[BobaFloutist]

I agree (or at least see the argument) if it's like the original creator who decided they want to keep their hands on the work (or maybe like if a company wants to withdraw one edition of a book to sell a new edition), but in cases where works are orphaned, or the rights are in limbo, or a huge corporation merges with another huge corporation and permanently deletes creators' works for a tax break, I don't think there's any real argument.

If I Johnny writer am like "Ok when I was 15 I thought that many consecutive slurs was funny, but now the alt-right is rallying around what was supposed to be satire, so I want it off the market" that's kind of reasonable. If James Writerson has classics that are kind of out of fashion and got converted to ebooks by Big Publisher™ which was then bought by Bigger Publisher™ who decides it's not worth the money to keep the classics on the market (but also refuses to release them back to the estate of James Writerson or to the general public), that's less reasonable.

[joemi]

Basing something like this on someone else's motive doesn't seem like the best idea to me because in most situations you can only guess the motive. So it ultimately just boils down to your assumptions.

[BobaFloutist]

If someone incidentally acquires a license to a product, quietly removes the product from the market, makes no announcement about some moral justification or about a new version coming out, and makes no movement for several years, I consider it acceptable to label that product "abandonware" and pirate it. If the license holder later comes out with a new version of the product, the right thing to do would probably be to buy it, if the pricing is reasonable. If they later come out and say "actually this product is (somehow, don't ask me how) unethical", I'll consider deleting it.

There's no way to get these things perfectly, but I also want to add that I don't consider it ethical to pirate things made by indie creators, or books (with the exception of textbooks), and that I'm probably unusually prone to outright buying new books or indie games or legal first-party mp3s of music, because I consider it a bit of a duty to support media that I appreciate or want to see more of.

At the end of the day, I think I do more to contribute to creators I appreciate than the average consumer, but I don't lose much sleep when I literally cannot access an old classic at a reasonable price and I flip a coin between "stealing it" or just doing something else. Nobody was going to get my money either way, and I only have so much patience and willingness to try to do things "the right way" before I decide they've made it unreasonably expensive or complicated on purpose and screw 'em.

[joemi]

Your reasoning begs the question: Why do you believe you have a right to access something that you can't (or aren't willing to) pay to access?