INTRO: Over the past couple of weeks, I posted a
couple of videos discussing the whereabouts of popular piracy website founders including
MegaUpload, KickassTorrents, BitTorrent, and of course The Pirate Bay.
In each and every one of these videos, I noticed a few common sets of comments.
First, you have the nostalgia-filled comments.
“I was like pirate bay??
Oooooh yeeaaa.
The nostalgia.”
“Duuude you gave me real nostalgia when you mentioned Isohunt.
That used to be the BOMB when TPB was taken down.”
And then, there are the comments that claim that these founders are heroes.
“These guys are legends.
They provided access to information that was not available to people who couldn't afford
it.”
“In the world without copyrights, we could've been heroes said the Pirate Bay creators”.
After that, you have the comments that are like, I used to pirate because I was either
a kid or broke or both.
But, now that I can afford it, I support content creators.
And finally, you have the ones that have no remorse and outrightly support piracy and
think that the entire concept of copyright is wrong.
“Just a friendly reminder: It's always morally accurate to use pirated Adobe”.
“Love how piracy is referred to as immoral, yet more than 80% of companies and services
wouldn't know morality if it hit them in the face, double standard?”
Clearly, people seem to be quite passionate and divided on this topic.
Either they pirate due to their situation or they pirate because they couldn’t care
less if some big corporation makes less money.
So, is piracy morally wrong or just merely illegal?
MORALLY WRONG: Starting with one of the most popular arguments
in support of piracy, we have the broke argument.
Someone doesn’t have any money, so they feel that if they want to enjoy a piece of
content or a game, they have to pirate it.
Now, there is some argument to be made that a lot of content is inaccessible to people
from developing countries.
For example, a $60 game costs 1200 pesos or 4500 rupees.
While these are technically equivalent amounts, the cost of living and average incomes of
these countries are radically different.
The average American household pulls in $67,000 per year while the average Indian household
only pulls in just 204,000 rupees or about $2700 per year.
Considering this, there’s no doubt that the average person living in a developing
country simply cannot afford a lot of western content whether that be games, movies, or
music.
But, does this make piracy moral in these situations?
Well, the basis of this argument is that affordability is what determines morality.
But that doesn’t make sense, there are plenty of things that most people can’t afford.
For example, I genuinely cannot afford G Wagon, but I really want one.
Would it be ok for me to steal a G Wagon?
I don’t have any bad intentions, I hope Mercedes does great and continues to make
phenomenal cars.
I simply can’t afford it, and that’s why I steal it.
Clearly, there’s no doubt that stealing the car would be morally wrong, so morality
is not based on affordability.
Hearing this, a lot of pirates would argue that by stealing that car, I’m directly
costing Mercedes money, but by pirating content, they’re not costing Adobe or Microsoft any
money.
If anything, they’re simply losing potential revenue, and many pirates argue that if they
couldn’t pirate it, they wouldn’t have paid for the content anyway, so there’s
no loss in revenue either.
In other words, they’re arguing that morality is dependent on whether there’s financial
consequences.
First of all, I think there’s a fundamental flaw with this argument.
If you truly weren’t interested in a piece of content, you wouldn’t have gone through
the hassle of pirating.
Usually, when people make this argument, I think what they’re trying to say is that
they wouldn’t have paid full price for the content because they don’t think it’s
worth that much, so clearly, there’s some sort of loss in revenue.
But is it even up to you to decide whether a piece of content deserves money or not?
The basis of this argument is essentially that the morality of piracy depends on the
quality of the content.
If a piece of content is worth the money, it’s not ok to pirate.
But if a piece of content is garbage, pirate all you want, but this doesn’t really make
sense either.
Let’s say you go to a theatre to watch a movie, and it was absolute trash.
You wouldn’t watch that movie even if you got it for free.
In this case, is it moral to ask for a refund?
The theatre didn’t spend any extra money to show the film to you specifically.
Even if you didn’t go, the film would’ve played and there would’ve likely been a
lot of empty seats.
So, by asking for a refund, you’re not costing the theater any money, they’re just losing
potential revenue.
But, what if everyone else who watched the movie hated it just as much as you.
Is it moral if you get a refund and all of them didn’t?
Clearly, that would be unfair.
Either everyone should get a refund or no one should.
So, morality doesn’t depend on affordability, financial consequences, or the quality of
the content.
In other words, if you’re pirating a piece of content because you either can’t or don’t
want to pay for it, I’d argue that it’s probably still immoral.
But, there are cases in which it’s not so simple.
MORALLY DICEY: One of the most understandable arguments within
the piracy scene is pirating for professional development.
Maybe you’re a freelance architect or a photo editor.
In such cases, you could use free software, but nothing quite compares to Autodesk Inventor
or Adobe Photoshop.
And when everyone else that you’re competing against is using this software, it’s extremely
difficult for you to produce a similar quality of product using free software.
So, by pirating professional software, you’re simply evening out the playing field right?
You’re not trying to freeload or get something that you don’t need, you’re just trying
to get the tools that are required to progress in your career and provide for your family
and whatever else.
While these are definitely virtuous goals, there is an argument that could be made against
this.
Here’s the thing, professional software is specifically designed to give professionals
a competitive advantage against the competition.
So, is it fair for you to reap those same benefits without paying?
Are they idiots for paying or are you just a genius for getting it for free?
In my opinion, the answer isn’t clear-cut in this scenario because there’s some morality
to both sides of the argument.
And what about more basic pieces of content.
What if instead of trying to pirate Premiere Pro and Excel, a high school student from
a developing country was trying to pirate a physics or chemistry textbook just so they
could get through the class.
These guys are just trying to get basic education to improve their chances in the real world.
Also, it’s not like these guys have a choice.
If you’re simply pirating a movie for enjoyment, you’re doing it out of free will, and there
aren’t any consequences for not pirating the movie.
Worst case scenario, you’ll be bored for a few hours.
But, if you don’t pirate a textbook that you can’t afford, you may end up failing
the class and pushing back graduation, or worse you may end up dropping out.
So, if you’re pirating for education or professional use cases, the morality is still
sometimes dicey, but I’d argue that it’s magnitudes more acceptable than pirating for
entertainment.
MORALLY ACCEPTABLE: So far, we’ve mostly been trashing on piracy,
but it’s not always so bad.
There’s actually a handful of cases where I think piracy is completely acceptable.
For example, what if a piece of content is region blocked.
Season 5 of Better Call Saul came out 2 years ago in February of 2020.
Yet, on Netflix, you can only watch the first 4 seasons.
This isn’t to say that season 5 hasn’t been launched on Netflix as many European
countries were able to watch season 5 on Netflix as soon as it aired on TV.
But American Netflix viewers are still waiting.
It’s not like these viewers are trying to freeload; they’re willing to pay for it.
In fact, they are paying for it given that they have a Netflix subscription.
At least in this scenario, Americans have another way of watching this content if they
have cable TV, but in many cases, a piece of content is just straight up banned in a
region and there are no legal ways to pay for it and watch it.
In such a scenario, I don’t think it’s morally wrong to pirate this region-blocked
content.
Another case in which piracy is acceptable is dead online games.
At some point, almost every online game will be shut down due to a dwindling player base.
Take Minecraft for example.
Right now, it’s not in any risk of being shut down.
But, what if it was shut down 10 years from now?
Would it be morally wrong for current players of the game to pirate a cracked version of
the game that runs off of third-party servers?
In this scenario, not only did you pay for the game originally, but the game developer
themselves shut down the game because it was no longer profitable or lucrative enough for
them.
So, if you pirate a dead game, you’re not really stealing from the game developer given
that they aren’t even selling the game.
Also, it’s not like you’re unwilling to pay but rather that there is no way to pay.
So, I think we’d agree that there’s nothing morally wrong about pirating dead games.
But there is one more thing to consider that makes the entire discussion a lot more complex.
COMPANIES WANT YOU TO PIRATE: Up until this point, all of our arguments
have been rooted in the perspective of consumers whether that be students, professionals, or
just everyday people.
But, what about the perspective of companies as that surely plays an important role in
all this as well.
For example, let’s go back to the G Wagon example.
What if Mercedes did a giveaway of a G Wagon?
If I win the giveaway, then I didn’t steal the car, but I still got it for free.
And there’s nothing morally wrong with this situation given that Mercedes is consenting
to giveaway away the car probably for marketing purposes.
Now, it’s not like companies want you to pirate, but there are significantly different
levels of toleration.
The movie industry, for example, has no toleration because they have little to benefit from piracy.
If you get a move for free, it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll also pay for it later
on.
But with something like Photoshop or PowerPoint, you may use it for free for 2,3,4 years.
But, if you start making good money through your career, there’s a strong likelihood
that you become a 10, 20, 30-year long customer.
And for these companies, letting users pirate for a few years is often a great investment.
In fact, some companies would rather you pirate their software for life as opposed to using
software from the competition.
Just listen to what Bill Gates thinks about piracy.
Bill was laughing as he said that, but I think he was also being dead serious.
One of the keys to Microsoft’s dominance within the operating system industry is that
most people would rather pirate Windows than use Linux.
And that wouldn’t be possible if Microsoft didn’t make Windows reasonably easy to pirate.
With that in mind, it would be less morally wrong to pirate Windows than to pirate Endgame.
Speaking of the company’s side, many pirates feel that the morality of pirating also depends
on the status of the company.
If a company is super big and/or corrupt, it’s ok to pirate from them.
But, it’s not ok to pirate from small game or software developers.
While I would argue that it’s morally wrong to pirate from either of them, it would definitely
be more morally wrong to pirate from the smaller developer as your individual actions have
a much greater impact on them.
THE PIRACY DEBACLE: At the end of the day, there is no clear-cut
answer regarding the morality of piracy.
In terms of a general rule of thumb though, I think the answer to morality comes down
to the purpose of piracy.
If you’re pirating purely for entertainment, it’s almost always morally wrong.
If you’re pirating for education or career development, it’s morally ambiguous and
depends on the specific situation.
If you’re willing to pay, but can’t get the content legally though, then I think it’s
morally acceptable to pirate.
The company’s stance on piracy along with their own actions also factors into this,
but I think the purpose-based determination is a pretty good rule to go by.
But that’s just what I think.
Where do you guys stand on the spectrum?
Comment that down below.
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