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I’d like to solicit themotte’s thoughts on the ethics of piracy. Specificlly movies, software, and music.
Sharing copyrighted data has been a part of the internet landscape for as long as there has been networked computers. I know it traces back to the bbs days and likely even earlier than that.
Back in the early aughts I was involved in a forum where we would scan for unsecured FTP servers and then fill them with the latest movie music and software releases straight from the groups who actually created and distributed the files. The beauty of this is that you were transferring between commercial networks so the speeds were ludicrous.
This was not long after Napster popularized file sharing and typical online user was very much of the opinion that copying data and sharing it was not equivalent to stealing. Maybe it was the circles I traveled in and my age at the time, but nearly everyone was ethically fine with downloading media. The only reason one wouldn’t do it was that there you needed some minimal level of technical know how to find more than just music on p2p networks. The only folks opposed to it were media corporations, some artists, and a small amount of corporate shills.
Once iTunes, steam, Netflix’s, Spotify, and other commercial options became available, most people stopped file sharing and simply bought media. It was a common to hear the refrain that piracy was a result of lack of access to media online. If there was ease of access and a fair price, most people would be happy to purchase software. This sentiment is still common but I sense it’s become less prominent over the last few years. The streaming environment has become quite fracutured and has impaired both the ease of access and price point for legally consuming media online.
The point of this post is to suggest that people’s opinion on the ethics of media piracy is diametrically opposed to where it was for most of the internets history. The median online opinion that I see is that piracy = theft. Many of these people are young and have been thought from an early age that piracy is not ethical. I suspect that many have also changed their opinion as they age and perhaps are not working at software/medi companies where piracy not affects them directly.
From a personal perspective, I stopped pirating media when iTunes and steam hit the market because it was in fact easier to obtain things legally and I was happy to pay.
That changed about 4 years ago when I realized that I could not in good conscience pay money to Hollywood and leftist game developers. I am happy to pirate their software and steal their movies because the alternative is so distasteful to me. I will occasionally really enjoy something and find the creators to be acceptable enough to support. In those cases I will purchase something after the fact to support people that I agree with. I encourage everyone to do the same. Enforcement of file sharing these days is non-existent. You can pretty much use the the pirate bay without worry and ignore the occasional email from you isp asking you to stop. Though there are many other alternatives out there that don’t take long to find.
Online music piracy became commonplace precisely because no one ever had any ethical concerns about it. Taping albums, radio, videocassettes, television programs, and the like had been commonplace since consumer grade technology permitted it. No one in the '90s had any ethical concerns about taping The Wizard of Oz off of television so your kids could watch it whenever they wanted to. Hell, when I bought CDs in high school my own parents would sigh and tell me I shouldn't be spending money on something I could download off the internet. The reason kids these days take a view of copyright infringement that's more in line with the actual law is because the media environment makes it cheap and easy to avoid resorting to piracy. Ironically, this environment owes its entire existence to the piracy of the early '00s; the music industry would prefer the 20th Century way of doing business, and they only switched to streaming after they were effectively forced to (actually well past the point when they were forced to). If streaming services disappeared and the only way to legally have unlimited access to the latest pop hit was to pay $35 for a CD with 12 fixed songs, most of which you have no immediate interest in, the younger generation's attitudes toward piracy would change in a heartbeat.
Even today, no one really pays too much attention to the letter of the law when it comes to copyright infringement. The people who would tsk tsk you for pirating a movie off of an illegal stream because you didn't want to pay for it probably wouldn't be too concerned about whether your use of Dilbert's picture in a presentation for work was properly licensed, or whether their local bar was signed up with ASCAP and BMI so some guy at open mic night can play "Midnight at the Oasis" in public. Hell, Netflix recently announced plans to crack down on sharing accounts, which is both widespread and technically illegal.
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