Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

If I’ve paid for it once, but the Powers That Be make it unavailable or want to charge again to continue using it, I have no problem with finding a copy that works to make my purchase whole.

As long as you're not reselling or appropriating others' creations as your own, everything is ethical.

A lot of folk bring up (correctly, imo) indie creators and end up mentioning Stardew Valley as an example - especially within the first couple years of its release. SV as an example has fell off, as it's had it's years to rake in cash.

But I absolutely pirated SV for YEARS, multiple times. I was in a place where I was utterly broke, could not always afford food, and only had internet because of assistance programs. My laptop couldn't run much, not even minecraft at that point. It could, however, run Stardew Valley. So I re-downloaded it multiple times over the handful of hand-me-down hard drives that I used in a laptop that kept frying hard drives. (eyeroll)

I did eventually get to a place financially where I could afford to buy SV, so I did. Then it went on sale on console so I bought it again, knowing I'd never play it (console without the aiming mod is awful), but it helped pay it back how much play time I'd enjoyed back when I couldn't afford the game.

That, to me, is ethical.

When you are a student and cannot obtain a reasonably priced copy of software- as a company I would see this as a sure fire way to onboard a new generation into my product which will then be paid for with company money later on.

For me anything Nintendo is fair game, I also dont bat an eye at any movie or show piracy.

For games if there is no way of buying it new and supporting the developers I’ll just download a ROM. It makes absolutely no difference to the developer or publisher whether I buy it used or pirate it. They aren’t getting any of the money either way.

Or if it’s a PC game and I’m not sure it will run on my system I’ll pirate it and if it runs they get my money.

As for movies and TV if it’s available to buy on physical on DVD, Blu Ray, 4K Blu Ray I’ll buy it. But if it’s only streaming or on VOD I’ll pirate it. There’s been too many cases of purchased content being removed from peoples accounts.

Basically if they want my money it needs to be available to buy brand new in a way that won’t just disappear one day.

All piracy

I can't really trust that a game is worth the price tag anymore. So I treat piracy as a extended demo. If I feel the fun to price ratio is solid I'll buy the game.

I believe online piracy is the uploading part, not the downloading. I think uploading has a much more narrow use case, but if everyone stopped we wouldn't be able to download.

Pirating content with the intent to buy it after trying it out using the pirated version (e.G indie games)

I stopped going to cinema when the Hollywood movie cartel started messing with freedom on the internet, and I don't feel any remorse pirating Hollywood movies.

When I started earning enough to have disposable income, I made sure to buy ebooks and audiobooks, as well as supporting my favourite musicians on Bandcamp or by buying merch.

Whenever EA or Ubisoft releases a half assed game with stellar marketing

i have downloaded tens of thousands of dollars of audio recording software. i always told myself that, if i were to ever make money from my efforts and usage thereof, i would be happy to pay the author.

i never made any money. but i hope the right people got paid by those that did.

There was a television show from another country that I wanted to watch. It wasn't available to stream in my country from the source, and wasn't available on any other streaming platforms. I even tried making an account, but they wouldn't accept my credit card because of the billing address.

Pirating that would be justified; the argument isn't just that, if I can't buy it then I should be allowed to take it, but that if I can take it without causing financial stress on the artists, then it's OK. They are refusing my money, so pirating it wouldn't deprive them of a sale.

I also strongly agree with what others have said, that my ethics require me to purchase something once.

Where I get fuzzy is on the right for producers (studios and distributors) to make profit. Money going to artists is clear to me; and production studios need to fund projects, some if which will fail. But the existing, purely profits-driven, risk-averse, homogenizing movie production industry... I'm not sure I agree that they deserve the lion's share of the profits.

It's a tautology.