this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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I've never understood the "piracy is morally acceptable" argument, personally. Best I can agree with is that piracy is not morally bad in some cases. Especially since me pirating something has no impact if I never would have paid for it in the first place. But it can often times be morally wrong (people who refuse to buy games from indie studios despite having the money to do so would usually fall into this category imo), and I can't imagine any scenario outside of the preservation of media where it's actually morally good to pirate things.
Like, I'm all for people not buying things that they don't support. And I feel no sympathy for large companies that make more money in a day than I'll make in a lifetime losing out on sales. But when did it become my right to play Hogwarts Legacy or watch a show without paying for it?
"If Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar's own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve."
I think imposing artificial scarcity on art, information, and tools; and rationing based on those with the ability to pay is immoral. I mean sure, most art that people pirate is just empty entertainment. But imposing artificial scarcity on tools (software such as OSs, CAD, productivity software, etc), news, and academic papers behind expensive licenses that many cannot afford to pay is objectively immoral. If piracy did not exist, I am positive the world would be without many of the technological advances we have today.
Not to mention the fact that oftentimes pirated content is just better. DRM free games run better and some work people have put into remastering media in general is outstanding.
I found a collection of the DBZ anime which is color corrected, proper aspect ratio, higher resolution, improved audio (from a different home release with better audio) made by fans for no profit. Even if you wanted to you couldn't purchase that but piracy made it possible.
Unofficial remasters of some old, poorly mastered songs have made a difference for me and I wouldn't be able to enjoy them without resorting to piracy.
As a Muslim, it is already forbidden to implement artificial scarcity. So as a Muslim, it's not an opinion, but objectively wrong, because God said that it is wrong.
Genuinely curious about that now...
I will warn you: We believe that there is good and wrong, and not humans, but Allah (god) is the one who created us and Allah is the one who decides what is good and what is wrong.
So basically what is wrong and what is right is pre-decided by Allah, so we don't have to decide if something is bad or not, because Allah already gave the info of that to us.
I was interested about the artificial scarcity part
Exactly. IP isn't rivalrous like land or goods, so it has no place being artificially restricted. Property rights are a solution to human conflict in the natural world.
If piracy were legal (just the download for personal use, not redistribution), let's pretend for a second. I bet the majority of people wouldn't even be here asking these questions.
"If it's legal then why not". That's how many people think. However the morality aspects still stand and shouldn't be skwed by the legal aspect. When you made the example of pirating indie games, if piracy is legal, people would legally download those games from third party sources, even the people who wouldn't do it if piracy were illegal (like it is in reality).
At that point it'll become some sort of "if I can afford it I will support the studio and buy the game, if I can't I will get it for free because people won't think I'm stealing regardless". Kind of like a donate if you can sort of system some software developers have in place.
In reality nothing prevents the same people from thinking that way right now. It's just the stigma behind pirating even those indie games which is still skewed and dependant by the legal aspect of the situation.
The truth about digital products is that if someone doesn't want to pay for something they won't pay regardless and it doesn't rob anyone else from being able to purchase and downloade the same exact content the legit way. The mistake is seeing pirates as otherwise potential paying customers if piracy wasn't an option.
That is actually the case in some countries, like the Czech Republic. But, torrents aren't because you are also uploading