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ersonally I am neither for or against piracy, just like I am neither for or against gravity. The two are almost equally inevitable and almost equally pointless to attempt to negate. If piracy could be stopped completely, or even substantially, I would have no issue with that whatsoever, but neither will ever happen.
What I am against is what I am convinced (partly on the basis of all the independent research I've read) are the blatant lies told by those who sell us entertainment and who wish to adopt draconian measures in order to ensure their survival, rather than to evolve with the times.
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Well, I'm going to take you at your word that you simply didn't research the issue. You did what most do: you read the position that you liked and concluded that this position was right .
Do the content creator advocates exaggerate claims of damages? Sure they do. BOTH sides exaggerate: the content creator advocates and the piracy advocates who claim that piracy is harmless or beneficial. However, both the GAO and the scholarly consensus have concluded that piracy is indeed harmful-though to a lesser extent than claimed by industry advocates.
Faced with that evidence, my approach is to keep on open mind, but to accept the scholarly consensus going forward. ( That's my approach to all kinds of disputed factual issues , from evolution to climate change). if the scholarly consensus changes, then I'll happily go over to the pro piracy side. Hey , its the most convenient side-download stuff for FREE!! What could go wrong? Of course, what's convenient in short term usually is bad long term. Its what I call the passenger pigeon problem.
In the 19th C, the passenger pigeon was the most abundant bird in North America. Its flocks darkened the sky.What could possibly be wrong with shooting all the passenger pigeons you could want, for fun and profit? The hunters resisted conservation laws as an unreasonable and unenforceable restriction on their " rights". And so the good times lasted-right up until the year when the passenger pigeon flocks did not come.
Right now we live in a society where artists can freely create and distribute works for a living. We take that living away and just as the passenger pigeon flocks melted away, so too will the artists and their works