Violating a social contract is not necessarily immoral, in the same way that breaking the law is not necessarily immoral.
That's the bit we're disputing. It's not "clear" and it's not "obvious".
I hope you do realize that it’s your own opinion.
First, I never violated a license agreement I signed by buying a product.
Also, my moral isn't yours, clearly. In my mind, sharing information is moral, withholding it is immoral. I think there is degree to this (clearly a State, or government officials, or state agents withholding non-vital information is extremely immoral, whereas it's less immoral to do so for a company), but clearly, I think of proprietary code, unshared patents and copyright of a song or artistic creation immoral.
And you very clearly benefit from all those things you claim are immoral, and the systems that brought them about, so I find myself skeptical to your claim they’re bad. It seems more like you disapprove of your inability to satisfy your sense of entitlement. After all, if you dislike these concepts so much, why do you want the very things they’ve produced?
Listen, the only social contract I have is respecting the laws of my country, and the contracts I agreed to sign. No laws in my country prevents me from downloading whatever piece of art or content I want. None. I just cannot share it outside of friends and family. Which I don't.
Also, I think I've download 3 pieces I didn't have a license for: Skyrim, Mass effect 1 and 2. I now own them all on steam. So my sense of entitlement is great, thank you. I was never into TV or movies, and my father digitalized his 500 CDs and probably trice that number from the public library, so even early 2010s when I was a broke student, I never had to find download links for the music I wanted to listen at the time (now I find out that this isn't enough and just download the music from YouTube).
When you pirated those works, you committed an immoral act, as the owner of the work did not give you permission to access those works. Broke students don't get to play games for free just because they want to. You're not entitled to whatever you want, especially when the alternative is that you are in no way harmed. You would have survived, thrived even, if you didn't have those games.
Because I had the permission from the first, and a bit earlier when I bought oblivion in a second hand game store, the work producer didn't gave me permission either.
Also, I just thought about it, I'm on a plex server owned by a college friend since 2017, did I broke the social contract by uploading my CDs on it? Or by listening to CDs my friend group put on it. Let's be honest, it's mostly my CDs, I have a truly huge collection, but it was also music we got from the school's nfs, on /share/music. Did that broke the social contract too? Knowing that we have a law that tax every sales of storage, even reconditioned HDD or smartphones.
I am quite certain you do not really hold this position, otherwise you would almost certainly pulbish your real name, home address, bank account balance and other information on your profile. Withholding all this information would be quite immoral.
Also, software and art are not "information", they are a separate thing. And copyright and patents don't prevent anyone from disclosing said "information", on the contrary. They allow artists and software companies to share this information without worrying that others will profit from their work.
Everyone imagines that Disney or Microsoft wouldn't exist in a world without copyright, but the opposite is true. They would freely copy any competitor while using their marketing and sales teams to convince everyone to give them (most of) the profits from their work. It's a lot easier for Disney to make money off your original screenplay than it is for you to make money off Mickey Mouse.
And I'm not equating art and information. I agree that art have the right to be reserved for the artist. I disagree that the recordings themselves have the same rights. And especially the 'master recording' concept that can prevent an artist to play his own songs on stage. I'm on Swift's side against Scooter Braun basically.
It is not immoral to download content illegally when the alternative is a revocable digital token being sold fraudulently.
By officially asking for new Terms of Service maybe?
That hasn't been working out so well lately, thus the whole "alternative methods" thing being pretty popular in some circles these days.
There's no better moral standpoint in either, it's always a case by case basis.
Perhaps you need to re-read things a bit? :)
Heh Heh Heh
Guess that's what we're both thinking about the other person then. No worries. ;)
Either way, when one party breaks their contract, you sue them in a court of law. You don't seek remedies on your own.