Piracy is literally the main thing worth praise about the internet. It's unequivocally extremely good. It means freeer and more equal access to culture for people who would otherwise have no access to it, it means functional academic research,it means a vibrant creative community
Try to imagine the internet without piracy. Even what we recognise as original creations from video essays to memes aren't reliably devoid of copyrighted content. It would be a pittiful sterilised emptiness interrupted only by carefully curated corporate content, ads and paywalls
People who stand against piracy stand against possibly -and without any exaggeration- THE most positive thing about our modern way of life. Might as well demand that we go live in caves if that would maximise sales.
I understand many people will instinctively reach for some stupid cliché like "you're not entitled to these things", but actually it's the other way around. Humanity has a right to these things, it's creators and publishers that are not entitled to any sales whatsoever.
No one is under any obligation to buy anything from you, and it's not their fault that they have gotten extremely good at sharing things so that they don't actually need to. People putting in the work to disseminate the products of human creativity for little reward are heroes.
Literally cry more you big baby, if you got into art or science or philosophy to make sales and now you dare stand against the free activity of people to force them into a miserable condition of generalised deprivation for your benefit. You are the rot that eats away at our world
*Elizabeth Warren voice* I have a kantian argument for that
This blew up way more than I predicted. Thanks are owed to the C4SS people for sharing it I suppose. Show your appreciation by uh following me on sci-hub. Support me by pirating my papers. Every time elsevier loses a buyer I ascend to ever greater heights of personal satisfaction
(Yes, this is not actually helpful at all because I'm terminally paranoid about my anonymity, but also the sentiment is honest, so I guess you'll just have to pirate everything to maximise your chances of supporting this independent creator. I'm sorry, it's the only way).
I'll try to reply to people with queries / good faith objections when the commotion dies down.
The communisation people have arrived! How's that for overlapping consensus?
Market anarchists 🤝consistent liberals 🤝communists
piracy gud
Market anarchists 🤝consistent liberals 🤝communists
piracy gud
Not to alarm anyone, but I'm no longer confident it is actually possible for me to scroll all the way down my notifications (I will certainly try). For the benefit of the late-comers, I do think we should endeavour to support creators in need to the best of our ability right now.
But that's because we need to help people in need, and we must further act to secure art and knowledge production (as requirements for any access to these things) for each and for future generations. And this is especially urgent in the present (non-ideal) conditions of injustice
To say there are no genuine intellectual property rights is not to say that there is therefore no reason to pay for anything. This should be trivial to understand. That IP is rotten and not the reason to do something is not to say there is no reason at all to do that thing.
