Ethics of Internet Piracy

[SELCOUTH]

I don't think it's immoral to pirate a product, but I will usually buy a product unless I have to subscribe to their service. Fuck Adobe and Microsoft for trying to go full on subscription. Won't be long before you have to subscribe to windows and get locked out of your PC when you miss a payment. I've bought many programs like FL Studio because I can purchase it once and be done with it. I don't mind giving them my money because although it's expensive they actually take the effort to fix bugs within their products and it mitigates any sort of risk I might be undertaking by pirating the product. Something like Adobe however? I'll absolutely pirate the shit out of it. Subscription based software is a terrible idea. I keep seeing all these obviously paid for "articles" about how it's going to be the best thing for the tech world, it's not. It's predatory practice and it completely fucks over small time content creators and developers because some of us have to use that money to keep the lights on. Chances are, you're going to be subscribed to that product for years and you're going to wind up paying double what you would have paid for if you'd just bought the product outright. It's highway robbery

 

[Moon-Watcher777]

I don't think it's immoral to pirate a product, but I will usually buy a product unless I have to subscribe to their service. Fuck Adobe and Microsoft for trying to go full on subscription. Won't be long before you have to subscribe to windows and get locked out of your PC when you miss a payment. I've bought many programs like FL Studio because I can purchase it once and be done with it. I don't mind giving them my money because although it's expensive they actually take the effort to fix bugs within their products and it mitigates any sort of risk I might be undertaking by pirating the product. Something like Adobe however? I'll absolutely pirate the shit out of it. Subscription based software is a terrible idea. I keep seeing all these obviously paid for "articles" about how it's going to be the best thing for the tech world, it's not. It's predatory practice and it completely fucks over small time content creators and developers because some of us have to use that money to keep the lights on. Chances are, you're going to be subscribed to that product for years and you're going to wind up paying double what you would have paid for if you'd just bought the product outright. It's highway robbery

Absolutely this! Subscription software is actual cancer. To be real honest most consumer programs have peaked. You can get 99% of your home office needs met with Microsoft office 98'. Creative programs like Adobe have failed to really innovate since the mid to late 2000's. These companies need to milk their pay pigs. Corporations and Federal organizations can simply write off the hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to rent these programs. As for me I use Free software like Libre Office and Gimp, and pirate whatever else I need to get the job done.

 

[OrientalGrill]

Its thanks to piracy that certain forms of lost media are preserved for future generations, so yes, I think it can be a godsend.

 

[JioJio]

Piracy no matter the justification is justified.

 

[nagolbud]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ4KLpBRa8w&list=PLeQuI8nFPM6TnYxXAyYiBRbbyvJA-NW16&index=13

 

[Warii]

Piracy is justified and moral for Adobe products because charging so much money a month forever is a rip off and a spit in the face. If Adobe charged a single one time fee I personally would pay it because at least then I would have the thing forever like Music, Games or Movies. Smaller creators typically don't charge through the roof when there selling something so its justifiable to pay for it whereas you aren't hurting the profit margins of say a movie company that makes 40 billion in box office sales.

 

[Andy Kaufman]

There's nothing morally wrong about pirating from corporations. But when youre downloading music, games, or whatever else from small-time studios or artists its far more dubious.

/thread

Also pirates are the vegans of software users: They will always tell you unmpromted that they are pirates.

 

[JihyoParkXX]

If I want to own something, I'd want it to be in a physical format but then again I almost always buy used so no money will be going to the corpos anyways. Funnily enough, I pirate and play all my games on PC and buy their PS4 discs later just to have them in my collection. I don't have a PS4 or PS5.

 

[punishedgnome]

I do think it is best to support shows and movies you want to see buy going to the theatre and buying DVDs or digital copies or whatever. I like The Orville, for example, so while I did pirate the show to be able to watch it on whatever device I want, I also bought it on DVD. I was a fan of the old Jackass stuff, so I drove to the theatre to see the new one.

All that being said, the people who try to convince you piracy is morally wrong either just want to convince you it's wrong so you will pay them, or they've soy fueled and only exist to consume content to such a degree they stan for big studios. Digital piracy is functionally no different than taking seeds from a fruit you buy at the grocery store and using those seeds to grow more fruit and giving that fruit to your friends. Pirating a movie does not cause a copy of the movie to disappear from somewhere else, just as growing fruit from seeds you got from a fruit at the grocery store does not make other fruit disappear from store shelves. What has happened is copyright law as we know it is outdated, and people who benefit from copyright law do backflips to try and come up with moral justification to leave it in place as is.

What I'd like to see is copyright law resemble patent law where it expires after 20 years. That is more than reasonable. The current system where government enforces copyright essentially in perpetuity to keep Mickey Mouse from falling into the public domain is not reasonable and is actively harmful to society on a cultural level IMO.