I want to make a case against Piracy, looking at Piracy from a practical standpoint, not from an ethical or legal standpoint.
Of course we know that Piracy is illegal in WIPO signatory countries, which is most of the world, even North Korea.
I am also against most forms of Intellectual Property, especially if it requires the initiation of force to maintain it, as I explained in my IP article.
I am for property rights but I only believe that the only legitimate property is property that can be maintained with defensive violence and not offensive violence. So the Non-Agression principle applies, as always.
Your legitimate property is your body and the extension of that, your actions and your work. If you work on something, your either keep it secret, or find a way to monetize it, but after you reveal it, you can’t send paramilitary thugs, tanks and helicopters after people who may misuse your property.
So only defensive violence is legitimate and the line between defense and offense is very clear. After you have published your intellectual property, defending it requires attacking everyone who misuses it, so that is not defensive anymore, it’s the initiation of force.
So that is my guiding principle on viewing IP, thus I oppose most forms of IP, especially if it’s enforced by the Government.
Why Piracy is Impractical?
I just wanted that to be made clear, my stance on it. But in this article I don’t want to talk about the ethics of it, but rather on the practicality of it. Despite being unethical to enforce IP, and illegal to break it through Piracy, it’s also very impractical. So in this article I want to talk about why Piracy is also impractical.
Criminal & Civil Punishment
The first deterrent is obviously the Government. At the bare minimum you can be fined, sued or getting your internet cut off by your ISP for Piracy. At worst, you can get into jail and forced to pay the damages back, with interest, to the “victims”.
So that is a huge deterrent. I mean we know what happened to Kim Dotcom, his house got raided by paramilitary thugs with tanks and helicopters for a “nonviolent copyright infringement”.
Now let’s take them one by one and analyze each one:
Movie Piracy
Now after the legal threat, there are other reasons why movies Piracy is bad. For instance I don’t even think it’s worth it. I don’t even think people should watch that many movies that they would need to pirate it since they can’t afford it. Just don’t watch movies at all, it’s full of propaganda anyways.
I mean I have some classic movies on original DVD’s legally bought from a movie store, they are classic old movies like Lord of the Rings franchise and the Matrix Trilogy. They are classic movies that are worth watching, thus worth paying for.
If there is some good movie that comes out, just go to the cinema to watch it. I just take my wife to the cinema and watch it there, it’s a pretty good experience to watch a movie in 3D, and the quality is pretty good in a cinema. It literally makes your heart pound when a thriller movie gets intensive, so that is an experience worth paying for.
As for the other movies, just don’t watch them. I can’t believe people just watch those shitty chick-flicks full of stupid sex stuff, like if people are brainwashed about that, just watch a porn movie online if you are that horny.
As for the serials, again, most of them is police state propaganda, all those cop procedural shows are just horrible. Not worth a penny in my opinion, not even worth the time to watch it.
Most movies are full of some sort of propaganda, so instead of watching them, why not just keep you mind clean of negative influences. Go read a book instead, much more useful.
So Movie Piracy is not only very risky, but it’s even worthless. A movie that is not worth paying for in your opinion, is also not worth watching for. Only buy movies that you want to pay for, otherwise just don’t watch them, since it’s obviously not worth a lot to you.
Music Piracy
You know in this day and age where most music is available on Youtube, like even big musicians put their songs there in a video clip. You can just listen to that legally.
Otherwise there are plenty of good mixes on Soundcloud and other places, which are mostly free, made by hobbyists, so you can just listen to that.
A lot of the music clips are also full of propaganda, some say it’s “Illumunati” or “Satanist” references everywhere. Well whether it’s true or not, it’s still very degenerate.
All of the female singers are whoring themselves out, almost naked, full of disgusting sexual references. It is very degenerate music.
So I really avoid those kinds of musics entirely. I also have original CDs of older musicians so I just listen to that. Older music is quality music worth paying for, I bought those CDs and I sometimes listen to those.
And I just avoid the degenerate music entirely, that’s pretty much my strategy on music.
Software Piracy
Now software Piracy is the most retarded thing people can do. Literally.
- Why the hell would people pirate a commercial spreadsheet software?
- Why the hell would people pay 100$ for a commercial spreadsheet software?
So the only choices seemingly are to either break the law or pay 100$. But that is a false dichotomy. What if you can get a spreadsheet software for FREE and it would also be legal?
Yeah it’s called LibreOffice! Why would anyone use anything else?
So instead of buying a closed-source sofware that you can’t trust, it may or may not have backdoor, it costs 100$, or if you would pirate it, that would also be a huge legal risk, plus pirated software will almost guaranteed have a virus in it that might turn your computer into a Botnet.
So either choices have risks in them, legal risk, and choose between guaranteed malware via pirated software or possible backdoor via closed-source official software. Both choices are horrible.
Why not just choose open-source software, that is both free, legal, and trustworthy. Only an idiot would do anything else.
So the FOSS principle applies here. There are plenty of volunteers that make software for free, including me, I made already some tools that I made freely available.
The Debian repository has over 51000 free and open source softwares. Why would anyone buy a closed-source software again?
So do you need any Software for Free and Legally? Start “Shopping” Here:
After you discover the Debian repository you will not pay for any software again, nor you will pirate anything afterwards. You have everything that you need right there.
Conclusion
So as you can see, Piracy is not just a huge legal risk, but it’s also pointless:
What is not worth paying for is not worth getting either!
Movies and music that you don’t want to pay for, are probably not worth the consumption either.
And for software just use FOSS software, it’s not just free and legal, but it’s also much more safe, bugs get fixed quicker and it doesn’t have a backdoor.
This also doesn’t eliminate the commercial nature of IP, but it really forces content creators to shift to a different business practice.
Software must be open source, yet Ubuntu for example is a commercial OS, despite being FOSS, and it’s run by Canonical Ltd. So they found a different way to make money it’s just that simple.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com