In a sense I do think this kind of approach matters more than people give it credit for. Most people tend to see piracy as a way to consume media without supporting the rightsholders of that media, but even pirated consumption is still support.
A person who is, say, pirating Harry Potter books and other media is still giving Rowling and her franchise and ideas space in their head, maybe contributing to further conversations about her, and overall inadvertently promoting her whether they like it or not - as opposed to having used that time and energy to consume media from someone more worth the time and effort, like say, Ursula Le Guin.
For example I was watching a video from a YouTuber who does controller reviews. In that video he briefly mentioned two controllers that were of such poor quality that they were literally unusable. He went on to say that he would not be making videos about them, because he found that even when he goes out of his way to give a controller the worst review possible, tons of people still buy them.
Personally, I think that information freedom matters enough that anything published under licenses that are more restrictive than copyleft, permissive ones, or straight public domain is unethical. If private property is theft, and it is, that absolutely extends into knowledge and culture as well. If I were a purist about that, I would go out of my way to use things like the fully free Linux distros, and only consume media under those aforementioned licenses. Truth be told I don’t though, I do pirate corporate media sometimes. But I do try to give space where it counts too - trying to use some time and energy to seek out any kind of media that’s more open.
That is indeed my philosophy - “even pirated consumption is still support” in the form of giving a platform, publicity, or space in your brain. Even further so considering the many, many problematic artists out there, and the many other artists that have collaborated with them, making entire genres nearly unconscionable as a result.
In a sense I do think this kind of approach matters more than people give it credit for. Most people tend to see piracy as a way to consume media without supporting the rightsholders of that media, but even pirated consumption is still support.
A person who is, say, pirating Harry Potter books and other media is still giving Rowling and her franchise and ideas space in their head, maybe contributing to further conversations about her, and overall inadvertently promoting her whether they like it or not - as opposed to having used that time and energy to consume media from someone more worth the time and effort, like say, Ursula Le Guin.
For example I was watching a video from a YouTuber who does controller reviews. In that video he briefly mentioned two controllers that were of such poor quality that they were literally unusable. He went on to say that he would not be making videos about them, because he found that even when he goes out of his way to give a controller the worst review possible, tons of people still buy them.
Personally, I think that information freedom matters enough that anything published under licenses that are more restrictive than copyleft, permissive ones, or straight public domain is unethical. If private property is theft, and it is, that absolutely extends into knowledge and culture as well. If I were a purist about that, I would go out of my way to use things like the fully free Linux distros, and only consume media under those aforementioned licenses. Truth be told I don’t though, I do pirate corporate media sometimes. But I do try to give space where it counts too - trying to use some time and energy to seek out any kind of media that’s more open.
Tl;dr: play Battle for Wesnoth.
That is indeed my philosophy - “even pirated consumption is still support” in the form of giving a platform, publicity, or space in your brain. Even further so considering the many, many problematic artists out there, and the many other artists that have collaborated with them, making entire genres nearly unconscionable as a result.