A Fantastic Little Corner

I think I should confess something- a realization I just recently had. Maybe I'm just getting too far into the motives of my villains in the novel I'm working on (Geez, that feels so weird to say, but it's finally true!) or maybe I'm just really angry about SOPA and big Hollywood in general. Maybe I've always secretly admired hackers and what they can do.

Guys, I think... I think I support piracy. Not just that I'm apathetic towards it or even just okay with it. I think I literally support pirates and hacktivists. In fact, you may even call me an Internet picture pirate, because many of the images I use, I'm supposed to pay for; I'm handy enough with photo editing that I easily remove their watermarks. I won't apologize, either: I'm not paying up to $1000 just to download a tiny image I'll alter and use for a few months at best. That's just a tad bit excessive if you ask me.

The main reason I support them is because of my hatred for the Hollywood industry. Yes, piracy is theft. But I would classify a $15 movie ticket because it comes with 3D glasses theft too. - Okay, so it's actually greed, but still. - Their response to that would be that they've had to raise the prices because of piracy, but we all know that's bogus: if all piracy ended today, you would not see a dime of price changes on anything from music to blu rays. The excessive court cases would continue, too. Like the woman who was fined millions for uploading 22 songs or the 10-yr-old whose charity video was fined thousands until the charity dollars were all in the pockets if greedy CEOs, lawyers, and producers.

Unjust court cases aren't all they pursue, though. No, they crafted a purposely vague law in the hopes of catching even accidental offenders. They lobby and intimidate Washington -why do you think dems still support the legislation?- to ignore the rights their bills will endanger. If someone says the word greed, I don't think of Wall Street; I think of Sunset Boulevard.

So I support pirates to get back at them the only way they can comprehend: their wallets. Whether though means of piracy, DDOS attacks, hacking to steal information and posting it publicly, or evolving the threats of being online thereby costing them more in R&D to protect themselves. The more havoc they cause, the better.

( What are the reasons for piracy, anyway? )

In one of their attacks a couple years back, Anonymous compared the Internet and the regulations it faces to limit its abilities and the information it is allowed to pass on to the political history of the printing press: it was this comparison that really made me stop and think.

You see, within the Internet exists the ability to be entirely anonymous, to be entirely free. While this freedom is often abused to carry out illegal activity, I believe that the freedom SHOULD exist. And hey, sometimes that illegal activity has a very good reason, even! Even so, just because Megaupload was used for piracy doesn't mean it was always used for piracy. (It also doesn't mean that the DOJ should have free reign to shut down sites at will. What happened to due process and innocence until proof of guilt in a fair court of law?) Much like the second amendment, freedom has always and will always require responsibility on the parts of the free.

I just... I dunno. While I'll never support thievery, I can't help but support piracy: the free spread of any and all information, regardless of what it is. It's hypocritical, I know. Maybe it's anger; I get pretty angry about abridged rights and such, which is what greedy Hollywood is after. At the same time, I've always believed that information above all should be accessible to all. - Not as an entitlement, but as a right. While governments and individuals are allowed to have secrets and privacy, no government should have the power to limit access to information.

What do y'all think about piracy? Is it a good thing? Are hactivists awesome? Or are they criminal menaces who should be hunted down? I'm certainly not against the prosecution of hackers and pirates; they are breaking the law and stealing, and they should pay the price if they're caught. - But not excessive prices... Like when a handful of pirates from Pirate Bay were fined $6.5 million. Like they'll ever be able to pay that! It's just greed!