And I agree. However, when youtube decides to make you watch an ad every 2 minutes, you stop caring

Piracy does not steal from the directors and creators, but from the distributors whose have already bought the rights. The distributors who attempt to create artificial scarcity, excessively monetize your attention, and in generally act hostile to their consumers. There used to be a pact between distributors extracting money from consumers while leaving the content in a desirable state, but greed ruined that. I don’t mind some ads, but we’re way beyond reasonable. I don’t mind phased rollouts, but actively preventing people from watching just because of their location? I don’t mind things not being shown, but the whole concept of stoking FoMO “before it goes into the vault for next generation”, is just wrong. I don’t mind attempts to copy protect, but paying your politicians to turn a civil matter into criminal and use govt resources to protect your artificial scarcity is just so wrong.

I prefer not to pirate. I used to think policy was wrong when there was some balance between distributors and consumers. However greed ruined that. Greed made distributors take and take. It is not wrong to steal from such corrupt unethical businesses. They’re not worthy of respect

As a general rule I actually agree, even if it’s a bit complicated and not black & white

First, piracy is not illegal everywhere, and a personal copy is the most legal way in almost every country to archive what you have bought.

As for the morality of it, it’s your problem, not mine.

And the most important question is: What can I do when whole countries do not sell their music or TV shows? I’m thinking of Poland or Japan for example. I cannot legally buy media from those countries because they don’t care about foreign customers. How can they lose money if they don’t sell anything?

If you want a concrete example that happened to me yesterday: I want to buy a subscription to https://pilot.wp.pl/tv/. I want to give my money yet they refuse it. What can I do?

The difference being that money is finite and digital media isn’t.

Have an upvote!

You are wrong of course and “intellectual property” is a bullshit concept. Owning information is what is immoral. It’s also not stealing as you’re making a copy and not taking anything away.

I’d rather spend another $1000 on harddrives than give a single cent to streaming services or filmstudios.

Theft has a very strict legal definition. Piracy is not legally theft. It is legally infringement, a separate crime. Conflating one with the other is propaganda by the largest IP holders.

These largest IP holders want nothing more than to lock up all culture and rent it back to you for a price, indefinitely. They would happily steal from you without a moment’s hesitation. In fact, they have stolen from you. They’ve successfully extended copyright terms to an absurd length, preventing works from entering the public domain for decades.

Many of these IP holders also don’t care about preservation. They’ll happily let their works be lost to history. Some are actively fighting against preservation.

Is it immoral to infringe? Yes. But IP holders don’t have the moral highground. They’re just as bad, if not worse. (I’m talking about the multi billion dollar companies here, not the small business persons struggling to get by)

If the money actually went to the people that made the content then there would be an argument, but it doesn’t, it goes to a bunch of assholes who conned the actual content creators from their hard work.

Shop local, steal from corporate.

No you shouldn’t steal from small or independent creators. However don’t try to tell me that Disney is going to go out of business because I pirated their latest movie.

steals the rightful intellectual property of directors and developers

Software piracy from an independent or small studio, maybe.

Movie piracy? Everyone working on the film got paid for their work. What you’re ‘stealing’ is the profits from a megacorp that’s making more money year-on-year than ever before while still paying those in the industry terribly because they can.

Your hot take is a bit flawed.

Define a “living”. then tell me who isnt making it. Piracy is self moderating, the content that is being pirated the most involves directors and developers that made the most money, even with the piracy. As you go smaller in scale to creators that are more likely struggling to make a living, are also the least likely to be pirated. Every artist Ive known, digital arts, music, tubers and streamers, have hated copyright strike systems. The ones that are popular enough to have pirates also have comfortable income from fans. There is no one being prevented from “making a living” by piracy.

Against indie devs yes, against Ubisoft and EA no.

Is it wrong to take food from a grocery store that would otherwise be thrown away? The grocery store isn’t losing anything except potential future revenue.

I’m a big fan of paying the people who make things for me.

But digital piracy is the only thing keeping archive copies of obscure media around today. Even libraries aren’t keeping up. Plenty of media creators have revived their thing that found an audience after decades forgotten - through piracy, and only successfully revived it thanks to archivist pirates, since they had thrown that thing away.

It’s not black and white.

Patronage funding, early access, streamlined delivery, and white glove support are the funding models that are working for creatives today.

Are people downvoting because this is actually a popular opinion and doesn’t belong here or because they disagree with it?