Let me explain here, as just one example. There was a tv show that was broadcast in the late 2000’s - early 2010’s. About 5-6 years ago, right when I felt nostalgic and wanted to watch it again, the tv show in question was pulled from all major streaming services, and DVDs of the show were not produced (or if they were, I was never able to get my hands on them). The only way that this cartoonish show was watchable for a time was via second-hand archives on YouTube, dailymotion, etc. However, despite the fact that the show was made inaccessible, the copyright holder’s official website states even to this day that the show is copyright, which means that unofficial uploads on YouTube should be in violation of copyright (the YouTube channels were just amateurish accounts and not credible, official accounts, just to be clear). As such, it was ambiguous as to whether the production company was going to lease the rights to the show. Whilst interest in the show has gone now, it did make me wonder: is it ever justifiable (either legally or ethically, or morally) to pirate media that has been completely pulled from circulation despite the original owner maintaining copyright (and therefore ownership) of? Or, is it (legally, ethically or morally) justifiable to pirate media where the copyright status is ambiguous (i.e. you don’t know if anyone owns it) [classic case study I always hear about: British PSAs, icons of 70’s 80’s and 90’s kids childhoods, yet locked behind copyright doors whose keys may lie in the hand of legal ambiguity]
Piracy is justifiable in a vastly greater number of scenarios than just pulled media.
I think not only is it justifiable, it is a necessity for archival purposes. If you can’t stream the show, they should be forced to release it for free or at the very least, release the copyright so other people can upload their archive.
To keep it short: Yes, it is.
Short, sweet and to the point! Thanks for sharing your view (even if it’s not detailed lol)
If it cannot be purchased for reasonable price on a good medium and owned forever, then piracy is justified.
Media piracy is always justifiable.
Unless you’re using it to train AI. Then you should either have to pay so much that your company goes bankrupt, or just be put to death, cause fuck you, Mark Zuckerberg.
Can you explain in what terms?
I’d say mostly that media companies have become openly hostile to consumers - the very people who buy their products - as your example shows.
If I can’t legally buy the media, then I’m left with no choice but to pirate it.
That plus they don’t make media in the digital landscape clear in terms of stealing and copyright. Thats why I have issues with the system as it is — it’s a type of product that’s practically unprecedented. If it were, say, stealing a loaf of bread in the shop, it’d be an easy explanation. But the digital landscape is so complex, not just in terms of content and ownership, but also in the legal, ethical and moral nuances, especially if the owner/copyright holder themselves is ambiguous/unclear on their stance) that I just find making head or tail of it incomprehensible. Or that’s my view of it anyway.
Piracy isn’t stealing. At most it’s an IP violation.
Stealing a loaf of bread in the shop is also always justifiable if only because fuck anyone who has enough money and resources to have a shop stocked with bread and would allow another human to starve over a few cents.
What if they’re an independent artist who self-publishes their work?
Sure:
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Nothing is actually being stolen. This is to say, if I copy a movie and give it to you, I still have the movie, my neighbor probably still has their copy of the movie, the store down the street still has the same number of movies, amazon still has its copy it uses for streaming, etc.
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The entertainment industry, like most others, is a parasitic entity that stifles creation and attempts to maximize shareholder profit at the expense of any/everything else, including the well-being of the artists, creators, and those who actually do the work of making things, as well as the consumer, who consistently has to pay more and more to receive less and less for things that are cheaper and cheaper to produce / reproduce.
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It’s becoming incredibly common for a digital item you “purchase” to be deleted from your account at the whims of whichever company “sold” it to you. At this point, most digital things you “purchase” you don’t actually own. This includes movies, music, books, audiobooks, TV shows, games, PC software, apps, etc. If I’m not allowed to own anything without the risk of someone arbitrarily deciding I can’t have it any more, even if I pay “full price” for it, why should I bother paying for it in the first place? It’s not like 90% of that money isn’t just going to some corporate asshole’s 3rd house while the creators and laborers make a comparative pittance. (me purchasing it isn’t going to fix that problem.)
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By the time a quality version of a product is piratable, the majority of the profit has likely already been made by whatever corporation has packaged and sold it before they gave the smallest amount they possibly could to the creator(s) and the people who helped make it happen. If you really want to support someone because you like their work, it’s probably more ethical all-around to pirate said work and then donate directly to those that made it a thing than it would be to squander the majority of that money on fuel for the CEO of Sony’s new jet.
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Despite all of this, many others will never agree with me and will continue to pay into this shit system, which is to say, no one is going to “kill the industry”. If artists are hurting, it’s because the rich aren’t paying their fair share to those who made them rich. Let’s look at Netflix’s executive compensation:
Co-CEO Ted Sarandos: Total 2025 compensation was roughly $53.9 million. <br> Co-CEO Greg Peters: Total 2025 compensation was roughly $53.2 million.<br> CFO Spencer Neumann: Total 2025 compensation was roughly $20.8 million.<br> CLO David Hyman: Total 2025 compensation was roughly $15.4 million.<br> Chief Global Affairs Officer Clete Willems: Total 2025 compensation was roughly $14.3 million (partial year).
- So, Netflix spent $157.6 million on just 5 people but can’t afford to pay the people that make those inflated salaries possible because… piracy? Also, it’s important to remember that executive compensation, just like normal employee compensation, is considered an operating cost and Netflix’s ~$11 billion profit for 2025 is the money still on the books after paying everyone. So like, that “profit” number could be waaay smaller while that employee compensation number could be waaaay bigger, were it not for the “shareholders” needing to get their cut for… Well, for paying a bit of money and then not doing anything. Show me on the $11 billion-in-profit-shaped doll where the pirates hurt Netflix. This is just one company.
Starting the counting over b/c either idk any numbers higher than 5 or b/c I don’t understand markdown. Take your pick. 6. There are lots of things I simply wouldn’t have watched / known about were it not for online sharing. Why should I be denied entertainment and shared cultural experience just because I can’t afford a thing? My awareness of my inability to afford much keeps me from actively looking at things that would cost money in the first place. I am also consciously boycotting industries and companies for the shitty treatment, overwork, and underpay for workers. This means I’m not spending money on streaming services regardless of whether I get to watch anything or not, so what money are they “losing” when it was never going to be theirs to begin with?
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If I give a friend a copy of a DVD, or even a USB with copies of 100 movies I own, should I really be fined $100,000 (per offense, iirc) and/or be put in jail for a year? That’s pretty fucked up.
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I’m sure there are other reasons, but I’m tired now.
Anyway, go nuts, just use a VPN.
Starting the counting over b/c either idk any numbers higher than 5 or b/c I don’t understand markdown.
I think the problem might be that if the numbered list is broken by bulletpoints or non-list paragraphs, it restarts the numbering from 1.
Ha thanks. I figured it was something like that but was also too lazy to figure out how to rectify the issue while still keeping a block quote and another bullet / paragraph where I wanted them.
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There is no moral obligation to obey copyright laws
Spoken like a true AI company CEO
They have other stuff to answer for
Once media (any media) has been digitized and the cost of producing a duplicate is negligible, even in capitalist economists own terms, the price of further copies of the thing should trend towards zero over time. It’s only through extreme greed and state enforcement (which in theory goes against capitalist economics, though we all of course know that to be a lie) that the ability to sell individual digital goods is possible.
In other words, it is more ethical to “pirate” resources that it doesn’t cost anything to produce than it is ethical to prevent people from accessing that media for monetary reasons. If a particular artist feels that someone shouldn’t consume some media they created for some other reason, then I would respect that. But it’s not artists or creators who ever have a problem with that, it’s the production studios that exist to turn art into profit who care, artists themselves tend to be very OK with people accessing their work for free.
Ideally, we would have a system in place (UBI, cultural enrichment programs, etc) which funded art creation directly as a collective effort rather than through individualized personal purchases.
Don’t pirate books from living authors.
Writing pays so little, and book tours are exhausting and pay even less.
A good book is a massive gift of energy and talent to the few people who will read it. Thank them for it with your dollars.
As a musician, I say do it, pirate away, come to the shows, tell your friends. And also, it’s only $9 so maybe buy it when you can
Edit : change – to , I am a hooman
Many years ago, the supreme court ruled that private citizens were allowed to use a recorder to tape TV for personal use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc.
This is not that different ethically. You’re basically just watching something you already had access to at a later time.
The person distributing the content is different though. They’re diminishing the potential value of the copyright. Even if the owner is not monitizing on it right now, it occasionally happens that an otherwise dead series gets a revival which could give the original content a renewed value. That would be destroyed by someone distributing it for free.
I guess we could argue about the ethics of that happening, and whether the copyright actually looses or gains any value from having old content freely distributed, but that’s a whole different topic.
It’s probably illegal but it’s completely moral in my opinion. Like, wtf are you supposed to do if not pirate? They pulled the show. You cannot obtain it legally even if you wanted to
To add to this the price should be reasonable. If the price for some old ass shit is crazy expensive it’s essentially NOT available legally and should be pirated.
For example Nintendo charging full price for some nostalgia game.
Nintendo is awful in general, but especially when it comes to their old libraries.
piracy is always justifiable.
If art is made and publicly released, it cannot morally be made inaccessible, even by the artist IMO.
It’s always justifiable to pirate shows. Specially in a world where they make it so hard to own the media you are buying.
if buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing.
If buying were owning, piracy wouldn’t be stealing either. It’s copyright infringement.
If buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing.
Copyright violations aren’t stealing anyways
Piracy is always justifiable. Get it. Get the whole dang season.
The only time I would say it isn’t justifiable, if it’s a book/game/etc. made by an unrecognised creator who needs every purchase they can get. In every other case, go for it!
Piracy is quite frequently justifiable, even on common media.
In our modern landscape, the vast majority of creators don’t see a dime when you view their material, so I have no reason to feel obligated to line the coffers of some conglomerate that’s effectively stealing the artist’s money.
I’ll pay for niche streaming services (paying for dropout directly helps the cast and crew) and buy merch from artist sites or shows, but I’m not going to feel guilty that downloading an album off a torrent takes away the fractions of a cent that my streams would give when I can pay them directly for a shirt and physical copy of the album if I ever get to see them live.
If no one can own anything, then piracy doesn’t exist.
Download that show. It’s a form of protest, as far as I’m concerned.
Make sure to bind your torrent client to your vpn. VPNs have a killswitch but the binding offers a bit for insurance.
What makes torrenting justified in my view:
- Enshittification of streaming services with ad breaks.
- Shows typically have a 2 year gap before we can watch the next 8-10 episodes.
- Not all shows are available in all countries.
- The customer has to pay for multiple services to binge an entire show.
- Physical media is not always available.
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Piracy is always justifiable.
Exactly. You’re pirating every time you watch an advertisement.
