Okay first thing, obviously I know where I'm posting, so I know the stance here on piracy would be almost entirely favouring it, I pirate shit too so my position is not against it. This is more of a discussion around a "devil's advocate perspective" view of piracy

Piracy has always existed with or without DRM or poor-corporate practices, but nowadays it gets flagged or really justified as a "movement" against predatory companies or greedy service developers, when I'm leeching on my seedbox I'm doing my part to "fight the big fight" against tech oligarchies or something.

Someone might say "capitalism is the issue" or something, and that because there's no ethical consumption under capitalism piracy is the system that festers as a result. While I don't even disagree totally with this sentiment I think the idea piracy wouldn't exist under any other economic framework is silly, people will always want free shit, even if its under socialism or communism, this is also part of why the sentiment in paragraph 2 is bullshit, I don't think that guy leeching from Moscow really cares at all about "consumer rights".

So is piracy just a necessary consequence of the impossibility of digital scarcity? Are all seeders evil people who talk about taking down corporations but balk at the idea of paying small producers? Does it really matter the size of what store you're stealing from? Is it even stealing at all?

Discuss or dont idk

copying isn't thieft. period.
the insentivization structures around the creation of things is backwards for a post scarcity environment. if there is compensation it should come /before/ the creation not after.

So is piracy just a necessary consequence of the impossibility of digital scarcity?

yes
never forget that the entire foundation that capitalism even has, if you're willing to believe it has one, is the allocation of scarce resources
and digital media is inherently not a scarce resource since it can be endlessly and perfectly copied

Are all seeders evil people who talk about taking down corporations but balk at the idea of paying small producers?

no
this would be... well, "amoral" conveys the wrong connotation, but really, good and evil don't play into it at all
maybe more "non-moral"? "not a question of morality?"
far more often than not, it's "I want to watch/play/read/listen to ___ but I'm broke" and the target never comes into play, so I can't say it's evil
and worse, if the target does come into play... you weren't going to buy it anyway, and you might even be promoting the target by talking about how you pirated it, boosting interest and getting people who would be interested in buying it to do so (this is particularly the case with major media productions; small outfits are a bit more on the fence because if even a tiny handful of people who were going to buy decide piracy is an option, that might be a significant share of their profits; while a big studio may not be significantly affected by thousands of people intending to buy switching to piracy)

Does it really matter the size of what store you're stealing from? Is it even stealing at all?

It's not stealing. If I stole a CD from a store, yeah, that's stealing, I took goods from a place and now the shop can't sell them.
If I download the album, and leave the store owner alone, he can still sell the CD to someone else.

now, I am getting access to a work without paying the intended compensation, and that's a different moral question that is harder to answer - I'm tempted to say it tends toward being wrong as a knee-jerk reply, but I'm also far enough on the side against intellectual property as a concept period (even as someone who isn't an anticapitalist, I would say IP deliberately creates purely artificial monopolies on ideas and non-scarce resources in a half-baked effort to encourage production that has long forgotten that fact and actively does stifle competition now - ALL of the possible good outcomes in capitalism outright depend on easily entering the market and becoming competition) that I'm struggling to think of why it would be wrong

this post of mine is a bit of a mess but fuck it, I think I conveyed what I want

>>1

people will always want free shit, even if its under socialism or communism

I'm not even a communist and even I understand that the entire point of communism is to get rid of money. All the shit is free shit.

Does it really matter the size of what store you're stealing from?

No. But also

Is it even stealing at all?

No, copying is not theft.

Anyone who actually justifies not paying people who make shit have obviously never made anything or extracted any pound of flesh in their lives. Life is give and take people, you can't just get infinite handouts.

when I'm leeching on my seedbox I'm doing my part to "fight the big fight" against tech oligarchies or something.

Piracy will never be stopped, but pretending its anti-capitalist good is extreme cringelarp lmao, its actually just "im broke and will never pay for this, gimme your shit now"

>>4
Communism is a scam anyway

>>5
I think you cling way too tightly to the principle that every product of human work is made to be exchanged. This kind of connects back to that FOSS thread from a while ago, but the fact that so many people contribute to open source without expecting reward, and the fact that we can derive so much joy from creation itself and sharing that creation, should, even if it doesn't refute it out right, at least cast some doubt on the idea that everything needs to be paid for.

Call me a dirty communist, but I think that you are being unnecessarily factious and ad-hominem-iy to people who pirate stuff. You will find that the majority of people are actually quite "broke", and wouldn't be able to take enjoyment even a tenth of all things they enjoy (even things like education, and culture) without going "gimmie your shit now".