Basic Trope: A creator encourages piracy of their own work, or at least doesn't mind it.
- Straight: Mike the musician says it's fine if you pirate his music.
- Exaggerated: Mike goes out of his way to encourage piracy: his concerts reserve some of the best seats for bootleggers, he uploads pirated copies of his albums with piracy-exclusive bonus tracks, he donates money to pirate sites, and so on.
- Downplayed:
- Mike is only okay with pirating music you can't obtain legitimately (out-of-print works that will most likely never be re-released, stuff not available in your region, etc.)
- Mike is okay with people downloading his music to preview it, but he believes that if you like an album and want to keep listening to it, you have to buy it.
- While warning his fans about a shady website that sells cheap, unauthorized MP3s of his music, Mike says that if you insist on listening to his music without paying full price for it, he'd rather you pirate it (he won't get anything either way, and piracy at least doesn't pay some shady company for stealing his music.)
- Mike is fine with you pirating his music if you have little to no discretionary income, but he also says that if you could easily afford his albums and still won't buy them, you're a cheap bastard.
- Justified:
- Mike is Doing It for the Art. He just wants people to listen to his music, and doesn't care about profit as long as he can afford to keep going.
- Mike does care about his profit, but believes that the increased exposure from piracy more than makes up for any lost album sales (a pirate may buy The Merch, attend concerts, or at least recommend Mike to someone who does become a paying customer).
- Mike despises copyright law.
- A software company figures out that letting you use a pirated copy of their software at least contributes to its dominance, so it's still better than you using one of their competitors.
- Mike is filthy stinking rich. He doesn't care a single bit about his album flopping yet his music being constantly played.
- Inverted:
- Mike encourages his fans to pirate the music of his rivals.
- Digital Piracy Is Evil
- Subverted: Mike uploads a file and claims it's a pirated version of his most recent album. It's a troll "release" that contains a deliberately bad version.
- Double Subverted: The final track makes it clear that Mike made the pirated release So Bad, It's Good as a prank, and that he has no ill will towards people who pirate his works.
- Parodied: Mike is a Straw Character in a Digital Piracy Is Evil work. He has become a Starving Artist as a result of the piracy he encourages, but still insists that everything is fine and there's no connection.
- Zig-Zagged: Mike may or may not be okay with piracy, depending on which release you're talking about.
- Averted: Mike wants people to access his music for free, so he decides to just release it for free and give his fans the option to donate money or buy merchandise if they want to support him.
- Enforced:
- Lampshaded: "So this guy won't mind if I download his music?"
- Invoked:
- Exploited:
- Defied:
- Mike wants to encourage piracy, but his record company refuses to allow it.
- Mike despises the idea of piracy, to the point of hiring multiple lawyers to take down any websites that have his music available for free download.
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
Back to Digital Piracy Is Okay.
