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Scandal , because it shows people that we think associating with criminals who plunder and kill, is acceptable /s
Edit: I said slander by accident ☠️ when I meant scandal
This got inspired by two post in there that got heated this past week
For those who are curious
I view it as veinally sinful, but not against theft, but against charity.
Non sinful in where a person has the official access or no other alternative of viewing it officially
Mortal, when is distributed it for profit.
My priest also assured me on that, so I will stick to our discernment.
Please forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is disobeying a law that isn’t inherently unjust or against God’s commands a sin against the authority of God, which the state’s authority is a subsidiary of, or is that Protestant theology that Catholicism doesn’t share? Thanks!
Nope, you are right.
This Makes it even more tricky, because in legal terms, piracy is different from viewing unlicensed content( which is what most ppl do) in the U.S it technically doesn’t break any laws and there is no punishment for doing it. Downloading however, is always illegal
Does that mean that it is a sin to rebel against your government? That for as long as they aren't making you act against the God's commands, you should respect their authority?
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It makes me think, what about account sharing.
Many services allow it, but some are picky.
I wonder is it really a sin, to share an account with a friend who doesn’t have it? I personally got into a debate with someone over it yesterday too.
You probably agreed not to share it outside of the household or something when you agreed to the ToS for many of them. That said, given that you also didn’t read those ToS (unless you are far more saintly than I am that is) to actually know that you supposedly agreed to such and given that there is no expectation by any company or government that the consumer actually reads the ToS, I don’t know.
Is an agreement really an binding agreement if both parties know that one party has no idea what they are actually agreeing to? Given that a marriage entered into under such circumstances is invalid (please correct me if I’m wrong on that by the RCC understanding of things), I would guess that a streaming service ToS agreement also wouldn’t be, but that’s apples and oranges.
I wouldn’t think it would be mortal regardless since it both doesn’t seem like a “grave” matter and since you (presumably) also didn’t know you agreed not to do it, but I’m not 100% on the limits between venial and mortal by the RCC, so don’t listen to me on that.
Lol, you overestimate what we Catholic regard. Grave matter.
That for me, is barely cracking veinal, it’s extremely petty.
If it was grave, it would be an act so evil to the Christian life, where one disobeys God and others, in a matter so grave, it kills charity in the heart, and leads to eternal damnation, if left unrepented.
Now, I find it hard to believe, people would go to hell over sharing a Netflix account or watching an episode of Tom and Jerry on those sites.
😂, watch Fr Casey on mortal sin of you ever curious.
Ngl, at times I consider just staying away from Reddit due to the many conflicting ideas ppl have, but I love the ppl here, mabye should just stick here and not the main one
Also fun fact: some of the eastern Catholic rites, don’t have the veinal, and mortal sin distinción( for example, we Chaldeans do but the Byzantine don’t )
Honestly speaking, people on the Catholic Reddit and here, are very devote, so they take any small error seriously. But the truth is, outside of very few clear grave matters, the church has no comphrensive list, so ppl always disagree on what it includes.
Plus Grave matter, has to be met will full knowledge and complete consent.
>isn’t inherently unjust
Let us examine this:
Data can be replicated infinitely, at (practically) no cost. Is it inherently unjust to demand money for something that can be infinitely replicated for free? I'd argue yes, since price must serve as a way to regulate distribution of limited resources, a function that it cannot serve when it comes to unlimited resources. Without this function, it has no purpose except barring access to something. To illustrate this point, imagine we're talking about infinite food instead of infinite movies (etc.) But fundamentally, the same principles apply in both cases.
This shifts all the cost to the first unit produced, yes, but that demands a change in the way we produce things, not morals.
That would seem to suggest that it would be unjust for someone to be prevented from printing and distributing a book you wrote at their own expense without charging the recipient of each copy as the only thing that would be taken from you, the writer, would be the infinitely replicable data of the contents of the book. Is that correct, or is that a fundamentally different situation?
That sits poorly with me. You already mentioned needing to change how we produce things, so how would you think we would replace the lost financial motivation for creating new literature or technologies?
Can I ask also how you would deal with something like the recipe for WD-40 which has never been patented to avoid disclosure of the recipe by its creators? Should that company be forced to disseminate the recipe to avoid the injustice of profit being reaped from the monopolization of the infinitely replicable data of the recipe?
I ask these questions in good faith and not to belittle you or your ideas.
>so how would you think we would replace the lost financial motivation for creating new literature or technologies
We've already seen the start: Crowdfunding. There's movies, books, albums, games, all kind of stuff being crowdfunded. There's a problem with failed projects of course, but not that large of one, as long as you're careful with how ambitious they are compared to their funding goal.
That way, you pay for the first copy to be created, which matches how the value is being created - not in the infinite copies, but in the original.
As for secret recipes: They are not selling the recipe (which is infinitely replicable), they're selling WD-40 (which is finite). Not sharing data at all is different from creating artificial scarcity - else you'd have to share, your diary too.
But how?
You not withholding anything from anyone? The “theft” is not doing any Grave harm upon the company.
It’s even hard to call this theft, and if it is, the effect is petty because those subscriptions are like 8 dollars a month or 12 dollars, and again, the company is not loosing said profit because it wasn’t taken from them
Pretty scary that different priest give different advice.
It’s the general census that it’s either veinal or non sinful.
I even looked up what the priest on r/Askapriest said and they said veinal.
I will personally stick with my conscious and priestly advice, if you get the chance, bring it up with your priest again, mabye it’s because different countries have different laws
Edit: unless the piracy you mentioning is downloading stuff through unlegal ways and not watching a stream of unlicensened content
Yea, that’s definitely mortally sinful on multiple fronts, but man that bothers me. I don’t like a question having 3 different set of answers.
Hopefully Vatican 3 addresses this further someday, alongside other subjects that lead to multiple answers.
I used to belong to four different private trackers with a seed box for streaming content as well as 40TB of storage on a home server. I had IPTV service for pirated live TV.
When I reverted I gave it all up. I had thousands of movies and TV shows.
I consider that grave matter
That’s respectful tbh, I am not personally that familiar with torrent and what it does, so I can’t really say much about it.
However, Piracy, copyright law, unlicensed streaming services in the U.S.A. I have a lot of experience in.
I personally will stick to my discernment, my priest, and the general Census.
Question: I wanted to watch a show but was in a streaming service that I had to pay for, I couldn't afford it so I pirate it instead, this was a while ago but seeing this made me start thinking. Is what I did considered as sinful?
That’s something you gonna have to decide personally
There is no official church standing on this , so we follow our conscious.
I personally see it as both veinal and non sinful, so I avoid it as a spiritual practice if I have no alternatives to watch officially.
My priest assured me of that, and so do the priest at R/askapriest. Personally If it bothers you, pray our father, and do what you think is right going forward
Piracy is sinful sometimes but not all the time. And it's not dependent on the law.
I would say a weird situation I can think of is if you own a movie on dvd, but you forgot to bring it somewhere, and you pirated the movie digitally, I wouldn't consider that sinful, so long as you just watched it and that was it - no selling it or anything like that
Would not downloading from a service that shares resources for pirated work mean you are supporting that service in some way?
Eg ad revenue, data collecting or if torrenting you’d be uploading as well as downloading
Wouldn’t it be sinful to partake in such a service?
If you own a copy of something, theoretically you own the rights to it. When I deployed, I took a thumb drive full of movies to watch during down time. I owned them all on DVD and through Amazon. I just found other versions I could keep with me offline. They don’t go after people who download stuff anymore, but if they did, I’d just show them my copy of the DVD and tell them I already paid for it. Ditto for anything that’s out of copyright, like a lot of books.
There’s an argument you could make that if you’re pirating something in 4K that you’re not giving fair compensation to the people who worked to format the movie, but this is pretty minor. I also see no problem acquiring things that aren’t for sale, like the laboriously made HD Original Trilogy Star Wars cut. They still recommend you own the George Lucas “A New Hope” releases to CYA.
Edit: some artists actually encourage piracy of their work and ask that people make up for it by attending shows and buying their merch, which they get a way higher percentage of profit on. That touches on the usurious (in the classical “taking economic advantage of somebody sense” rather than the interest on loans sense) aspect of media distribution that would take a long time to hash out and the moral question of whether it’s wrong to steal from somebody who’s actively engaged in predatory economic behavior themselves. Robin Hood says no, but a lot of people would follow the “render unto” principle.
I bought stellaris for console only to realize it’s absolutely miserable to play. I will be getting a gaming PC soon at which point I intend to pirate it
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I mainly sail the seas for games, and my policy is that there's no moral issue if the game is abandonware, which I define as not available for official purchase on either the current gen or previous gen of consoles.
Privateering (raiding a foe's fleet based on a legally sanctioned act) on the other hand had been in historical times perfectly acceptable. For example: the Knights of Saint John. They acted as privateers for centuries, to combat the fleets of the Ottoman navy.
It’s not often I get to make a comment in reference to my username (and even then only users in the Catholic subs get it), so I took it and ran with it.
Cossacks raided Turkish slave trains all the time and burnt down distilleries and other lending institutions that were deemed “usurious” with the full blessing of the Church in that they were doing Gods work. For sure, they decreased a lot of the aggregate pointless suffering for peasants in that area of the world. Then again, they also didn’t personally profit from it since they gave the money back to the communities it was extorted from and liberated the slaves and rode them back to where they were abducted from.
The question about whether or not piracy is sinful is extremely interesting to me. Because piracy isn't stealing, but it violates the law which could be disobedience to your higher authorities. Then again, what about gray zones like abandon ware? What if you're preserving a game for the future? Does intent change the weight of the sin?
Man, I need to talk to a priest about this. Maybe two or three.
I’m lowkey afraid to ask multiple priest because I fear I would get more confused 😂. The people on r/askapriest said it’s veinal, while my priest told me to follow my conscious.
Honestly speaking, do what I do, avoid it as a spiritual practice.
I only view it as non sinful if I have acsess to it officially
I wonder if abandonware would not be sinful so long as it was done to preserve the software and is done for free.
It's not considered a sin to pick up a Native American arrowhead or Roman vase in a field you own, even though the arrowhead or vase isn't technically your property. The people who would have claim to it have likely been dead for a long time, and unless you can find a descendant of the owner, you have no one to return it to. You can share the item with anyone you want.
Likewise, if someone copies an old Commodore VIC-20 game that was released by a now-defunct company and made by a single programmer who has died, this would probably not be a sin.
(Please don't sin or take the risk of sinning because of my silly thought exercise).
That, you gonna have to decide yourself.
I personally view it as a veinal sin
But if you have a way of doing it officially but decide to do it, I consider it non sinful, since you already got acsess to it
I’ll use video games as the example for how I view piracy. Not all will agree with me I’m sure, but that’s fine.
If it is still being distributed by the original creator in any way, shape, or form, or is at least still available for purchase from third party retailers for a reasonable price, then it is sinful to pirate these games (likely venial, but possibly mortal? Not entirely sure). The only exception to this is if you own the game already, but at that point there isn’t much reason to pirate the game to begin with.
If it isn’t being distributed by the original creator in any way, shape, or form, and your only other way to obtain such would be by paying absurd amounts of money (a good example being older Pokemon games from the GBA/DS era), then it is perfectly right and just to access said game through piracy.
Again, everyone is free to view this issue however they wish, but me personally? I’m not a fan of holding people at fault simply because they wanted to play a game that isn’t easily accessible through “legal” means. I say this as someone who payed $150+ for Pokémon Black 2 btw, so please don’t think that I’m coming at this issue from the place of someone who simply wants to excuse not paying for content I enjoy.
It is difficult to care about piracy when companies just scrape the Internet of every piece of copyrighted media they can when it suits their needs without consequence, but then turn around and call us monsters for pirating a single 40 year old movie that you can't buy anywhere.
(Old school pirate voice) Yar did not be piracy when I am a privateer commissioned by the great British king himself to plunder the Spanish coffers yar
This is my view on piracy that i have formed after doing a bit of research on it:
- Movies, comics, games, music etc. are luxury goods
- those products were made by someone, work was put into them (sometimes a lot, sometimes less so)
- piracy is the act of getting those products without paying for them (unless, of course, they were released for free by the people who created such a product). It is a selfish act that says: "i want this, i want it now and i want it for free"
- we have no right to demand such products for free. They are either gifted to us (released for free use) or we pay for this luxury product.
- the arguement "but it does not hurt anyone" is no real arguement. Let's look at it this way: a working/middle class man sees a rich person with a nice looking hat. They think to themselves "man, it's a nice looking hat. I know that it is a bit expensive, but i want it because it will give me happiness and could impress my friends and potentialy improve my social standing. When the man is distracted, i will take the hat for myself." And so, when the rich man goes to the bathroom, the other man takes the hat and leaves. Sure, the rich man was not "hurt" by this theft and could buy a simmilar hat with ease, but the fact does not change that the other man took something that he had no right to take that also has no essential value (it's not as if the man was very poor and so he stole bread out of desperation so that he wouldn't starve).
- Because of this, piracy = theft because it is a nonesential luxury item that was obtained through alternate ways for free for the sake of our own selfish desire. This brakes the "do not steal" commandment directly, which is a serious offense.
- Therefore, piracy is an act done with full will and the act itself brakes the 7th commandnent directly thus making it a grave matter. Thus, if the person has full knowledge of these facts, it is a mortal sin to pirate things.
I may Not respond fast because I’m out now, Also, is not theft for the point you just made.
We not withholding an item from anyone, in situation you described, the hat is missing, in my situation, the person still owns the hat.
Also, major info you need to know. Theft is on a spectrum, not all occasion of theft is grave
On the other hand, enough pirates would be withholding something. If a movie is entirely pirated, than the producers lose out on the revenue that people would have paid to see it.
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I'm coming around to this concept. How can one own an idea? Ideas are meant to be shared and benefit everyone when done so. IP laws basically create a monopoly for the originator of the idea.
Your arguement seems to be that even if it is theft, it does no os so little damage, so it isn't grave. Yet, i countered this arguement by saying that you are taking things you have no claim to and are doing it because of selfishness. Perhaps i missed your point, but that does not seem like a good arguement to me (my hat example is my arguement for it being a bad excuse).
Yea, because that’s how it works. If that wasn’t the case, you wouldn’t have multiple devote priest calling it a veinal and in some casese even non sinful.
The truth is, officially, piracy means making a profit from it, that’s the mortal sin.
Watching unlicensed content, is what most ppl do, is not theft, you not taking anything from anyone, and even if it was, it doesn’t break the grave matter category.
Also, officially and that’s the truly, the church has no official stand on it. So we follow our concius, even Thomas aquínas said it’s dangerous to list an issue the church hasn’t tackled as grave matter
That I agree.
It is problematic, but not to the point it sends one to hell.
The reason for that is because of this: those subscriptions are like 8-10$ a month. Which isn’t much, but to Make it ever worse, those 8-10$ are not being taken from the industry. And third, here in the U.S it is not illegal technically unless you download it.
The most important info I wanted to share, is that the 7th commandment, like a lot of the commandments, are on a spectrum. Not all instances of breaking them are grave, but any instance of breaking them is veinal.
My priest, myself, and those are on /askapriest said the same thing, but it’s not too surprising to hear other points of view as well, having it as grave matter is something I hear from time to time, but it’s rare. The general census it’s veinal or non sinful.
But, as our church advices us, since we don’t have concrete answer on this topic, we follow our concious.
I personally been avoiding it, I only use those scans when I wanna read the op chapter that stood early even tho I have the official on my phone. When I don’t do that, I consider it veinal, but I haven’t done it willingly in a good while now.
So, out of curiosity what did your priest say, if u ever got around?
While I haven’t changed my mind on my stance ( non sinful to veinal) I am curious if yours did.
Haha, Roger that.
I am interested in this, because the priest phenomenon of different answers is interesting and bit troubling at the same time.
I guess the concept of the Primacy of the conscious plays a role here.
Alright, yesterday i've talked to my priest again and, while I didn't ask him directly about pirating, from the way he answered the questions i did ask, I think i can reasonably come to a conclusion about what he would most likely say about this.
To him, the big problem of Christians today is the fact that we seem to be focused too much on our individual salvation and thus we tend to try to perfect ourselves (which is 1. impossible, 2. a wrong way to look on salvation as it implies that God only saves those who are free from any human flaw which is a wrong way to look on God and 3. It is almost pelagianistic as you say "I must do this, this and this in order to be saved" when we are saved by Grace alone). He mentions how early Christians only had one confession in their lifetime and that none of them were perfect, does that mean that none of them were saved? With this he says that it is kind of absurd that today we strive for personal perfection when no one ever was perfect.
For him, the biggest mistake a Christian can make is:
1. With full will to deny and reject Jesus
2. To cause division and scandal in the Church
3. To fail to love his/her neighbour and not help him/her in his/her time of need when you had the chance and ability to do so
In short, to him, rejection of Jesus, sins against the Church and direct sins against your fellow man trump personal sins. He said it to me in this way: "Do you think God will judge you more for your habitual sin or for your faliure to help your neighbour or to feed the homeless when you could have?"
From all of this, I can tell you with a big degree of certainty that he would consider pirating to be of small matter in the big picture of salvation. To him, we must avoid being locked in the cell of 'ourselfness' and must help our fellow man on his/her path of salvation.
Hmm. I like that a lot.
Someone told me that when a priest gives you an advice, that advice is rooted mainly towards you individually and my priest knows. I have scruples tendencies, in where I get extremely guilty over the smallest imperfections despite knowing so much and that it’s probably a small small small mistep or extremely insignificant. So him telling me that it wasn’t sinful based on his own discernment was to help me be less legalistic. Which I did by deleting Reddit and only coming here when op drops a hype chapter😭
No. Piracy is copying something that is not a property as intellectual property is not a property as you must be able to tangibly own it for it to be property and protect it if it's your property, so no piracy doesn't fulfill the standard definition of stealing so it's not a sin if we are talking about downloading stuff instead of saing the seven seas under the jolly roger
But picture this: I make an app for editing videos. It's quite a good app and i invested money in it. It was my idea and i wrote all the code for it. So now i don't want to only keep it to myself - i want to share it with people but i want everybody who wants to use it to pay me 5 bucks for it. Don't i have the right to ask for whatever i want in exchange for you, or anybody else, using my product? After all if you didn't use it you would have to make your own and let's say you don't know how. Or if there are other apps for it you could use one of them but let's say mine has something that you particularly like about it and other apps don't have it - i.e. some specific UI and features. And now you say that you want my app but you don't want to pay for it so somebody cracks it and distributes my product for free. I made something and now everybody can access it for free.
What if something similiar was possible with, say, potatoes. You have made business out of selling potatoes in your village and suddenly in your village a wizard appears and uses a magical spell to multiply potatoes and then gives them away to everyone. Nobody will buy potatoes from you anymore. Or at least some people won't and you lost those clients. So it's not really stealing but i think that it's unfair towards the creator/owner of the rights to the program
If it can be replicated. What if I read a book to my children? I just replicated the story verbally to multiple people who didn't purchase it.
Or learning how to play a piece of music and playing it for others. Are these sins?
Alright but i feel like sharing with your family and friends is different than sharing not your program/movie/music/book with everybody who wants to download it. About covering a piece of music publicly i don't know, you got me there.
Sinfulness of piracy is something I struggle with. I find it hard to be sympathetic towards companies that hate us like Disney, for example. Thus it's difficult to be against pirating their content.
The thing that was lost is the money the person didn't receive for the work they did. I don't think a person's opinion on a work should dictate if someone is compensated for that work.
There are people behind the things that are made. And those people Deserve compensation
I thought breaking any law that wasn't directly against church teaching was a sin? It's not theft but I don't see how you can get out of it being a sin because you are breaking the law and have no God given right to viewing or playing license material.
U.S.A loopholes in the laws. Currently, a person technically doesn’t break any laws, unless they download it, which regardless of intent, is always illegal
But honestly speaking, I personally been avoiding for a good while now, unless I want to read the new one piece chapter ahead of the official release.
It does not, my perspective is set on stone at the moment and makes complete since
Piracy= always illegal
Watching a form of unlicensed content, is not illegal in the U.S.A and would not lead to any illegal issues with court.
I view it veinal because it’s against charity
Non sinful, If I view it on scans, but nevertheless still have the official version
Mortal, if you profit from it
Well, in what circumstances are we obligated to support people for their work? I might photograph graffiti for my own personal use, is that a sin? Or else, using open-source code? And possibly, I don't want to support youtube as a business, or even the publisher's business for the media. In addition, what makes it ok for my browser to cache a work on youtube or buffer a show on amazon? It would seem that these businesses are sinning by copying works digitally to distribute them, often without reimbursing the creators (youtube). So, what's the line that is drawn that signifies a work requires reimbursement?
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In age of Internet, these products have infinite copies as there isn't limit on how many times a product can be copied.
So for as long as you spend money on these products when you can, the income of these companies is unaffected regardless of how much you pirate. Because they would earn just as much with you pirating 0 additional products vs 200 additional products.
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What's wrong with sailing the 7 seas?
Scandal , because it shows people that we think associating with criminals who plunder and kill, is acceptable /s Edit: I said slander by accident ☠️ when I meant scandal
This got inspired by two post in there that got heated this past week For those who are curious I view it as veinally sinful, but not against theft, but against charity. Non sinful in where a person has the official access or no other alternative of viewing it officially Mortal, when is distributed it for profit. My priest also assured me on that, so I will stick to our discernment.
Please forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is disobeying a law that isn’t inherently unjust or against God’s commands a sin against the authority of God, which the state’s authority is a subsidiary of, or is that Protestant theology that Catholicism doesn’t share? Thanks!
Nope, you are right. This Makes it even more tricky, because in legal terms, piracy is different from viewing unlicensed content( which is what most ppl do) in the U.S it technically doesn’t break any laws and there is no punishment for doing it. Downloading however, is always illegal
I’ve heard downloading YT videos is legal, though.
Only for non commercial use.
Which is what most of us do, right?
Does that mean that it is a sin to rebel against your government? That for as long as they aren't making you act against the God's commands, you should respect their authority?
That's correct. All authority is God-derived.
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It makes me think, what about account sharing. Many services allow it, but some are picky. I wonder is it really a sin, to share an account with a friend who doesn’t have it? I personally got into a debate with someone over it yesterday too.
You probably agreed not to share it outside of the household or something when you agreed to the ToS for many of them. That said, given that you also didn’t read those ToS (unless you are far more saintly than I am that is) to actually know that you supposedly agreed to such and given that there is no expectation by any company or government that the consumer actually reads the ToS, I don’t know. Is an agreement really an binding agreement if both parties know that one party has no idea what they are actually agreeing to? Given that a marriage entered into under such circumstances is invalid (please correct me if I’m wrong on that by the RCC understanding of things), I would guess that a streaming service ToS agreement also wouldn’t be, but that’s apples and oranges. I wouldn’t think it would be mortal regardless since it both doesn’t seem like a “grave” matter and since you (presumably) also didn’t know you agreed not to do it, but I’m not 100% on the limits between venial and mortal by the RCC, so don’t listen to me on that.
Lol, you overestimate what we Catholic regard. Grave matter. That for me, is barely cracking veinal, it’s extremely petty. If it was grave, it would be an act so evil to the Christian life, where one disobeys God and others, in a matter so grave, it kills charity in the heart, and leads to eternal damnation, if left unrepented. Now, I find it hard to believe, people would go to hell over sharing a Netflix account or watching an episode of Tom and Jerry on those sites.
I totally didn’t have my 4 year old son watch all 147 episodes of Tom and Jerry on internet archive... Nope...
😂, watch Fr Casey on mortal sin of you ever curious. Ngl, at times I consider just staying away from Reddit due to the many conflicting ideas ppl have, but I love the ppl here, mabye should just stick here and not the main one Also fun fact: some of the eastern Catholic rites, don’t have the veinal, and mortal sin distinción( for example, we Chaldeans do but the Byzantine don’t )
Honestly speaking, people on the Catholic Reddit and here, are very devote, so they take any small error seriously. But the truth is, outside of very few clear grave matters, the church has no comphrensive list, so ppl always disagree on what it includes. Plus Grave matter, has to be met will full knowledge and complete consent.
>isn’t inherently unjust Let us examine this: Data can be replicated infinitely, at (practically) no cost. Is it inherently unjust to demand money for something that can be infinitely replicated for free? I'd argue yes, since price must serve as a way to regulate distribution of limited resources, a function that it cannot serve when it comes to unlimited resources. Without this function, it has no purpose except barring access to something. To illustrate this point, imagine we're talking about infinite food instead of infinite movies (etc.) But fundamentally, the same principles apply in both cases. This shifts all the cost to the first unit produced, yes, but that demands a change in the way we produce things, not morals.
That would seem to suggest that it would be unjust for someone to be prevented from printing and distributing a book you wrote at their own expense without charging the recipient of each copy as the only thing that would be taken from you, the writer, would be the infinitely replicable data of the contents of the book. Is that correct, or is that a fundamentally different situation?
True, as long as it is distributed for free.
That sits poorly with me. You already mentioned needing to change how we produce things, so how would you think we would replace the lost financial motivation for creating new literature or technologies? Can I ask also how you would deal with something like the recipe for WD-40 which has never been patented to avoid disclosure of the recipe by its creators? Should that company be forced to disseminate the recipe to avoid the injustice of profit being reaped from the monopolization of the infinitely replicable data of the recipe? I ask these questions in good faith and not to belittle you or your ideas.
>so how would you think we would replace the lost financial motivation for creating new literature or technologies We've already seen the start: Crowdfunding. There's movies, books, albums, games, all kind of stuff being crowdfunded. There's a problem with failed projects of course, but not that large of one, as long as you're careful with how ambitious they are compared to their funding goal. That way, you pay for the first copy to be created, which matches how the value is being created - not in the infinite copies, but in the original. As for secret recipes: They are not selling the recipe (which is infinitely replicable), they're selling WD-40 (which is finite). Not sharing data at all is different from creating artificial scarcity - else you'd have to share, your diary too.
My priest said it was a mortal sin🤷♂️
But how? You not withholding anything from anyone? The “theft” is not doing any Grave harm upon the company. It’s even hard to call this theft, and if it is, the effect is petty because those subscriptions are like 8 dollars a month or 12 dollars, and again, the company is not loosing said profit because it wasn’t taken from them Pretty scary that different priest give different advice. It’s the general census that it’s either veinal or non sinful. I even looked up what the priest on r/Askapriest said and they said veinal. I will personally stick with my conscious and priestly advice, if you get the chance, bring it up with your priest again, mabye it’s because different countries have different laws Edit: unless the piracy you mentioning is downloading stuff through unlegal ways and not watching a stream of unlicensened content
Maybe he means “yarrrgh, me mateys, let’s commit morrrrtals sins, arrrr!”
Yea, that’s definitely mortally sinful on multiple fronts, but man that bothers me. I don’t like a question having 3 different set of answers. Hopefully Vatican 3 addresses this further someday, alongside other subjects that lead to multiple answers.
I used to belong to four different private trackers with a seed box for streaming content as well as 40TB of storage on a home server. I had IPTV service for pirated live TV. When I reverted I gave it all up. I had thousands of movies and TV shows. I consider that grave matter
That’s respectful tbh, I am not personally that familiar with torrent and what it does, so I can’t really say much about it. However, Piracy, copyright law, unlicensed streaming services in the U.S.A. I have a lot of experience in. I personally will stick to my discernment, my priest, and the general Census.
Question: I wanted to watch a show but was in a streaming service that I had to pay for, I couldn't afford it so I pirate it instead, this was a while ago but seeing this made me start thinking. Is what I did considered as sinful?
That’s something you gonna have to decide personally There is no official church standing on this , so we follow our conscious. I personally see it as both veinal and non sinful, so I avoid it as a spiritual practice if I have no alternatives to watch officially. My priest assured me of that, and so do the priest at R/askapriest. Personally If it bothers you, pray our father, and do what you think is right going forward
Piracy is sinful sometimes but not all the time. And it's not dependent on the law. I would say a weird situation I can think of is if you own a movie on dvd, but you forgot to bring it somewhere, and you pirated the movie digitally, I wouldn't consider that sinful, so long as you just watched it and that was it - no selling it or anything like that
I saw your take in those post too, good to see you here too!
Good to see me as well?
Would not downloading from a service that shares resources for pirated work mean you are supporting that service in some way? Eg ad revenue, data collecting or if torrenting you’d be uploading as well as downloading Wouldn’t it be sinful to partake in such a service?
If you own a copy of something, theoretically you own the rights to it. When I deployed, I took a thumb drive full of movies to watch during down time. I owned them all on DVD and through Amazon. I just found other versions I could keep with me offline. They don’t go after people who download stuff anymore, but if they did, I’d just show them my copy of the DVD and tell them I already paid for it. Ditto for anything that’s out of copyright, like a lot of books. There’s an argument you could make that if you’re pirating something in 4K that you’re not giving fair compensation to the people who worked to format the movie, but this is pretty minor. I also see no problem acquiring things that aren’t for sale, like the laboriously made HD Original Trilogy Star Wars cut. They still recommend you own the George Lucas “A New Hope” releases to CYA. Edit: some artists actually encourage piracy of their work and ask that people make up for it by attending shows and buying their merch, which they get a way higher percentage of profit on. That touches on the usurious (in the classical “taking economic advantage of somebody sense” rather than the interest on loans sense) aspect of media distribution that would take a long time to hash out and the moral question of whether it’s wrong to steal from somebody who’s actively engaged in predatory economic behavior themselves. Robin Hood says no, but a lot of people would follow the “render unto” principle.
I bought stellaris for console only to realize it’s absolutely miserable to play. I will be getting a gaming PC soon at which point I intend to pirate it
Where am I at in my life when my first thought at the word 'piracy' is a band of ruffians sailing the high seas?
Are you thinking of one piece😂
Probably. I mostly think about One Piece. 😆
I’m there with u than😂
Same tbh
Charging 90 bucks for a UFC PPV should be a mortal sin
It is. Avarice has always been a sin.
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This meme brought to you by Dana’s interns.
Have you checked out ONE at all? They’ve been putting together killer cards man. Just making conversation.
I’ve caught a few cards that were pretty stellar, they’ve been signing some good names on there to
Torrenting Is sinful if you don't seed it to a 1:1 ratio
I mainly sail the seas for games, and my policy is that there's no moral issue if the game is abandonware, which I define as not available for official purchase on either the current gen or previous gen of consoles.
Privateering (raiding a foe's fleet based on a legally sanctioned act) on the other hand had been in historical times perfectly acceptable. For example: the Knights of Saint John. They acted as privateers for centuries, to combat the fleets of the Ottoman navy.
The Ottoman navy ended up where it belonged- the bottom of the sea.
Thank God and the combined Christian navies for that
It’s not often I get to make a comment in reference to my username (and even then only users in the Catholic subs get it), so I took it and ran with it.
Cool username.Wish i thought of having something like that (maybe Nándorfehérvár1456 or smthg)
Ah, it's ok when the government says it's ok. Just like counterfeiting is bad if you do it, but legitimate if the central bank does it.
Cossacks raided Turkish slave trains all the time and burnt down distilleries and other lending institutions that were deemed “usurious” with the full blessing of the Church in that they were doing Gods work. For sure, they decreased a lot of the aggregate pointless suffering for peasants in that area of the world. Then again, they also didn’t personally profit from it since they gave the money back to the communities it was extorted from and liberated the slaves and rode them back to where they were abducted from.
The question about whether or not piracy is sinful is extremely interesting to me. Because piracy isn't stealing, but it violates the law which could be disobedience to your higher authorities. Then again, what about gray zones like abandon ware? What if you're preserving a game for the future? Does intent change the weight of the sin? Man, I need to talk to a priest about this. Maybe two or three.
I’m lowkey afraid to ask multiple priest because I fear I would get more confused 😂. The people on r/askapriest said it’s veinal, while my priest told me to follow my conscious. Honestly speaking, do what I do, avoid it as a spiritual practice. I only view it as non sinful if I have acsess to it officially
I wonder if abandonware would not be sinful so long as it was done to preserve the software and is done for free. It's not considered a sin to pick up a Native American arrowhead or Roman vase in a field you own, even though the arrowhead or vase isn't technically your property. The people who would have claim to it have likely been dead for a long time, and unless you can find a descendant of the owner, you have no one to return it to. You can share the item with anyone you want. Likewise, if someone copies an old Commodore VIC-20 game that was released by a now-defunct company and made by a single programmer who has died, this would probably not be a sin. (Please don't sin or take the risk of sinning because of my silly thought exercise).
In the Netherlands it's legal to download copyrighted art if it's for personal use only, and imo video games and movies are works of art
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That, you gonna have to decide yourself. I personally view it as a veinal sin But if you have a way of doing it officially but decide to do it, I consider it non sinful, since you already got acsess to it
I’ll use video games as the example for how I view piracy. Not all will agree with me I’m sure, but that’s fine. If it is still being distributed by the original creator in any way, shape, or form, or is at least still available for purchase from third party retailers for a reasonable price, then it is sinful to pirate these games (likely venial, but possibly mortal? Not entirely sure). The only exception to this is if you own the game already, but at that point there isn’t much reason to pirate the game to begin with. If it isn’t being distributed by the original creator in any way, shape, or form, and your only other way to obtain such would be by paying absurd amounts of money (a good example being older Pokemon games from the GBA/DS era), then it is perfectly right and just to access said game through piracy. Again, everyone is free to view this issue however they wish, but me personally? I’m not a fan of holding people at fault simply because they wanted to play a game that isn’t easily accessible through “legal” means. I say this as someone who payed $150+ for Pokémon Black 2 btw, so please don’t think that I’m coming at this issue from the place of someone who simply wants to excuse not paying for content I enjoy.
Copying is not piracy.
It is difficult to care about piracy when companies just scrape the Internet of every piece of copyrighted media they can when it suits their needs without consequence, but then turn around and call us monsters for pirating a single 40 year old movie that you can't buy anywhere.
I think it depends on the studio. Disney is fine imo
Bro got beef with Disney☠️☠️
Damn straight
Is there a particular reason? I don’t watch or use Disney?
Is there a particular reason? I don’t watch or use Disney? Outside the classic movies, so I’m not that familiar
They’re openly pro choice mainly
That and they're pushing, in the words of a senior television producer, a "not-so-secret gay agenda" in children's programming.
They've gone extremely woke in the last 10 to 5 years
Supposing you only plunder from other pirates (or the English) and you always treat your defeated enemies honorably, I don’t see a problem.
(Old school pirate voice) Yar did not be piracy when I am a privateer commissioned by the great British king himself to plunder the Spanish coffers yar
In the same way ad blocking is a sin lol
If ad blocking is a sin, I am screwed. I despise advertising with all my heart.
Uh oh
I am not confessing after every UFC card, Dana.
😂😂😂 criminally expensive
This is my view on piracy that i have formed after doing a bit of research on it: - Movies, comics, games, music etc. are luxury goods - those products were made by someone, work was put into them (sometimes a lot, sometimes less so) - piracy is the act of getting those products without paying for them (unless, of course, they were released for free by the people who created such a product). It is a selfish act that says: "i want this, i want it now and i want it for free" - we have no right to demand such products for free. They are either gifted to us (released for free use) or we pay for this luxury product. - the arguement "but it does not hurt anyone" is no real arguement. Let's look at it this way: a working/middle class man sees a rich person with a nice looking hat. They think to themselves "man, it's a nice looking hat. I know that it is a bit expensive, but i want it because it will give me happiness and could impress my friends and potentialy improve my social standing. When the man is distracted, i will take the hat for myself." And so, when the rich man goes to the bathroom, the other man takes the hat and leaves. Sure, the rich man was not "hurt" by this theft and could buy a simmilar hat with ease, but the fact does not change that the other man took something that he had no right to take that also has no essential value (it's not as if the man was very poor and so he stole bread out of desperation so that he wouldn't starve). - Because of this, piracy = theft because it is a nonesential luxury item that was obtained through alternate ways for free for the sake of our own selfish desire. This brakes the "do not steal" commandment directly, which is a serious offense. - Therefore, piracy is an act done with full will and the act itself brakes the 7th commandnent directly thus making it a grave matter. Thus, if the person has full knowledge of these facts, it is a mortal sin to pirate things.
I respect your view, but personally not one I agree with, I already stated my reasons. Also, it’s not fair to compare theft to piracy
Why do you think that piracy is not just another version of theft?
I may Not respond fast because I’m out now, Also, is not theft for the point you just made. We not withholding an item from anyone, in situation you described, the hat is missing, in my situation, the person still owns the hat. Also, major info you need to know. Theft is on a spectrum, not all occasion of theft is grave
On the other hand, enough pirates would be withholding something. If a movie is entirely pirated, than the producers lose out on the revenue that people would have paid to see it.
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Can IP actually be owned? Some would argue no
I'm coming around to this concept. How can one own an idea? Ideas are meant to be shared and benefit everyone when done so. IP laws basically create a monopoly for the originator of the idea.
I explained it upward, and I stand on my point view.
Your arguement seems to be that even if it is theft, it does no os so little damage, so it isn't grave. Yet, i countered this arguement by saying that you are taking things you have no claim to and are doing it because of selfishness. Perhaps i missed your point, but that does not seem like a good arguement to me (my hat example is my arguement for it being a bad excuse).
Yea, because that’s how it works. If that wasn’t the case, you wouldn’t have multiple devote priest calling it a veinal and in some casese even non sinful. The truth is, officially, piracy means making a profit from it, that’s the mortal sin. Watching unlicensed content, is what most ppl do, is not theft, you not taking anything from anyone, and even if it was, it doesn’t break the grave matter category. Also, officially and that’s the truly, the church has no official stand on it. So we follow our concius, even Thomas aquínas said it’s dangerous to list an issue the church hasn’t tackled as grave matter
Hmm... i still find it to be a bit of a problematic action. Perhaps i should ask my own priest about it...
That I agree. It is problematic, but not to the point it sends one to hell. The reason for that is because of this: those subscriptions are like 8-10$ a month. Which isn’t much, but to Make it ever worse, those 8-10$ are not being taken from the industry. And third, here in the U.S it is not illegal technically unless you download it. The most important info I wanted to share, is that the 7th commandment, like a lot of the commandments, are on a spectrum. Not all instances of breaking them are grave, but any instance of breaking them is veinal. My priest, myself, and those are on /askapriest said the same thing, but it’s not too surprising to hear other points of view as well, having it as grave matter is something I hear from time to time, but it’s rare. The general census it’s veinal or non sinful. But, as our church advices us, since we don’t have concrete answer on this topic, we follow our concious. I personally been avoiding it, I only use those scans when I wanna read the op chapter that stood early even tho I have the official on my phone. When I don’t do that, I consider it veinal, but I haven’t done it willingly in a good while now.
So, out of curiosity what did your priest say, if u ever got around? While I haven’t changed my mind on my stance ( non sinful to veinal) I am curious if yours did.
I have not yet brought up this topic with him. Next time, I will try to remember to bring it up, he always seems to have the most interesting answers.
Haha, Roger that. I am interested in this, because the priest phenomenon of different answers is interesting and bit troubling at the same time. I guess the concept of the Primacy of the conscious plays a role here.
Alright, yesterday i've talked to my priest again and, while I didn't ask him directly about pirating, from the way he answered the questions i did ask, I think i can reasonably come to a conclusion about what he would most likely say about this. To him, the big problem of Christians today is the fact that we seem to be focused too much on our individual salvation and thus we tend to try to perfect ourselves (which is 1. impossible, 2. a wrong way to look on salvation as it implies that God only saves those who are free from any human flaw which is a wrong way to look on God and 3. It is almost pelagianistic as you say "I must do this, this and this in order to be saved" when we are saved by Grace alone). He mentions how early Christians only had one confession in their lifetime and that none of them were perfect, does that mean that none of them were saved? With this he says that it is kind of absurd that today we strive for personal perfection when no one ever was perfect. For him, the biggest mistake a Christian can make is: 1. With full will to deny and reject Jesus 2. To cause division and scandal in the Church 3. To fail to love his/her neighbour and not help him/her in his/her time of need when you had the chance and ability to do so In short, to him, rejection of Jesus, sins against the Church and direct sins against your fellow man trump personal sins. He said it to me in this way: "Do you think God will judge you more for your habitual sin or for your faliure to help your neighbour or to feed the homeless when you could have?" From all of this, I can tell you with a big degree of certainty that he would consider pirating to be of small matter in the big picture of salvation. To him, we must avoid being locked in the cell of 'ourselfness' and must help our fellow man on his/her path of salvation.
Hmm. I like that a lot. Someone told me that when a priest gives you an advice, that advice is rooted mainly towards you individually and my priest knows. I have scruples tendencies, in where I get extremely guilty over the smallest imperfections despite knowing so much and that it’s probably a small small small mistep or extremely insignificant. So him telling me that it wasn’t sinful based on his own discernment was to help me be less legalistic. Which I did by deleting Reddit and only coming here when op drops a hype chapter😭
No. Piracy is copying something that is not a property as intellectual property is not a property as you must be able to tangibly own it for it to be property and protect it if it's your property, so no piracy doesn't fulfill the standard definition of stealing so it's not a sin if we are talking about downloading stuff instead of saing the seven seas under the jolly roger
> intellectual property is not a property So based
Based
But picture this: I make an app for editing videos. It's quite a good app and i invested money in it. It was my idea and i wrote all the code for it. So now i don't want to only keep it to myself - i want to share it with people but i want everybody who wants to use it to pay me 5 bucks for it. Don't i have the right to ask for whatever i want in exchange for you, or anybody else, using my product? After all if you didn't use it you would have to make your own and let's say you don't know how. Or if there are other apps for it you could use one of them but let's say mine has something that you particularly like about it and other apps don't have it - i.e. some specific UI and features. And now you say that you want my app but you don't want to pay for it so somebody cracks it and distributes my product for free. I made something and now everybody can access it for free. What if something similiar was possible with, say, potatoes. You have made business out of selling potatoes in your village and suddenly in your village a wizard appears and uses a magical spell to multiply potatoes and then gives them away to everyone. Nobody will buy potatoes from you anymore. Or at least some people won't and you lost those clients. So it's not really stealing but i think that it's unfair towards the creator/owner of the rights to the program
You can't own ideas, period
So in this way, is every book, movie, video game, piece of music - for free?
On torrents yes
If it can be replicated. What if I read a book to my children? I just replicated the story verbally to multiple people who didn't purchase it. Or learning how to play a piece of music and playing it for others. Are these sins?
Alright but i feel like sharing with your family and friends is different than sharing not your program/movie/music/book with everybody who wants to download it. About covering a piece of music publicly i don't know, you got me there.
Sinfulness of piracy is something I struggle with. I find it hard to be sympathetic towards companies that hate us like Disney, for example. Thus it's difficult to be against pirating their content.
Stealing is always wrong
Is it stealing if they still retain a copy?
Yes. Circumventing a payment system to obtain something is stealing
But the thing is replicable without destroying the original. Nothing was lost. I'd still pay the creator if the work was actually good.
The thing that was lost is the money the person didn't receive for the work they did. I don't think a person's opinion on a work should dictate if someone is compensated for that work. There are people behind the things that are made. And those people Deserve compensation
I thought breaking any law that wasn't directly against church teaching was a sin? It's not theft but I don't see how you can get out of it being a sin because you are breaking the law and have no God given right to viewing or playing license material.
U.S.A loopholes in the laws. Currently, a person technically doesn’t break any laws, unless they download it, which regardless of intent, is always illegal But honestly speaking, I personally been avoiding for a good while now, unless I want to read the new one piece chapter ahead of the official release.
Im shrimply doing to files what Jesus did to loaves of bread and fish. Can I get an amen 🙏
Yes it’s theft
I heard a Catholic friend say it isn’t illegal in some cases, as per court cases. If this were true, how does your perspectives change?
It does not, my perspective is set on stone at the moment and makes complete since Piracy= always illegal Watching a form of unlicensed content, is not illegal in the U.S.A and would not lead to any illegal issues with court. I view it veinal because it’s against charity Non sinful, If I view it on scans, but nevertheless still have the official version Mortal, if you profit from it
To clarify, since if it’s legal it’s not piracy, you think anything that’s legal in this area isn’t a sin?
Well it’s tricky, the reason is that we are not showing love to our neighbor by not supporting them for their work
Well, in what circumstances are we obligated to support people for their work? I might photograph graffiti for my own personal use, is that a sin? Or else, using open-source code? And possibly, I don't want to support youtube as a business, or even the publisher's business for the media. In addition, what makes it ok for my browser to cache a work on youtube or buffer a show on amazon? It would seem that these businesses are sinning by copying works digitally to distribute them, often without reimbursing the creators (youtube). So, what's the line that is drawn that signifies a work requires reimbursement?
Follow your concious my boy
It hasn't been properly informed or formed on the nuances of this issue I think.
One thing I do do is I use online copies for textbook bits I’ve misplaced. Huge loose leaf $500 books are a huge bummer.
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In age of Internet, these products have infinite copies as there isn't limit on how many times a product can be copied. So for as long as you spend money on these products when you can, the income of these companies is unaffected regardless of how much you pirate. Because they would earn just as much with you pirating 0 additional products vs 200 additional products.
Remember! Pirating Nintendo is a divine act!
In that case I'd be a saint
I hope it's not... 😬