Recently, my wife and I had a shouting match over piracy which went nowhere other than making me realize I couldn’t back up my positions on anything other than the higher-level ethics stuff.
The argument went something like this:
Wife: piracy is federal crime, federal crimes mean federal prison, i don’t want you going to federal prison
Me: thats not how that works
Wife: how do you know? What if they got a court order against you and you had to supply all your files to them
Me: incoherent monkey tantrum noises
To clarify, she is fine with piracy, she just is scared of me getting caught. And my position was “nuh uh!”
My understanding is that the biggest point of risk (of actual legal consequences, specifically) is when you are the one propagating files (because the feds will go after uploaders when able) and when using public torrents (if i forget to use a VPN, dmca snitches might send a “stop pirating” notice to my landlord who owns the router our internet goes through). Not 100% percent sure why these are the risky things, though, and I’m not sure if there’s other things i need to be on my toes about.
The argument i have more trouble with figuring out how to answer is the question of “what if the feds change their strategy for some reason and start playing whack-a-mole with individual pirates like me?” What do I do to future-proof myself? Is just using a VPN across all my devices enough?
She just has to get over it.
If everyone sits around fearing the authorities using force until the authorities use force, the authorities automatically use force on everyone and we are all dead or imprisoned before long.
The only way to function as an adult is to understand that they can’t get all of us without us helping them do it. We have to make using force as hard as sending men with guns and feeding us in a cage, not just saying scary stuff.