Hi guys, first of all, I fully support Piracy. But Im writing a piece on my blog about what I might considere as “Ethical Piracy” and I would like to hear your concepts of it.
Basically my line is if I have the capacity of paying for something and is more convinient that pirating, ill pay. It happens to me a lot when I wanna watch a movie with my boyfriend. I like original audio, but he likes dub, so instead of scrapping through the web looking for a dub, I just select the language on the streaming platform. That is convinient to me.
In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something? And where is 100 justified and everybody should sail the seas instead?
I would like to hear you.
- When the content is no longer available for retail purchase (i.e old games or shows that have been pulled entirely [see Infinity Train])
- You have a physical copy, but want a digital version.
Slightly more gray: content I’ve already paid for in one form or another. I spent like $100 going to the theater to see Mario with the family. I’m not losing sleep over adding it to my Plex when it hits VOD.
I pay for a smattering of VoD services, I don’t lose sleep over watching something that isn’t available on them.
If corporate greed didn’t force a hundred different services on us, then it might be different.
You say you don’t want 100 different services, but do we really want all media content to be under one roof or just a few players? Consolidation is also terrible for media/art. That’s basically why so many people are against the Actibliz acquisition.
This is doubly true for games, which tend to be re-released over and over again on different platforms. This is true to a lesser extent for things like movies, but it’s much worse with gaming where each console is a closed ecosystem that’s incompatible with other systems. At least with Blu-Ray, you can expect any Blu-Ray player to play the movie you’ve purchased. It’s not like a Toshiba player will only play Toshiba brand Blu-Ray discs.
Companies love to use the “you don’t own the game, you own a personal license to use the game” line when revoking rights to play games you’ve legally purchased… But that goes both ways; If you own a personal license to use the game, it shouldn’t matter what platform it’s on, because it’s the same game regardless of whether you’re playing on PlayStation or PC.
Straight black but I still consider ethical:
The entire “going to the movies” experience is terrible for me and my wife, only going to get worse with a runt on the way. It’s certainly a fault of the theater I try and attend, but I’m not driving 2 hours for a decent viewing experience.
I pirate like CRAZY. BUT if I find a film/TV show I really enjoy, I certainly do my part in word-of-mouth or digital marketing for them. It’s certainly once it’s left the theaters but I wasn’t going to that anyway. It also gives a chance for older films/series to get some funding that I may not have picked up otherwise.
Occasionally if there’s a film/show that’s a standout, I’ll buy a physical copy. Honestly I never open them as I have a more convenient digital copy on plex but I do put in some for it.
That said, watch Grave Encounters 1 (not 2…) and Cabin in the Woods. I believe they’re both on Netflix but absolute top tier movies if you’re into horror for GE or horror parody for CITW, cabin possibly being in my top 5 of all time.
Also that said, I’ve seen way too many episodes of MTV Cribs for me to care about it too much >:(
Paying for a ticket isn’t the same thing and I’d argue that’s not morally justified piracy. You went from a rental to ownership at a rental price.
I thought you were going to say something like “I already bought a copy of Star Wars thirty years ago, then THEY made the way I watch it obsolete, so I don’t feel as bad getting another copy since I already paid for it once.”
That would be closer to moral than “well I watched it in the theaters once, so I totally own a copy!”
- You have a physical copy, but want a digital version.
Kind of similar but I feel like pirating content you have legal access to (Steam, Spotify, Amazon, Netflix, etc.) in a way to get around DRM is ethical.
For example wanting to listen to songs you have on Spotify on an iPod or reading ebooks purchased from Amazon on your PC.
- Content that you cannot acquire by any “lawful” means.
- Content that you already own a copy of (Yes, this includes “only” having a “license” to it; you own what you own).
- Content that is outrageously priced, and/or from large companies where the people who worked on the product will receive nothing from sold copies. (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, etc)
Scientific articles. You’re not robbing the authors of a single penny, because they don’t get a cut of the sales by the publishing house anyway and the journal reviewers are volunteers.
many, if not most, authors of such papers are more than happy to provide a copy if you were to ask them directly.
That indeed should be the preferred route when you’re not in a hurry and the contact info is up-to-date, but when you want to binge very quickly through a dozen articles as I used to do a lot that becomes impractical. Sometimes authors are unresponsive too, or deceased in the case of old articles.
Isn’t there an archive site for scientific papers that are freely distributed? I forgot what it was called, should bookmark it.
As some else said, you really should just reach out to the authors. You would be surprised at how many will gladly send you it. Plus, you now have a direct line to the person to ask questions and are showing them that people want to read their work. Academics really appreciate that generally.
When the money goes to people who did not create the media. Support creators, not exploiters.
My take on this is summed up much better by Cory Doctorow, and best written up in the foreword of his book “Makers”, which he published for free online.
There’s a dangerous group of anti-copyright activists out there who pose a clear and present danger to the future of authors and publishing. They have no respect for property or laws. What’s more, they’re powerful and organized, and have the ears of lawmakers and the press. I’m speaking, of course, of the legal departments at ebook publishers.
…
Why am I doing this? Because my problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks, @timoreilly for this awesome aphorism). Because free ebooks sell print books. Because I copied my ass off when I was 17 and grew up to spend practically every discretionary cent I have on books when I became and adult. Because I can’t stop you from sharing it (zeroes and ones aren’t ever going to get harder to copy); and because readers have shared the books they loved forever; so I might as well enlist you to the cause.
That’s a great excerpt and I’m now interested in this book but it doesn’t really address the issue of money not going to the creator. He’s just in a position where he can afford to go without the income. Millions of artists can not. I imagine neither of us wants art creation to be solely the domain of the wealthy. Reminds me of how in college the only people who could do “good” internships were those who could afford to go a summer (or longer after college) without income and live in D.C. and other expensive cities. It’s wrong to not pay people to do a job of course, but that was a major secondary issue. Only people with money could get the internships that got them jobs that made good money.
IMO it’s better to not pirate small indie content (mostly games in my case).
Steam offers rather valuable services to the developer in exchange for that fee though. You get to use Steam’s existing infrastructure for content delivery, payment processing, advertising, community management, authentication (not necessarily DRM), multiplayer services, etc. instead of having to implement and maintain it all on your own. Self-publishing is not easy nor is it cheap.
