"Piracy"

   Piracy is a [1]capitalist propaganda term for the act of illegally sharing
   copyrighted information such as [2]non-free books, movies, music, video
   [3]games or scientific papers.

   It is greatly admirable to support piracy, however also keep in mind the
   following: if you pirate a [4]proprietary piece of information, you get it
   gratis but it stays proprietary, it abuses you, it limits your freedom --
   you won't get the source code, you won't be able to publicly host it
   without being bullied, you won't be allowed to legally create and share
   derivative works etc. Therefore prefer [5]free (as in freedom)
   alternatives to piracy, i.e. pieces of [6]information that are not only
   gratis but also freedom supporting.

   Have you ever heard about a public library that struggles with funding?
   Did you ever wish your local library could afford a bigger building and
   more books? Imagine for a moment now that we can build public libraries
   all around the world, basically for free, even in the most remote of
   place, each having so many books that they wouldn't fit to a skyscraper,
   each book in so many copies that arbitrarily many people could lend the
   same book at the same time, for as long as they want. Wouldn't that be
   great? People promoting anti-piracy are those who say "no, we are against
   this". You just can't argue anyone supporting anti-piracy is not evil. We
   already have this great library that past civilizations didn't even dare
   to dream of, it's the [7]Internet, it's just that evil dicks now prevent
   access to it.

   Despite the term itself being recent, the concept of "piracy" is nothing
   new; it's essentially as old as the concept of "intellectual ownership"
   itself. Famous paintings have been copied by "pirate artists" and sold as
   being the original. Mozart, thanks to his genius, famously copied sheet of
   music that was supposed to remain unpublished just from hearing the piece
   played. For the modern history of computer piracy especially the case of
   [8]The Pirate Bay, a famous [9]torrenting site established in 2003, was of
   great importance.

   At the dawn of personal computer era, the culture of [10]hackers who
   helped with pirating software by creating [11]cracks spawned the
   [12]demoscene, a hugely significant [13]art subculture based on
   programming technically impressive audiovisual presentations. The fuss
   around piracy also influences mainstream culture, e.g. the infamous "you
   wouldn't steal a car" anti-piracy propaganda that was present on VHS movie
   tapes is now a laughable piece of failed [14]capitalist attempt at trying
   to invoke a sense of guilt of sharing -- many people happily pirated and
   pirate to this day and they also happily admit to piracy; in fact many old
   movies and otherwise historically significant media has been preserved
   only thanks to people pirating. Piracy in actuality doesn't hurt anyone,
   monstrously rich corporations are and always will be monstrously rich, and
   if piracy indeed did hurt a corporation, then it's actually another
   argument for piracy, not against it.

   { My brother collects old movie dubbing, great works of art of legendary
   actors, works that now would have been lost to time if it weren't for
   people recording those movies on VHS tapes and illegally sharing them.
   ~drummyfish }

   One paper from 2020s found that men (curiously unlike [15]women) exposed
   to anti-piracy propaganda will increase their pirating by 18% :D One
   example of publicly embracing piracy in the mainstream is e.g. the
   [16]Pirate party that has risen to popularity in a few countries now.

   { Where to pirate stuff? See e.g.
   https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/wiki/megathread and
   https://piracy.vercel.app. ~drummyfish }

   TODO: more history etc.

Links:
1. capitalism.md
2. proprietary.md
3. game.md
4. proprietary.md
5. free_culture.md
6. information.md
7. internet.md
8. pirate_bay.md
9. torrent.md
10. hacking.md
11. crack.md
12. demoscene.md
13. art.md
14. capitalism.md
15. woman.md
16. pirate_party.md