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Sure, but taking this to its logical extreme, it seems like I could justify any act as long as it’s also legal.

While I totally agree with the advice of “it’s illegal so you probably shouldn’t do it”, I don’t think it’s a terribly interesting conversation philosophically. Deferring to human law in these discussions feels like an existential cop-out.

I think the question is substantially more interesting if you pretend that you have a magic wand to make the laws whatever you want, and then ask “why would it be wrong for me to torrent a game that I have purchased a legal copy of?”




You might as well remove the legality of it from the question then and focus on the moral aspect.

In the case of downloading a copy of the game you own, I don't have a moral issue with that.

However, I don't think that generalizes to any digital good. I'd say it is morally wrong to make copies of a digital good where an additional instance gets you some benefits. For example, downloading an additional digital ticket to a limited virtual event, thereby gaining access for free, or any instance where the original creator loses a sale and someone gets to enjoy or profit from said copy of the digital good.


Well, sadly if something is legal then they can actually do that thing. I don’t like it myself, but that’s unfortunately how it works.


No argument but I feel like that’s an orthogonal topic to “is it moral for me to pirate a game that I purchased a legal copy of?”

I’m well aware that I’m legally allowed to do legal things, but “laws” have a lot of politics and emotion involved in their creation, and I don’t feel like they’re a great place to determine the “morality” of something.




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