alt Hacker NewsPlenty of written works aren’t “information” but rather art. Most piracy is just about people preferring not to pay for novels, TV and film.
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There is also a ton of tv shows, movies, music and books that you cannot buy, for now real good reason. I wouldn't be surprised that if in a few years there will be shows and movies that are only exists as pirated versions. With things increasingly only being available on streaming platforms or behind DRM in other ways, we risk looking back on the current era as a black hole 50 years from now.
My concern is that less popular content is just erases, lost in mergers or lost in massive datacenters, never to be seen again.
Indeed, art. And it is a pretty common position that all people should have access to art and culture. Add up the cost of buying the DVD/Blu-Ray releases for the 1500 or so films that make up the canon of cinema. That's a sum of money daunting even for people in developed countries, let alone most of the world. Piracy is going to be the realistic solution. (And before you say "Use the library", you know well-stocked libraries don't exist in most of the world, right?)
Or not being able to. Regional licensing, missing and shuffling content.
To watch the world cup I had to spin up a VM in Brazil to watch it with Portuguese narration because the free transmissions are region locked.
I would gladly pay 5 bucks for it if it was possible otherwise and avoid the hassle.