Most answers only touch the issue of piracy of scientific articles, but let me answer your more general question.
I believe that copyright is immoral, hence "piracy", for me, requires no further moral justification.
Copyright is a racket, established by rent-seeking, mostly unproductive but powerful individuals/corporations. It's a cartel/monopoly that discourages market competition, one of the most important inventions in history. The only connection between copyright and theft that I see is that by extending copyright retroactively, politicians (and their corporate sponsors) are stealing from the public domain. most importantly, copyright does little-to-nothing to encourage creativity and likely even prevents it. I see it as an obstacle to progress.
I wouldn't necessarily oppose a limited copyright term (14-20 years seems plenty), but I completely oppose the current regime. However, I still often pay for media (after having pirated it and confirmed its value) to support the author(s).
I would let content creator to decide what to do with his creation. I believe the author can do anything with it. For example, burn it, or set a price of $100500 per bit of information, and require customers to crawl on their knees ingratiatingly asking to buy it. Of course, no one would buy it that way, but author has ultimate right on his/her creation.
One of those rights is to sell it to big unproductive but powerful individuals/corporations.
I pirate too, but I respect the ultimate creator's right.
There is an implicit acceptance of the current copyright system and the laws regarding copyright as it stands, in your comment.
Look at the big picture, we have created a society that thrives on imposing artificial restrictions on everyone and the only people who benefit from it are big corporations.
By giving complete rights over the invention to the inventor or a corporation, we are limiting the potential impact of the invention.
Instead if access to such knowledge is made freely available, the possibilities are endless.
What if Sir Tim Berners-Lee patented the World Wide Web and monetized it?
To answer your last question: Civilization would have progressed faster, people would still be able to think and the economy would produce more things that are actually valuable.
Are you implying that the WWW is something noxious to civilization, thinking and economy and therefore it's failure (caused by being patented and monetized) would have been beneficial.
Or are you implying that if patented and monetized, the WWW would have been even more successful than it is and have a beneficial effect on civilization, thinking and economy.
If this isn't sarcasm I think either interpretation can be easily disproved.
"I would let content creator to decide what to do with his creation."
That sounds simple, but it's not.
Imagine this scenario: Disney makes a poster to advertise a Mickey Mouse. They display the poster in public. You (someone with no contractual relationship with Disney) see the poster, and decide to make kids' toys that look like the character in the poster.
> One of those rights is to sell it to big unproductive but powerful individuals/corporations.
> I pirate too, but I respect the ultimate creator's right.
It may be the creator's right, but it isn't necessarily the creator's will. There are a lot of reasons to publish in particular journals, and restricted access to the published paper isn't necessarily the desired effect, it may just be an unfortunate side effect.
I believe that copyright is immoral, hence "piracy", for me, requires no further moral justification.
Copyright is a racket, established by rent-seeking, mostly unproductive but powerful individuals/corporations. It's a cartel/monopoly that discourages market competition, one of the most important inventions in history. The only connection between copyright and theft that I see is that by extending copyright retroactively, politicians (and their corporate sponsors) are stealing from the public domain. most importantly, copyright does little-to-nothing to encourage creativity and likely even prevents it. I see it as an obstacle to progress.
I wouldn't necessarily oppose a limited copyright term (14-20 years seems plenty), but I completely oppose the current regime. However, I still often pay for media (after having pirated it and confirmed its value) to support the author(s).