Indeed, art. And it is a pretty common position that all people should have access to art and culture. Add up the cost of buying the DVD/Blu-Ray releases for the 1500 or so films that make up the canon of cinema. That's a sum of money daunting even for people in developed countries, let alone most of the world. Piracy is going to be the realistic solution. (And before you say "Use the library", you know well-stocked libraries don't exist in most of the world, right?)

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tene80i 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you're saying "piracy is justified in those parts of the world where access to any art or culture is prohibitively expensive", then that's a pretty defensible position, not unlike "It's ok to steal bread if you are starving".

But that's not what many people defending piracy are doing. Many of them do indeed have great libraries nearby, and art and culture on demand at prices they happily spend having food delivered to their house.

	▲	TFNA 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't know if you have noticed, but piracy has declined greatly since the introduction of streaming. The scene is a shadow of its former self. The communities today that are keeping high-quality releases of canonical music and films available are overwhelmingly based in regions of the world with a dearth of good libraries.

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FeloniousHam 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> And it is a pretty common position that all people should have access to art and culture.

Access to _all_ art and "culture"? For free?

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TFNA 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Even if not all art, once something becomes canonical, it then becomes something that people should be able to easily familiarize themselves with for the sake of an educated and edified citizenry. And indeed, many countries subsidize public libraries and live performances for this very reason. But no state can manage to provide free or nearly-free access to the entire canon, so piracy helps fill the gap.

	▲	FeloniousHam 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Do you have any examples of art or culture that is unavailable?