hand. New physical releases tend to be worse than they were in the past in my opinion, so second hand or piracy feels like a good enough deal to me.

For music, I'd rather have physical CDs, if possible, rather than paying for streaming because I at least either support a local business I like to go to for CDs or support the artist directly. Laws be damned, I'd rather pirate music than give my money to the companies who financially abuse artists. Similar reason why almost all my CDs are second hand.

For stuff I have legally purchased, if need be I can just pirate them if it's a digital product. Otherwise I can back up disc based media I have. No idea how to do it for the Sega Genesis cartridges I have, though, so if need be I can pirate those as well.

Edit:

For games, I pirate games I don't own. For digital games I could find on Steam, I use it as a sort of demo for the game because majority of games don't have a demo and I need one to ensure I'm not throwing my money down the drain.

There have been plenty of games I've bought because the "demo" was enough to make me wanna buy the game to support the devs. Latest example being Dungeon Clawlers.

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.

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.

Feel free to pirate everything on personal use. If you like the work put behind it feel free to support it; but it's not necessary.

Ef ethics in a world where greed is the norm imho.

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.