Anyone should be able to download anything for free, in an ideal world. We don't live in that world, so I download what I need/want, and pay the creators if I can afford it, in order of how high quality the content was.
That said, I don't pirate applications, simply because I don't trust running the code from a random source on my computer. There are FOSS alternatives for all productivity software (except for DAWs, and REAPER has a free 'trial'), games I generally buy on sale, except for Geometry Dash for Android, which I downloaded the apk for since 1) it's Android, which is apparently more secure than Linux, and 2) It seemed to have removed from the Google Play Store, or Aurora, or something, and I'd already bought the Steam and iOS versions of the game.
Android has root, you just gotta put in a little bit of work, and give up your Google App goodies like RCS chat and Pay. (you can get them working too, but Google's getting better at detection/blacklisting spoofed device fingerprints making it a cat and mouse pain)
I never buy any of the content but I do enjoy consuming content thus from a utilitarianistic point of view, piracy is a moral choice for me. Joking aside, if you can pay for things without a strong financial burden, you should pay.
I don't really see an issue either way. I think we all try to justify piracy in our own ways, and ultimately, people either take a black and white stance or some shade of grey.
In my personal opinion, I try not to pirate things from small creators. When I do pirate, I usually end up supporting them in some other way, shape, or form.
Educational material I think should be free or very cheap. Education should be available to everyone regardless of their social or economic status. Those textbooks that those publishing companies charge hundreds of dollars for are a prime example. The companies are leeches.
Entertainment companies are morally bankrupt because of how much they take from the people actually doing work to give to CEOs. I don't care if people get that content for free since nearly none of the revenue will go towards the creators. But they are at least somewhat reimbursing the labor that goes into the content.
The academic journals do not do any work whatsoever and charge absolutely absurd prices for access. They get free peer review from the community, they certainly don't write any of the content. It is a moral imperative to prevent them from profiting off of other people's work. Hope they lose all their ill-gotten gains.
I think most would much rather screw the middleman (Subscription services, publishers, etc) pirate the material, and then send money directly to the creator if they like them.
I don’t like that these businesses can tell you that you’re gonna get something but hide the actual pertinent details like:
no refunds
the game isn’t even completed and you’ll have to buy DLC to see the rest
big streaming company offers this resolution and bitrate but what we don’t tell you is that we don’t guarantee that for every device
People have no problem buying an item as it’s marketed, but when you start fucking with and scamming/tricking consumers is when you really kick the fucking hornets nest.
I’ve also seen others mention that sometimes pirating the material meant more freedom with the content they now own a copy of. With 3rd party self hosted streaming services you can do cool things like watch stuff with your friends, watch stuff when you’re away from home, etc.
There used to be a time prior to throw away consumerism where you bought something and it was yours. You buy a painting? It’s yours to resell. Buy a record? Play it with some friends or sell that too.
A long time ago these greedy piggy middleman stepped in and started inflating with bullshit tactics like reducing your degrees of freedom with your newly owned product.
They want you to believe in this new world where you don’t get physical anything, everything’s restricted, milked until bleeding, leaving everyone wondering why everything “sucks” all of a sudden.
Cough cough, tv, movies, games rn unless made my smaller studios
I’ve got an interesting book for you!
How Music Got Free (nonfic piece about 90s-early 2000s piracy)
Why entertainment is a luxury, knowledge and education is basically what human civilization is built upon and should be free. Of course the reality is that people need money in the current system we live in and we have to reward those somehow who dedicates their time and efforts to education.
So I've arrived to a conundrum... Because I think morally it's more acceptable to pirate educational content (imho), but I'm also more likely to pay the educators, as it is a very important job. Of course this does not apply to when someone just gatekeeps knowledge because of greed, it's very similar to charity fraud in my book
When I was poor, I pirated a lot of games, played them and then spread the word.
I can say and do believe I helped sales and increasing popularity.
It's not just a pat on the back. My recommendations had others play games they'd never even heard of and in turn recommended them to others.
Of course, now that I can afford some games and no longer play them at launch, I just stick to "Grab them on a sale! It's worth it at a smaller price!"
I think pirating educational materials is less morally bad than pirating entertainment.
College textbooks, for example, are insanely expensive. I once paid like $300 for a single chemistry book. I never made that mistake again. Not because I pirated; I just started buying used or past editions. It's not like chemistry for a 100 level class is cutting edge stuff. It's the same ideas and knowledge we've had for decades or a hundred or hundreds of years. It's all public knowledge at this point.
But you may need the book to do readings and assignments. So if you can't afford the book, even used or past editions, then it makes sense to turn to piracy. I would sometimes grab the library reference copy of a textbook and just go crazy with a copy machine. That might technically still be piracy.
Entertainment, on the other hand, isn't really required at all. So to me, that's worse.
That all said, 99% of the stuff I've pirated is entertainment. My immorality is only bounded by the size of my SSDs!
When knowledge is deliberately gated by large entities and the author would give it away for free (scientific papers) is a no-brainer for me. Or when a course requires specific textbooks that costs hundreds of dollars.