Buddhism Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people practicing or interested in Buddhist philosophy, teaching, and practice. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Ever since I was a kid I have pirated and bought illegal copies of many different kind of media such as music, movies, video games and softwares.
Now as an adult do I have to pay for all these things legally? The problem is I have a family to take care of and if I had to repay all of these I might end up being in debt. The prices for these items will probably be different now anyway. Besides it will take a lot of time to remember all of the things I pirated.
The important thing is to start training.
Don't dwell on the past.
Angulimalla killed a bunch of people and still managed to not let it stop him from reaching Arahantship and your past should't be turned into a hindrance for you.
Angulimalla did stop doing stuff he would later regret and just trained.
If instead he thought 'i must make amends for this bad thing i did otherwise [ie serve the families, help out the orphans etc etc]' he would never have made it to max lvl. He could be a nanny.
He also did not escape his kamma, which he had to endure:
MN86:17.2: Now at that time someone threw a stone that hit Aṅgulimāla, someone else threw a stick, and someone else threw gravel. Then Aṅgulimāla—with cracked head, bleeding, his bowl broken, and his outer robe torn—went to the Buddha. The Buddha saw him coming off in the distance, and said to him, “Endure it, brahmin! Endure it, brahmin! You’re experiencing in this life the result of deeds that might have caused you to be tormented in hell for many years, many hundreds or thousands of years.”
Forget about it. Your actions did not cause any significant harm.
However, don't do it again, for the sake of developing Dhamma.
First of all, Sadhu, good householder, appreciation for seeing a fault.
Legal systems of sociaties often have the possibility of voluntary disclosure as a possibility to get free of remorse, look if there is a punish necessarily, and sometimes also ask the aggrieved juristic person if wishing to take part on the investigation.
Confession, (toward a teacher/good friend who has possible not equal offence), is called purification (if done toward a pure in this regard) and is already a release to be able to walk on, and the strong resolve not to do it again, knowing the disadvantage protect from repeating offend. Once confession is done, there is no more need to be pulled down, and the danger of repeating is good reduced by keep the disadvantages and risk of binding of having fallen in debt good in mind when taking on something.
Mudita
(Note that this is not given for stacks, exchange or any trade that binds, but for release.)
Pirating anything such as software, movies, music, video games etc is neutral karma in the sense of good/bad. Despite what people and our laws may say pirating i.e making a copy of something is NOT stealing, so in the moral/ethical restraints of vinaya/precepts you are not breaking any vow or precept.
Buddha did not lay down an ethical constraint of not copying something, if so when you look or take a picture of a person you would "steal" their image! or we could internet search for an image of the mona lisa and find countless "priceless fine art thieves"
Buddha laid down an ethical restriction of taking physical belongings that are claimed and belong to others. This is not the case when one pirates a song or a movie.
Now if you stole the source code of a video game, or the original recording of a song or movie now that IS stealing. Pirating movies, music, games etc is just making a copy of an immaterial phenomena, the original material recording still belongs to the author.
EDIT: For those people downvoting this actual logical comment as if my opinion and logic is invalid I point you to THIS thread, where Yuttadhammo explains the actual implications of the concept on more depth.
