Asklemmy

I have pirated some opera video recordings. It's the only way I'd see some of them. I don't know how to pirate TV or music, and I'd never pirate music anyway because I care a lot about music.

I do.

Nope, not really.

Life's about more than money.

I'll stop pirating when creators get paid their fair share. Before that, support them directly or sail the great blue

People who say piracy is theft are wrong, actually holders of intellectual property are thieves that are stealing that what should belong to the public domain. When you pirate you make a copy of something, you don't take anything away from the other person. That's fundamentally different from theft. When you force people to pay for a free resource (copying data) you are creating artificial scarcity. To think that construction is helping society in any way is fooling yourself. It's very clearly limiting human creativity and freedom. Allowing people to do with it as they please free of charge would allow for better ideas and applications to emerge. When someone comes up with an idea (a medicine, product, song, whatever) they claim it as theirs and no-one can touch it. Look at it this way: someone invents the wheel. The wheel is a concept that is out their, waiting to be discovered by someone. Before it was discovered it was readily available for anyone to discover, but than someone finally invents it and suddenly he can claim it as his? Is the first one to discover the moon, the one who owns it? Ultimately songs and books and such are not fundamentally different. Also, no-one writes a songs out of nothing, you build upon the ideas of others. You walk the path, use all the stepping stones laid down by others, it brings you to a point and suddenly it's all yours? It doesn't make any sense at all, but we're so used to it that we can't see it for what it is. It's a scam. It's a monopoly and it doesn't belong in a free society. You should support creators and be thankful for their efforts, that's why trademarks should exist, if you want to buy the copy from the author himself you should know which product to buy through the trademark, which one is by the original creator and which copies are from third-parties. But all other intellectual property is theft from the public domain.

Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn’t pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it?

I think what you might be referring to is the Paradox of Choice -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

When I was younger (< 25) I would pirate loads - music, films, tv shows, games etc. The main driver was that I was poor and wouldn't have paid for them anyway, but also it was convenience , streaming services weren't around yet so it was the only way to consume digital products.

Now that I'm older and have a decent salary, I don't do it anymore. I'm happy to pay for Spotify and have a really easy experience, or use Amazon or Netflix. I don't play PC games anymore either. The only act of piracy I do now will be the very odd occasion where I watch to watch a full F1 race that I missed, but the service that I pay for might not have uploaded the race for up to 24 hours later. I don't want to wait because I run the risk of coming across spoilers and I'm eager to watch what happened, and seeing as I'm already paying for the service to watch the race I don't see what the issue is by seeing it a bit earlier.

I pirate and I think doing so should be legal and accepted. It's one thing to have a copyright for profitable uses of some content, a whole other much crazier thing to say copyright forbids sharing that content for free. File sharing should be thought of the same way as letting your friend borrow your book - just a normal and uncontroversial nice thing to do, that you shouldn't avoid based on some concern it will lead to lower book sales.

I don't really pirate much anymore, because I don't consume much paid media anymore. Occasionally, if I really, really want to watch something on a platform that I don't have a free subscription to (through a phone plan or isp), I will find a stream of it, but that is rare.

I justify it by generally not being on favor of modern IP laws. On a less ideological basis, fuck'em for making their content inaccessible. And from the current strikes, it looks like most of their talent doesn't get much of a cut anyways.

I haven't pirated a game in years, just because Steam is so convenient, and I can pay for more games than I have time to play. In the past, when I couldn't afford all the games I had time to play, I would pirate them. I couldn't afford them, so it was no "potential loss" for them anyways.

For software other than games, there is usually an adequate Free Software alternative, so I just use those. I am a developer, so sometimes I make small contributions on software I use a lot, and have a good understanding of.

Haven't pirated music since big streaming services became available (first, Play Music, now Spotify). I do kinda feel bad that Spotify pays shit though. I would happily pay the artists directly if it was convenient.

I pirate a ton of stuff, but I also see more movies in theaters than most people I know. I'm lucky enough to live in a place that still has an awesome local video store that has a ton of hard to find, obacure films. Like shaw brothers kung fu films, or documentaries like Jefftowne.

Man, what an echo chamber of anti-corporation and anti-copyright sentiments. I pirate myself, because the services for tv/movies are not convenient, but I don't delude myself into thinking it's somehow justified. If I could get any movie or series on demand like spotify I wouldn't pirate (if I could afford it). I fail to see how anything else would be ethical to the creators of the content.

I pay for my audiobook streaming because it doesn't cost so much and you cannot pirate the books I listen to anyway

Nowadays, not a whole lot. I have more money than I have media consumption time, no matter the type. There are still exceptions for situations where nobody wants my money, where I also feel that even calling it a form of "theft" is a bit rich simply because... what potential sale or income is being lost? Nobody wants to make money with it! I'd happily pay, it's just that there's no one there to receive the money!

When I was a broke-ass college student I pirated a lot of things. When I started working properly and finally had my own means, I started buying basically everything. Then the post-covid world brought a lot of changed to my life and income and I'm a little back on the piracy train.

There's a lot of factors, for me. If I want to support a product, I won't pirate it. I recently picked up Sea of Stars, because it's a small team indie title made with love, and it shows. Likewise, if I am on the fence about something for some reason, I may "demo" it first and if it keeps my attention, I'll end up buying it.

Sometimes there's past experiences that keep me off of some games. I strictly won't buy Ubisoft's PC releases, and haven't played an Assassin's Creed game in years because of that. After every debacle with them, between uPlay, account issues and the performance/quality of their PC ports, they just don't deserve my money.