They get paid. They just don't get a share of profits. They are usually paid a salary or, increasingly more commonly, are paid as a contractor.

Not from consumption. Most of that money is for execs/investors,

Investors became investors by paying creators for their work in advance without knowing what they'd produce. It's incredibly short-sighted to say "hey, the creator already got their paycheck so my purchase makes no difference now".

Maybe it would help to think of it as paying the creator for their next game.

Thats a pretty story, but completely unconnected to reality. If it worked like that, id be okay with it.

Also, when you pay for stuff, abd like it, and want to revisit it later you usually cant. And that always makes me feel like a fool. I don't like feeling like a fool. I don't like paying to feel likeva fool. I don't like expecting a thing i like to be there then it not being there; that ruins my day. And the sheer fucking regularity of this makes. Me think it's going to keep happening.

When you steal it, they cabt steal it from you, 'cuz they don't know you have it.

This is a specious analogy. e-books from libraries are already heavily controlled and are usually quite expensive to provide. Physical copies have their own inbuilt limits to distribution.

You're treating copyright like it's some sort of hardline moral stance against consuming any media you haven't directly paid for, when actually it's more like a very long list of compromises to balance the conflicting requirements of creators' needs to be compensated for their work versus society's need to benefit from that work. This is why lending libraries, fair use etc are legal and piracy isn't.

The amount of people that take these moral high roads is fucking ridiculous.

Well, the faceless mega-corp made it difficult to purchase or stream

I don’t like that I have to play the game on Steam

Akshually I’m just copying it, so it’s not theft

There are too many streaming services, so I shouldn’t have to pay for ANOTHER service

I’m not depriving the content creator or publisher from any money, since I wasn’t going to pay for it regardless

Just fucking own up to it. You are downloading content that you did not pay for. I don’t take some enlightened stance when I download a movie; I just do it. What I’m doing is not right, but I still do what I do. I don’t try to justify it with some bullshit political take.

We all have our line on what we deem acceptable or not. The only piracy that, in my opinion, could have a leg to stand on is when it is actual lost media. No physical copies available, no way to stream or pay for it. Anything else is just the lies we tell ourselves to justify our actions.

Just admit that you could pay for the content if you wanted to, you just choose not to, because you are a pirate. You are depriving someone somewhere from a sale or some other form of revenue.

Edit: I worded “Just own it” poorly. Clarified it to “Just own up to it”. That was the original intent, just an oversight on my part.

The problem with almost every pro-piracy argument like this is that they fundamentally require a significant percentage of the population to disagree with it. "People who can pay will pay and I'm not taking anything from them" only works for as long as both the general population and retailers regard piracy as wrong and keep funding all those games, movies etc for you.

Heck, all you pirates should be upvoting anti-piracy posts like this, we're the ones keeping your habit funded...

Would you download a train?

When I return from the library instead of the bookstore it is with the deepest shame.

the pirate would not have bought the copy anyways, but having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire

Also, the person deciding whether or not they "would have" paid for it, has a strong incentive to kid themselves that they wouldn't. Imagine if cinemas worked that way, and you could just walk in and announce that you weren't going to buy a ticket anyway and since there's a seat over there still empty it's not going to cost them anything for you to sit in it. They'd go out of business by the end of the week.

Also also, either the thing you're copying has value that arose from the effort of creating it, or it doesn't. If it's of value, then it's reasonable to expect payment for it. It's it's not of value, then you shouldn't miss not having it.

Depends on file size, and if the train download is done.

Heathen! Buses are as cool as trains

You have some very entitled opinions, if everyone thought like you no one would create digital media. You're free to not watch movies or listen to music but it's pretty asinine to take things without compensating the creator and claim no wrongdoing

Edit: I assumed it would be pretty obvious I was talking about digital media that needed a budget but apparently not.
Of course anyone can make digital media for free in their spare time but you'd need some kind of income to support that hobby.
FOSS is the same but you need some income to survive.

Well yeah, because my objections to AI aren't based on copyright law.

Podcasters and medium to small youtubers work like that (bigger also get some money from ads, but for medium to small, Patreon is the main source of revenue). You can get their shit for free, but they would like you to give them some money after if you can.
The scale is a bit different, but the scheme works.

No, I'm providing a counter-example and rejecting the argument that only lost media entitles you to consume media for free.

Unlike physical goods, information can flow and be copied freely at a fundamental physics level.

The electricity and silicon required to make this happen are not free, on a societal or physical level. There is a tangible cost to this transfer, even if you're ignoring the social construct of copyright.

I think this issue comes from a misunderstanding of "free", possibly conflating it for "trivially easy".

Rather than develop a system that rewards digital artists based on how much something is used for free

Feel free to come up with such a system. I think you'll find that a rather difficult task.