Asklemmy

People who say piracy is theft are wrong, actually holders of intellectual property are thieves that are stealing that what should belong to the public domain. When you pirate you make a copy of something, you don't take anything away from the other person. That's fundamentally different from theft. When you force people to pay for a free resource (copying data) you are creating artificial scarcity. To think that construction is helping society in any way is fooling yourself. It's very clearly limiting human creativity and freedom. Allowing people to do with it as they please free of charge would allow for better ideas and applications to emerge. When someone comes up with an idea (a medicine, product, song, whatever) they claim it as theirs and no-one can touch it. Look at it this way: someone invents the wheel. The wheel is a concept that is out their, waiting to be discovered by someone. Before it was discovered it was readily available for anyone to discover, but than someone finally invents it and suddenly he can claim it as his? Is the first one to discover the moon, the one who owns it? Ultimately songs and books and such are not fundamentally different. Also, no-one writes a songs out of nothing, you build upon the ideas of others. You walk the path, use all the stepping stones laid down by others, it brings you to a point and suddenly it's all yours? It doesn't make any sense at all, but we're so used to it that we can't see it for what it is. It's a scam. It's a monopoly and it doesn't belong in a free society. You should support creators and be thankful for their efforts, that's why trademarks should exist, if you want to buy the copy from the author himself you should know which product to buy through the trademark, which one is by the original creator and which copies are from third-parties. But all other intellectual property is theft from the public domain.

I like stealing

I feel good seeing how the corpos squirm when trying their damndest to get rid of any pirating method (which is fair and what everyone in the world deserves free of charge by birth) only to be met with impossible tasks and fall flat on their faces. It's one of the better feelings in this world. I pirate everything, everywhere, unless I know I can help a talented (and actual) human out.

When I was younger (< 25) I would pirate loads - music, films, tv shows, games etc. The main driver was that I was poor and wouldn't have paid for them anyway, but also it was convenience , streaming services weren't around yet so it was the only way to consume digital products.

Now that I'm older and have a decent salary, I don't do it anymore. I'm happy to pay for Spotify and have a really easy experience, or use Amazon or Netflix. I don't play PC games anymore either. The only act of piracy I do now will be the very odd occasion where I watch to watch a full F1 race that I missed, but the service that I pay for might not have uploaded the race for up to 24 hours later. I don't want to wait because I run the risk of coming across spoilers and I'm eager to watch what happened, and seeing as I'm already paying for the service to watch the race I don't see what the issue is by seeing it a bit earlier.

Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn’t pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it?

I think what you might be referring to is the Paradox of Choice -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

I have pirated some opera video recordings. It's the only way I'd see some of them. I don't know how to pirate TV or music, and I'd never pirate music anyway because I care a lot about music.

I'll stop pirating when creators get paid their fair share. Before that, support them directly or sail the great blue

I pirate and I think doing so should be legal and accepted. It's one thing to have a copyright for profitable uses of some content, a whole other much crazier thing to say copyright forbids sharing that content for free. File sharing should be thought of the same way as letting your friend borrow your book - just a normal and uncontroversial nice thing to do, that you shouldn't avoid based on some concern it will lead to lower book sales.

Specifically for books I pirate because I get a better product this way. I prefer reading on my phone and downloading an epub means I can open it in any app I want, add chapters and share it with whoever I want. If I could easily pay for a book and get the same experience without any drm or online account bullshit I would probably do it.

Physical books are also ok but buying anything not in my language means possibly waiting forever for it to arrive and paying more for transit costs. I may still do it if I really want to support the author but I'd rather have a way to pay them directly tbh.

It is noble and dare i say, even cool and funny to download (evilly).

I do.

Nope, not really.

Life's about more than money.

i only pirate things that i do not "need" and i would not purchase no matter the price - typically movies and shows that are not on the streaming platforms i pay for.

if pirating that thing isn't an option, i'll just do without it. so in my eyes the creator is not losing any sales from me since i would not be paying for it in any scenario.

I don't pirate because I'm an adult who makes money and respects creators.

I want? I pirate. It loses no value. If the price is right I'll support smaller guys when I can, but shit is only getting more expensive, so I support less these days.

Shits getting expensive and I'm not getting richer. I think I'd be stupid to not pirate.

Shit really is getting expensive.

Man, what an echo chamber of anti-corporation and anti-copyright sentiments. I pirate myself, because the services for tv/movies are not convenient, but I don't delude myself into thinking it's somehow justified. If I could get any movie or series on demand like spotify I wouldn't pirate (if I could afford it). I fail to see how anything else would be ethical to the creators of the content.