memes

You seem to be under the impression that they should. At what point does one person's right to get richer override other people's right to have a decent life?

Well, they do. It's when humans and lawyers get Involved that things become unjust and unbalanced. The law itself is quite clear, otherwise.

I was locked out of my EA account for half a week due to a bug on their end. I downloaded a game I own(lease?) so I could play over the weekend.
Is this pirating?

I think the problem is that theft is the wrong crime to compare to. Piracy is more akin to toll skipping.

I don’t think the phrase supposed to be a logically consistent justification, but rather a way to voice their discontent with/encourage opposition to the increasing degree of control that corporations exert over products you supposedly “bought” from them.

It hasn’t been possible to take full ownership over purchased media since the dawn of copyright law—buying a book doesn’t mean you can run it through a photocopier and sell it at the nearest flea market, after all. Even so, it wasn’t until the advent of software licenses that this rhetoric became popular, as you literally cannot “own” a piece of media that is only available through licensing. Licenses are also largely unregulated: while you were always bound by relevant laws, you are now also bound by the terms of the license, in which the licensor often reserves the right which often reserves the right to change the terms or terminate the license as they see fit. As if relentless regulatory capture was not enough, corporations have engineered a world in which you are effectively at their mercy, and a lot of people are understandably upset by this. So, if these people are deprived of any legal means of owning the media they wish to own, they resort to piracy. Of course this isn’t “justified” in the traditional sense, as stealing something that isn’t for sale is still stealing, and authors/publishers/etc. are not obligated to sell their works, but to them it doesn’t matter, as the underlying social contract of media creation and distribution has been violated.

Exactly. If I stole an item that belongs to you, I'm denying you the possession of that item, and you'll either have to acquire another one, steal it back, or just not have it at all. When someone commits an act of digital piracy, they aren't denying anyone the possession of it, therefore it isn't the same as stealing.

Calling it theft is, in my opinion, emotionally manipulative and prevents any serious discussion on the ethics of piracy.

Even the word piracy is a bit suspicious to me; original pirates robbed ships in international waters and were considered enemies of mankind, so calling a much lesser act piracy sounds very manipulative... I wonder where the word piracy was first used to describe copyright violations, can't seem to find anything about it.

This saying / idea sprang out of folks losing content they "bought" via online platforms.

Basically the letter from Sony(?) Said that due to licensing rights content was going to be removed from their servers.. and that the items you bought were no longer available.

So.. essentially nothing on a digital platform is ever purchased . It's just leased until the platform owners decide to alter the deal. And such, if you can't actually buy it... Are you actually pirating it?

They just don't want to consider that it's possible to steal from the people who made the game even if paying for it doesn't guarantee you'll own it forever.

Nah bro, piracy because we don't wanna pay.

Imagine YouTube reposts stealing merger ad revenue but it's your main revenue instead.

So just like you can't prove that none of the pirates would have bought it if pirating didn't exist? But which is more likely, that sales would stay the same or that more people would buy the products if piracy didn't exist?

You're not entitled to the fruit of someone's labor without compensation or their consent, even if you pinky swear that you'll compensate them at a future date.

"Stealing, theft, is predicated on taking something from someone so they no longer have it."

So if I purchase a product and then its taken away due to service closure or 'updated' to be so different as to no longer be recognisable that would be theft surely.