75% of the anti-piracy discussions I see rarely blame companies like Nintendo or Disney and always try to talk about how piracy is immoral, and you should feel “dirty” for doing it. My question is why do people seem to hate those who pirate more than the bad practices of mega-corporations or the fact that they don’t want to preserve their media?
As opposed to everyone else calling them bootlickers, I think there is likely a subset of people like this who are not considering piracy against the big corporations as unethical, but the “trickle down effect” of piracy towards smaller business/individuals.
For example, if you were to pirate Starfield, no one would really care. If you were to pirate something like BlackOps, most people wouldn’t care (and those that do are corporate bootlickers). However, what about pirating indie games, or music VST’s, or circumventing a patreon from someone with under 100 supporters?
There’s two camps when I see anti-piracy comments; the bootlickers, and those that have the idea that pirates pirate everything relentlessly. The fact of the matter is that piracy does not hurt big corporations, but we cannot say that is also true for small developers publishing their game on their own, and vocal anti-piracy, or rather artist-in-mind individuals, will let the world know that we should support independent artsits and not pirate.
Now, whether or not indie games are getting pirated is a whole different story. And really, what this comes down to is just having the opportunity to purchase in a way that supports the pirates ease of access.
Also, it completely ignores the ethical aspect of piracy which is why support a company that doesn’t have your interests at the forefront of its business practices. Which is a very similar reason to decide to not pirate – I enjoy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I would like to see more if it, I will pay Hulu and watch the show to tell them to make more IASIP.
If you like something, don’t pirate it if you want more of it. It’s actually very simple. If you do like it but can’t support it for personal reasons, don’t expect to get more of it.
Which of course, for the anti-piracy crowd is another sentence for, “you didn’t pay to watch it so they cancelled my favorite show!”
Tl;DR - A poor crossover between an individuals enjoyment of corporate content and an supporting independent artists living wage.