Would you teach your kids how to pirate?
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?
Teaching how to do it safely might save their ass. And your own if they pirate at home.
- piracy is not theft
- “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.”
- morality and legality don’t always correlate
- a good adblocker is worth more than an antivirus, you should always be running one regardless of activity
Absolutely. My entire network is behind a VPN, so they can't fuck up. Windows is banned in my household, so I'm not worried about malware. I'm not paying 20 bucks a month for limited access to the ever shrinking Netflix library, which I can't even use behind a VPN or share with other people. Piracy is the only way forward.
Teaching kids good, healthy anticapitalist values is important. It's also good to teach them some basic computing and privacy skills, because they're not going to get that anywhere else. They're going to be under lot of social peer pressure to have the latest phones and being connected on social media, consuming information from algorithms.They need to understand how to minimize the harm from Meta and the big tech.
Same applies to the copyright industry and their practices (along with corps who are heavily anti-repair like Apple) - they need to understand the exploitation model of capitalism and lobbying - from there, let them make their own choices.
Piracy is a great example of a topic where legality and morality aren't the same.
Those kinds of topics are incredibly valuable teaching moments for children.
I would teach them when they are mature enough. Help them understand why some people think it is wrong, when/why you think it is acceptable, and how to do it safely.
You can teach them the difference between actual theft and copying. Explain how piracy has benefited humanity as a whole, explain why knowledge and cultural experiences shouldn't be gate kept by mega-corps from underprivileged people.
There are so many valuable lessons that you as parents could pass on to your kids through the topic of piracy.
And as every major platform enshitifies and information of all kinds gets locked behind more paywalls, piracy will become a more and more important skill to have.
I taught my nephew and I wouldn't see a moral problem on teaching my hypothetical kids how to.
Sure. To prepare someone to become a responsible adult, they need information. Learn things good and bad. Understand especially WHY people do things and consequences of actions.
I mean if you exclude half the truth, your kids will not learn how to judge things and make decisions.
And things not being etically 100% correct is not a reason to hide them altogether. I mean my mom also reads murder mystery stories and murder is not okay... I think beginning with a certain age it is important to learn also about ambiguous stuff. It's part of life.
That doesn't mean I'd have to teach them myself. But I'd talk to them and make sure they learned the right things.
Not a parent yet, so take this with a big grain of salt.
But if I were to talk about piracy from a moral standpoint, I would first talk about stealing. Yes, we all know it's not the same, and it isn't, but there will certainly be someone who says it is, and it's better to clear that out. Besides, there are some parallels.
- Stealing is reprehensible, but extremely so when you steal for someone who much needs it himself. Shoplifting is bad and can lead to serious consequences. Stealing money from a poor person is extremely bad and can't be justified.
- Stealing is when you take something and the owner doesn't have it anymore. Piracy ain't that.
Then a bit on moral and legal grounds of piracy:
- While piracy isn't stealing, piracy does decrease profits of the rightful owner. When you pirate from someone who does not profit much off something, it's same as stealing from poor man. Piracy is impactful, and it's important to remember.
- Piracy may lead to legal consequences, which is why one shouldn't normally pirate stuff regardless of morality. But if the conditions of rightful ownership (cost, regional or use restrictions etc.) are inadequate, there exists such a way.
And in any case, I think the later you tell your kids about "illegal doesn't mean bad" the better. Could save a lot of trouble IMO.
If I teach them, they'll find it boring. Better to be a role model and answer questions if they have them.
No. I plan on treating it as other adult things. "Oh, you got into this? Well, here is how you protect yourself. "
Computer literacy wise? I hope my daughter gets the curiosity into it. Other things as well. More you know and understand, the better.
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.
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.
Absolutely, I would say whether you're teaching piracy or not, those are essential things that everyone online must know about; it would be unethical to allow your kids to go online without that protection.
Until their frontal lobe fully develops I will do it for them.
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
I will teach anyone who will listen.
My mom introduced me to Napster. So at this point, it would be a family tradition.
one time a student pirated some expensive CAD software and learned it, that student went on to become the purchasing agent for a company and guess what software the company purchased?
the software that was learned already.
$100 student lisc was pirated and that pirate purchased 10 license at $5k per.
Permanently Deleted
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
It's not the result, but the process.
You can teach ppl stuff all you want, but what they really need, is to learn how to figure it out themselves. Otherwise, when the best practices you teach them become obsolete, they won't be able to create their own.
my mom taught me how to pirate almost 20 years ago
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.
I won't have kids. I absolutely have taught other people's kids though.
While I don't plan on being a parent, I will say that I did learn a good bit about piracy from my dad when I was younger, which kept me away from obviously shady things and now that I'm older I pretty much have a routine in place for my stuff whereas he doesn't even use a computer anymore. I think it's worth it really.
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.
It's not as though the existence and mechanisms of piracy are a coveted secret. There's a decent chance that they'll learn about and attempt it independently, and the method they learn about online might expose them to greater risk than if they did it with more consideration.
On that basis, I think that knowledge transfer is at worst harm reduction. If it's immoral, which I don't believe it is, then at the very least your intervention could prevent them from being preyed upon by some copyright troll company when they do it despite your silence or protestations.
I'd never thought about this but when the time comes I'll teach my sons, but hopefully they'll tell me some new way I don't know yet. Also a true pirate should check out Usenet.
Of course, if I didn't they might end up using a public tracker to download torrents
Adblockers? Absolutely! The good adblockers (ublock origin with more lists enabled) also help to thwart trackers.
And by your example, yes, even piracy, not just because I agree with doing it, but because if they will be going to do that too, they could as well do it safely, to the extent it's possible.
Interestingly, as I read your post, a lot of topics align already with what I deem even more important: privacy. It seems it's not only the words that are similar.
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.
If the way you navigate online life is based on your reflections regarding safety, convenience (and anticorporate, possible anticapitalist sentiment), why not pass your advice on? It might save your kids from getting caught pirating.
Absolutely. If I had any
Comment that I'm adding on a couple of friends'. One lives in Norway, one lived in India. They told me that both of these places have an issue with accessing media and other digital goods legitimately, often finding themselves willing but unable to pay for something (I was surprised to hear this about Norway — my friend speculates that Norway is small enough that it might simply be forgotten about when big media companies negotiate rights). They both said that VPNs and piracy are way more normalised in their home countries, because it was either that, or miss out on loads of stuff.
Feel it's useful and important to highlight that the degree to which piracy is normalised depends on where you are.
I'll only say no to this question because I don't want to have kids. But I taught my mom how to pirate, and I'm proud of that. I believe that piracy is not a morally neutral act. It is morally good. Pro-piracy is an ethically good stance to take in this age.
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.
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.
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.
I would if I had them.
It’s always advisable that you teach people how to use anything safely.
This really seems like a non-question. What is there to debate?
I'm not sure. I don't plan on having kids, so this is a purely theoretical question that I won't have to answer in practice, but I think I probably would, at least to some degree.
I had a pretty iconically millennial childhood when it comes to tech; I remember my mum being on the phone to the internet people and asked "he's offering me an unlimited packaged for [money] extra. Is that good, do we need that?", to which my brother and and I vigorously nodded. We were young enough we didn't know shit, but unlimited sounded good and we weren't paying the bills. My mum probably realised we didn't know what unlimited Vs metered internet meant in practice, and opted for unlimited as the safe option, because if she felt the need to ask her children for advice, she wouldn't be great at managing a metred connection. That's the context in which I grew up and is why I'm as techy as I am today.
I learned the hard way, and whilst I don't think that's necessarily the best way to learn, I don't know how one might teach people how to recognise which "download" button to press, and when a dodgy looking site is actually dodgy. It's like internet street smarts, but what that means has changed since I was a kid, and I don't necessarily know how I'd teach that beyond the basics, like installing adblockers and other common sense things.
They'll learn on their own when asked to pay hundreds of dollars for a single textbook.
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.
Speaking personally I don't know if its something I'd bring up to them, but if the topic comes up naturally I'd be honest about doing it and my moral reasoning for doing so. If the kid shows an interest or a curiosity about it then we can sit down and I'd teach them my ways. I took some stupid risks while I was still learning that I'd like to spare them from taking. Besides as you said it is technically illegal and if they are going to do it then it's best that they be doing it safe. Especially seeing as they would likely be doing it in your home.
It lead me to learn so much about servers and automation as well as everything I've learnt from material I've acquired
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
im not saying my parents introduced me to piracy, but we did have a lot of downloaded movies "from a friend"
Nobody taught me, so I'm not teaching anyone. Nobody banned me from doing it tho, so there's my answer. Piracy is a consequence of freedom, among other things.