It is illegal and immoral. It steals the rightful intellectual property of directors and developers who are only trying to make a living. If you want to be a thief so badly, then rob a federal bank.
It is illegal and immoral. It steals the rightful intellectual property of directors and developers who are only trying to make a living. If you want to be a thief so badly, then rob a federal bank.
Theft has a very strict legal definition. Piracy is not legally theft. It is legally infringement, a separate crime. Conflating one with the other is propaganda by the largest IP holders.
These largest IP holders want nothing more than to lock up all culture and rent it back to you for a price, indefinitely. They would happily steal from you without a moment’s hesitation. In fact, they have stolen from you. They’ve successfully extended copyright terms to an absurd length, preventing works from entering the public domain for decades.
Many of these IP holders also don’t care about preservation. They’ll happily let their works be lost to history. Some are actively fighting against preservation.
Is it immoral to infringe? Yes. But IP holders don’t have the moral highground. They’re just as bad, if not worse. (I’m talking about the multi billion dollar companies here, not the small business persons struggling to get by)