I don't know if it even is "piracy" though. If you go to a library and ask to see today's newspaper or borrow that latest bestseller and to make a few copies with your phone or the library photocopiers they will just let you do it. Sure you could subscribe for way too much money to various online services and do this at home, but libraries do indeed let you have this kind of shit for free. Some libraries even let you borrow console games for free too.
But that's all physical media. All the rules about online digital media were written during the neoliberal period so digital copies of things are all extremely restrictive and locked down. Doing what would be considered totally normal and mundane just a couple of decades ago is now suddenly a radical act of "piracy".
Whatever petty rights you retain over physical media is only because publishers didn't find a good way to take them away for now.
To use a very very stupid example (it's late give me some slack) you can buy a tomato and eat it, but if you plant the seeds of the tomato, you might get blackbagged by monsanto or whoever, because you only got a licence to eat the tomato, not to plant it. And it doesn't get more "physical" than shit you buy to eat. Digitalisation is coming for everything.
As for physical game libraries, I don't think they are piracy, no. As for game emulation, it could be piracy because most games are encrypted on disk and only the publisher's $300 machine is allowed to decrypt it without falling foul of the DMCA.
I think people should be making the moral and ethical case for game ownership (and game piracy). My point is more, I don't want to need a bachelor's in law or ethics to justify piracy because i think piracy in and of itself is value neutral.
I don't know if it even is "piracy" though. If you go to a library and ask to see today's newspaper or borrow that latest bestseller and to make a few copies with your phone or the library photocopiers they will just let you do it. Sure you could subscribe for way too much money to various online services and do this at home, but libraries do indeed let you have this kind of shit for free. Some libraries even let you borrow console games for free too.
But that's all physical media. All the rules about online digital media were written during the neoliberal period so digital copies of things are all extremely restrictive and locked down. Doing what would be considered totally normal and mundane just a couple of decades ago is now suddenly a radical act of "piracy".
Whatever petty rights you retain over physical media is only because publishers didn't find a good way to take them away for now.
To use a very very stupid example (it's late give me some slack) you can buy a tomato and eat it, but if you plant the seeds of the tomato, you might get blackbagged by monsanto or whoever, because you only got a licence to eat the tomato, not to plant it. And it doesn't get more "physical" than shit you buy to eat. Digitalisation is coming for everything.
As for physical game libraries, I don't think they are piracy, no. As for game emulation, it could be piracy because most games are encrypted on disk and only the publisher's $300 machine is allowed to decrypt it without falling foul of the DMCA.
I think people should be making the moral and ethical case for game ownership (and game piracy). My point is more, I don't want to need a bachelor's in law or ethics to justify piracy because i think piracy in and of itself is value neutral.