At least, some of the recent controversies.

  • It is, yes. It’s a separate conversation of if it should be illegal or immoral to keep your privacy this way. But as long as you are violating the intended method of revenue for the content you’re viewing, that’s piracy to me.

    I think most people hear piracy and think it’s immoral or illegal, but there are very valid reasons to pirate content such as game and movie preservation.

    • Yup, illegal does not mean immoral or unethical. It just means some rich or powerful person doesn’t like what you’re doing. There’s a lot of overlap, of course. Many illegal acts are also immoral or unethical. But it’s not a 100% overlapping Venn diagram. Also YT is kind of evil, so it’s piracy against an evil corporation as much as the content creator. The smarter content creators have sponsors and embedded ads and don’t rely on YT for anything.

    • The implicit contract is to show an ad for a service, but they are actually violating the contract by attaching other things to the ads. They then use the ads to steal information that they then sell without my consent. So, if anything we are discussing honor amongst thieves.

      • It’s not like you see the ads that have trackers, they get blocked. So it’s still part of the agreement sort of. And you’re also aware that it’s revenue for them. People assume it’s a moral argument, it’s not. You can pirate from absolutely evil people, but it’s still piracy. That’s why I don’t view it as worth arguing over for the most part. I WANT people to realize that it’s piracy but that they’re actually doing something ethical.