I loathe that piracy needs to exist. But it's a natural response to greedy media industries. People pirate material that copyright holders refuse to release/rerelease, they steal when popular media gets silo'd behind yet another wildly overvalued streaming service, they pirate so media can reach places corporations deem unvaluable to do so themselves, etc.

Piracy was naturally on a decline as streaming seemed to be settling on Netflix + a couple premium/niche providers, in much the way that mainstream music piracy is largely dead today. Now, it's on the rise again as people are tired of being nickel and dimed by Peacock, AMC, Max, Disney+, Prime, Netflix, Hulu, ESPN+, Fubu, CBS All-Access, etc.

Piracy does not need to exist, should not exist, and should be heavily stigmatized and harshly punished.

What are your thoughts on Open Source Software?

I demand that you forget these words immediately after you read them. They are my property.

Piracy is a socially acceptable term for theft. Theft isn't and shouldn't be socially acceptable.

Gee, what a solid and water tight argument. You sure have me convinced now.

Theft clearly seems to be seen as acceptable when it comes to corporations taking away access to purchased content. I don't see why that shouldn't work both ways.

Piracy and theft are two different things.

Piracy is not theft.

Theft is when I walk out of a store with 8 apples and the store has 8 fewer apples.

Piracy is when I walk out of a store with 8 apples and the store has 0 fewer apples.

They are mathematically different concepts.

In that case, copyright is a socially acceptable form of tyranny that prevents freedom of expression. Or a socially acceptable theft from the commons.

Dystopian ideas such as ownership of ideas should not be tolerated.