this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

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Hi guys, first of all, I fully support Piracy. But Im writing a piece on my blog about what I might considere as "Ethical Piracy" and I would like to hear your concepts of it.

Basically my line is if I have the capacity of paying for something and is more convinient that pirating, ill pay. It happens to me a lot when I wanna watch a movie with my boyfriend. I like original audio, but he likes dub, so instead of scrapping through the web looking for a dub, I just select the language on the streaming platform. That is convinient to me.

In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something? And where is 100 justified and everybody should sail the seas instead?

I would like to hear you.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My take on this is summed up much better by Cory Doctorow, and best written up in the foreword of his book "Makers", which he published for free online.

There’s a dangerous group of anti-copyright activists out there who pose a clear and present danger to the future of authors and publishing. They have no respect for property or laws. What’s more, they’re powerful and organized, and have the ears of lawmakers and the press. I’m speaking, of course, of the legal departments at ebook publishers.

...

Why am I doing this? Because my problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks, @timoreilly for this awesome aphorism). Because free ebooks sell print books. Because I copied my ass off when I was 17 and grew up to spend practically every discretionary cent I have on books when I became and adult. Because I can’t stop you from sharing it (zeroes and ones aren’t ever going to get harder to copy); and because readers have shared the books they loved forever; so I might as well enlist you to the cause.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's a great excerpt and I'm now interested in this book but it doesn't really address the issue of money not going to the creator. He's just in a position where he can afford to go without the income. Millions of artists can not. I imagine neither of us wants art creation to be solely the domain of the wealthy. Reminds me of how in college the only people who could do "good" internships were those who could afford to go a summer (or longer after college) without income and live in D.C. and other expensive cities. It's wrong to not pay people to do a job of course, but that was a major secondary issue. Only people with money could get the internships that got them jobs that made good money.