> They all had their chance. They blew it.

This is so silly. It's like saying "Sweet manufacturers all had the chance to sell the same sweets, and they blew it. So I just nick most sweets." Just say "I don't like paying for things and can get away with this, and my ethics only work in public or when I'm forced to obey them." And then we're done.

I agree overall, but it is a lot different when each further thievery requires no additional work (since you're not streaming from them). It'd be more like paying someone each time you walk in your door, for the lifetime of the door. In this case they can also take the door off anytime they want, put ads on it, or do pretty much whatever they want.

Are you saying I wouldn’t steal a car, or a handbag, or a television, or a dvd? So piracy is a crime?

Are you really making that argument in 2025? You must be very young.

Bittorrent didn’t become popular because no one wanted to pay for things. In fact people stopped when Netflix was good. I stopped, all my friends stopped. It was no longer a mainstream thing. We even put up with a few price hikes. Then 1 service became whatever and people started torrenting and streaming sites started popping up.

Everyone was willing to pay for convenience. No ones wants to pay even more for in convenience.

You’ll note music piracy is not really a thing anymore. Thanks Spotify.

I'm not very young, but that meme doesn't hold up. I agree piracy isn't the same as theft, but it's extremely close still. If an author works on a book for 10 years and then the publisher copies it and sells it without paying them, is that okay because copying isn't technically theft? Murder isn't theft either, but it's still bad.

I agree that streaming services quieted piracy, but that doesn't somehow make piracy okay.

> I agree piracy isn't the same as theft, but it's extremely close still.

No, not really. Most of the time nothing is lost.

> If an author works on a book for 10 years and then the publisher copies it and sells it without paying them, is that okay because copying isn't technically theft?

If people genuinely like the book, people will support the author. If the author isn't being supported, that's an issue with their relationship with their publisher.

For most of history, the ideal of stealing content would have been rightfully viewed as ridiculous.

"piracy" is the natural state of things, and eventually it will become the norm again just as it has been for most of history.

Sweets have a cost, and constitute a straightforward loss to someone if stolen. Digital copies of a file are clearly different.

There's plenty of valid arguments against piracy, but equating it to zero-sum material theft is not one of the strong ones.

This argument has always confused me. Yes, it's true that a digital copy of a video can be duplicated endlessly in a way a physical item cannot. But... so?

It's an item available for purchase at a price. If you take it without paying that price then the seller is out money they would otherwise have received. If everyone pirated Netflix's output then they would have to shut down, just the same as a grocery store would if everyone stole their produce. The only reason that doesn't happen is because piracy is a minority activity.

Personally, I can pay for media, so I believe it's ethical that I do. If someone in my position chooses not to pay, there's a pretty solid argument that the media company is out money they could have had otherwise.

However, not everyone who pirates something was ever going to buy it in the first place. A huge portion of the world lives in sufficiently deep poverty that the option was either: have the thing for free or not have it at all. These folks don't represent lost sales.

Luckily though, "price" is not the same thing as "cost". If they watch for free, it doesn't cost us anything.

Just out of curiosity, how certain are you that "piracy is a minority activity"?

Seriously how old are some of the people responding? An entire generation already went through this.

Bootleg DVDs, pirated files were common place. I could literally go out whenever and spend change on a VCD. Or a friend would have a copy of whatever movie on their HD. I’d go to anime screenings where people would bring their RAID arrays full of fan subbed anime. Music was pirated all over the place. Digital players just made music piracy more common. Everyone used BitTorrent. Everyone. People got sued. ISPs used to send out letters saying “we think you’re torrenting. Please stop or we’ll cancel your service”.

You know what didn’t happen? The entertainment industry didn’t collapse. You know why? Because none of these people were never going to spend money on entertainment. You know what I did if I couldn’t afford to see a movie or get a new CD in college? Something else.

When Netflix started streaming, they fixed all this. We all stopped BitTorrenting because Netflix was easier. They know how to fix it and they fixed it for a while. Sell us convenience. But I’m not paying and managing 5 subscriptions.

By acquiring a duplicate of the original, you're no longer depriving someone of property in the way you would be with theft. If you steal an apple, that's one less apple that the store has to sell to someone who is willing to pay for an apple, and the store will still owe the orchard the cost of the apple you took. In contrast, pirating a movie doesn't remove any physical copies from shelves. The problem comes down to what you believe the cost of piracy actually is, and who bears that cost, which gets complicated in the case of digital goods and subscription models. If the argument is that piracy lowers demand in general, then you'd have to account for the effect of libraries, the secondhand market, and competition from other media. The practical evidence that pirates are outnumbered by paying customers suggests that on the balance, the system is capable of supporting some freeloaders without collapsing. To extend the apple analogy, it would be similar to people coming to the orchard after the harvest and gleaning the leftover apples instead of buying them from the store. Can you argue this diminishes apple sales? of course. Is it theft? yes, and the orchard owners have their right to insist it's a crime and all apples must be paid for, but if the apples were going to rot anyways the harm is minimal. Would it completely destroy the apple market and leave all apple growers destitute? I don't think so.

Or...don't pirate and rotate streaming services. Just because a new show drops doesn't mean you need to watch it next week

There are certainly people who do this with free trial subscriptions when a show they want becomes available.

The comment you're replying to said "legally".

It's legal until you get caught. Schrodinger's download.

That is in no way true