[dspillett]

There is a difference between talking generally about piracy and its ramifications, even encouraging it as some would be doing, and directly linking to unlicensed copies of material.

Even if an individual did believe that piracy is perfectly acceptable, direct linking still puts the site under risk of moving into the cross-hairs of law enforcement.

[alharith]

I do not agree there is a material difference in that case. Whether or not the site is under the crosshairs is also irrelevant to the point.

Besides, as I mentioned in my comment, direct links to hubs that contain pirated material and direct links containing suites of tools specifically used for pirating such as DRM removal on ebooks and video players, and bypasses for news organizations and scientific publications are also frequently directly linked.

[dspillett]

I've seen links to hubs taken down like this link to a specific item, so if there is a discrepancy there is isn't consistent. Either a few slip through the cracks and you've seen them or I'm only seeing the other portion for some reason.

Mentions of key hubs like pirate bay don't count as linking to them IMO though might effectively be so as the mention might clue some to their existence. Discussing the matter completely without mentioning those places/services would not be practical.

Tools for removing DRM have valid uses. Minority uses, sure, but still valid. Whether removing it for your own transcoding & platform shifting purposes, rather than distribution, is morally OK is a complex discussion (I say yes, lawyers will almost certainly say no!), but if you allow that then the valid use list grows.

Bypassing news filters is usually a case of exploiting them giving different responses in different cases to improve, for example, their Google rank. This is against the engines policies. You can of course argue that "two wrongs don't make a right" but then equally one wrong doesn't either! I'm not sure if the scientific publications matter is the same or not, I'll have to submit to your expertise/experience there.