There was this post on Reddit making fun of the old meme where stealing is like taking somebody’s car, but piracy is like taking somebody’s car but it’s still there in the morning, which would be known as copying. Personally I like that idea; being able to have a car is a real boon in this day and age. And why stop at cars? Why not bread? Why not water? Why not soap and combs and crayons and stuffed toys and other essentials of life?
There are billions of people around the world who devote themselves to fictional gods on the condition that, after they die, they will have everything they ever wanted in the afterlife. It would be paradise to be able to copy everything off here on Earth; with the boring stuff of survival, manufacturing, and scarcity of resources out of the way, we’d be free to do whatever in the world we want. Sadly we have yet to see that paradise, and consequently I’m an atheist.
For some reason this incredibly controversial issue of giving everyone free stuff at absolutely no cost to the manufacturer was so rage–inducing that multiple Redditors commented expressing their disapproval of piracy, saying it’s morally wrong. I consider letting eight million people die of starvation because they couldn’t afford basic needs morally wrong, but what do I know? Maybe that Jesus fellow had a point, giving people free fish. The fishermen were probably really pissed, but the fishermen are bourgeois capitalists, and will be the first ones against the wall when our Lord and Saviour comes back with the Fishermanpocalypse.
You see, while I like the idea of buying a 99¢ hamburger, I like the idea more of everybody in the world having the 99¢ to buy it with; preferably a few thousand dollars more, of course. I like the idea of everybody being equal and getting the right to enjoy the same things as their peers, regardless of class or social status. A lot of people say life isn’t fair to the disadvantaged, and that it isn’t fair for them to be disadvantaged, but so few people advocate systems which help them out.
The reason that people are disadvantaged, and the reason economics work at all, is because things are scarce. There isn’t an infinite amount of bread and water to go around, there isn’t an infinite amount of medicine to keep us healthy, and there isn’t an infinite amount of hamburgers, which is the reason that even the paltry price of 99¢ is there at all. We have yet, in practical terms, to live in a post–scarcity society.
A world in which anybody can get anything for free is a paradise, and that paradise is currently a reality for the richest and most privileged in this world, and yet no–one else. A world without scarcity is a world without barriers; it’s a world where people may most be people and not feel entrapped. It’s a world full of freedom. Even better, it’s Stallman–approved.
While piracy cannot yet give people their basic needs, it can give people some other needs. It gives people their need to belong, by giving them media that all their friends have watched. It gives them their need for entertainment, by giving them everything the world has ever produced for free. It gives them the need to create, because there is nothing that inspires faster than seeing the art that their fellow humanity built for them. Piracy allows all of this to happen. Without it, it would only happen with the permission of the establishment.
And, lest we forget, the Internet was built on copying. Not just the minor copying of millions of web browsers loading millions copies of the same resource, but on the open principles and scientific developments that built it, such as TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML. The reason anything in our society works at all is because some very smart people had very good ideas, and instead of keeping those ideas under lockdown to profit off them, they gave them away to the world to make it a better place. Sadly, the vast majority of people are not very smart, which is why they post on Reddit.
This website happens to be built on piracy; the vast majority of stuff I know is from materials I have pirated, and pretty much all of the images are pirated, too, because I did not ask anyone’s permission to indulge in their art. Just going to highlight the ludicrousness of that idea… the idea that I have to ask permission to use the work that somebody gave to the world, and yet has a problem with the world using that work.
We actually had permission culture, where needed to ask permission from a higher body to publish a work. We call those the Dark Ages. The higher body was the Catholic Church. You see, they actually invented the concept of copyright so that people wouldn’t (couldn’t) publish ideas that were unfavorable to the Church, and this censorship is still being used today to remove unfavourable reviews of movies and video games. I’ve said it before: copyright is a cancer. A brain cancer… because it kills ideas before they were even born.
Fun fact: this image was actually bootlegged into a book cover. You may be wondering how this is legal when the source license bans commercial use and therefore fun. The photographer, Dan Brady, actually licensed the image under CC BY before the license change, and because CC licenses aren’t revokable, anybody can do whatever they want under those original CC BY terms. Another fun fact: all the images Dan claims full copyright over are far less popular than the ones licensed under permissive terms. Damn, Daniel.
But you know, bad memes deserve to be burned at the steak. Where’s the Inquisition where you need it? Oh that’s right, nobody expects the Inqui [THE EDITOR REGRETS TO INFORM YOU THE WRITER OF THIS ARTICLE WAS ASSASSINATED FOR BEING EXTRAORDINARILY UNFUNNY. THE ARTICLE WILL NOW BE WRITTEN BY A MAN WITH NO SENSE OF HUMOUR AT ALL]
This is a flag PIGMENT STALL for strata NOBODY IN PARTICULAR, because I like strata! CREATING IMAGES THAT REPRESENT PIGMENT STALLS.
I made it. If you look closely to the flag PIGMENT DYE STALL, you can see there are the letters "STRATA"! A VARIETY OF COLOURED PIGMENTS SEPARATED BY HOLLOW, SHALLOW, WOODEN BINS, LAYERED INTO PILES OF DIFFERING HEIGHTS AND STABILITY.
I don’t like the flag, because this is a self–deprecating joke! ENJOY THE PIGMENT STAND VERY MUCH AND ALSO I DO NOT MAKE JOKES.
I also like really small file sizes, and really BIG upscales! So big, you need to step back from your monitor to see what is actually going on! NONE OF THIS IS TRUE.
Also, images are not the only things I like upscaled big ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I HAVE NO SUCH AFFINITY FOR OBJECTS LARGE IN SCALE.
I have a very strong opinion over how technology should be used. For example, I don’t like windows, and embedded css. I AM NEUTRAL ON THE USE OF MICROSOFT® WINDOWS® OPERATING SYSTEMS AND THE USE OF EMBEDDED CSS.
WELL WHAT’S NEXT, THE SKY ISN’T BLUE? YOU’RE A DISAGREE TO THE FAMILY. MY FAMILY HAS NO DISAGREEMENTS WITH ME. Bill gates can suck my fresh cock. The end.
Date: 2017–03–16. Size: 7,072 bytes. Colours: 64.
Upscaled Dimensions: 520×380. Original Dimensions: 130×95.