Ha ha. I got your mass produced shit and i didnt pay for it, and then shared it with people so they dont waste their money.

And

Oh hey wanna buy that bluray for Toxic Avenger cause its a great movie?

Are 2 thoughts im completely fine with holding in my head.

Bold move, asking a “should I pirate?” question in a community called Piracy. Surely you’ll only receive unbiased answers here.

I used to only pirate things that I owned, or planned on buying I’m the near future. But nowadays, it feels more like stealing from billionaires is a moral imperative.

Fr tho basically what /u/AnimalsDream said

it depends.

I’m old enough to remember when PC demos were a thing and essentially if a demo didn’t exist, the game likely wouldn’t sell well. Hell there used to be entire websites that ONLY had demos for download of upcoming releases. So now game companies don’t do demos anymore, I pirate the games as a demo. If it’s something I think I’ll play through and come back to in a month or two or even a year then I’ll buy it. If it’s an indie dev I’ll buy it because I want to support them.

If it’s something I’m no likely to finish or will finish and never pick it up again, high seas.

Music is different. I just soulseek everything. I’m not paying some crappy streaming service to then provide pennies to the artist. I can support artists I like via other means. Merch sales, going to concerts, etc that’s where they get their money.

TV and movies? fuck em. I’m not paying for that crap when 9 times out of 10 something that I like is just going to get cancelled after 2 seasons. They don’t need my money.

Books? nope, always pay for those.

The US Supreme Court said it’s cool for LLMs to pirate shit for their garbage so it’s free game. Pirate everything. Support indie developers and artists though if you dug some of the stuff you pirated and have the means. I pirate manga all the time but still like having a lot of the physical copies so I end up doing that a lot even though they’re usually raking in money

I mean, they are just doing a global “exception” for AI training all together so why bother? The copyright law is not equally applied to everyone.

The more you pirate the more hyped and disappointed you’ll be about things you’d otherwise never have known about. It’s a double edged blade. Your criteria grows. You spend less on highly advertised products and more on niche things most haven’t heard of. But when pirating as an act of boycott you also risk growing attachment to the product or franchise you’re pretending to sabotage. So if it sounds ethically correct to pirate something instead of purchasing it to harm someone in the production chain, don’t do either. Most people will just preorder a collector’s edition for another of their releases as soon as they forget or relax about what upset them. Piracy isn’t theft, it’s generosity, accessibility and preservation.

i would love to have a dvd collection of my faves but they’re like nah we dont want to make them anymore so now im just like fine i’ll just download :)

Just seed everyday

Pirate anything you want, and buy from anyone you want to support.

When it comes to music I try to buy the stuff I like (mostly flacs) on bandcamp Fridays (certain days of the year where bandcamp charges 0% fees from the creators).

If it’s indie/small/mid-sized creator I’d like to see more of. They also sell vinyl and other merch which is rly cool

Basically: should i care about ethics capitalist ideology?

No.

The system is literally genociding people, destroying the planet, etc. It’s a major mistake to take their “ethics” seriously. It’s just another grift. Enjoy the natural freedom of information while you still can.

Whatever you want. Copyright was literally invented to steal from creators anyway.