Would you teach your kids how to pirate?

My gf and I have had discussions about teaching morals to kids. In that vein, I asked myself, would I teach piracy to my kids? Yes, it’s technically illegal and carries inherent risks. But so does teenage sex carry the risks of teenage pregnancy, and so we have an obligation to children to teach them how to practice safe sex. So, is it necessary to teach them how to stay safe in the sea? How to install adblockers, how to detect fake download sites that give you computer aids? Show them how to use a VPN and choosing the right one (a true pirate must always choose a VPN with port forwarding capabilities, so you can still seed) I feel like this is all valuable info we all learned as pirates the hard way, and valuable information to pass on to our kids.

I definitely want my kids to know about libgen. Want a book you want to read about? Wanna learn about dinosaurs from a college level textbook for whatever reason? Just go to libgen, son!

And I attribute most of my computer literacy and education to piracy, trying to install cracks to various games, trying to make games work, and modding the fuck out of skyrim as a young teenager. That, and also jailbreaking android phones. All the interesting things i’ve ever done with computers was probably against some BS terms of service.

So, is piracy something you would actively teach your kids? Sit them down and teach them how to install a Fallout 3 FitGirl repack? Or is this something you’d want them to figure out themselves?

CuteistFox ,

If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing.

aldalire OP ,

Wise men say true words

atlasraven31 ,

They'll learn on their own when asked to pay hundreds of dollars for a single textbook.

Faceman2K23 ,
@Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Sonarr/Radarr etc make it very easy and safe for media, but apps and games would be more of a serious sit down and talk kind of situation as more can go wrong there.

nintendiator ,

From an ethical standpoint, in the modern world, not teaching your children how to pirate is being an irresponsible parent. Not just because the "download stuff for free" aspect of piracy, but because piracy is associated to a number of moral and ethical decisions and tenets that also form important ideologies. Getting ready access to information, and being capable to redistribute information, for example, is a key element to anti-fascism ideologies which is why eg.: punk places an emphasis on radio. Being able to fight your own fights instead of only trading on the currency (digital or otherwise) other people impose on you is a core element of both digital and physical sovereignty, which is one of the reasons why stuff like KYC laws or banning of sex workers in economic operations have to be fought against.

Appoxo ,

I would not teach them safe piracy but rather safe computer literacy and usage.
Exactly like you said: How to spot fake ads or scams etc..
But if my child would like a book from XYZ and they would pirate it I would question the motive instead of getting it from, for example, a library.
Doing illegal shit out of convenience (like pirating a book instead of showering, getting out and enter a library searching for it) is still illegal. Even if you juat read what you want and put the book back in the shelf.

I would also firewall the shit of the little buggers computer. Also no account with admin/sudo rights.

drunkensailor ,

ain't got none but hyptotheticaly, sure. better'n them gettin busted with a dcma or whatever cuz they dont know how to chekc for dns leaks and use failsafes to block non-vpn access. most of us started off and had to lern ho wto do shit the reight way. why nt help em do beter

i woldnt want my kibds to be soem kind of normies that dont even know wtf a vpn is

sirico ,
@sirico@feddit.uk avatar

It lead me to learn so much about servers and automation as well as everything I've learnt from material I've acquired

scoobford ,

I'd teach them once they are old enough to understand it on a technical level, as well as the potential consequences.

And I find your comparison to sex ed very strange. Sex is something they will do with huge consequences if they fuck up. They need to understand it, and they need to understand it early.

aldalire OP ,

Yee idk just a showerthought

coolfission ,
@coolfission@lemm.ee avatar

Yes but I don't think comparing piracy to sex ed is a fair comparison. Sex ed is essential because of all the inherent risks that can happen from committing any sexual activity. With piracy, it's not like getting caught by your ISP will cause life-long pain and trauma while not teaching safe sex can result in STDs, unintentional pregnancy, and assault cases.

WeLoveCastingSpellz , (edited )

Yup! Better if they don't make the same mistakes that we did at the start of our journeys at the sea. "Minecraft free download no viruses.exe" etc

Wilker ,
@Wilker@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

MinecraftSP.exe

that's it, that's the whole query back in 2010 all the way to 2014

CuteistFox ,

You mean tlauncher.exe

WeLoveCastingSpellz ,

My first one is installing a probably malware loaded minecraft demo, tlauncher though was ok at some point and they sold out afterwars

JasSmith ,

I’m a capitalist but even I think visual media needs a come to Jesus. If they had adopted the Spotify model everyone would be a lot happier. I would be paying for content still. Instead they broke up into a dozen different services with walled content. This is so stupid. I have no qualms keeping my own collection when this is the paid offering.

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

Isn't that an argument of monopoly by Netflix would be better?

JasSmith ,

No. See Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Tidal. They all contain something like 99% content overlap. You can subscribe to any of them and access almost all music. The difference is price, performance, UX, and features.

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

I'm not sure that's true of TV series. I'm not arguing for monopoly by the way. Exclusives are anticompetitive and that's bad!

neon_commie ,

Do you own a factory or something? Believing capitalism is the best economic system does not make you a capitalist.

JasSmith ,

There are two definitions:

S: (n) capitalist (a conservative advocate of capitalism)

S: (n) capitalist (a person who invests capital in a business (especially a large business))

Rinox ,

It's like sex education and education about drugs and alcohol. It's necessary information for kids, even if you don't want them to do it, because if they don't know anything about those things, they'll end up with lots of problems.

Teach them how, why and why not, be honest and then trust them to make an informed decision on their own

Riyria ,

Yes, when they’re older. I’d rather be the “dad, can you find this for me?” guy, and then when they’re older and start talking about wanting to set up their own Plex server or something I’ll show them how to do it, if they even want to. I would be perfectly happy being the perma media pirate for my family.

Appoxo ,

And what if they get a love letter because they were too stupid to practice safety?

uriel238 , (edited )
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Media piracy is in the tradition of oyster piracy (stealing from landlords trying to control the oyster market) and the golden age (robbing the Spanish silver train that was exploiting the nations of the new world) in that it's crime against unreasonable state regimes.

This is not to say underground media sharing has always had the moral high-ground, and it's not even to say that fair copyright laws are unreasonable, but since the mid 20th century (since Disney, essentially) intellectual property law has not served the public in a community effort to build a robust public domain of ideas and content, rather has been used to do the opposite, to favor established businesses over new ones with complete disregard for the public.

But then there's the technological matter, where DRM is used to obstruct of sharing (reasonable or otherwise, legal or otherwise). Here in the states it's legal to use DRM to obstruct legal backups and sharing, but it's not legal to bypass DRM to facilitate legal backups and sharing. It shows us that our regulatory agencies are captured, that our government serves rich companies and plutocrats rather than the public. The law runs contrary to the social contract.

We are in an age in which our language (English) only has words for wrongdoing that acknowledges two authorities: Sin (wrongness against the Church -- allegedly against God) and Crime (wrongness against the state, in accordance to what laws are enforced by a legal system). When we talk about other entities that can be wrong, say, individuals, the community, the world population, ecosystems outside of human society, we have to make do with the words we have, e.g. sin against nature, crimes against humanity, and so on.

Intellectual property law is a construct that (according to the Constitution of the United States) was intended to do a thing that it has totally failed at, going as far as creating perverse incentives to misuse the law. And given the companies that produce the media we might pirate are poor at compensating artists and developers, or at recognizing licenses already established (say, your DVD copy of Ghostbusters when the new medium emerges), given they pirate each other's content shamelessly, and will steal yours outright if you can't outspend them in court, it has actually become more ethical to pirate content than to buy it legitimately.

But I'd teach my kids not just to pirate, but to recognize shoddy work from good work, and to not consume at all when they can, since consuming content benefits its producers, whether or not it's acquired legally. (The MCU is about hero-team organizations who defend the status quo from all enemies, including the far left, and including those who want the human species to have a future. So they're not really our heroes, are they? Batman runs around and beats up poor people, leaving the wealthy to continue to rule over the rest of us whose last resort is crime.

If we're going to consume content, let's use it to inspire the content we make ourselves, until commercial content is entirely unwanted and unnecessary. This is the future the MPAA and RIAA fear. Not everyone pirating their stuff, but everyone not bothered to pirate their stuff.

Edit: Clarification

aldalire OP ,

Well written!!

veniasilente ,

mods where is the "upvote twice" button?

KillingTimeItself ,

i would teach my kids that piracy is the natural market force to push corpos and companies into ethically (or at least more ethically) distributing content.

I would also teach my kids that if one were to pirate media, they should also find a way to support whoever it came from directly, assuming it's a band or small artist, rather than something like a TV show, where it'll make no difference.

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