No, it’s not like stealing a physical item from a store.
“stealing” a digital copy of a movie, tv show or a game is like if the item you’re stealing from a store is infinitely copyable. Like the replicator from star trek…or that one episode of Sabrina the teenage witch with that box that can make a perfect copy of everything you put inside of it.
Of course I personally would never pirate anything, no matter how much streaming services increase their prices or how much they crack down on VPN usage to get around geo-restrictions, PIRACY IS BAD AND ONLY BAD PEOPLE DO IT.
I’ve never pirated anything in my whole life!
I already knew someone would reply that, and addressed it.
You can’t say any of that. You are enjoying a product of a system as it exists. If it crashed and would never be rebuilt, all you’d have left is independent cinema/games. This already exists, and you could go consume that. But you don’t.
There’s no guarantee that in absence of big corpo with profits there will be anything produced like your favorite TV show.
I can promise you one thing: if no one pays for what they watch, there will be no TV shows. Scripting, cast, production, and delivery, all cost a lot of money. If tomorrow you inact a low that prohibits charging money for media content, no new system will emerge. Or what you’ll see is kinda what YouTube has: short videos with built-in ads, and potentially sponsored content that you’ll never know about.
So, right now, you’re damaging the only system we know that produces content that you enjoy.
Ah, I see. You want someone else to work for free, so you get your content for free.
Maybe you never talked to an independent artist. Who are in their 30s barely manage to make their ends meet, and are looking for any chance to get into a different career path.
No, anon, you in particular aren’t morally safe. You make lame excuses for your inability to pay.