If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.

Pirate what you need unless you are one of them archiver preppers.

This ain’t about “legality” this is about fighting the class war against owner class.

Everything.

Piracy is a tool to help reduce the disparity in wealth.

The only time you should buy something that you could pirate is if you can’t find it and you plan on sharing it with everyone else. I call this “taking one for the team.”

Do what you want. No need to overthink things!

do whatever you like nobody cares (no offense)

No need to make everything complicated

I generally make sure to spend my money one contemporary artists or authors (who are not already filthy rich, if they are already super well-off i dont contribute to increasing that wealth and instead buy something else) and try to maxmize the amount of money that falls to them. You could also find ways to donate directly to these artists and then pirate their stuff to your hearts content (from my ethical point of view anwyay, law will not agree with me). Ive also first pirated stuff and then bought it later and just replaced the files on my media server.

I dont really care about big corporations or some random rights holder long after someones death. So any big studio movie or old rock bands get pirated.

From my personal ethics standpoint, intellectual property is a form of private property which I’m against, also a form or artificial scarcity, which I’m also against.

If you want to support a small artist? You can maybe donate to them directly? Is that a thing? Maybe they have a patreon or something? In my case I have way less money than the artists I consume from so donating would make no sense.

Also, the act of making a copy doesn’t remove the original, the artist doesn’t get poorer because you pirate their content.

Personally, I think it depends. For me, I like to pirate games that there’s no way for me to legally buy a copy of and if possible are way too overpriced. Think multi hundred dollar retro games.

For media, I would absolutely support buying used media second hand. New physical releases tend to be worse than they were in the past in my opinion, so second hand or piracy feels like a good enough deal to me.

For music, I’d rather have physical CDs, if possible, rather than paying for streaming because I at least either support a local business I like to go to for CDs or support the artist directly. Laws be damned, I’d rather pirate music than give my money to the companies who financially abuse artists. Similar reason why almost all my CDs are second hand.

For stuff I have legally purchased, if need be I can just pirate them if it’s a digital product. Otherwise I can back up disc based media I have. No idea how to do it for the Sega Genesis cartridges I have, though, so if need be I can pirate those as well.

Edit:

For games, I pirate games I don’t own. For digital games I could find on Steam, I use it as a sort of demo for the game because majority of games don’t have a demo and I need one to ensure I’m not throwing my money down the drain.

There have been plenty of games I’ve bought because the “demo” was enough to make me wanna buy the game to support the devs. Latest example being Dungeon Clawlers.

I sail to find higher bitrate versions of things on the few streaming services I pay for. If I stream a show on Prime I don’t want to get a non-HDR or non-Dolby Digital version just because the platform got enshittifed since I signed up.

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.

Ask yourself: what would an evil, monopolistic megacorporation that owns all this IP do in my position?

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

pirate whatever you want, but just know that you’re not voting with your dollar if you don’t put your dollars anywhere.

it’s really hard to make a living with a passion project these days.

you could buy music. and ethical/indie shit. books. things that you actually care about existing. or not, i guess. whatever

As I’ve made more money in life, I pirate the same amount of stuff, basically (besides games). But I also spend a shitload of money on the stuff I like. Instead of paying Netflix or Spotify, I buy DVD/BD box sets, collector’s editions, vinyl, bandcamp my favorite albums, and way too many concert tickets. Avoid the middleman and support the creator.