I remember a time when I could visit my friends and borrow physical games for my Nintendo or PC, plug them in and play without restrictions. Nowadays this is at most a nostalgic memory as we are slowly moving towards fully cloud based gaming and borrowing instead of owning. Purchasing a game does not mean you own it. You are not allowed to modify it or share it with your friends. The studio or publisher can revoke your license at any time and without notice or consequences, leaving you without a game or your money back.
Let's quickly look up an explanation on what piracy in the context of software and computers means:
Software piracy is the unauthorized use, copying, distribution, or modification of software that is legally protected by copyright laws. It involves violating the software's licensing agreement, which outlines how the software can be used and shared.
So, it boils down to violating a contract that you have entered by purchasing a certain digital good. If this is now physical or digital does not matter, but usually products are bought online due to instant delivery and convenience, not to mention that any update for a game has to be downloaded regardless of how the product was obtained.
Companies have shown that they will shut down games and servers for older products, even if that makes them completely unplayable. With no server software or code, the games are now basically gone forever.
This is not exclusive to games though, companies like Adobe have dropped their perpetual license scheme in favor of "Creative Cloud", a monthly subscription with no way to own the product. As a matter of fact, most proprietary software is forcing you to pay for them monthly as they offer no perpetual license.
We are not yet done, this also applies to movies and music. When is the last time you went out and bought yourself a new album CD or a bluray movie? Nowadays we have Netflix, Disney+, Peacock, Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, etc. Those are all monthly subscriptions with a predatory pricing scheme, they are intentionally hard to cancel, they reserve the right to terminate your access anytime and they let you own nothing. Often they do not even allow you to download content to watch offline.
These are all examples out in the wild and I am sure you can find many more. This idea of "You will own nothing and you will be happy" is outright disgusting, by forcing you to use their proprietary platforms, sign up with lots of personal information and lock into their bad payment structures you are being milked out of your hard earned money just to enjoy what has never been easier to access yet so restricted.
If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing.
DAWs, VSTs, synths, samples, etc.
Download HiFi music from many different platforms.
Copyright and intellectual property has been terrorizing us for decades, we are fighting back with torches but there can only be done so much before it becomes truly impossible to own anything. With cloud based services on their way we are well into the end of traditional piracy as we know it today. Piracy will never go away as long as capitalism and greed is ruining our beautiful art. It is not simply the art of obtaining something for free, it is preserving history and teaching future generations. It is about owning, not renting. It is about our freedom to modify our software however we please. They are trying to strike us down but they cannot succeed. The system is broken, we are showing the problems and instead of fixing them they invest more money into finding and putting us behind bars.
As long as this dystopian reality is progressing, I cannot and will not stop fighting. Our children have a right to enjoy and explore the same games that we did, single or multiplayer even years after the original company goes under. Support The Internet Archive in their mission to archive and preserve history.