You have some very entitled opinions

Nah, the entitled opinions are coming from the "pay me, but you can't own media" folks.

if everyone thought like you no one would create digital media

If everyone thought like me, people could buy digital media in convenient formats at reasonable prices, and buying media would probably still be a lot more popular. My Bandcamp library is in the tens of thousands and growing. I support digital purchasing more than most, when it's done well.

but it's pretty asinine to take things without compensating the creator and claim no wrongdoing

As the whole crux of the thread makes clear, no taking is involved. You might want to go re-read the OP again, speaking of asinine.

Yes. Yesyesyesyesyes. Fuck yes.

If you aim to make significant profit with it. Yes. Otherwise i had nothing to lose to begin with.

But would you download a bus?

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

Yeah, me too. Especially when I only have a scale model PLA print of the car I downloaded.

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.

You can tell it’s made the rounds because it has a reaction image nearly the size of the image itself shoved onto the bottom superfluously

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.

not actually true

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

Adding on to say: no. It doesn't cost the creator anything when a pirated copy is made. They potentially miss a sale, but if their item wasn't in a store where someone may have made a purchase you wouldn't call that actively harmful, right?

In addition, most media the creators don't actually make money from the profit. Most of the time they're paid a salary, maybe with a bonus if it does particularly well. The company that owns the product takes the profit (or loss), not the actual creators.

Also, a lot of media isn't even controlled by the same people as when it was made. For example, buying the Dune books doesn't give money to Frank Herbert. It goes to his estate.

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.

I usually can't, actually. Not immediately anyway. But that doesn't stop me from paying for it when I can. Done it with plenty of games. And if I didn't have that option, which I primarily use for games I'm not entirely sure I'll stick with, well... I just wouldn't buy it. Full stop. Wouldn't be a consideration at all. There is no lost sale here, only the potential to fall in love with it enough to buy it when I eventually can.

Not saying this is some moral high ground. It's not. But plenty of folks just can't afford to gamble on whether or not they like something and end up paying it forward when they can.

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.

Yeah but me streaming doesnt get them more paid, and it's a fucking pittance anyway. Ive kniwn people who couldn't really afford to live, working on projects that made ridiculous profits. Sorry, union too weak, cannot use to bludgeon me into the absolute shit show tgat is paying for media.

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...

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

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.

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

What do you think an investor is then?