It’s not that LTT can’t afford piracy, it’s that pirating content that is made using ethical and honest business practices and treats their employees well (at least from what it appears) sends the wrong message. Piracy should only be used when companies give you a reason to avoid using legal methods of accessing their content.
EDIT (8/16/23): Yeah, I've changed my mind given recent events. Sail away!
You sound like you’d be ok with physical theft from a mom-pop-shop as long as you get something for free. It’s not in the spirit of the piracy community.
With that attitude I hope somebody steals your TV and computer because they don't want to pay for one. There is a massive difference between pirating from HBO or from LTT. It's the difference between stealing from Walmart or stealing from an old lady's bakery. You're a shit person.
It's the same as sneaking into a show for your favorite small band. Your lack of paying for a ticket isn't depriving someone of a product, but you're a dick for not supporting them. The difference is that the actors and writers of movies and TV shows get paid the same whether or not you pirate. Someone smaller like LTT should be supported if you can afford to do so. Piracy is about freedom of information, unrestricted media, convenience, and not supporting big bad companies. If you think it's just about free stuff then you're more dimwitted than ever. Of course I like free, but that's not the point.
Who put you in charge of diving out some grand meaning of piracy? I've encountered plenty of people for whom a major aspect of piracy is that it's a way to access content they would otherwise be uninterested in paying for, for whatever reasons they have. Who's to say they're wrong for wanting free content?
I don't mind shorting a predatory carrier or production studio, but I don't care to short the people who make content I want: if they don't make money they don't make content and we don't get to consume it.
Nope. They have exactly as much money as they had before I pirated their shit. It's a false assumption if you assume that people would purchase everything they pirate, and not just do something else free
In the grand scheme of the media industry, they are. Moreover, Floatplane is a separate entity with < 50k users.
I don't use Spotify, but yes, I pay for YouTube premium (which comes with YouTube Music, which I use instead of Spotify). I use YouTube a lot. $13.99 is not that much money for so much video and music content.
And I'm not saying don't pirate anything ever. But come on, when people build a platform to try and do things right, to ethically support their creators, we ought to support those platforms.