My gf and I have had discussions about teaching morals to kids. In that vein, I asked myself, would I teach piracy to my kids? Yes, it’s technically illegal and carries inherent risks. But so does teenage sex carry the risks of teenage pregnancy, and so we have an obligation to children to teach them how to practice safe sex. So, is it necessary to teach them how to stay safe in the sea? How to install adblockers, how to detect fake download sites that give you computer aids? Show them how to use a VPN and choosing the right one (a true pirate must always choose a VPN with port forwarding capabilities, so you can still seed) I feel like this is all valuable info we all learned as pirates the hard way, and valuable information to pass on to our kids.
I definitely want my kids to know about libgen. Want a book you want to read about? Wanna learn about dinosaurs from a college level textbook for whatever reason? Just go to libgen, son!
And I attribute most of my computer literacy and education to piracy, trying to install cracks to various games, trying to make games work, and modding the fuck out of skyrim as a young teenager. That, and also jailbreaking android phones. All the interesting things i’ve ever done with computers was probably against some BS terms of service.
So, is piracy something you would actively teach your kids? Sit them down and teach them how to install a Fallout 3 FitGirl repack? Or is this something you’d want them to figure out themselves?
Don’t. They’ll learn anyways. You’re gonna deprive them of the joy of learning to pirate (lol)
Seriously, teaching how to pirate is not what parents should do
you’re better off teaching your kids how some things work, what might be safe to do online and what might be less safe, what possible implications for right holders and creators there might be if you pirate (and that those right holders and creators are often not the same people). Teach them to think for themselves if it’s worse to pirate a 35 yo movie you can’t find on dvd anymore, or a brand new movie that’s still showing in the local cinema. All of this is better than just telling kids “piracy is bad mmmkay!” and then letting them roam free so they start pointing and clicking utter bullshit and using a virus infested os.
Tldr: educate children, talking about piracy is part of it.
