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I sometimes advertise\xa0sci-hub.tw\xa0\u2013 the Kazakhstani pirate site that lets you get scientific papers for free. It\u2019s clearly illegal in the US. But is it unethical? I can think of two strong arguments that it might be:

First, we have intellectual property rights to encourage the production of intellectual goods. If everyone downloaded\xa0Black Panther, then Marvel wouldn\u2019t get any money, the movie industry would collapse, and we would never get\xa0Black Panther 2,\xa0Black Panther Vs. Batman Vs. Superman,\xa0A Very Black Panther Christmas,\xa0Black Panther 3000: Help, We Have No Idea How To Create Original Movies Anymore, and all the other sequels and spinoffs we await with a resignation born of inevitability. This is sort of a pop-Kantian/rule-utilitarian argument: if everyone were to act as I did, our actions would be self-defeating. Or we can reframe it as a coordination problem: we\u2019re defecting against the institutions necessary to support movies existing at all, and free-loading off our moral betters.