I’ve begun discontinuing many US services in favor of EU ones. However, I’ve noticed that some individuals, instead of simply ceasing to use American products, resorted to illegally downloading everything. While it’s true that the money goes to the US when you pay, it can’t justify disrespecting others’ hard work and effort while still consuming or using their products, and it is also illegal. This is especially true considering that they likely don’t have any direct connection to MAGA. This applies to actors, directors, YouTubers, and many others. We should simply cease using their products without giving them any further consideration.
Edit: adding to the last line, we should give instead more attention to locally and European made creations and products
Piracy isn’t stealing because you don’t take the original away from the creator, you just create a copy which doesn’t detract at all from the original copy. In fact, copyright is more a tool for stealing than piracy, as large corporations will get small creators to sign over the rights to the content they created, consolidating ‘ownership’ rights in the hands of a bunch of greedy corporations (Disney, Microsoft, etc) rather than the people that actually created them.
I bet you wouldn’t be happy if something you made and that you’re trying to sell get copied and shared completely for free. Many people would use that without giving you a penny. It is not stealing in a stricter sense, but it would hurt your finances for sure.
I wouldn’t try to sell information. Physical products, services, support, sure. But you can’t sell information which has no scarcity. Maybe you could pay for someone to create something they otherwise wouldn’t have, but not for something that already exists.
I’m not a large company. As long as I’m credited appropriately I would be fine and hoping this newfound attention brings more customers to me to offset any “losses” from people who would have paid had they not pirated it.
As a real-life example, did you know that papers available on Sci-Hub receive statistically significantly more citations than those unavailable there? source
To add (kinda what you said but from slightly different angle)
Intellectual property is a crime.
Just think about it, just because someone was first to fill the paper work for an idea means you have to ask their permission to express any similar idea you had yourself.
If you want to support creators there are other ways which are often more direct without middle men taking a cut.