Is piracy ever justifiable for ambiguous pulled media?
Let me explain here, as just one example. There was a tv show that was broadcast in the late 2000’s - early 2010’s. About 5-6 years ago, right when I felt nostalgic and wanted to watch it again, the tv show in question was pulled from all major streaming services, and DVDs of the show were not produced (or if they were, I was never able to get my hands on them). The only way that this cartoonish show was watchable for a time was via second-hand archives on YouTube, dailymotion, etc. However, despite the fact that the show was made inaccessible, the copyright holder’s official website states even to this day that the show is copyright, which means that unofficial uploads on YouTube should be in violation of copyright (the YouTube channels were just amateurish accounts and not credible, official accounts, just to be clear). As such, it was ambiguous as to whether the production company was going to lease the rights to the show. Whilst interest in the show has gone now, it did make me wonder: is it ever justifiable (either legally or ethically, or morally) to pirate media that has been completely pulled from circulation despite the original owner maintaining copyright (and therefore ownership) of? Or, is it (legally, ethically or morally) justifiable to pirate media where the copyright status is ambiguous (i.e. you don’t know if anyone owns it) [classic case study I always hear about: British PSAs, icons of 70’s 80’s and 90’s kids childhoods, yet locked behind copyright doors whose keys may lie in the hand of legal ambiguity]
99 replies
If art is made and publicly released, it cannot morally be made inaccessible, even by the artist IMO.
Piracy is justifiable in a vastly greater number of scenarios than just pulled media.
To keep it short: Yes, it is.
Short, sweet and to the point! Thanks for sharing your view (even if it’s not detailed lol)
Media piracy is always justifiable.
Unless you’re using it to train AI. Then you should either have to pay so much that your company goes bankrupt, or just be put to death, cause fuck you, Mark Zuckerberg.
Can you explain in what terms?
I'd say mostly that media companies have become openly hostile to consumers - the very people who buy their products - as your example shows.
If I can't legally buy the media, then I'm left with no choice but to pirate it.
That plus they don’t make media in the digital landscape clear in terms of stealing and copyright. Thats why I have issues with the system as it is — it’s a type of product that’s practically unprecedented. If it were, say, stealing a loaf of bread in the shop, it’d be an easy explanation. But the digital landscape is so complex, not just in terms of content and ownership, but also in the legal, ethical and moral nuances, especially if the owner/copyright holder themselves is ambiguous/unclear on their stance) that I just find making head or tail of it incomprehensible. Or that’s my view of it anyway.
Piracy isn't stealing. At most it's an IP violation.
Stealing a loaf of bread in the shop is also always justifiable if only because fuck anyone who has enough money and resources to have a shop stocked with bread and would allow another human to starve over a few cents.
What if they’re an independent artist who self-publishes their work?
Sure:
Nothing is actually being stolen. This is to say, if I copy a movie and give it to you, I still have the movie, my neighbor probably still has their copy of the movie, the store down the street still has the same number of movies, amazon still has its copy it uses for streaming, etc.
The entertainment industry, like most others, is a parasitic entity that stifles creation and attempts to maximize shareholder profit at the expense of any/everything else, including the well-being of the artists, creators, and those who actually do the work of making things, as well as the consumer, who consistently has to pay more and more to receive less and less for things that are cheaper and cheaper to produce / reproduce.
It's becoming incredibly common for a digital item you "purchase" to be deleted from your account at the whims of whichever company "sold" it to you. At this point, most digital things you "purchase" you don't actually own. This includes movies, music, books, audiobooks, TV shows, games, PC software, apps, etc. If I'm not allowed to own anything without the risk of someone arbitrarily deciding I can't have it any more, even if I pay "full price" for it, why should I bother paying for it in the first place? It's not like 90% of that money isn't just going to some corporate asshole's 3rd house while the creators and laborers make a comparative pittance. (me purchasing it isn't going to fix that problem.)
By the time a quality version of a product is piratable, the majority of the profit has likely already been made by whatever corporation has packaged and sold it before they gave the smallest amount they possibly could to the creator(s) and the people who helped make it happen. If you really want to support someone because you like their work, it's probably more ethical all-around to pirate said work and then donate directly to those that made it a thing than it would be to squander the majority of that money on fuel for the CEO of Sony's new jet.
Despite all of this, many others will never agree with me and will continue to pay into this shit system, which is to say, no one is going to "kill the industry". If artists are hurting, it's because the rich aren't paying their fair share to those who made them rich. Let's look at Netflix's executive compensation:
Starting the counting over b/c either idk any numbers higher than 5 or b/c I don't understand markdown. Take your pick. 6. There are lots of things I simply wouldn't have watched / known about were it not for online sharing. Why should I be denied entertainment and shared cultural experience just because I can't afford a thing? My awareness of my inability to afford much keeps me from actively looking at things that would cost money in the first place. I am also consciously boycotting industries and companies for the shitty treatment, overwork, and underpay for workers. This means I'm not spending money on streaming services regardless of whether I get to watch anything or not, so what money are they "losing" when it was never going to be theirs to begin with?
If I give a friend a copy of a DVD, or even a USB with copies of 100 movies I own, should I really be fined $100,000 (per offense, iirc) and/or be put in jail for a year? That's pretty fucked up.
I'm sure there are other reasons, but I'm tired now.
Anyway, go nuts, just use a VPN.
I think the problem might be that if the numbered list is broken by bulletpoints or non-list paragraphs, it restarts the numbering from 1.
Ha thanks. I figured it was something like that but was also too lazy to figure out how to rectify the issue while still keeping a block quote and another bullet / paragraph where I wanted them.
There is no moral obligation to obey copyright laws
Spoken like a true AI company CEO
They have other stuff to answer for
Once media (any media) has been digitized and the cost of producing a duplicate is negligible, even in capitalist economists own terms, the price of further copies of the thing should trend towards zero over time. It's only through extreme greed and state enforcement (which in theory goes against capitalist economics, though we all of course know that to be a lie) that the ability to sell individual digital goods is possible.
In other words, it is more ethical to "pirate" resources that it doesn't cost anything to produce than it is ethical to prevent people from accessing that media for monetary reasons. If a particular artist feels that someone shouldn't consume some media they created for some other reason, then I would respect that. But it's not artists or creators who ever have a problem with that, it's the production studios that exist to turn art into profit who care, artists themselves tend to be very OK with people accessing their work for free.
Ideally, we would have a system in place (UBI, cultural enrichment programs, etc) which funded art creation directly as a collective effort rather than through individualized personal purchases.
Don't pirate books from living authors.
Writing pays so little, and book tours are exhausting and pay even less.
A good book is a massive gift of energy and talent to the few people who will read it. Thank them for it with your dollars.
As a musician, I say do it, pirate away, come to the shows, tell your friends. And also, it's only $9 so maybe buy it when you can
Edit : change -- to , I am a hooman
If it cannot be purchased for reasonable price on a good medium and owned forever, then piracy is justified.
If buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing.
Copyright violations aren’t stealing anyways
It's probably illegal but it's completely moral in my opinion. Like, wtf are you supposed to do if not pirate? They pulled the show. You cannot obtain it legally even if you wanted to
To add to this the price should be reasonable. If the price for some old ass shit is crazy expensive it's essentially NOT available legally and should be pirated.
For example Nintendo charging full price for some nostalgia game.
Nintendo is awful in general, but especially when it comes to their old libraries.
Piracy is always justifiable. Get it. Get the whole dang season.
The only time I would say it isn't justifiable, if it's a book/game/etc. made by an unrecognised creator who needs every purchase they can get. In every other case, go for it!
It's always justifiable to pirate shows. Specially in a world where they make it so hard to own the media you are buying.
if buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing.
If buying were owning, piracy wouldn't be stealing either. It's copyright infringement.
Go for it. AI basically made piracy legal, or these companies would be facing massive lawsuits, right?
Piracy is always justifiable.
Exactly. You're pirating every time you watch an advertisement.
In the start of 2000 the American diffusion rights for Cowboy Bebop was held by Disney. It cost in my region nearly 50$ for 2 episodes on DVD (there’s 26 episodes).
The reason was that « animation » was their turf and they were no good reason for them to let so oriental men be better than Disney at it. So they bought most of the diffusion rights and didn’t distribute the product.
Most of the time … piracy is ethical
Legally, no. The law does not carve out any kind of exceptions here.
Ethically, it's not a lost sale if you never could've bought it in the first place. And I don't think it's fair to audiences to say they just don't get to enjoy the media at all if it's not officially available. If official means no longer exist, then piracy is preservation.
Morally, creators still do deserve compensation for their work, one way or another. So if you can't buy the work directly I think it's good to try and find other ways to support the creators if possible - such as buying merchandise or other projects they're involved with.
Great write up. This was the blinds of comments I was looking for in this chat.
If no one can own anything, then piracy doesn't exist.
Download that show. It's a form of protest, as far as I'm concerned.
Make sure to bind your torrent client to your vpn. VPNs have a killswitch but the binding offers a bit for insurance.
What makes torrenting justified in my view:
Legally, no. There are some grey areas to be poked around in like orphaned works whose ownership is ambiguous or contested, but it doesn't sound like your problem falls into that category. The media company that made the show you're after still maintains copyright and legally controls every aspect of distribution.
Ethically is a much more interesting question. If you pirated the media you're after, an older work with no way to watch it legally, the creators aren't really hurt because you're not depriving them of revenue. Pretend there were DVD's to be had though, if you buy them on the second hand market the creator doesn't get a cut of that sale so who's really harmed? What if the new price of the DVD's was more than you could afford or justify spending? If you were never going to be a new customer, does that make it okay to steal since again the creator isn't losing anything?
Huh, that point about the DVDs is interesting. Only question I would ask is: even if they’re second hand, does it factor into the debate that the DVDs were originally put out by the company and initially bought by someone for the correct price (but then on the other hand, the second hand buyer is paying less for the same show (arguably legally?) but in any case both the first hand and second hand buyers are buying for less than the new price…)
I can’t decide!!!
Someone could make the argument that the secondary market for media is part of the total ecosystem. Someone might be more inclined to buy something new if they know they can resell it later so the secondary market impacts the new market in that way. The creator doesn't see any of the money being exchanged on the secondary market though so the people really benefiting from it are resellers and collectors trying to unload something. They're hurt if you choose to pirate instead of buying used.
But in terms of the creator a pirated copy and a used copy are no different. If your desire is to make sure the creator gets what they deserve then you're best option is new DVD's or streaming. But, if like the show you're currently after those options aren't available, I'd say there's no reason not to pirate the media. If you still want to make sure the creator gets paid keep an eye on them and buy/stream it if they ever release it.
Wow, that’s a very well thought, articulated opinion. Thanks for sharing
I'd argue the creator sees the second purchaser's revenue in the original price of the product, and the original purchaser may not have bought if they couldn't resell.
Net sale is the same, just distributed across two consumers.
Totally fair, I've certainly heard the argument made to justify the outrageous costs in the Magic: The Gathering secondary market. What I don't like about the argument though is that resellers aren't the majority of purchasers and the number of people buying media solely to resell is a small fraction of the market. I'll grant you that a small fraction still could be a non-trivial chunk of change for the creator but ultimately why someone buys something doesn't matter all that much.
Reselling media particularly is an insane risk. Take OP's show, I don't think they ever named it, but if the creators dropped a limited run DVD or Blu-ray series tomorrow there would be no telling whether a secondary market would exist at all. If the show isn't streaming and doesn't already have a DVD release, it's bound to be a very obscure show that never got very popular. Those buyers hoping to bet on being able to flip the DVD's later might be out of luck. So it doesn't really matter if the theoretical resale-ability factors in or not, the new purchase is made regardless.
But I don't feel particularly strong about this aspect of the discussion, in fact I almost talked myself out of my position while writing this.
Good points.
There's certainly nuance there to be considered, which my statement doesn't really address.
Piracy is quite frequently justifiable, even on common media.
In our modern landscape, the vast majority of creators don't see a dime when you view their material, so I have no reason to feel obligated to line the coffers of some conglomerate that's effectively stealing the artist's money.
I'll pay for niche streaming services (paying for dropout directly helps the cast and crew) and buy merch from artist sites or shows, but I'm not going to feel guilty that downloading an album off a torrent takes away the fractions of a cent that my streams would give when I can pay them directly for a shirt and physical copy of the album if I ever get to see them live.
piracy is always justifiable.
Are you asking if it's ethical, or asking if it's moral?
Legal and ethical (you can add moral too, ig). Yeah, why not? Let’s do all 3
I'd say it's both ethical and moral, but also illegal.
One of my gripes about how goddamn long copyright lasts is that it makes officially sharing a digital copy a crime. Perfectly applied, most music would have disappeared from existence before it can be digitized and disseminated throughout hard drives around the world. The only reason the majority of copyrights are even monitored at this point is to harvest money from YouTube videos; those people have absolutely no interest in preservation.
Makes me think of that old horror movie Nosferatu: Stoker’s wife sued the producers and the court ordered that all copies of the movie be destroyed. It was only that a few prints of the movie were hidden (arguably pirated, certainly meeting the legal definition) that that movie is still watchable today, and critics call it one of the greatest horror movies of history (or at least one of the earliest/most influential)
That's a cool story.
There's a lot of cinema that was just thrown into the trash. If you ever see Metropolis, imagine 100 movies like that that we will never see.
Sad
I think it's ethically justifiable to pirate media that has been abandoned by its creators; without such action, media would become lost.
Legally, it's not ok until it goes out of copyright, but if the company that has the rights to a work isn't even selling it, it'd be rather weird for them to bother wasting money pursuing a claim against you.
I'd rather like to see the laws changed so that what feels ethical and what is legal are in alignment with each other again, but I don't expect sanity on that front to show up during my lifetime...
But what if you didn’t know if the creators had definitely abandoned it? After all, if they maintain copyright control, there’s surely the possibility that they might revive it at some point/re exert their control over it, right?
If I can't go on Amazon and buy a copy for sale at any price, I'm of the opinion that I'm justified in pirating it -- and I have put my money where my mouth is on that point.
Edit: to be clear, I'm talking about commercially produced films and tv shows; I'd look elsewhere for e.g. games
Many years ago, the supreme court ruled that private citizens were allowed to use a recorder to tape TV for personal use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc.
This is not that different ethically. You're basically just watching something you already had access to at a later time.
The person distributing the content is different though. They're diminishing the potential value of the copyright. Even if the owner is not monitizing on it right now, it occasionally happens that an otherwise dead series gets a revival which could give the original content a renewed value. That would be destroyed by someone distributing it for free.
I guess we could argue about the ethics of that happening, and whether the copyright actually looses or gains any value from having old content freely distributed, but that's a whole different topic.
Ethics is cool and all but have you tried coming to your own conclusion?
Do you feel okay with doing whatever measures you must to secure it? Is taking something that someone else has 'legal' control over wrong to you? Think about it this way, are you justified at coming up to my windows and taking pictures of my art work in my house? I'm not selling it, so clearly it's fine since you're not depriving me off monetary value and, if I wanted to have some control over it, I should be selling prints of it at least, right?
Or, like, it's just a show. Keeping it and sharing it with others keeps it alive, instead of digitally rotting away. Don't spend that much time thinking about any of it.
Why don't you just say the show, though?
Well first of all, I did mention that this was something that happened 5-6 years ago. To be clear, I did watch the show on YouTube back then (I know I didn’t mention that, I probably should’ve), that wasn’t really the point of this post. You’re looking at it backwards: you’re assuming I’m asking because I want to know if I should watch the show. What actually happened is, I watched the show and it got me curious in a general sense what other people think (years later, I didn’t have Lemmy back then). I’m asking out of curiosity what other people think, not because I’m trying to make my own mind up. I was actually only using that show as an example for the question I was asking — any other show under the same ambiguity would’ve sufficed just as well to explain what I was asking, really. Second of all, the reason I don’t want to say the name of the show is because it’s a show that had a very niche audience, and I know other people IRL who use this platform and I don’t want to risk them finding out I have an account here for personal reasons. They know I was a huge fan of this show so they’ll click straight away if they came across this and I’d named the show.
Fair enough on the name of the show being personally identifiable but, five years ago or today, what does it matter? What does it matter to you? What sin are you looking to be absolved of? If it's so niche that a) the only place you could find it was YouTube and b) so few people know of it that it would identify you, go look up the creator and find a way to send them a fiver and pirate that. Who actually cares?
Because I’m interested, as in, in the topic of legal, moral and ethical implications, not just of this show, but ambiguous media in general. I’m not on about absolving anything. I simply find it an interesting topic is all. Is that not motivation enough to ask? In any case, what’s it to you why I care?
A better and more important real world case is revenge porn. The moral difference should be obvious to people with (y'know) morals, but it's slightly more complex to define from a stricter ethical or especially legal framework. What fundamentally justifies the piracy and unregulated distribution of a show that's been removed from public access vs material that the person may have originally consented to making and showing to others but objects or no longer consents to it being shown to a wider audience? It can't just be the sexual nature in and of itself because what's defined as intimate enough to restrict viewing is highly subject to cultural influence.
Once it was shown and accessible to the public there is a public interest in the copyrighted work as well. It's part of culture, of history, of the public and human system. The copyright and ownership is no longer a singular concept but stands in relation and potentially in conflict with the public interest.
Some jurisdictions explicitly allow archiving as exceptions to copyright. Museums and archive.org can conditionally evade copyright, for example.
On revenge porn, the persons autonomy, self determination, bodily safety and honor, and psyche is a high good and significance that must be protected. This right is much more significant than any "public interest", which is less prominent to other works anyway, because "revenge porn" has no artistic and constructive value as a creative or cultural work.
Why would it not be justifiable? Seriously, start by asking about the harm, and to who, and then you will answer your own question easily enough.
In theory, copyright law exists to create an incentive for people to engage in creative works. Copyright allows the creator to monopolize the distribution of their own work, and that monopoly makes the enormous amount of effort put into the work financially viable, in theory. If the creator has published the work, and is no longer distributing it, there is no monopoly for their copyright to protect. However they are using their copyright, it is not in the intended fashion and so it is ethically justifyable to bypass it.
That being said, in the modern context; the issue creatives face with monetization is not distribution, but discovery. There is so much content that being seen is the primary gatekeeper to financial success, so much so, that most creatives will legally give up their monopoly on distributing their work in exchange for promotion (publishing). In such an environment, piracy is effectively aiding the creator by spreading their reach, even if they are not directly paid. Their cultural relevance is much more important than that one sale. Despite this, the ownership of the properties ip is what holds value, and so the owners must keep up at least a token amount of resistance to piracy, to maintain their legal legitimacy.
You can see this reflected in the modern environment; easy, widespread piracy that is only occasionally resisted in the cheapest and most non-committal manner possible. Pirate whatever you want, and understand that you will occasionally be told to stop. However; that that request always comes with a wink.
I bought so many CDs of artists I found and downloaded on Napster and Limewire
If no one loses any income from you pirating something then I'd say it's impossible to be immoral. I'd imagine that anyone actually involved in original production would just be happy that there's still someone out there interested in their work.
If the only person who loses income is a corporation then it's still morally acceptable because corporations themselves are inherently amoral.
Pirate everything but balance the books by directing money to the original creators with things like merch or going to live shows or conventions etc
Interesting. What’s your belief on the subject for media that was crated by someone who no longer makes money off of it (e.g. they’re dead, or they sold the rights or ip) but is owned by someone else who had nothing to Do with the creation?
In my opinion, if they're not the creator, or critical to the creation, of a work, they have no claim over it.
Even if they paid for the legal rights to?
The spirit of patenting an idea is so the creator can retain financial benifits from their ingenuity. If they sell it off and the buyer just sits on it, it is ethical to pirate. The buyer needs to make something new with the idea before they have any real contribution to the original idea.
Did they pay you for anything? Then who cares, you're not included in the contract and not bound by it.
This reminds of what happened with one of the most infamous sci-fi design controversies: the Daleks:
The concept was conceived by a writer called Terry Nation, but he only created the outline (the story, etc.) but didn’t create the design. Instead, these characters were designed by Raymond Cusiak, and they became immensely popular, drawing in millions of viewers. However, because of some legal loophole, Cusiak did not receive royalties for his design, only Terry Nation received royalties despite the fact that the design of the Daleks (the lure for viewers) was created by someone else entirely. Not necessarily a legal issue, but certainly a moral/ethical one.
Well that has an easy solution.
EXTERMINATE
lol true
Legality is not the same thing as morality.
I know, that’s why I asked about them separately (and ethically also)
I think not only is it justifiable, it is a necessity for archival purposes. If you can't stream the show, they should be forced to release it for free or at the very least, release the copyright so other people can upload their archive.
Yes.
Mostly because the media is no longer owned by the buyer. It used to be back in the day DVD box sets were a thing, now? Not so much. I think you should becuase it's been proven that a corporation will literally do whatever it needs for it to do to make shit more marketable. Including removing shows and what not if it has any issues to today's overtly contestable woke olympics.
Its most likely illegal, but depends on where you live (some country might have more flexible copyright laws that have that situation as an exception).
But I would consider that ethical and moral. When HBO deleted a bunch of their cartoons for the tax ride off, one of the creators of the cartoons tweeted that they themselves had to pirate their own show just so their kid could still watch it.
Justifiable? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not an armchair ethics professor like most of the nerds in this discussion.
I cut out all all the extra dance steps and forgo justification entirely. If I want it, I'll attempt to take it one way or another.
If they don't want to make money on it anymore, that's their call. They don't get to forbid us from accessing our own culture, though. If they don't want to provide any way to access the content at all, the internet at large will provide.
Specifically to your situation I'd say it's an obligation to pirate it to archive history. Like sites that archive old video games that are otherwise abandonware and lost to history
Just commenting that Tubi afaik has a lot of old shows that Copyright holders put on there just to make a few bucks. It has ads and is owned by Fox.
Didn’t they just make a deal with Cartoon Network for 20 old shows or something? (Was it Cartoon Network or another old channel/service?)
My own personal morals are with where are the profits going? To the corporation ceos and stars? Then 100% stealing is justified. The writers, crew editors, session muscisians, programmera, designers etc got paid a salary once and yet others profit off it for decades, nah. I hold off on current shows if I want them to keep making more seasons.
I do try and be more thoughtful with bands and authors. I go to shows and signings and buy merch directly from them. Lord knows they don't earn anything off Spotify so may as well have my own library. I get most ebooks through Libby and dedrm them or at least borrow for a day before acquiring elsewhere since dedrm seems more difficult these days.
Retro games they already made their money, liberate them or at least make it easy and cheap to own. Steam solved this for modern PC games by having so far a decent service.
So in your case shows over, no one sells it, and if they did only a corporation would profit. Take the show Ed, there was never a DVD release and there's nowhere to stream it. So what other option is there if you want to rewatch it?
My view is the difference between an artist and a scam artist is that an artist would not mind others seeing their work without payment to make some assessment of its value and to build genuine support. I stopped going to movies because of my utter disappointment with the trash in the industry. A scam artist is going to demand payment before you even know what you're actually getting and use various shady marketing tactics, including sunk cost fallacy, to get your business.
If it is something I like and see value in what a person is doing, then I want to contribute to that. I don't want to pay a bunch of money to see something that I am left feeling like I just wasted money. Therefore, I have no problem with piracy to the extent that if I were to really enjoy it and want to keep watching then naturally I want to support the creators.
What was the show?
I would rather not say tbh. The name of the show is not relevant to the question being asked, as the topic in question can apply to any and all shows that are stuck in this state (there are actually more than you might think). However, if you are knowledgeable about that era of shows, I will soon be posting about another forgotten show which you might find more interesting as I cannot for the life of me find this other show.
you forgot the not.
It is never legally justifiable to pirate anything, by definition.
That being said, ahoy maties, 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
for long dead series, that the franchise is dead, yes its justifiable since nothing new is being produced. aka, SG series.
I have never heard a convincing argument that any piracy is ethically or morally wrong: no one is being deprived of anything. You have to manually construct a scenario where someone is about to pay an independent artist for their work and then decides to use a copy instead, and even then I think it's hard to argue any actual harms.
I would argue that nothing is universally justifiable, it all depends on the person committing to the action.
Piracy is justifiable for a lot of people, it's also not for a lot of people. It depends on what options those individuals have. You could also factor in societal norms or ethical impacts.
It's still morally wrong in the absolute sense since you're taking something for free that you're implicitly expected to pay for. However if there is no way for you to actually pay for it even if you wanted then that makes this one of the clearer cases in which one can morally defend piracy. It's still not right but it's less wrong.
The only scenario that I can think of that would be even more clear is when you've actually bought the media already but the disc got damaged for example as was the case with my GTA San Andreas back in the day: I had bought the game but the disc exploded in the drive so I was forced to crack it so that I could play without the disc.
TLDR- In your case, that wouldn't be called piracy.
The main purpose of IP law is to reward creators and pirating old show where you can stimulate the creators revenue or influence stream then it's perfectly fine. In fact you might be doing good!
Nothing is justifiable, even breathing (you're taking oxygen away from those who need it more).
If you need to pirate, do so. Stop asking for philosophical justification. You sound like a mole from the DMCA.
I’m only asking people’s views out of interest, whether I do or I don’t will be independent of this.
Ah yes let's stop ethics entirely and just go back to clubbing people in caves then.