is the philosophy of a 14-year-old. i am sorry but you know it's true. if you don't know it's true then i have good news: i've written a post to convince you it's true and here it is.
the core problem, you see, is that
when you pirate corporate media, you are still a corporate shill
disney doesn't care that you're pirating star wars xiv: the whole cast is holograms now. do you know why? because twelve seconds after you finish watching it, you're going to be halfway through penning a tweet about how either good or bad it is. you are going to contribute to making it a part of Culture, to making people feel like they need to see it or they have somehow missed out on a core part of the human experience. you know, the whole reason you have for pirating it in the first place. you are going to do free word-of-mouth advertising, the most valuable kind, to an audience who by and large are going to pay to see or get the thing.
this applies to software as well. ooh, you really hate photoshop's pricing model? you gonna show them who's boss by pirating it? and passing around psds? and giving your friends photoshop tips? and googling for photoshop help? and watching photoshop tutorials on youtube to give them more algorithm juice? and generally reinforcing the impression that photoshop is fundamentally vital?
and if you're not going to talk to anyone about it, well, why's it matter if you watch that one particular movie or not? do you just love disney and adobe? is that it? is that why you're putting them on the front page of piratebay?
even if it impacts them, you are just fucking over everyone else
let us assume that the Free Advertising effect of piracy is not, in fact, outweighing the loss of potential sales. congratulations! you are sticking it to The Man. here is what The Man is going to do:
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raise prices, which fucks over your peers
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do some horrible anti-piracy thing, which fucks over your peers
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go out of business and never make another of the thing you apparently cannot live without, so now you are going to die from Ready Player Three withdrawal
"well my peers should just pirate too" yes and Well Everyone Should Simply Act Exactly Like I Do is the kind of philosophy you read off a bathroom stall wall
other things exist
you like free stuff? you think free stuff is great? i have incredible news: the internet is awash in free stuff. go watch and use that! people make free films and resources and software and whatever all the god damn time.
if you're going to pour your cultural influence juice into something then it might as well be a project that is actually aligned with your values, right? which at the very least include "i don't want to pay for things". if you have other values too, then all the better — buy cheaper things from individuals, instead of advertising expensive things you stole from corporations you hate anyway
"ohh but it's not as good. ohhh it's not what my friends are seeing or using" i'm sorry i thought this was ✨praxis✨. i thought we were following our principles in an attempt to nudge society in a better direction. i thought we weren't a high school freshman who's chasing the win-win of getting something for free and getting the tiny thrill of doing something taboo and finding some contrived reason why this is sticking it to someone, somewhere, somehow.
if you put more eyeballs on the free and cheap things, they will often get better! better yet, if you put effort into them, they will definitely get better! if you want to improve the world then try Doing Something
i'm obviously feeling spicy here but it kind of makes my blood boil every time i see "disney is an evil company, so it's actually ethical to keep consuming their stuff as long as you don't pay for it!" — like what the fuck are we even smoking here? it's indistinguishable from dystopian corporate propaganda. it could just as well be a psyop to trick you into continuing to watch their damn movies even if you hate the company
i could respect "i just like getting things for free" because at least it's honest, but somehow we have turned suckling on corporate teats into Leftist Praxis and it's like living in bizarro world

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