I refuse to pay for pirated content out of principal. It’s bad enough that I’m infringing copyright (and boy do I!) but commercialized piracy rubs me the wrong way. I even prefer Bittorrent over Usenet and FOSS media software over commercial software. Yarr!

commenting out the whole block

var foo is declared but not used is such a pain in my asshole when doing this.

Good to know! What’s the practical use for a L2 VPN?

Nowadays Wireguard is a more performant protocol, but it does the same thing.

It’s called honing and you can hone a blade on a piece of leather, like an old belt. It’s not sharpening per se, but it keeps the little burs on the blace’s edge lined up nicely so it stays sharp and if kept up, prevents the need to sharpen with something more aggressive like a sharpening stone (or the bottom of a coffee mug in a pinch).

You’re most certainly right, but a pirate can dream…

I’m talking about double-edge blades that fit into a handheld razor that looks a lot like a Gilette or Bic, except it’s all metal, and about 2% of the price per blade, not a straight “safety” razor that you might see a professional barber use.

They probably shaved about the same but mostly used double-edged (100% steel) blades that could easily fit in a slot, rather than the plastic-clad, quadruple-blade nonsense sold for $8/cartridge.

You can still buy double edged razors for about 10-15 cents apiece, by the way.

I was initially skeptical but if they actually sold lossless, Blu-Ray quality rips of videos, I’d pay more than a few bucks per movie or show for that.

I’m not surprised. I guess they follow on Google’s footsteps of anti-competitively neutering search results for things like weather and stocks from Firefox for Android vs. Chrome, which work fine if your change the user-agent. -_-

can’t, or won’t?

Exactly. I’ll fuck Steamboat Willie in my Rule 34 art if I want, just as God intended.

I finally caved and decided to log in to the MuseScore app and it’s awful: confusing login process, and pop ups to prompt you to subscribe to Pro before even using the app to view a single song, with no obvious way of closing the pop up (no skip button or X button).

Trash. I will never subscribe out of principle.

Drink verification can, peasant.

Nah, I’ll just switch to Jellyfin.

This seems most plausible. OP, if you have a multimeter you could try to trace which TRS terminal has continuity with the damaged wire (if it’s exposed) and see which signal it’s supposed to carry.

I think I understand how I ended up believing you were pirating even though you weren’t: @zaphod makes it seem like you’re doing something remotely unethical when you not only use a legitimate subscription service but also support the artists through other ways! I’m not sure what more an artist could ask from a patron such as yourself.

By your definition of harm, no artist creating non-material goods (books, movies, music, etc) could ever experience harm due to any one individual’s actions. “I was never going to pay, so taking it without paying is a victim less crime,” etc, etc.

False. I acknowledge that there could be harm if a consumer would otherwise be able to afford to pay for all of the music they listen to. The distinction here is that if a consumer is already spending as much as they can truly afford then artists aren’t going to get any more money out of this consumer, regardless of whether or not they pay for it.

In other words: if you pirate because you must = no harm; if you pirate because you can = some harm.

That’s an interesting thought experiment about the cheating spouse, though. Thank you for the interesting perspective! This makes me want to re-visit my philosophy notes.

For the record, I pay for Spotify and also support artists through Bandcamp, merch, vinyl, and live concerts. I also pirate music which isn’t otherwise available through Spotify and/or Bandcamp (e.g. The Grey Album by Danger Mouse, and up until recently The Flamingo Trigger by Foxy Shazam) and don’t feel guilty about those instances.

My mistake! I lost the thread when typing my response. Don’t worry, I’ll call the RIAA today and cancel the snitch report I made ;)

My argument isn’t simply utilitarian either. It would be utilitarian to say, “It’s moral to pirate music as long as your enjoyment exceeds the harm caused to the artist.” But I’m saying that there is no harm caused by OP pirating in this situation. Don’t most moral arguments involve some kind of measure of harm? (Honest and sincere question)

It’s been a while since I studied philosophy, but for my own knowledge, do you know if there is some distinction between this sort of argument (e.g. “no victim = no crime”) and plain old utilitarianism?

In other words, what ethical theory is your moral argument based on?