The morality of piracy

Samseau said:
This is a difficult question, with a lot of nuance, but, overall, I think even if it is stealing then it is easily forgivable. Most artists who are pirated end up making more money, especially in concert sales, so, it's hard to say it's immoral when people aren't being harmed.
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I think we are largely all rule followers and users of logic so the appeal to "law" and convincing arguments is easy to make to us. What people have lost is the idea that there is some sort of structure or rule of law in reality, which there isn't. It's mostly a mirage and we're just arguing (literally what law has become) in types of transfer payments, mostly based on sophistry (at best), or control and degeneracy as part of the societal plan. Artists and entertainers are so overhyped and overpaid it's hard to take any of this stuff seriously as "work." My proof of that is that back in the day people made art for its own sake, the culture, or public consumption. Herman Melville and Mark Twain didn't really make any money, but they have a place in our history. I appeal to that genius as meaningful, not getting paid for it when otherwise almost none of these people are starving. They know what they are getting into, and the possibility it doesn't work out. When you're going for fame I largely don't care about the costs your take on otherwise. Why should I?
 
homersheineken said:
Is denying the pedophile, gay and talmudic Hollywood money in this war immoral?
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This gets at my original swamp contribution and the sickness in DC, with all the sway they have due to having all that money = it leads straight to degeneracy and even hatred of the human being, and of course, God. If the state seized your children or tried to give them drugs, are you supposed to be obedient to those rulers because "God put them in a role of authority over you"?

As an American I can't see how anyone squares any of this, knowing that our founding fathers actually got the freedom by revolting.
 
TruckDriver9 said:
I will generally "pirate" stuff at first and if I like it, I will then buy a hard copy which a prefer to have as digital-only content can be censored or canceled. It's not that different from going to the music store, back in the old days, and listening to records before deciding to buy them, or skimming through a book in the bookstore. And with the amount of cultural slop released these days, buying anything blind is theft committed against me.
I also appreciate when publishers put effort to make hard copies attractive - extra content, cover art, etc.
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TruckDriver9 said:
I will generally "pirate" stuff at first and if I like it, I will then buy a hard copy which a prefer to have as digital-only content can be censored or canceled. It's not that different from going to the music store, back in the old days, and listening to records before deciding to buy them, or skimming through a book in the bookstore. And with the amount of cultural slop released these days, buying anything blind is theft committed against me.
I also appreciate when publishers put effort to make hard copies attractive - extra content, cover art, etc.
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And so as long as you donate some money to the author it's should be fine.
 
Thefinalepic said:
and that disobeying the governing body of one's jurisdiction is a sin.
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And what does the bible say about if your overlords are evil and degenerate? For example if your country is at war and your government told you as a soldier you must shoot enemy babies or go to prison for refusing to obey orders. Is it wrong to disobey your governing body? Of course that is an extreme example but in general a lot of laws in modern society are evil as our rulers are completely evil. In Singapore they have passed laws now that will make it illegal to not get vaxxed during the next fake pandemic. Does that mean if you live in Singapore and there is a pandemic you should inject your children with poison to avoid a fine or 6 months imprisonment?

Personally I have little respect for the laws or the people that make or enforce these laws. To the extent I follow laws it is to avoid punishment and not for any other reason. In today's degenerate world legality has nothing to do with morality. Its like how I have zero care factor when police get killed by criminals. They are enforcers of the regime and they have no conscience. Look at how the police behaved towards the public during covid, or look at how the police in Romania enforced the corrupt EU agenda against the population during the recent election period. The police are not your friends.

The government is the enemy, never forget that.
 
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Stealing is a zero-sum game (you have thing, I violate you by taking thing and now it's mine alone), piracy on the other hand is just making a copy of existing media - it's merely copyright infringement.

Copyright laws were created to extend the idea of owning property to the non-physical realm - ostensibly to protect writers, musicians and other creatives' intellectual property. In the modern age however the majority of profits go to the publisher, whether it be Amazon for writers, Spotify for musicians, etc.

Copyright laws are extremely powerful these days. Disney's Mickey Mouse copyright was about to expire and go into the public domain but in 1998 they lobbied Congress to make an extension so copyright would last about 120 years after intellectual property creation. So it's not just your entire life you can profit off something, but even generations after your death can't remix or build on your work.

It's so overreaching these days you've got John Deere preventing farmers from repairing their own tractors, and Monsanto suing farmers for growing pesticide-resistant seeds that blew onto their land. These laws are abused by police to play copyrighted music during protests in order to copyright strike videos of the event, it's used by Hollywood to copyright strike critics of their propaganda and Apple uses it to remotely disable phones that were repaired by 3rd-party repair shops.

Even ignoring the copyright owner, a huge chunk of sales revenue goes to parasitic governments to fund proxy wars and LGBT propaganda. This is all on top of the various ways getting goods with DRM is a worse experience than pirated, such as ads on Amazon Prime Video and Denuvo to lower frame rate on videogames.

Meanwhile large corporations flagrantly violate the copyright of individuals. OpenAI and various AI companies train their models on source-available code for example without any attribution to the authors despite the licenses demanding it. Meta even trained their model on a well-known shadow library of pirated books. But does anything happen to them? No, because copyright is just another Jewish psyop used to further enrich the elites whilst draining the peasants' funds and rights.

TL;DR: Copyright is 99% of the time immoral, so piracy is fine.
 
Iakobos said:
"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."

My understanding is that Christians should follow the rule of law unless it contradicts the law of God in which case we of course must obey God.
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This is the discernment we are talking about. The point of Christ's statement is actually that all things are God's.

When you pull back the curtains, aren't most things contradictory to logic, truth and God in the modern Gomorrah we've slouched to? I'd argue yes.

Should our Founding Fathers in America just listened to King George and whatever dictum he put forth? These are the questions.

Would you pay 95% taxes if a leader said so? Does that contradict the "laws of God"? These are the important questions of the thread.
 
My heart tells me piracy is wrong.

An analogy that comes to mind is fair dodging on the train.

Yes, the train runs whether you board it or not, so you're not necessarily taking anything away if you board without paying, but you're still supposed to pay.

Even if the train was owned and operated by puppy-murdering child molesters it would still be wrong to board without paying.
 
A train is essential to your work and daily life, you use it in lieu of personal transport, if you need some software to use as a tool for making money as a researcher, a scientist, or a photographer, then definitely pay for it if your livelihood depends on it.

I download a song not because I need it, but because I can, if it's not too much hassle. I would have never bought it anyway, and especially not in mp3 quality. I would live without it, the absence having no real impact whatsoever.

Nobody pays me anything when I have to listen to the music I don't like in public places, your town may pay some artist to perform on the fourth of July without asking for your consent. Can I return the music I no longer enjoy, here give me my .99c back plus inflation, or at least half of that. The NYSE runs on Linux, nobody pays the developers any royalties.
 
The title of this thread should be changed. Saying "The morality of piracy" makes it sound bad.

It should be something like "The morality of rightfully appropriating content from its owners, who are bad people and they deserve it".
 
I read the first few posts and skipped the rest. Frankly, I’ve never given this a lot of analytical thought. I don’t “pirate” much off of the internet and really haven’t downloaded anything permanently (or streamed new movies or whatever) but music, which was back in the day of Napster. I don’t listen to that kind of music anymore anyway. My moral compass has never gone south in considering the issue, though I did always find those pious millionaires who didn’t want people listening to their songs for free to be repulsive.
 
I have an app called “delta” where I play old handheld games on my phone, such as GBA or DS games. All of the games are older than a decade, nothing current. Am I supposed to go on eBay or Amazon to find old handheld devices and cartridges which take up space? I see nothing wrong with downloading the ROMs and playing those games on my phone.
 
Blade Runner said:
If the state seized your children or tried to give them drugs, are you supposed to be obedient to those rulers because "God put them in a role of authority over you"?
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Australia Sucks said:
And what does the bible say about if your overlords are evil and degenerate? For example if your country is at war and your government told you as a soldier you must shoot enemy babies or go to prison for refusing to obey orders. Is it wrong to disobey your governing body? Of course that is an extreme example but in general a lot of laws in modern society are evil as our rulers are completely evil. In Singapore they have passed laws now that will make it illegal to not get vaxxed during the next fake pandemic. Does that mean if you live in Singapore and there is a pandemic you should inject your children with poison to avoid a fine or 6 months imprisonment?

Personally I have little respect for the laws or the people that make or enforce these laws. To the extent I follow laws it is to avoid punishment and not for any other reason. In today's degenerate world legality has nothing to do with morality. Its like how I have zero care factor when police get killed by criminals. They are enforcers of the regime and they have no conscience. Look at how the police behaved towards the public during covid, or look at how the police in Romania enforced the corrupt EU agenda against the population during the recent election period. The police are not your friends.

The government is the enemy, never forget that.
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People have asked these questions for millenia. St. Augustine wrote that an unjust law is no law at all.

Indeed the Apostle Paul said that all lawful authority comes from God, which logically implies that rulers who break the law are from Satan.

There isn't an actual contradiction, however, a lot of "churches" abdicate their responsibility in calling out unjust authorities in order to cozy up to the state.

The Russian Church called out the USSR, only to get clericided for it. They were eventually forced to submit. Same thing with the Antiochian Church which originally resisted Islam, and the Bishops and Priests were slaughtered for it. Same thing with St. John the Baptist, who called out Herod.

So, good Churches call out unjust immoral authorities that have no right to rule, the real problem is that most people are too cowardly to act against them even when the Church does.

It was a special time when the founding fathers acted as righteously as many Orthodox Saints have in the past.
 
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