Name a crime

It's only a crime for poor people

Nobody is forcing you to consume any of the media you feel you need to pirate.

Just live beyond consumption. You can do that, you know?

I'm pretty sure if someone stole everything you own you'd see it differently

You people behave like you believe that artists got gathered up under threat of violence, put into these companies and are being forced to work there against their will...

This seems to work as a model for YouTubers and podcasters

No, it doesn't. They're still being paid by YouTube/Spotify a flat amount based on the number of views - which are being paid for by ads and premium subscriptions.

Which means: people pay (one way or another) first, consume the content later.

Especially if the creator(s) is deceased.

Are you suggesting only the wealthy are deserving of art?

insurance exists;

Hahahahaha - keep telling yourself that. Until the insurance fails to pay out and you're homeless, with zero possessions and everybody doesn't care

Only the wealthy can afford art? Music? Movies? Graphic Novels? Video Games?

Are you being obtuse?

sounds like the problem is with capitalism then.

it’s not blatant nonsense. jesus fucking christ you people lack a brain.

the art/media/fucking whatever intellectual “property” = no intrinsic value, worthless itself

the labor to create the art = valuable

the labor to distribute the art, be it through “legitimate” or pirated means = valuable

it’s that simple. there needn’t even be any long moral/ethical arguments. piracy is righteous because information deserves to be free. there is no way to enforce ownership of information without wanton violence from the state.

a flat amount

Nope, the amount is anything but flat. For bigger youtubers the ad money start to be significant, and for bigger podcasters spotify pays something, but for the most, amount of money from ads is negligible.

Before piracy there were demos and shareware, which let you see if your machine could handle the game or content and give you a vertical slice, and let you show it to friends for word of mouth advertising.

Then, Steam put a two hour refund window with no questions asked, which helped a lot of "this crashes on start, I can't open this at all on a RTX 4090/high end PC, 15 FPS in the fog, etc".

Developers learned from that and they began padding/gating content behind two hours of gameplay, so you wouldn't know until 3-4 hours in that the game was grindy dogshit (SCUM, Ark, Empyrion, and countless other Early Access and sometimes full release titles like NMS on launch day for example).

So the correct thing to do, and it's what I do: Pirate the game, make sure it runs/works and is fun and there's no "gotcha" traps or hidden DLCs or other predatory mechanics involved, and THEN pay for the full title on Steam+DLCs and just continue the save.

My Steam Account has actually already been flagged over a dozen times for this because my primary savegames are like Razor1911.sav, and so far it's still in good status because I am actually spending a couple thousand/year on content.

The only damage that exists from piracy is to the copyright holders profits.....

Since the copyright holder is usually a corporation that is owned by shareholders, the majority of which are richer than all of us combined, ask me if I give a shit and I will show you my field of shits to give, and you will see that it is barren.

Eat the rich. Or Luigi them... I don't care.

Ironically, it's actually doesn't work on a small scale. It works on a medium scale, big enough to have a stable audience, not big enough to get lucrative deals from brands.
It might not work to support a lifestyle of AAA company CEO, and it might not work at pushing out hundreds of unimaginative boring microtransaction machines, but I would say it's just a bonus

Yeah, why the fuck not?

Obviously, something made in a specialized vehicle manufacturing plant will be better/more durable/whatever, but given the option between downloading a car vs spending a year's salary to buy one.... I'd rather download one.

Unless my wages get better (which they are not) or cars get cheaper (which they won't), I'll continue to have this opinion.

There's a nontrivial number of cars that cost more than a house did in the 80's and 90's. So it's entirely possible for someone to spend the same dollar value on their home, when purchasing it in the 90's, as they do 25 years later, buying a house in the 2020's.

Stupid.

Using insurance means your premiums will go up, meaning you are still going to pay for it. There is also some emotional damage depending on how the theft happens.

,You can say "I think intellectual property is a dumb idea" and I'd love to hear your arguments for that,

Read the above comments then.

but to act like it isn't real just because we came up with the idea relatively recently, is just asinine.

Again, read my comments. I didn't say it wasn't real, I said it has no basis in human culture or history.

If they dont, they kinda don't get to do their art. It's a whole thing.

Id say 'or they starve/die on yhe street' but that's what they get service jobs for.