I pirate lots of content. Movies, shows, music, books, etc. I don’t pirate software, and I don’t pirate games. Here’s some thoughts on piracy inspired by a conversation I recently had:
- You live in a country where online content companies don’t give you access. Even if you want to pay for content, you aren’t legally allowed to. Pirate sites don’t care where you live.
- You buy the book in real life. You want a digital version. Why do you need to buy it twice?
- Scarcity creates the price. Digital files have no scarcity, they are infinitely duplicatable. They have no price. Instead, we force a price on them and the attempt to trade them at their true value is the natural way; this value is zero.
- There’s no stealing, nothing is taken away from anyone. They still have the same amount of song or movie, I just have a copy. I haven’t stolen it because I should have paid, they have no claim to my payment. If I steal a banana from a shop, they have one less banana. If I pirate a song, does the singer not have the song anymore?
- We’re taking away from people’s jobs! That’s ludicrous. Let’s all cry for the leech collectors, sea sponge harvesters, lamplighters, crossing sweepers, alchemists, and so on for the multitude of jobs that no longer exist. Technology leads to some jobs becoming redundant, and in the process creates new ones. The industry will adapt as all industries do.
- Suddenly the software is no longer available for sale. It’ll stay up online for as long as one person can be bothered to maintain it.
- If someone won’t pay for the item anyway, no one has lost anything. I’ll pirate the movie or I just won’t see it. Nothing to profit from either way except now I’ve seen the movie and will probably pay to go see it or another type of movie.
- DRM! DRM! My singleplayer game that cost £70 can only be played online. God forbid two people are using the WiFi at my house and I can’t play my singleplayer game.
- You don’t actually own the digital content. Thanks Amazon for removing purchased digital items such as movies and audiobooks.
- It’s the procurement of redistributions, not stealing resources.
- Copyright lasts for 100 years, a decision made by corporate greed, patent protection is 14-20 years. Hollywood became Hollywood to escape Edison’s East Coast greedy lawyers. Disney built their empire on securing public domain content and have lobbied endlessly to restrict the public domain. Public. Domain. Public.
- Musicians see no money from this, no matter what you hear, it’s from touring. Pirating music is great but you can’t pirate the live gig experience. Pirate the artist, like it, pay them live.
- Copyright is not a human right. It is a contract made by the government and people (companies) to protect their interests. They abuse the notion of copyright and monopolise whatever they can to extort the consumers out of physically owning their purchase; thus any moral justification disappears. Our democratic duty is to protest and break laws that don’t serve the people.
- Piracy is an outcome not an input. Black markets fill gaps between pricing and availability. Piracy is a black market where the price has been reduced to zero with the marketplace being the entire world. It is market pressure to redefine prices and practices, regardless of morality.
The internet should be free, and free, for all. Anything on it is fair game. If I take a picture of the Mona Lisa, I haven’t stolen it. If I share that picture so other people can experience its beauty because they can’t afford a ticket to Paris to see it then I’ve helped open them up to something they would never have otherwise seen. It’s something that I feel is important, especially we we’re moving away from owning software, or anything, in favour of never-ending subscriptions for content you never truly own.