this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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When you purchase a physical copy of a movie in general; you obtain and retain the right to "copy your copy" and "use it strictly for personal use" ad infinitum.
So yes, it's completely 💯% ethical piracy to pirate titles you already paid for but found the format to be lacking. You don't owe filmmakers a second purchase for a new or better format. Don't bother getting into the weeds over per-screen or per-head copies either; you don't owe them that either. Just don't screen a film for more than 3-5 people outside of your immediate household family who are not related to you by blood or name and you'll probably never run into Copyright Lawsuits... because it'll never be worth their time to bother.
Pirate away happily matey. Don't let people fool you into thinking you are more or less ethical in your piracy than what you yourself believes is ethical or unethical. You decide how you will and want to pirate because a pirate is free.
Lending the "copy of Your Copy" is arguably not always personal use. The law explicitly only authorizes copies of your copy if those copies are "at rest" for "archival" purposes. I only ignore the distinction that this rule is only for computer software because I view digital video/audio data files as computer software itself. It's just a standardized format that tells an application what to draw and present on the screen and/or what sounds to make.
If you're not going to abuse the mechanic and only lend out fewer copies of your copies than you can count on one hand...then sure, knock yourself out. I don't think the law is ever going to be robustly enforced enough to seek you out specifically for doing this. Personally though; I don't think doing this passes muster under the expected fair and personal use unless you're loaning said copy to someone you live with.