this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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I'd like to ask myself the opposite, when is it unethical to pirate? Because it's just data, and how many copies there are of it shouldn't change anything. If I want to support a developer I'd 'buy the product', regardless of already having it or not, and I would never in my life buy a product (Not a service, just the data) just because I cannot get it otherwise. I believe it's pretty much the same for most people that knows how to download pirated content.
But I believe that early leaks are strongly unethical, as you end up interfering in the creative and production process before it's ready. Furthermore, a lot of people whom usually won't pirate will jump at the possibility of doing so just for the hype of getting the product NOW, and maybe will not feel the necessity of buying later. I cannot think any case in which a leak is ethical or even beneficial for anyone, and I'm surprised that I've never seen much push against it by pirates.
Nintendo games getting leaked helps emulator developers to iron out issues before most people start playing. Most recent example is tears of the kingdom.
Well, this is a good example of the leak being beneficial for something, but I still think it's extremely unethical. I think it's pretty fair to have a little patience to play a game that just released, for free, on an emulator.
I just commented something similar, asking for examples of when piracy is unethical, because I couldn't think of any myself, but your example of leaking is really interesting.
I can see how pirating/leaking an unfinished work could be really harmful to the creator and I know that would feel horrible if it happened to something I'd created.
I'm not sure why there's so much acceptance of (and even enthusiasm for) early leaked unfinished products.
But at the same time, people know that leaks aren't finished so I don't think anyone expects it to be the finished product. And in the case of tears of the kingdom, it was actually already finished so the leak was exactly the same as the game that came out at launch.
We're not entirely rational creatures so even though logically we may know it won't be the finished product, it can still massively impact how something is perceived. First impressions can always make a big difference no matter how much you try to rationalise them away.
I don't know what tears of the kingdom is, to be honest, so I can't comment about that.