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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1324 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 6, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I have spent a few hours playing the Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake (on PC I might add). It's a very charming and well-made game. It lifts the spirit.

The devs added major image sharpening to it though, probably in an effort to make a 1080p game look better on 4K TVs or something. I hope that can be modded out soon.

I think it’s vulgar to pirate games (I assume you’re not ripping it from the cart). Call it a matter of honor. If one must do it, it is best not to mention it.

Bravo. It surprises and disappoints me endlessly to see shoplifter ethics espoused by supposed right wingers.

There is literally no way that you can legally buy a game. You can only purchase a revocable, non-transferable, full-price license to play the game until the publisher changes their mind or the servers shut down. That license is gimped in a dozen different ways, not least of which is that they do not permit it to work on a general computing device but only on their special hand-marked and very expensive machine. It's as though you bought a Hermes bag but were only allowed to wear it if you had your entire outfit from the same store.

We are not talking about normal products and we are not talking about normal markets.

It's as though you bought a Hermes bag but were only allowed to wear it if you had your entire outfit from the same store.

See, what I'd do is not buy the bag or wear it. I wouldn't steal it, or have a Chinese copy made of it. Not least because I would consider such a product/company so wildly unethical that I wouldn't want to support them, even spiritually by honoring their product.

What's the justification for using the product without paying for it? I guess I could see the logic for jailbreaking a game you already own, or downloading a copy of it for more convenient use, or pirating a new server for an online game that's dead.

But the logic of "the big corporation are greedy and unfair and just want to take advantage of me, maaaaaaaaan, so I'm justified to take what I want without paying" is the ethics of a shoplifter. It's the way people that loot stores justify their actions, on the basis that the owners and corporations are all against them, or that the insurance covers it anyway so there's no real loss, or other vague marxist noises.

I'm not saying I'm perfect: I use anna's archive and dodge paywalls and run adblockers and play ROMs and I'm not by any means meticulous about the IP ownership when I watch something online.

But we should admit that we do it out of greed, convenience, venality etc. If a seller offers their product in an unfair manner, the ethical thing to do is to simply refuse to purchase it, one is not justified in stealing it.

It's not a great analogy because copyright infringement (what you've been psyoped into calling piracy and theft) does not deprive anyone else of the good.

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