Technology

I want a luxury good and don’t want to pay the price

There are certainly aspects of this, but the primary reason I pirate is not because of this, and I suspect there are quite a few people for whom this is also true. In the early oughts once I started getting some money and in basically the infancy of the digital media age, I did try to buy stuff the corporate way. And I got burned by it too many times (probably 3-4, but really once is probably enough.) So now I don't ever even attempt to "buy" something that is digital and DRM encumbered, and I'm more than fine "demoing" a game or whatever. By the time iTunes started selling movies and TV, my purchasing of content I expected to own was limited only to places that released DRM-free.

These days, I have a little more money that I could be spending on this type of content, but Sony just demonstrated exactly why I -never- will (and they're just the latest in a long line.) You know that there were people that bought stuff that were still in the middle of watching it or just bought it a few minutes ago who Sony/Discovery effectively just robbed. I'm sure Sony/Discovery just created a many, many pirates with this action.

Further, there is far more content than I could possibly purchase, so the money I do spend on digital goods, I do so either with the expectation it's ephemeral (like a subscription service - it's impossible guarantee they'll even stay in business) or that I actually own it, eg: DRM free. If I'm out of money to spend, I can't find a moral or ethical reason that makes piracy wrong, and I think actually it's likely that it benefits everyone. When I was younger especially, I couldn't afford much, but I pirated a lot. In Doctorow's case specifically, I've bought some of his books, but that's only because I was able to download some of the earlier work and then spend the money when I had it. With bands in particular, I can guarantee they have made far more money from me than in a world where piracy didn't exist.

If you apply this type of concept to basically anything else, no one would buy it. If you go to Target and grab a t-shirt, and someone whips out a contract -after- you've paid which they demand you sign before you can have the shirt that they can come to your home and take it whenever they want, no one would do it. Or that you can't wear that shirt into a Walmart without getting sued. Or that you can't cut the sleeves off or turn it into a scarf later. If you went back a second time and bought another shirt and they come and take them both, everyone would look at you like the sucker.

So yeah, if by some magic piracy stopped existing tomorrow, I wouldn't suddenly be a Sony/Discovery customer, I'd just take up woodworking or some shit. While some piracy is probably always going to exist that's as you describe, piracy is a service problem.