1. When the content is no longer available for retail purchase (i.e old games or shows that have been pulled entirely [see Infinity Train])
2. You have a physical copy, but want a digital version.

Any piracy related to scientific papers I consider ethical. That kind of knowledge should NEVER be hidden behind a paywall

Abandonware is a very clear cut case of ethical piracy, too. Without it, a lot of digital stuff "wouldn't exist" anymore. Mainly games, but also loads of productivity programs, doubly so for discontinued platforms, like Amiga computers.

There should be a way to pay only the workers when you buy something. In that case, you could pay them but only after pirating and making sure you enjoy it. Since there is nothing like that, I think you should pay only content from small creators. Big creators already have plenty, and paying for anything else just gives money to greedy executives who then lower the quality of the content to make more money. Of course, if you have the means and don't pay anything, you are just making sure there will be less of that content made in the future. It isn't scalable; if everybody pirated content without paying a single cent, there would be no content made except by hobbyists who don't want to make a living out of it.

Most people here arguing that the "ethical side" of piracy is when the media is not available elsewhere. Or if it's available but at an abusive price/requirements. To which I agree.

But I also believe that culture shouldn't be only for those who can afford it. Books, movies, videogames, tvshows, education, science is what makes a society culturally rich. This is exactly why we have libraries. It's a public service. I've seen teens become avid consumers and incredibly knowledgeable in certain subjects, to the point that they are making a living because of it. Because the internet allow them to explore and grow. Without a pricetag nor preassure on their families.

Heck! Even I pirated almost everything in my teen years. Nowdays I pay for a lot of media. Don't get me wrong, we should be supporting artists. Always. If possible.

If it's not possible, go ahead just pirate it. Piracy it's just the best digital library in history. With a heavy euphemism attached: "piracy" (the act of attacking ships in order to sack them, kill people, rape people). It has a bad connotation on purpose. Don't fall for it.

Edit: punctuation

If a product is no longer for sale on any storefront, or the edition for sale is lacking content had by previous versions of the same product, piracy is morally correct for the sake of archival and preservation

If I have already purchased a copy of the physical media, I don’t think it is piracy to acquire a digital copy of the same media for personal use

If the product is no longer available to buy officially.

If the product required prohibitively complicated methods to play it (VPN, specific hardware requirements) which can be circumvented by pirating means, so, by extension, I mean region locked software or media in general.

When the quality I want is not available; a stream of a movie in 1080 or very compressed 4k which I want to see in the best quality possible.

Here is a quick hot take: If a company ever advertised a product in a public setting and the content is no longer available for purchase in a retail setting/manner anyone should be free to acquire it via non-retail means. Full stop.

Scientific articles. You're not robbing the authors of a single penny, because they don't get a cut of the sales by the publishing house anyway and the journal reviewers are volunteers.

Piracy is a service problem. They keep making it harder for people to watch things, and piracy gets easier every day.

If it comes from a large corporation, its probably ethical, since they are exploiting you (or others) in an unethical way.

If it's an indie team (or one man team for that matter) then it's probably unethical.

For me it concerns the intersection of privacy and piracy (and ownership).

My conceptions of ownership: I give money and receive a product in return. That ends my relationship with the seller.

But, increasingly (or almost exclusively on online marketplaces) businesses expect we will pay them for, essentially, the privilege of becoming their products. They control digital media as a means to record every action and behavior about us, the users, in order to bundle and sell our information to data brokers and other ad partners.

So, essentially, if buying something does not give me full ownership (possession of media) and is simply a means for a business to spy on me and harvest my data by controlling that media, then I'll pirate.

It's unethical and dangerous to use a transaction to spy on customers.

For ethical piracy, I would say definitely if the content is no longer available through official channels.

Other situations include:

• downloading a copy of equal quality to one you already have a physical copy of, but don’t have the equipment to rip it
• really old stuff that should be public domain, but isn’t because copyright law is broken
• downloading the cracked copy of a game because DRM in your purchased copy makes it unusable

I personally avoid DRM protected digital purchases unless I can strip it out. I prefer ripping movies myself, but I don’t have any issues buying DRM-free music. I also wouldn’t mind paying for a kindle book given that I can always import it into Calibre and end up with a DRM-free copy.

Piracy makes up for some huge inequalities in the world. The prices for digital goods do not usually take into account the economies of certain regions. I live in Morocco and our money is really low compared to the dollar. 1 dollar is like 7 Dirhams. The average salary for a normal job is really low if you convert it to dollars. So services like Netflix and HBO would cost 10 times more if you factor in wages and conversion to dollars. Why should we pay that just because we live in another place ? Why do these services pretend to be global and yet they are enforcing US prices on the rest of the world. You can't even speak of physical goods because Amazon doesn't give a fuck about Africa. Books would cost 3 times their price in shipping and you have to wait a month or so, not to mention that there are limits on how much currency you spend internationally. The fees for an international card are so high also. In short, without piracy 90 percent of the world wouldn't be able to partake in anything.

IMO it's better to not pirate small indie content (mostly games in my case).

On Anna‘s Archive Front Page there is a book "Against Intellectual Monopoly", I think it would give you an interesting perspective to consider too.

I change laptops frequently. Used to buy songs from iTunes and every time I changed laptops, transferred music over, I'd lose access to them. Would have to go thru insane process to be allowed to listen to the music I'd paid for.

Similar thing would happen with some software, Adobe especially.

If you're going to treat me like a criminal, then I might as well be a criminal. Same with purchasing movies on Amazon.

I tried to pay for minecraft, but 2 hours later, Microsoft wouldn't let me. Kept trying to make me an Hotmail account.

Growing trend in software I'm not happy with. No longer allowed to own the things we buy, and forced to hand over my email, phone number, address, name, create account... used to be, you could just buy things, simply. That was that.

Corporations are getting drunk with power, overreaching, infiltrating people life.

Also, if in poverty, no food, homeless, etc. If I can't afford what I need. And can get it another way, I will

If you're not using it to make money it's never not OK. I can't see it as theft. It's just a different method of obtaining the same thing that doesn't harm anyone.

Not only are those making this choice unlikely to pay anyways, but all the regular people who worked creating it already got paid so nobody can say "oh the film crew, VFX artists etc will be out of a job". No they already did their job and got paid. The investors maybe want more money but they aren't hurting for it, I don't feel anything for them.

In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something?

Never pay money for pirated content or ask someone to pay money for pirated content. Donations to keep a site running are borderline and iffy, depending on the implementation and transparency. As soon as you earn any kind of revenue or treat it as your 'job' it crosses into the unethical IMO.

Second point related to money: Pirating stuff you could easily pay for is probably bad, if the creator receives $0 from you. There might still be reasons to do so (not wanting to support DRM for example), but if you got the cash you better find a way to support the actual creators (merch, donations...). The smaller the author the heavier the moral responsibility to bring some money their way. This also weighs in the other direction: It's probably accetpable or even good to not give more money to giant corporations that abuse intellectual property for their own gains and who shit on creators.

1. Content that you cannot acquire by any "lawful" means.
2. Content that you already own a copy of (Yes, this includes "only" having a "license" to it; you own what you own).
3. Content that is outrageously priced, and/or from large companies where the people who worked on the product will receive nothing from sold copies. (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, etc)

Watching youtube with adblocker 🤣

Books: if I can buy a digital version and if it's not priced over its paper counterpart, I buy. If it's out of print and there isn't a digital version from the publisher, I look for the digital version from anywhere. I did that once for a book series and when the publisher finally put out a digital version, I bought them.

It's about access. The paywall has to be reasonable and the publishers should digitize "out-of-print" regardless of the cost to them. They can recoup the costs over time rather than counting "profits" in a quarterly window.

Blind readers should get the forever exemption. They should have braille/audio of any book, sold or not.

I'd say all piracy that isn't bootlegging or otherwise profit motivated is pretty ethical. It's basically a decentralized museum of modern art that our tragically morally bankrupt society can't be bothered to allow for the legal preservation of.

When the money goes to people who did not create the media. Support creators, not exploiters.

Sharing knowledge and creative works is how society progresses. Scientific progress relies on open access to discoveries and data. Creative works are shared, remixed, and built upon. But restrictive copyright laws have allowed corporations to severely limit access to information and works of art to optimize their profits. They frame piracy as “stealing” to make it seem immoral, when in reality piracy often involves simply sharing creative works with friends or communities that can’t access or afford them.

To Read More: https://technomagnus.vercel.app/posts/piracythe-moral-imperative-of-sharing-knowledge

Content that should've been easily purchased, but it's stuck behind a subscription model. Photoshop. Lightroom. I don't understand why these have subscriptions. I should be able to buy it like any other software.

Any stream content. Any subscription. Anything that I can't access because of my nationality.

I'd pay for other things.

Depends if I find the company that made that media ethical. I would be happy to pirate Autodesk, Adobe, EA etc. Just because they are predatory and unethical. I also "pirate" music (adblock on youtube) since recording labels are shit. Also I watch youtube with no ads, since I do not support Google. I do pay for Nebula though, since a lot of creators I like are there and the company is fair.

If there is no legal way to play a game due to the game being too old, require obscure hardware, not sold in your region, etc. In that case since the player had no way to give the developer money, might as well pirate it.

When I can't get something because it's no longer being made, or at least not for a sensible price.

Like, old games are fair to copy. They don't even make the hardware for that any more. Sony is making strides with PS+ Extra, but the catalogue there is nowhere near big enough.

I think the music industry has finally got to a point where piracy is pointless. A subscription to pretty much any streaming service gives you everything now. The TV/movie guys are struggling here, and even with three subscriptions, there's a ton of stuff missing. If there was one that had the kind of coverage that Spotify had for like £30/month, I'd pay that in a heartbeat.

I would call ethical piracy any kind of data acquiring that would otherwise be unattainable. A more common example is any kind of software and/or content that you pay and therefore should own and for any kind of reason the seller/provider restricts your acces to it.

1. Whether it is a movie/series/book/song you payed and for some good forsaken reason you cannot access it because you changed your hardware or your country doesn't have access to it
2. Or it is any kind of software that you have to pay a subscription to keep a feature you previously had on a previous version (ex. Adobe)
3. or a video game that was removed from the service, has DRM and you can't access it anymore and/or the server shut down and the company doesn't release the source code
4. or an even older game you own but the cartridge/cd/disk/cassette is destroyed and or the console is not supported anymore and/or it is abandonwarevand the current owner is not know so it cannot be commercially distributed

Coprorations do not want anyone to own the hardware they sell by denying the right to repair, let alone software. The mere sence is unethical, so it's ethical to at least acquire software through piracy.

It's our culture. Everything we create, we create as a society, so to restrict access to our shared culture is the immoral act. That's the philosophical take anyway.

Practically speaking, we're living under feudalism capitalism, so we have to consider that the creation of art (movies, games, images, etc.) all comes at a financial cost, so acting as if those costs aren't borne by others is, I would argue anyway, unethical.

So the position I usually take is that if the group making the thing is small, the Right thing to do is to pay for it, while if it's a big multinational cultural glutton like Disney, they can eat a bag of dicks. As far as I'm concerned, pirate the shit out of that.

The interesting dilemma for me comes with the question: once you've purchased work from the Little Guy, is it ethical to seed it or just sneakernet it with others? Usually I fall on the side of "yes" on this, because small organisations also need exposure, and getting something for free is often the way in. I know that's how I got into a bunch of books for example.

I don't know about "ethical" but justified yeah.

Certainly if media is not available for purchase I have no problem with people pirating it. But also if it's not available in a reasonably accessible format. For example, I wanted to show my son the original TMNT show. I would have happily bought it on Vudu, Amazon or Play Movies, but it's only available on iTunes. I have all Android devices and don't even have a personal Windows device, so I would need to jump through serious hoops to get it working if I bought it.

I expect to pay a fair price for things. Unfair pricing are profits made from monopolies which are illegal. Copyrights exist to enforce monopolies, and thus are unethical in my view. It is especially evil when lobbying pushes laws that develop mass surveillance, private militia and automatic justice. While these laws exist, piracy is an act of resistance against oppression.

And it must be mentioned : science should be free. Especially medical science.

What pisses me off with copyrights is that the unethical or outright evil behaviour come from the copyright owners, but they turned the laws so the evil behaviour is legal and we now have these questions about the ethic of so called piracy.

If you couldn't afford to pay for it in the first place, then they're not losing any money.

I'd say as long as it isn't harming a small independent artist, then its generally ethical.

I think something most folks can agree on is abandonware. If there is literally no way to purchase something and you want to buy it then I don't think people should be angry that you "stole" it.

I genuinely believe that stealing is stealing and anyone justifying it is doing so to not feel guilty about it.

I download things I haven't paid for. It's wrong. I can rationalize this because the stuff I'm stealing has already made their money and me enjoying it on my own time likely has zero impact on the content creators. Also, fuck the non-skippable intros and commercials on blurays.

The one exception to this, what I would argue is unquestionably "ethical piracy", is content that's actually important to the progress of humanity. Things like well researched scientific papers, studies about the humanities, psychology, the affects of technology, mechanization, artificial intelligence, etc. This should never be held behind lock and key. You whining about not having access to How I Met Your Mother is not a valid reason to steal content.

Also, people need to spend more time at their public libraries. If you want free shit, a lot of it is there explicitly for the purpose you all espouse.

Perfectly ethical:

• Content that is Inaccessible legally such as old games, abandonware, delisted media, banned stuff etc.

• Digital copies of physical content you own

• Digital Content that you already own such as ebooks or movies, but are restricted access due to DRM or single-copy rules or other dumb stuff. If I paid for something I should have the right to access it however I want (as long as I don't distribute it)

Gray Area:

• Pirating work that benefits a publisher but not the creator. Movies, Shows, and Songs released by studios that exploited the creators of that material and not giving them a cent. This includes scientific work and research.