Piracy gave me a future

[Daaksyde]

@tlwest

With luck, the knowledge of an act’s immorality causes a moral pinprick that keeps us looking at our actions and deciding whether our action is justified. And yes, there’s a good chance it still is. But it also gives us a little incentive to find other better ways to avoid that immoral action.

I’ll not feel a moral pinprick for obtaining something that I have paid for from someone who is trying to steal from me. It’s my moral obligation. To idly allow them to get away with that would be immoral. Perhaps your morals are such that you feel obligated to play the role of hapless victim. If that’s what makes you happy, good for you.

@tlwest

I might kill to protect my family, but my killing of another will never be moral, no matter how justified.

I would counter that it would be immoral not to do so if the situation warranted. Is it really moral to sit idly by and watch your family be attacked and harmed when you could stop it?

But that’s digressing far from the topic. Point is, if moral behavior is unjust, then the moral is invalid. If justified behavior is immoral, then the moral is invalid. Justice trumps and ultimately determines what is moral.

[shaddack]

@goretsky

I learned a long time ago not to buy anything from SONY.

They are on my blacklist as well. However, see below.

@goretsky

If you do not like the way a company does business, vote with your dollars and take your business elsewhere.

You sometimes have the choice when it comes to new things. (Sometimes you have availability/price/performance constraints and the only device that fits them is on the blacklist. That’s the time to suck up the idealism and be pragmatic.)

You also don’t have the luxury of choice when it comes to devices that are hand-me-down, scavenged, or inherited. You have to do with what you got.

You also don’t have much brand choice when somebody brings you a thing to repair.

@goretsky

If you pirate their products, all you are doing, instead, is giving them justification to engage in (or lobby for) more draconian copyright measures, DRM and so forth.

It’s nice to be idealist but pragmatism triumphs in the short term and in the long term we’re all dead anyway.

@goretsky

I should also probably note that some companies (not necessarily SONY, but others) may have withdrawn things like service manuals after unqualified people attempted to repair something and hurt themselves, caused further damages and sued the company as a result.

Well, fuck all the parties involved and the lawyers twice. My need for schematics trumps their desires.

@goretsky

You have defaced a picture of me?

Wait until your nose is all over bittorrent!

[JonBristow]

Will I get banned if I post a dank “under capitalism, there is no ethical consumption meme”?

I’m not sure boycotting SONY really does anything from a “fixing” the copying vs. stealing problem.