Here’s a table I adapted from Louis Rossman’s video on the levels of piracy, grey areas and his morals and ethics on it. (spreadsheet file)
I tried to condense each rank and make it less about a specific type of media like CD audio or DVD video, along with a table of simplified characteristics of each situation. Of course more levels can be added and there are many situations not covered. This hierarchy is simply the way Louis ordered it from more to less justifiable; he respects people can think about it differently and I do too. He suggests that he doesn’t really care about people that pirate without giving a shit about creators, and that he only has a problem with people who aren’t honest with themselves about their motivations.
Setting legality aside, what ‘level of piracy’ is morally or ethically acceptable to you?
I can’t really afford to pay for some things. I feel like pirating indie games is hurting indie creators by showing there’s demand for pirating them, making it more likely indie games will be pirated.
So I only play indie games that were originally released free of charge to begin with.
For AAA games, I pirate freely.
For anything else, I pirate without much thought of the morals and ethics of it (that is some music (from the 60s-80s so I’m not hurting creators) and movies/tv that are oftentimes not keeping up to the standard expected and make their money at the cinemas anyways (and for the TV shows, they have already made more than enough, as I don’t really follow anything newly released))