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Comment by denkmoon | Hacker News Reader

Piracy is a moral obligation.

Not consuming media offered by a corrupt system would be plausible. And there would be plenty of choices to source content directly from artists. Or make your own.

Pirating content is just something people do because it's technically feasible. To silence the cognitive dissonance and justify the behavior towards their peers and reconcile it with the rest of their character (presumably they would not steal physical objects with a clear ownership status), this narrative of a morally motivated fight against the big bad recording company or film studio is employed. It's intellectually dishonest.

This is true AFAIK. Growing up in a lower economic class, I'd engage in piracy simply because modern computers make it trivial. At first it was for entertainment, but over time it exposed me to programming. Piracy ended up being a gateway to building my career, so I'm thankful for that much. Even if it's kind of ironic.

I have and will gladly pay money for authors/developers that really get me excited, though consuming so much interesting content for free can make me pretty jaded. To a pirate, paying for certain software might as well be giving a donation.

As someone who sees pirating as civil disobedience, I would like to respectfully disagree.

Disney (and friends) spend the GDP of a small country to ensure that my entire life is surrounded by their products and enshrined themselves in international treaties to ensure that it will remain so. I could stop consuming their media, which would require me to withdraw from 90% of all movies and music that my friends and family want to watch, which whether I like it or not is what I would call "my culture".

I don't think this is fair, specially considering that I had no say in this state of things and that changing it would require me to essentially mobilize my entire nation against the foreign interests of the USA.

I don't expect everyone to agree with this point of view, but to call it "intellectually dishonest" feels to me like an unnecessary agression. If anything, I would counterargue: expecting people to either pay a toll to access their culture or to to become "cultural monks" is what's truly wrong, especially when there's an alternative that literally favors the interests of people over corporations.

I am re-listening to Lessig's "Free Culture" this week while driving. My oh my how the younger generation has been conditioned to have no rights as consumers. Just pay perpetually and hope permission is granted, the licensing doesn't require yet another subscription and hope the servers don't go down b/c they're no longer profitable. When driving in silence it sounds just like my Yahoo Music library sounds these days.

this civil disobedience, is it just evening the score between you and Disney? Because that I would understand. What I'm criticising is the claim of piracy as some sort of moral fight of the oppressed. The noble filesharer uploading this year's Transformers instalment for the greater good. That's just giving it way more credit than it deserves.

I personally find more intellectually dishonest to compare piracy to theft.

Why?

Piracy is the only way to disarm this immoral system where all the "legal" alternatives are basic assaults on our consumer rights that leaves us with no real good ethical choice,

Your comment makes sense only to someone who already agrees with you and is similarly informed/misinformed. It does not provide any insight to those not sharing the same knowledge as you.

Right off the bat, anyone can contest:

- "only"

- "immoral"

- "assaults"

- "ethical"

Your comment provides no context or support for any of these.

If you want an essay, we can agree to a rate and I can write it after you send me the check.

If you want people to "disarm an immoral system", you're not going to get far if you want to be paid to convince them.

"One should not use X!"

"Why?"

"Pay me and I'll explain!"

I don't want to convince them of anything.

I'm not entirely sure, but perhaps there's an argument to be made that since it's pretty much the only way to get DRM free copies of certain materials piracy at times is justified.

Intellectual property is theft by the corporations — it is literally charging us to partake in our own culture. And if you’re a creator and create something derivative, expect tens of thousands in a legal judgement against you just because you’re a creative fan. Even decades after the creator is dead, and can no longer benefit.

>it is literally charging us to partake in our own culture

If I create something it's not your culture unless I decide to share it.

If you agree to erase your memory of all culture surrounding you and to create truly from blank than your statement could have some sense.

The culture around our current set of movies very very very likely wouldn't exist without for profit markets for that IP. Sorry my blood, sweat, tears in making new items isn't "free" for you to take unless I release it as free (which I certainly have in the past). I mean you can steal it obviously because it's an IT product but that doesn't make it moral at least not in my culture.

The current set of movies wouldn't be possible without thousands of years of myths, legends, stories and other fiction that was in public domain when these movies were made. Are you willing to pay countries royalties for their myths and legends.

Mel Gibson definitely ripped off the Bible in Passion of the Christ. He should pay royalties to the one true church.

You know the one.

But I’m not sure what the Discordians would do with all that money.

Campaign to get ddate back on most distros?

To the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster obviously.

It generally wouldn’t be piratable if you chose to never release it at all.

Just by creating it? Indeed, that doesn't necessarily make it my culture.

However, it does become my culture once my entire city is plastered with posters for it, its music plays on every radio twice a day, my children play with toys based on its characters, and/or conversations with my friends refer to it years after the thing came out.

Because we still have DRM in 2021.

It's disgraceful.

The Walt Disney Company. One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

I don’t see much of an issue with Disney getting paid for the new content they produce. If I want to watch the new Bad Batch episodes, I can either pay for a Disney+ subscription and increase the official view count, thereby increasing the project’s revenue and likelihood the folks working on it have their contracts renewed, or I can convince myself Disney is some evil corporation consisting of people who don’t deserve to be compensated for their efforts and pirate it. Back when I was a kid with no assets to my name piracy made some sense. However, now that I have the means to support creators, I do.

> Back when I was a kid with no assets to my name piracy made some sense. However, now that I have the means to support creators, I do.

This is the most sensible argument I've heard for being anti-piracy. It is a matter of means, and I've had a similar experience with my approach to piracy.

I'd be interested to know more statistics about what demographics perform piracy and on what kinds of media.

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