Elettra Mangone Unterthiner ’29 was first introduced to piracy after her friend recommended the website StreameX, a media library consisting of movies, TV shows, and anime series.
“They just said it was a platform in which you can find any show, any movie, that is free without having to pay for it. And they didn’t mention any consequences,” said Mangone Unterthiner.
Mangone Unterthiner is not the only student who began pirating media in this manner, unaware of the consequences for artists. But after conducting her own research, she ultimately decided the idea of illegally sharing copyrighted content conflicts with her moral values.
The decision to pirate, which often takes just a few clicks, raises complex ethical questions. Though piracy can offer a solution to consumers who have little affordable options to access desired content, it also represents little more than theft from artists who need money to continue their creative process.
In 2024, piracy websites accumulated over 216 billion visits, compared to 130 billion in 2020, according to the Guardian. The increase can largely be attributed to rising costs. In 2025, U.S. households spent an average of $70 per month on streaming services, a 45 percent increase from the previous year.
The rising cost of entertainment, combined with stagnant incomes, has led so many people to turn to illegally sourced “free” entertainment that piracy has almost been normalized, no longer being viewed as theft.
By raising prices, media companies are leaving customers in an ethical dilemma, where morality and affordability clash. While piracy is illegal, and can hurt artists, for low-income consumers and students, it’s the only affordable option to access media.
This January, Spotify sued the shadow library Anna’s Archive for 13 trillion dollars over pirated data. Similarly, Bato.to, once one of the most visited pirating manga websites, was shut down by Japan and China on January 19, 2026. In 2025, piracy cost the anime industry over 30 billion dollars, and five billion to the comic book industry. However, with limited translations for manga, there are very few legal and affordable options.
Piracy isn’t just a harmless shortcut — it is fundamentally unfair toward artists, authors, and other media creators. It’s no different from walking into a store and stealing a physical product off the shelf. Taking someone’s work without permission and payment is morally wrong. Musicians earn pennies per stream, and therefore rely on a lot of legitimate streams to generate an income. Authors rely on book sales to fund their needs and future projects.
Ultimately, media piracy has turned into a systemic issue rather than a legal one. Though the cost of entertainment has risen, the fundamental need for it hasn’t changed. The responsibility, therefore, does not only fall onto the shoulders of the consumers, but also to the greedy industries that continue to increase prices in this unaffordable economy. Corporations have the power to balance pay and accessibility for creators and consumers alike, yet persist to prioritize profit over fairness. This doesn’t justify piracy, but reveals an uneasy truth: until industries stop treating customers like endless revenue streams, pressures driving people toward illegal pirating will continue.