Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Teaching how to do it safely might save their ass. And your own if they pirate at home.

• piracy is not theft
• “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.”
• morality and legality don’t always correlate
• a good adblocker is worth more than an antivirus, you should always be running one regardless of activity

Teaching kids good, healthy anticapitalist values is important. It's also good to teach them some basic computing and privacy skills, because they're not going to get that anywhere else. They're going to be under lot of social peer pressure to have the latest phones and being connected on social media, consuming information from algorithms.They need to understand how to minimize the harm from Meta and the big tech.

Same applies to the copyright industry and their practices (along with corps who are heavily anti-repair like Apple) - they need to understand the exploitation model of capitalism and lobbying - from there, let them make their own choices.

Absolutely. My entire network is behind a VPN, so they can't fuck up. Windows is banned in my household, so I'm not worried about malware. I'm not paying 20 bucks a month for limited access to the ever shrinking Netflix library, which I can't even use behind a VPN or share with other people. Piracy is the only way forward.

Speaking personally I don't know if its something I'd bring up to them, but if the topic comes up naturally I'd be honest about doing it and my moral reasoning for doing so. If the kid shows an interest or a curiosity about it then we can sit down and I'd teach them my ways. I took some stupid risks while I was still learning that I'd like to spare them from taking. Besides as you said it is technically illegal and if they are going to do it then it's best that they be doing it safe. Especially seeing as they would likely be doing it in your home.

Doesn't sound like an easy task, perhaps a good start would be teaching them how to tie knots and learn wind direction. Once they are old enough to travel book a vacation to somalia and introduce them to the place, that's where most of piracy is going on these days

Teach them how to root a device or at least do a grapheneos install. I'll be honest I only know the latter.

And yes, teach them both piracy and emulation

While I don't plan on being a parent, I will say that I did learn a good bit about piracy from my dad when I was younger, which kept me away from obviously shady things and now that I'm older I pretty much have a routine in place for my stuff whereas he doesn't even use a computer anymore. I think it's worth it really.

How to install adblockers, how to detect fake download sites that give you computer aids? Show them how to use a VPN and choosing the right one (a true pirate must always choose a VPN with port forwarding capabilities, so you can still seed) I feel like this is all valuable info we all learned as pirates the hard way, and valuable information to pass on to our kids.

Absolutely, I would say whether you're teaching piracy or not, those are essential things that everyone online must know about; it would be unethical to allow your kids to go online without that protection.

Absolutely. If I had any

I would not teach them safe piracy but rather safe computer literacy and usage.
Exactly like you said: How to spot fake ads or scams etc..
But if my child would like a book from XYZ and they would pirate it I would question the motive instead of getting it from, for example, a library.
Doing illegal shit out of convenience (like pirating a book instead of showering, getting out and enter a library searching for it) is still illegal. Even if you juat read what you want and put the book back in the shelf.

I would also firewall the shit of the little buggers computer. Also no account with admin/sudo rights.

I'd never thought about this but when the time comes I'll teach my sons, but hopefully they'll tell me some new way I don't know yet. Also a true pirate should check out Usenet.

I haven't taught my kids. . .yet.

However, they know that if they can't find something they want to watch, they just have to ask me and I'll get it from them. . .and that (sarcastically) "daddy is just borrowing it from the internet" so I think know what's going on.

Comment that I'm adding on a couple of friends'. One lives in Norway, one lived in India. They told me that both of these places have an issue with accessing media and other digital goods legitimately, often finding themselves willing but unable to pay for something (I was surprised to hear this about Norway — my friend speculates that Norway is small enough that it might simply be forgotten about when big media companies negotiate rights). They both said that VPNs and piracy are way more normalised in their home countries, because it was either that, or miss out on loads of stuff.

Feel it's useful and important to highlight that the degree to which piracy is normalised depends on where you are.

They'll learn on their own when asked to pay hundreds of dollars for a single textbook.

Of course, if I didn't they might end up using a public tracker to download torrents

I’m a capitalist but even I think visual media needs a come to Jesus. If they had adopted the Spotify model everyone would be a lot happier. I would be paying for content still. Instead they broke up into a dozen different services with walled content. This is so stupid. I have no qualms keeping my own collection when this is the paid offering.

I'll only say no to this question because I don't want to have kids. But I taught my mom how to pirate, and I'm proud of that. I believe that piracy is not a morally neutral act. It is morally good. Pro-piracy is an ethically good stance to take in this age.

I would if I had them.

It’s always advisable that you teach people how to use anything safely.

This really seems like a non-question. What is there to debate?

I'm not sure. I don't plan on having kids, so this is a purely theoretical question that I won't have to answer in practice, but I think I probably would, at least to some degree.

I had a pretty iconically millennial childhood when it comes to tech; I remember my mum being on the phone to the internet people and asked "he's offering me an unlimited packaged for [money] extra. Is that good, do we need that?", to which my brother and and I vigorously nodded. We were young enough we didn't know shit, but unlimited sounded good and we weren't paying the bills. My mum probably realised we didn't know what unlimited Vs metered internet meant in practice, and opted for unlimited as the safe option, because if she felt the need to ask her children for advice, she wouldn't be great at managing a metred connection. That's the context in which I grew up and is why I'm as techy as I am today.

I learned the hard way, and whilst I don't think that's necessarily the best way to learn, I don't know how one might teach people how to recognise which "download" button to press, and when a dodgy looking site is actually dodgy. It's like internet street smarts, but what that means has changed since I was a kid, and I don't necessarily know how I'd teach that beyond the basics, like installing adblockers and other common sense things.

Children playing on a computer unsupervised has to have rules and boundaries (and physical backups). No, I'm not going to teach children, who are not even in their teens, to download or install anything, ever, unless I want them to learn about ransomware specifically.

I taught my nephew and I wouldn't see a moral problem on teaching my hypothetical kids how to.

Not a parent yet, so take this with a big grain of salt.

But if I were to talk about piracy from a moral standpoint, I would first talk about stealing. Yes, we all know it's not the same, and it isn't, but there will certainly be someone who says it is, and it's better to clear that out. Besides, there are some parallels.

1. Stealing is reprehensible, but extremely so when you steal for someone who much needs it himself. Shoplifting is bad and can lead to serious consequences. Stealing money from a poor person is extremely bad and can't be justified.
2. Stealing is when you take something and the owner doesn't have it anymore. Piracy ain't that.

Then a bit on moral and legal grounds of piracy:

1. While piracy isn't stealing, piracy does decrease profits of the rightful owner. When you pirate from someone who does not profit much off something, it's same as stealing from poor man. Piracy is impactful, and it's important to remember.
2. Piracy may lead to legal consequences, which is why one shouldn't normally pirate stuff regardless of morality. But if the conditions of rightful ownership (cost, regional or use restrictions etc.) are inadequate, there exists such a way.

And in any case, I think the later you tell your kids about "illegal doesn't mean bad" the better. Could save a lot of trouble IMO.

Sure. To prepare someone to become a responsible adult, they need information. Learn things good and bad. Understand especially WHY people do things and consequences of actions.

I mean if you exclude half the truth, your kids will not learn how to judge things and make decisions.

And things not being etically 100% correct is not a reason to hide them altogether. I mean my mom also reads murder mystery stories and murder is not okay... I think beginning with a certain age it is important to learn also about ambiguous stuff. It's part of life.

That doesn't mean I'd have to teach them myself. But I'd talk to them and make sure they learned the right things.

If I teach them, they'll find it boring. Better to be a role model and answer questions if they have them.

Yes, when they’re older. I’d rather be the “dad, can you find this for me?” guy, and then when they’re older and start talking about wanting to set up their own Plex server or something I’ll show them how to do it, if they even want to. I would be perfectly happy being the perma media pirate for my family.

I will teach anyone who will listen.

No. I plan on treating it as other adult things. "Oh, you got into this? Well, here is how you protect yourself. "

Computer literacy wise? I hope my daughter gets the curiosity into it. Other things as well. More you know and understand, the better.

My mom introduced me to Napster. So at this point, it would be a family tradition.

It's like sex education and education about drugs and alcohol. It's necessary information for kids, even if you don't want them to do it, because if they don't know anything about those things, they'll end up with lots of problems.

Teach them how, why and why not, be honest and then trust them to make an informed decision on their own

It's not as though the existence and mechanisms of piracy are a coveted secret. There's a decent chance that they'll learn about and attempt it independently, and the method they learn about online might expose them to greater risk than if they did it with more consideration.

On that basis, I think that knowledge transfer is at worst harm reduction. If it's immoral, which I don't believe it is, then at the very least your intervention could prevent them from being preyed upon by some copyright troll company when they do it despite your silence or protestations.

I won't have kids. I absolutely have taught other people's kids though.

From an ethical standpoint, in the modern world, not teaching your children how to pirate is being an irresponsible parent. Not just because the "download stuff for free" aspect of piracy, but because piracy is associated to a number of moral and ethical decisions and tenets that also form important ideologies. Getting ready access to information, and being capable to redistribute information, for example, is a key element to anti-fascism ideologies which is why eg.: punk places an emphasis on radio. Being able to fight your own fights instead of only trading on the currency (digital or otherwise) other people impose on you is a core element of both digital and physical sovereignty, which is one of the reasons why stuff like KYC laws or banning of sex workers in economic operations have to be fought against.