this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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You fail to realize that piracy is what is actually contributing the most behind the scenes. Artists gain more from exposure than to direct purchases of their products. If piracy was illegal many musicians wouldn't be so famous/well known because not so many people can/are willing to make a purchase in order to discover something. Actually going to concerts and buying merch contributes to musicians much more than buying their songs for $2 on the Apple Store or whatever. Music labels and distributors keep the majority of the revenue anyway.
Also what you actually call "stealing" is actually just sharing digital data. Nobody is taking away anything from anybody. It's not a physical good with limited availability. The people who pirate digital products wouldn't be buying it regardless (for whatever reason that might be, it doesn't matter), essentially it doesn't make any difference to the creators. The difference between purchasing a game for example and the difference between pirating is the same as the difference between purchasing the game and NOT purchasing the game. Let's not even get into DRMs where they make the experience worse for paying customers by tanking game performance. Or forcing to always be online to play single player games. The list can go on and on.
Pirating in 2023 is the only ethical way of consuming media. I'm done paying greedy corporations for a ridiculously fragmented entertainment industry where an individual has to subscribe to different services just to watch different seasons of the same show because they somehow decided to remove content I wasn't done watching. Or renting a movie on Prime Video just to find out I need to purchase a specific device to watch it in HD when my machine is more than capable of playing 4k.
The only way I'd pay for digital content again is if they provide some sort of convenience over piracy. I happily pay for my Spotify subscription because it is actually a good service, at a good price and most importantly it's convenient! I can listen to whatever song I want from one single subscription using only one app on my phone.
I used to pay for YouTube premium, I downloaded a bunch of videos to watch offline while on a trip where I knew I didn't have internet access only to find out that in order to watch the videos I downloaded I needed to be online in the past 3 days. So I couldn't even watch them because of some nonsensical, anti-consumer policies. So I downloaded a third party app that gives me premium features (and more) that allows me to actually watch videos offline.
You came here looking for tips but you're getting a reality check instead. I think it's awesome.
I have pirated games that I would have bought if I didn't know how to pirate it.
That, right there, counters everything you said. It is stealing because I'm not paying for something I would have payed.
Imagine getting in a concert without paying and saying "it isn't stealing because there's free space and the sound is shared". Is that how you live your life?
No, I'm so sorry, your low quality response doesn't disprove any of my points. You didn't even try because you know you can't.
In your case choosing to pirate = choosing not to buy. If you chose not to buy without pirating it would've been the same thing. You were never forced to buy anything, don't convince yourself otherwise.
Are you telling me how I think?
It's been some years since I pirated stuff, but I definetely did it because I had no money and I wanted to play the games ASAP. I could have saved to buy them, but I chose to be selfish and focus on instant gratification.
Most pirates just want free content, that's it. They want to save their money.
I'm not judging you for that, I've downloaded stuff because I couldn't afford also.
There are different type of pirates all doing the same thing for different reasons, which are all very valid.
The one thing to keep in mind is that piracy is by no means "stealing", not even close. When you pirate stuff you're not depriving the creator or other buying customers of their products because you're essentially just sharing/downloading a digital, replicable copy.
If anything it's copyright infringement, we should start calling it for what it actually is.