Look, I’m the first to admit that we young people are dumb: we are sex-crazed, druggy rock ‘n roll freaks who love Family Guy and fart jokes, but at least we care about the future. For us, most of our lives lie in the future. For old people, most of their lives lie in the past. I think that might be why old people are so stuck in their ways.
If you haven’t heard, the people who run The Pirate Bay were found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison and fines of about $4 million. This is nothing more than the older generation trying to stop the future from happening. By the way, they weren’t even convicted of sharing files illegally, or even sharing information about illegal files, but simply linking to information about illegal files which “aids and abets” the downloading of illegal files. This is nothing more than censorship.
I really hate people who try to stop change. As I mentioned previously in my blog post on Star Trek and Intellectual Property, a world in which information is free is one step closer to utopia. It’s nothing to be afraid of. If history has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t stop innovation.
Now, I don’t know a single 20-something or younger person who believes filesharing to be wrong (or gay marriage, or marijuana). Hopefully, once our generation takes over things will change.
BEST COMMENT: d00d — “this post is great!
it manages to offend baby boomers who are offended when you call them old, now that they are old. they were once considered cutting edge, hip and trendy.
it offends people who have no idea how to dispassionately read a blog. “i disagree with you! i am going to sit here and shout at my cat while i type a witty/obscene response and then go to bed grinding my teeth in frustration b/c i am not able to disassociate myself from my reading.”
it offends ignorant people, because they are ignorant. “you want to legalize things that i think should be illegal? why don’t you just legalize murder and rape while you are at it, since i think those things should be illegal, too.”
it offends otherwise smart people, who attempt to hold the 300 year tradition of copyright up as though it has lasted eons, and that those who violate it should be physically imprisoned for committing information related meta-crimes in the virtual world.
and it offends me. because the reaction to this piece shows how many ignorant, self-centered and egotistical buffoons are still stubbornly part of the problem.”
EDIT: I’m fully aware that not all old people are conservative and not all young people are liberal. However, most stereotypes have some amount of truth to them. My comment about the old generation was actually specifically relating to the filesharing part: a generation which knows absolutely NOTHING about computers (and therefore NOTHING about filesharing) should not be making laws against things they know nothing about. Although the old generation probably knows more about drugs and marriage than us young people (who have only been doing drugs for a few years and aren’t yet married), don’t even try to pretend you guys understand computers or the Internet. And I repeat, anybody who is against filesharing really has to read my blog post on Star Trek and Intellectual Property. For the record, I’m 26 years old, I do have a job, and my company has just recently started open sourcing its projects.
Tags: bittorrent, filesharing, freedom, future, gay marriage, intellectual property, marijuana, The Pirate Bay
“They have just as much right for their money as all the other people do.”
This is the viewpoint that I want to smash into the ground. Nobody has a RIGHT to money. I’m sorry, but no matter how hard you work you cannot make money by selling something that has no value. For example, I could toil for 18 hours a day making breathable air… but I wouldn’t be able to sell it. Why? Because air is FREE. I don’t care how hard you work on your music or your art, it’s available for FREE, so you can’t expect to make money off of it. Life isn’t fair. Deal with it.
Philip, I’m not an artist, but your argument is complete BS. At the very minimum, artists need money for basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter, and (heaven forbid), they might want to make a little extra in order to pay for health care, retirement, and their kid’s college fund. I’m 28, a former Peace Corps Volunteer, and I’m getting a masters in non-profit management. My brother is gay, and I’m also a stoner.
With all that said, you’re an idiot, and your view of the world is simply rationalized narcissism and greed. Far from “liberating” art, you would completely destroy it. You know most artists go to college in order to deepen their knowledge of their profession, which in turn saddles them with mountains of student loan debt. But of course they aren’t real people, just abstract entities whom, unlike you, don’t require any of the basic necessities in life that you take for granted.
If their work has no “value,” then why do you want it? You really didn’t think that one through, did you? The fact that you want it shows that it has value. It’s just that you’re dishonest and unethical, but you try to convince yourself through claims of a BS “utopia” that you shouldn’t have to pay for it.
[...] bel post: Anybody else…. Ma questi non ne vogliono [...]