So software piracy is now qualifies as a religion in Sweden
polycounter lvl 18
I'll be much happier if someone can prove me wrong, but this appears to be a legitimate article about a real thing
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57352469-1/file-sharing-religion-goes-legit-in-sweden/
This "Kopimism" is an officially recognised religion that reveres file-sharing and thereby gains whatever protection from 'persecution' and other perks that such an establishment offers.
With this in mind I think I may form the Church of Whacking-People-I-Don't-Like-With-a-Big-Stick. I'm sure it will prove to be quite a successful and lucrative undertaking.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57352469-1/file-sharing-religion-goes-legit-in-sweden/
This "Kopimism" is an officially recognised religion that reveres file-sharing and thereby gains whatever protection from 'persecution' and other perks that such an establishment offers.
With this in mind I think I may form the Church of Whacking-People-I-Don't-Like-With-a-Big-Stick. I'm sure it will prove to be quite a successful and lucrative undertaking.
Replies
otherwise I don't see a reason to worship cheapness.
00:0000 And the Flying Noodled One spake to Jackblade, "take thyself forth to the Lowes, and the Ace, and the Home Depot, and gather thy lumber for thine purposes.
00:0001 "And thy lumber's dimensions shall be two inches by four inches, yet really one and one half by three and one half, and thou shalt cut it to a length that you may swing it easily.
00:0010 "And you shall call it The 2x4 Of Enlightenment."
00:0011 And so Jackblade went across the land, and incidentally snagged a great sale on untreated timber at Lowes, and Jackblade hewed from the raw wood as described by the Flying Noodled One such an instrument as to do Its Noodley will.
00:0100 And Jackblade held the 2x4 of Enlightenment above his head, and called forth the rational and disgruntled to him, and they set across the land (after a brief stop at Pizza Hut for the all-you-can-eat lunch buffet).
00:0101 And much Whacking of the Fools and the Idiots commenced as the 2x4 of Enlightenment rose and fell, spreading the Flying Noodled One's holey teachings, and there was great rejoicing.
Stealing in the act of God is still illegal.
Spreading the message of Kopimism is not illegal even though it may be offensive to some people.
Stealing copyright material is still illegal.
Don't take everything you read so seriously.
And no, like in other european countries law is above religion. On the other hand A WHOLE LOT of shit is done with christianety and islam as somekind of fucked up ground. So nothing new there right?
This is merely a political statement of sorts, much like flying spaghetti monster.
How do you "steal" copyrighted material by way of copying? Stealing implies that something was taken away, that someone has less than before or depriving someone of what they once had. Copying doesn't take anything away, it creates more not less. However, "copyright infringement" is against the law and applies to that issue, call it what it infringement. That's what it really is.
As to the topic at hand... From what I've read, this is likely a religion based on the concept of freely sharing information in all forms regardless of its legal status for the benefit of promoting knowledge and cultural progress. Copying is an act of kindness to mankind.
@Bonebrew22
I'm also a proponent of the Zietgiest movement. Economic freedom for all through technology creating abundance and responsible use of resources for the good of everyone.
It's not serious religion though, so don't take it as such. It just takes advantage of the fact that all something requires to become a religion is to just have a specific amount of members, which isn't hard to gain for a joke like this in the big pirate-community of sweden.
Is that to say you don't take it seriously as a religion or that they don't? It doesn't bear any less merit as a religion than Christianity or Judaism. They're all moral codes created by men to influence the behavior of people and to form a social group through shared beliefs. I don't take any religion seriously.
That said, I do support their philosophy about sharing knowledge and culture without barriers. That can only serve to promote the progress of knowledge and culture. Art shared freely begets more art. Art that is locked up behind a system of commercial censorship impedes art. You can't be inspired by art placed behind barriers and burdened with limitations. Culture and knowledge expands what it means to be human.
That kind of thinking is an illusion that technology human nature shatters. Not only that, but you pointed out that which is really being sold: time and labor. That makes the necessity for artificial scarcity irrelevant when another scarce resource can be applied. If you can figure out how to market time and labor to the gaming/music/arts fans, you won't have to worry about who's sharing your works on the net and we'd all be the better for the freedom to share, remix, and re-imagine facets of our culture.
Had we come down on artists like Led Zepplin for plagiarizing others' works they were inspired by, we wouldn't have a collection of great songs that define a generation. You can mention Led Zepplin and many people will know who you're talking about. Mention the names of the artists they copied from to those same people and I doubt many would recall them. The point is, LZ took what was already there, rearranged the pieces, and made it great.
Our entire learning process is predicated on copying and emulating what others do. By blocking access to part of that wealth of prior art, you impede the capacity to learn. How could we learn from the renaissance masters if they were locked up behind a pay-wall? Only those with the cash could benefit from their cognitive wealth. What about the age of enlightenment or the printing press? Those two things expanded human technology and culture.
Time and labor is valuble precisely because if I don't work, me and my family become homeless and we probably die.
I can say technology shatters that all i like, except it doesn't until we have machines that can create matter out of thin air.
Things have value because the cost to create them has to come out of somewhere. If i spend time drawing, it's time i didn't spend farming or mining or building something, which translates to a direct loss of resources, which creates scarcity in other fields. Marketing time and labor to the fans is awesome, and individuals do it -- pay what you want bundles for drm free games are a wonderful example of that. But it's not the kind of thing that can be applied top down to the entire economy, because it inherently depends on the creators having the initial funding or time to create the game, which they had to earn through traditional economic principles.
The zeitgeist idea would be lovely if they elaborated on HOW technology shatters the concept of scarcity, but they do a pretty poor job elaborating on their ideas because they are lying, since it clearly is not true.
You can't eat ideas or sleep under them in a rainstorm.
The Renaissance masters were well paid by the Popes and nobles who commissioned those works. And for several hundred years, there was only ONE Sistine Chapel and ONE Mona Lisa.
As for the printing press - many of those were, again, commissioned and paid for by nobles, and in some cases the Church.
The fundamental aspect that you're missing is that prior to the age we're now, when a work can exist entirely as a data sequence in the digital realm and can be perfectly duplicated an infinite number of times, it wasn't just time and labor that was being sold. It was also the scarcity of the authentic original (or limited originals), and the fact that duplicating them was impossible, unlikely, or at best impractical. And skilled creators were paid well for that.
Good grief! Straw man much? Your scope is cast far too wide here. I'm talking about technology as it pertains to media and art, not everything in existence.
That's circular logic. Things have value when they serve a utility to people, not because they come from something else. The only real value inherent in it is how much of a particular resource we have and how much use we can get out of it.
We already market time and labor in every other part of our economy through the fixed amount of time, labor, and resources that are necessary to produce a single product. Each product is representative of a certain number of units of time, work, and resource utility.
I said technology shatters artificial scarcity (like data that is infinitely copyable), but since you brought it up I can tell you that technology that is leveraged to produce abundant resources (like renewable energy instead of fossil fuels) as opposed to constant waste of valuable resources can provide for the whole of life on this planet up to its maximum carrying capacity. As our technology advances and we can make more efficient use of our finite abundant resources, we expand the carrying capacity of our planet.
That is how the Ziegiest movement seeks to solve the issue of scarcity. Our current system is horribly wasteful. We burn fossil fuels for energy when the core of our planet is constantly generating more heat energy than we could possibly use at our current consumption rate. We gather resources, use them up, and throw them away without recycling it or renewing the supply somehow. We take from the Earth and put nothing back.
@Garagebay9
What does that have to do with having access to those works for progressing culture? Nothing. You missed my point. Had those highly revered works been locked up in copyright and whatnot, we would have been at a loss culturally because they inspired so many works after them.
So what? That has nothing to do with the value of that technology to increase the wealth of culture and knowledge. Again, you missed the point.
You missed the point once again. Had those works been created today and not 500 years earlier, we wouldn't had likely been able to benefit from the artistic and educational value of those works because they would surely be tied up in copyright. People would be barred from copying, sharing, remixing, and taking inspiration from those works. It would certainly be a cultural loss to us all.
They were hits because they were good songs that they made into great songs. Originality is an illusion. All art is derivative. We build on what came before. That is how all art propagates. If you lost respect for LZ taking some good songs and turning them into songs you love, then you are missing the value of what they did.
Take the "Amen Break", for example. It's used in many popular tunes. Is it wrong that all those artists use it? Hardly. Some really great stuff has come from the reuse of that drum loop. Things like this tend to become more famous than the source material used to create it. Taking pieces of culture and rearranging them into something new is a great thing and should be revered just as much as when someone creates something we perceive to be unique.
Copyright doesn't mean the banishment or censuring of creativity or inspiration, the other way around; inspiration is encouraged, every gamedeveloper will be inspired by the games he played and thus will birth new combination of ideas.
No, that's actually not how it works. Things have value because they cost something to produce, people pay that value because they serve utility. One of the big things that determines that cost is the scarcity of labor.
Everything really is that deeply interconnected -- it's impossible for me to spend 10 hours drawing without me at the same time costing 10 hours of potential production to anybody who would hire me to work in another job. Read up on some basic economics and scarcity, be critical, see if it makes sense, and then come back to your zeitgeist stuff and see if you want to believe in it. You can't form a critical opinion on centuries of economics just from a couple of wackos saying it's false, you're going to have to educate yourself and then make up your own mind.
edit addendum: While you're at it, look up what a strawman is. I am not misconstruing a weaker version of your argument -- i'm taking a critical eye to the implications of it. If there's no scarcity in technology, when technology clearly takes very skilled labor to produce, then how do we reconcile the cost of that labor?
Artificial scarcity is one so far very effective solution to the problem of protecting the value of that tremendously expensive work. The thousands of hours of education i devote to studying art, and tens of hours i devote to producing each piece, must be able to generate some kind of value, or else i'd be better off spending them working to produce a scarce good. Unless you can propose a better thought out, fully developed system to evaluate creative works than copyright law, I would respectfully request you quit spouting insulting garbage about it.
I would venture a guess that karl marx was much smarter and better educated than us, and he swung and missed bigtime in trying to solve these exact same issues. If he cannot do it with years and years of education and critical thinking, i don't think some wackos can do any better.
No, you're completely wrong. It costs something to produce? Where does that cost come from? Where does the cost of that cost come from? It goes on and on. It's circular logic. It is a fact. Value in resources comes from their utility, not the cost to extract it. I've seen tops travel in circles less than that logic.
I'm quite well versed in basic economics, the concept of scarcity, and the concept of opportunity cost, thank you very much.
I also know what a straw man is. A straw man is implying a different, but similar argument than that which the other has made and defeating it to make it appear that you have won the debate. That's exactly what you did.
Value doesn't need protecting. Either it has value or it doesn't. If it's not useful to someone in some way, it has no value. You're basing your concept of value on that of a monetary value assignment. That's an arbitrary value and one that is not as universal as utility based value, real value. There is one overall, unavoidable, scarcity in the universe though: time. Time is an endlessly consumed resource that never runs out, but once a moment has passed you by, it's gone forever.
@eld
You might think so, but copyright fails its solitary primary goal to create more art for the public domain. How much art created in your lifetime has been added to the public domain. Give up? Zero. You will never see any art created in your lifetime ever enter the public domain to be useable without restriction.
Inspiration is still possible, but with limitations. I can't make my very own version of the Halo series based in that universe with the same characters even if everything else is of my own work and independent ideas. I would be beat down by trademark and copyright before you can even say "fair use".
That makes absolutely no sense. If it's a closed system, then how did you just add the value of new resources? That contradicts your whole point. Our ecosystem isn't closed either. It's constantly bombarded with solar radiation that provides energy for all life here. We continually are impacted by meteorites that introduce new sources of minerals and other elements. If we are constantly gaining new resources from outside our planet, how can our economy be closed system? It's non sequitur.
Are you kidding me? You've jumped the shark into absolute crazy town dude. Come back after you've read books or something.
You're saying a bunch of things (which are absolutely absurd) and offering no argument or evidence except just saying 'that's the way it is' when it clearly isnt and never has been.
And then you make insane analogies.
Shit, dude. You must be smart to even think up things this focusedly counter-intuitive, you should apply those smarts to some classical education and quit saying stupid shit. If the whole world believes one thing, even after centuries of argument and study, maybe that one thing could be true?
(hint, those values already exist within the system)
Also, here's a fun, accessible start to not being completely loony: http://www.khanacademy.org/#microeconomics
I do intend to pursue a career in games. I'm currently stuck on personal issues that I will not elaborate on at this time. I have the skill and talent, but not the experience.
I may be offering the same ideas about IP, but it's because I see the same old thing again on the other side of the fence. That's as far as I will get into it here. We're not supposed to be discussing piracy here. If you truly want a response to that, pm me.
@SupRore
Sure, whatever. You're right and I'm wrong. Happy? I'm tired of this. Nobody wants to think outside the existing artificial constraints. I think some people like this fucked up system because they think it will let them be part of the 1% some day.
I have no love for it, and it fucked me over more than most people in powerful, western countries, but your naivety, closed mindedness, and utter refusal to face or understand the realities of how economics functions is insulting.
And whether somebody thinks they're gonna get wealthy off of economics (which is silly, anyway, economists don't actually make THAT much) is irrelevant to whether it's valid science or not.
There are a million ways to improve the way money and resources are dealt with, but a pipe dream fantasy based on complete denial of scarcity is not one of them.
actually I have no aspirations to be rich - I'm happy we no longer have to be part of the 1% to be able to make art all the time (or be their private artist pet). I don't want to go back to doing manual labor and hopefully having the free time to do art for my own enjoyment.
Aside from time, there is no such thing as true scarcity. There are finite resources, but they can become abundant. Water is a finite resource, but it is abundant. So is air and sunlight. Nobody has to pay to breath, drink, or get irradiated by UV rays, but we have to pay to live? Through technology we can transform other finite resources into abundances through responsible use, recycling, and renewable systems. Resources are only scarce if you waste them.
Our own planet is a giant battery. It generates 2000 Zeta Watts of energy per second in its molten core. We all use about .5 ZW across the globe, but we keep burning dead plants and animals instead. If you automate the infrastructure (food, energy, health care, etc.) nobody has to work to live and will be free to pursue intellectual goals that will promote the progress of the human species. Imagine sciences, arts, and medicine limited only by what reusable resources we have at our disposal. It wouldn't be a question of "can we afford it?", but a question of "is it achievable and beneficial?" How great would that be?
If that sounds crazy, then I can't help it. I guess I had one more in me.