This example pertains to comic books, but I think it applies to most types of piracy. Piracy is a crime, that’s not the discussion. The discussion is whether there are other actions that mitigate piracy ethically.
I’m a comic book nerd, and amongst the comic-reading friends I know is Lex (name changed to protect the innocent/guilty). I went over to his place a while back and saw his computer/comic setup and it got us talking about digital comic piracy. A few years back, Lex discovered .cbz and .cbr files, which are .zip and .rar packages that can be read by a reader program on a computer or mobile device. He prefers the digital experience and downloads his comics from various non-legitimate sources. That said, he doesn’t like the format offered from the iPad app store, because they are a file format that can only be read by proprietary readers or can’t be moved off of the mobile device to the computer (he says). As such he’s fallen into a number of habits:
[INDENT]Habit A: He downloads digital versions of physical issues he used to have back in the day.
He had tons of longboxes which were crowding him out of his apartment (which I can kind of relate to), but has now either sold or given away almost everything, having gotten digital copies of everything he used to have.
This extends to new purchases too. Although he does buy his physical copies of the books, he also downloads digital copies the same week. After the stack gets too unwieldy, he just takes them to Goodwill. He says they could usher in new readers, which I think is dubious, but I think it’s noteworthy in that he’s not getting any money by reselling them.
**Habit B: He has gone back and bought collected versions of stuff he’s downloaded and liked.
**He’s gone back and bought physical copies of things he really likes from Amazon or the local book store. He does this even though he may not read the physical version at all, since he prefers the digital experience; but he does it to support the artist (which I really admire).
Habit C: He downloading digital versions of things he didn’t purchase to "try them out."
He’s also copped to downloading some titles he doesn’t regularly read to try them out. I can confirm he’s picked up some titles as a result of this, but I can’t say that he’s gone back to buy those issues that turned him on originally. I think it’s a “moving forward” kind of deal.
Habit D: He doesn’t buy physical versions of stuff he’s downloaded because he didn’t care for them.
Some stuff he tries, he doesn’t care for, even though he’s downloaded several issues to read a full arc all the way though. He said that these are the kinds of titles he wouldn’t even pick up if it weren’t for the “free sample” so the creators aren’t losing anything either way. Sometimes he trashes the files after reading, sometimes he keeps them (he doesn’t have a good answer for why he does). This is more dubious by my way of thinking.
Habit E: He has some copies of older, harder-to-find issues that he never bought and has no intention of buying.
Lastly, there are some old comics from the 60’s and 70’s that he downloaded even though he never had a physical copy of them. These are the kinds of back issues that can cost like $20 even though the cover price was originally 35¢. This one I’m kind of split on. [/INDENT]
So can the wrongful actions of piracy be mitigated by paying for legit versions later? And in a related question, is piracy ever excused if legitimate versions are unavailable or priced out-of-range by a resale market? To what degree does piracy resemble or differ from libraries or friends loaning books/music/movies?