Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Regardless of what conclusion you develop, some things are always morally acceptable to pirate. For example, Metallica.

/s

On a serious note, IP is a made up concept. Pirate away.

Freely pirate everything without guilt. If you use torrent then seed how much you can. It will help your fellow human beings.

BUT if/when you have money to spare invest them into creators/art that bring you something. It seems antithetical because they taught us real art should be free from capitalism's shackles yadda yadda, but art and artists needs money to flourish. Find indie artists and wacky projects and fund them.

pirate whatever you want, but just know that you're not voting with your dollar if you don't put your dollars anywhere.

it's really hard to make a living with a passion project these days.

you could buy music. and ethical/indie shit. books. things that you actually care about existing. or not, i guess. whatever

You can be the judge of that.

First of all: Decide a code of ethics for yourself.

(Piracy is equivalent to going to a book store and taking pictures of the books as you flip through pages. Ask yourself: Is this ethical?)

And if that's okay for you, then:

Second: If action is unlawful, weigh in on potential consequences and then ask yourself if you want to risk the consequences.

Piracy is not murder, cops would probably be too lazy to investigate.

Pirate everything, and share as much as you're able.

Only you can decide the answer to this question. If you aren't too busy preventing forest fires. /joke

I look at it this way, if I made a copy of this work irl would the person who made it go without their needs met? If I bought it IRL already then it is always fine IMO. If it is a independent person I try to buy it in a way that they get most or all the money and I get files that are not DRM. It really a case by case thing. Like I will never give Nintendo or Disney any money ever again so I have to find ways to get what I want most of the time it is second hand or pirating it.

Feel free to pirate everything on personal use. If you like the work put behind it feel free to support it; but it's not necessary.

Everyone has different preference on what they would/wouldn't pirate so it your prerogative what feels right to you.

1. If X was not available to pirate, would you pay for it?
2. If you would not have paid for X, does pirating X cause any actual loss to its owner? If you would not have paid for it either way (even if that were the only option) and you haven't caused them a loss of revenue by pirating it, did you impact the creator at all?

The counter to this is always that just because someone wouldn’t pay doesn’t mean the creator’s work has no value. To that I would yes that is completely true. The creator's work has value, but maybe not monetary value. You can't always conflate value to money (ex. FOSS, canonical sci-fi lore, protest symbols, etc).

There is also a morality component used against my argument that would say I'm ignoring the intent, consent, and ownership the creator has. Its usually worded that I'm using outcome-based morality and that the ends always justifies the means by that logic. But I pay for X, not for access to use X. If the creator can opt without my consent to remove X from me, I'm not longer obligated to follow that moral constraint. Morality is a two-way street.

That's a question for you, I don't think there is a universal answer for everyone.

IMO if you cannot get it in a format that's appropriate it's warranted.

For example ebooks that only come with drm so you can't add it as an epub to your ereader.

I usually buy the book and then acquire the epub

When society does I think its valid to. So right now - everything if you want. If we get back to wealth disparity levels from 50 years along with decent rights and working democracy. Then maybe tighten the ship. Certainly at the least money and corps need to be out of our democracy.

No. Take what you like and burn the rest.

I pirate what's any good that I cannot find legally for streaming, as well as educational stuff that I want available should I and/or my family find ourselves without internet access.

Sometimes I'll go so far as to pirate things that I cannot find without ads(even with premiums*), but mostly if it'll let me see the first few minutes before playing an ad, I just live with it.

* The only reason I still have Amazon Prime is for the free shipping. I pay extra for no ads. I pay extra for HiDive. There appear to be things available on Prime with HiDive that aren't available on just Prime or just HiDive. Magically, those shows(Ranma 1/2, for example) have ads. WTF?

None of these companies have ethics. Why should you get hung-up in ethics for a victimless crime?

Depends which d&d alignment you're shooting for but I think empathy is necessary for ethics and moral reasoning. Reciprocity is a good moderator to prevent being a door mat, treat people how they treat you.

Just pirate everything, more money for you to invest, bring food to your table, support your family, go on trips etc.