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
Remember how many years ago antiviruses kept track of such types of malware as adware and spyware? When did you last see that kind of alert when seeing ad filled pages or when using software from facebook on your computer?
Antiviruses don’t worth shit today. Their only purpose is to delete your keygens on the basis that kEyGeNs ArE mOrE lIkElY tO hAvE a ViRuS.
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.
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.
Windows is banned in my household, so l’m not worried about malware.
This is a false sense of security and just because you’re not running Windows doesn’t mean you’re immune to everything and can let your defenses down. For example, KDE recently had to announce that downloading themes will execute arbitrary code and cited someone who had personal information deleted because of downloading a theme.
I knew I would get a comment about this. Yes, I absolutely know that Linux is not at all immune to malware, but the chances of finding Linux malware on a typical piracy website are very low. That’s why Anti-virus is unecessary on Linux.
well its a step up at least…
in regards to privacy using something like windows already has you fucked up. As opposed to something like using KDE which might rm -rf your system.
I taught my nephew and I wouldn’t see a moral problem on teaching my hypothetical kids how to.
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 buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.
YES. My gf made the point that when our kids are young, when their frontal lobe hasn’t developed yet, we will teach them black and white morality. But that’s only half the truth, since stealing from walmart or a big chain has a different moral flavor than stealing some random person’s things. In a way, I acknowledge that piracy isn’t stealing, and carries with it enormous societal benefits, like the freedom of information, but it’s still illegal, and I don’t want them to be OK doing illegal things.
Maybe the perfect solution is to leave out the inconvenient fact that piracy is illegal when teaching them how to pirate. LOL
Taking something from Walmart removes the item. This can increase prices for other shoppers and has consequences.
Duplicating/downloading a movie or a games does not. It just creates an identical copy and removes nothing.
Those are not really two things you can compare. I am totally OK with the latter, I consider the former unlawful. I can still go and buy a license to pirated content if I feel it’s worth it after I consumed it. I guess Walmart would be very confused if you came back to pay for the banana you stole a week ago because you did enjoy it. Might even get you into trouble.
EDIT: And you’re right, it doesn’t make sense that piracy is illegal. The law should be changed. At least the punishment is ridiculous.
smart. though i would add that shoplifting can be bad, unless its from a corpo. but i understand not telling ur child that
Piracy decreases the profits of the publishers, publishers decrease the profits of the rightful owner. Piracy hurts the rich man, the rich man hurts the poor man. The publishers will still hurt the rightful owners whether piracy happens or not.
Teach them how to root a device or at least do a grapheneos install. I’ll be honest I only know the latter.
And yes, teach them both piracy and emulation
Rooting isn’t recommended anyway, it completely destroys Android security. GrapheneOS is the best solution.
Didntbsay anything about security. But rooting is a good skill I want to learn
It varies depending on the manufacturer and model, though.
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.
Doesn’t sound like an easy task, perhaps a good start would be teaching them how to tie knots and learn wind direction. Once they are old enough to travel book a vacation to somalia and introduce them to the place, that’s where most of piracy is going on these days
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.
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.
And what if they get a love letter because they were too stupid to practice safety?
If I teach them, they’ll find it boring. Better to be a role model and answer questions if they have them.
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.
I will teach anyone who will listen.
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?
