[MSFT_Edging]

I think the type of industry/market is a huge decider on what makes piracy moral. TV/Movies? hugely exploitative industry where you have nearly zero effect on the people who do a majority of the work. They've already been paid, the media most likely made the investment back(i know, exceptions), the rest is media landlording, owning the rights to a majority of the work's profit. Same thing with music. Musicians see almost nothing from their sales/streams. Most of the money made is to repay the labels costs, then once again, landlording by the label. Many musicians, especially indie musicians, will be pro-piracy if that means their fans can appreciate the work, since the label won't send them much anyway.

In the digital age, a majority of copyright is just digital landlord behavior. There's other things, like artist commissions, one-man dev shops(the software Transcribe! has a fair price, is fairly unique, stupid easy to crack, but why bother), and patreon feeds, which all actively fund the person doing the creative work and allows them to continue the work, without the feudal contingencies of traditional distribution.

That being said, taking someone's work and selling it for profit is basically the only scenario I think copyright law should apply to. No individual should ever be sent to prison or bankrupted for copying a file. The power imbalance is staggering for an overall anti-artist industry.

[internet101010]

I don't think it's that deep. I am in the Gabe Newell camp that believes making things difficult to access leads to increase in piracy. Nobody pirates music anymore because most of it is available on a couple of platforms and more importantly there is none of the exclusivity stuff that exists with VOD providers.

[crtasm]

There's some (e.g. Apple exclusives), and a lot of people seem to rip music from Youtube.

[ryandrake]

> media landlording

Wow, this is a great way to think about it, and helps describe how copyright is losing some legitimacy among the general public. Copyright is supposed to be about providing incentive and rewarding people who actually create things. But the way it's actually implemented is exactly media landlording where the lions share of reward is going to parasites whose only accomplishment is "owning IP".

I hope you don't mind if I pirate the term Media Landlording and use it myself. It perfectly describes the ugly world of intellectual property.