Piracy is Good: The Moral Imperative of Sharing Knowledge
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Piracy, in today’s context of unauthorized sharing of digital content, is wrongly condemned as immoral theft. However, it is not piracy itself that is immoral. Rather, it is the greed-driven laws and practices that censor knowledge and creative works to maximize profits. At its core, piracy is about sharing information and creative works with others, which should be seen as a moral good. 🤑
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Except piracy peaks at the recent releases. That isn't about media preservation, it's about seeing the new shit for free.
For some hard to impossible find stuff it can be useful but that's not what it's mostly used for.
The media preservation is a side-effect from it, you can't exactly have it both ways. :) Also seeing new shit for free is not the same as losing profits. People who would pay yet pirate are not the majority. Media is fucking expensive.
I'm not arguing for lost profits, I don't really care except for the writers and other creatives should get paid. But pirates should just admit that they want shit for free, this holier-than-thou act is annoying and crumbles at the first step. Before arguing for the ethicality maybe come up with a solution or at least disapprove the new media piracy. Because that's a huge, huge side-effect. More like the effect and media preservation is tacked on positive side effect.
I doubt they do not admit they want and enjoy shit for free.
There is no solution I can think of, unless something radical like UBI. Also I can't disapprove the new media privacy, because I find it more positive than negative. Some people losing money (negative), me not getting beaten up on the street for fun by teenagers because they are bored (positive).
One of the arguments for pirating new media is the demo effect. If you want to play a game, you don't want to spend money then realize you don't really enjoy it. Used to be a standard, now demo versions are non existing. Bought a few games after finishing them and enjoying. Same with movies.
Demos are making a slight comeback on steam. For some new titles.
If your problem is with getting beaten in the streets you could just wait for it to arrive on the streaming platforms. That's anyway when the good quality torrents come out. And if for some reason the movies aren't released in your region, you could always access them through VPN or there are also other solutions.
I don't really buy the demo effect in this day and age when there's let's plays of every game and they're more accessable than torrenting a game. I'll admit that some percentage will buy games/movies/media after torrenting so there can be a slight positive effect when it comes to sales. But at the end of the day, people just want to consume everything for free.
The beating up on the streets is a common example in post-soviet countries. Where many children and young adults are fascinated with banditism and wreak havok upon regular people. Being able to play computer games and watch movies changed that part a lot. Pirating here became a cultural norm and there are the laws are not enforced