History Main / DigitalPiracyIsOkay

* [[Music/NineInchNails Trent Reznor]] has encouraged fans to download his music, since he hates the ridiculous price tag the record companies tack onto it.

** In the same breath, Reznor commented that it's OK to download his music because "he's rich" and then went on to say that it was his call, not the fans or the company, to make that offer. A lot of other artists are not in the position he is in and he asked that they be given the same courtesy.
** It should also be noted that, while only the first nine tracks to the album (''Ghosts I'') were made available on the band's website at the time of the album's release, you can '''legally''' [[http://www.archive.org/details/nineinchnails_ghosts_I_IV download the whole album for free.]] ''Ghosts I-IV'' is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license, in effect allowing anyone to legally share the entire album without any repercussions, as well as allowing people to remix the album's content (so long as it's for a non-commercial use, credit is given to the original artist, and the remixes are placed under the same license as the original album).
** Reznor is actually an avowed pirate, being a member of former music torrenting site Oink.CD and actually said that labels could do better to actually try and match said sites.
*** He also has an account on The Pirate Bay, seed0, which he used to upload a few Nine Inch Nails live stuff, as well as obscurities and the nearly lost "Broken" movie, as an ISO file no less, with DVD menus (it was formerly a low-quality VHS KeepCirculatingTheTapes thing).

** The "keep circulating the tapes" thing originally started as a way to help popularize the show in the U.S. (Creator/ComedyCentral was not available everywhere back then) and abroad (with the hosts giving the occasional ShoutOut to fans from places where the show didn't air, such as France). It was actually removed in Season 5 for legal reasons, but the tradition nevertheless carried on.

* When people on piracy websites started complaining that their copies of ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami'' were having problems, the game's developers created threads offering free tech support, figuring that leaving the pirates with a buggy product would just make them even less likely to buy it. ''It worked,'' as a large amount of them decided to actually purchase the game as thanks. Later, when the sequel ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami2WrongNumber'' was [[BannedInChina banned in Australia]], they ''encouraged Australian gamers to pirate it so they wouldn't miss out.''

* Music/KidRock has this attitude, despite his refusal to license his songs on sites like iTunes. Mainly because he realized that his live concerts make almost a hundred-fold more money than album sales.

* When Creator/DanaTerrace shared [[https://twitter.com/DanaTerrace/status/1520480477093769218 a screenshot of an episode]] of ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', fans noticed that it contained a watermark from ''[=TheOwlClub=].net'', a popular site for pirating the show, meaning Dana either pirated her own show or is aware of the site's existence. [[https://twitter.com/DanaTerrace/status/1520481382048444418 She admitted to the former as soon as it was pointed out]], stating that she didn’t have cable and the episode wasn’t available elsewhere at the time.

* When Creator/DanaTerrace shared [[https://twitter.com/DanaTerrace/status/1520480477093769218 a screenshot of an episode]] of ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', fans noticed that it contained a watermark from ''[=TheOwlClub=].net'', a popular site for pirating the show, meaning Dana either pirated her own show or is aware of the site's existence. [[https://twitter.com/DanaTerrace/status/1520481382048444418 She admitted to the former as soon as it was pointed out]], stating that she didn’t have cable and the episode wasn’t available elsewhere yet.

* When Creator/DanaTerrace shared [[https://twitter.com/DanaTerrace/status/1520480477093769218 a screenshot of an episode]] of ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', fans noticed that it contained a watermark from ''[=TheOwlClub=].net'', a popular site for pirating the show, meaning Dana pirated her own show. [[https://twitter.com/DanaTerrace/status/1520481382048444418 She admitted to the deed as soon as it was pointed out]], stating that she didn’t have cable and the episode wasn’t available elsewhere yet.

** The article "[[https://froghand.neocities.org/trustnocompany.html It's because I'm black, isn't it?]]" talks about all the ills of proprietary software, and how it puts the company who owns the software in a position of power to manipulate and spy on thir customers. The gist of the article is that no closed-source software can be trusted from both a security and a moral standpoint, as anybody who makes their software closed-source doesn't care about the user, and so shouldn't be patronised on principle. Naturally, if more software was free, then people wouldn't need to pirate.

*** Ironic, considering [[DigitalPiracyIsEvil their policies on some of the other properties they have distribution rights to]] (for example, Franchise/PowerRangers and [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic various]] Creator/{{Hasbro}} [[WesternAnimation/TheTransformers franchises]][[labelnote: To those confused...]] There is a reason for this "shift" in policy. While Best Brains Inc. were okay with [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]] being distributed outside their normal control, Toei and its beneficiaries under Super Sentai/Power Rangers and Hasbro are absolutely ''draconic'' with their protection of their intellectual properties, especially when it comes to selling merchandising. Ironically enough, both Toei and Hasbro have started to officially load episodes of their toku shows to [=YouTube=], which will only cause more pirating.[[/labelnote]]).

* Music/{{Brainwave}} is completely okay with piracy, since they [[DoingItForTheArt release all of their music on a pay what you want system anyway]].

** The company deliberately chose not to copy-protect its ''Microsoft Entertainment Pack'' series of casual games to promote the Windows platform itself just as it was gaining traction in the PC market with 3.x and most games were written for MS-DOS. Microsoft wanted to convince consumer that Windows wasn't just for businesses. Given the nostalgia that many people who used Windows computers in the '90s, when many of the games came pre-installed on new [=PCs=] shows how successful this strategy is.

* When people on piracy websites started complaining that their copies of ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami'' were having problems, the game's developers created threads offering free tech support, figuring that leaving the pirates with a buggy product would just make them even less likely to buy it. ''It worked,'' as a large amount of them decided to actually purchase the game as thanks. Later, when the sequel was [[BannedInChina banned in Australia]], they ''encouraged Australian gamers to pirate it so they wouldn't miss out.''

** They also released a video named [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uulMxLyiBZg "Why It's Morally Okay To Pirate All Of Sony's Games"]].

* Creator/JossWhedon normally is no better than neutral on piracy, but was angry when due to real life school violence and MoralGuardians' influence, the WB network refused to air the finale for ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' Season 3 until months later, as the previous episode had left fans hanging (to be fair, said episode ended with [[spoiler: blowing up the school]], although it was Giles, a faculty member, who did that). (Joss had no objection to the delay of "Earshot" for similar reasons as that was more of a standalone episode). He was quoted about the Season 3 finale as telling fans to "Pirate the damn thing!"

* Microsoft was famous for saying, "If You're Going To Pirate Software, Pirate Ours." They zig-zagged between this and DigitalPiracyIsEvil over the years, but since most of Microsoft's money comes from enterprise users and companies - the vast majority of whom wouldn't be dumb enough to pirate essential software - they've generally let it slide. In addition, Windows has gotten much more forgiving with what happens with unactivated Windows over the years, slowly sliding from "Locks you out of the computer entirely" in XP to "Removes some minor features and adds a watermark" in Windows 10.

*** Ironic, considering [[DigitalPiracyIsEvil their policies on some of the other properties they have distribution rights to]] (for example, Franchise/PowerRangers and [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic various]] Creator/{{Hasbro}} [[WesternAnimation/TheTransformers franchises]][[labelnote: To those confused...]] There is a reason for this "shift" in policy. While Best Brains Inc. were okay with [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]] being distributed outside their normal control, Toei and its beneficiaries under Super Sentai/Power Rangers and Hasbro are absolutely ''draconic'' with their protection of their intellectual properties, especially when it comes to selling merchandising.[[/labelnote]]).

* [[WebVideo/{{Jimquisition}} Jim Sterling]] has zig-zagged this. He has ''endorsed'' piracy for ''some'' works...but will lapse into the DigitalPiracyIsEvil when DRM-free games like ''VideoGame/WorldOfGoo'' report 90% piracy rates or when a good number of people still pirate the Humble Bundle despite its low price.
** To clarify: he's against it when the game in question is an indie game with no publisher that needs all the money it can get, but okay with it when the company who owns the IP is just a publisher and the money isn't going to the creator.

* Microsoft was famous for saying, "If You're Going To Pirate Software, Pirate Ours.", though zig-zagged nowadays they're heavy handed against piracy in an inversion of this.
** Also, after announcing that Windows 10 would be available as a free upgrade for all users of Windows 7 and 8, Microsoft later clarified that even pirated copies of Windows could be upgraded for free... although it's not activated and therefore the personalization features are locked.
*** Furthermore Windows 8 and 10 doesn't accuse improperly activated Windows as "not genuine" anymore, instead stating politely that to enjoy several features (such as personalization and removal of popups and notifications) you need to activate.

* Played with in ''VideoGame/SonicColors'':
-->'''Eggman''': All unauthorized photography, video reproduction, or shutting down of energy generators is strictly prohibited. Thank you.\\
'''Sonic''': Eggman! I am going to save this planet, and I am going to free these aliens. No copyright law in the universe is going to stop me!

* While Creator/PlatinumGames didn't outright tell people to steal their latest game, their reaction to Creator/{{Sega}} delaying the release of VideoGame/AnarchyReigns outside of Japan by 6 months for no reason other than to try ensure that it would have less competition in their opinion and the fac that they didn't even bother notifying Platinum of this fact ahead of time, something that would greatly fracture the playerbase due to its heavy online nature even though the game was already fully complete and translated, they posted a notification on their homepage that the game has no region coding and the Japanese version already includes a localized translation for English and other languages, letting people know that they could safely import the game and play it that way without having to pointlessly wait for another 6 months due to Sega's boneheaded decision: sure enough, when the game was ultimately released elsewhere officially, its online modes were much more barren that would've been normally expected, which was especially bad since a number of game modes required a large number of players and there was no option to use bots as a replacement for human players.

Beyond evangelism, reasons for this attitude include boosting coverage and/or market share, sales of complementary goods and nurturing fan-added value.