I don't know any pirates, but I sure do know a lot of people that share copies of files on the internet.

Piracy is the forceful (often deadly) interruption of commerce through personal gain. I'm not talking about naval piracy. Naval piracy is the original definition. Media companies just use that term to make people who share digital media look bad. Never mind their moral faults.

Enjoying digital media without paying for it isn't piracy. You can do that via the radio or TV and no one says anything. You're not supposed to show friends your media, that's considered a public performance, but nobody cares. I remember a circus 10-15 years ago telling us not to record because they were using Star Wars music. People still recorded. Nobody cared. (This was also in the pre-smartphone times. So maybe 20 years ago?)

Culture is our most important invention as a species. So important, in fact, that we’ve evolved to make it essential to our individual health and collective capacity to function. To deny someone access to interact with culture on the basis of their lack of wealth is cruel and anti-human.

Likewise, developing something like an LLM, which spews thoughtless pollution into the only shared infosphere we have, and displaces individuals’ ability to connect to each other to develop culture… that is an existential threat to the human race and should be opposed vehemently.

It is only theft when taken from someone who needs it more

At the circus, I would assume that they had a contract allowing them to use the music, but it also required them to make their best efforts not to allow recording.

Their best effort, of course, was to ask people not to record, and then they didn't need to bother doing anything else.

Where’s “I’m struggling to get by and I don’t want to give thieving corporations any more of my money than they already get.”

Paying for DRM-free quality content https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/ and pirating the rest. Also promoting the concept of Big Content from Chokepoint Capitalism https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710957/chokepoint-capitalism-by-rebecca-giblin-and-cory-doctorow/

"What are you, a cop?"

I saw a lot of comments talking about including "I pirate cuz I like free shit". I was gonna but I couldn't find a template with an extra spot :(