"Kopimism": Possibly the Stupidest Thing Ever
"Kopimism" is a fake religion in which people pretend to believe that stealing (aka "sharing") files is a sacred rite. Teen stupidity over this stuff is one of the thing that keeps me away from comments on Reddit.
Look:
1. This is not a religion. This is a moronic, transparent ploy to rationalize stealing files. No sane person is buying this. This is not anyone's religion, and only the terminally sophomoric would even attempt to deny that.
2. Freedom of religion is an important principle. You want something genuinely sacred, that principle is about as close as you can get. Transparent, bullshit attempts to get your bad habits deemed religious weakens respect for the important principle. Stop it. You are idiots.
Interlude: look, weed should be legal. There's really no denying that. But I've never had any patience for folks who have, periodically, tried to pretend that smoking weed was part of their religion. Some religions do actually have an established history of using drugs (Rastas: you're a borderline case, dudes. I'm going to allow it.) The thing is, smoking weed is genuinely harmless. Stealing files isn't. Allowing some folks to get by with recreational drug use is, in part, an acknowledgement that there's really nothing wrong with what they're doing. But you can't just start, e.g., the High Church of the Pedobear and expect the state to condone your nonsense.
3. I don't know how the file-sharing madness will ultimately shake out, but currently we seem to have big corporations--who are already ripping off artists--doing loonier and loonier things to protect their files, and pirate-friendly kids saying loonier and loonier things to defend their penchant for riskless theft. Look, I don't think there's any big problem pirating the occasional file. Individual cases aren't the problem. It's folks who routinely pirate that's the problem. I simply don't see a big problem with snagging an album or movie when you can't find a way to buy it, or if you're checking it out because you're not sure you're going to like it, or whatever. But a policy of pirating stuff all the time is deserving of prosecution. Why people think it's ok to steal something simply because it's easy to do so really is beyond me.
But look: if you are going to steal files, at least be honest about it and admit you're stealing. Don't get mad because someone wants to get paid for his work, and don't pretend you aren't stealing just because you wish you weren't. And, fer chrissake, don't pretend it's a damn religion.
4. Oh and: should religion be accorded this special status? Well, it should probably just be freedom of thought that's protected. Atheists' metaphysical beliefs deserve as much protection as those of theists. But "freedom of religion" is probably a decent approximation. It's probably close enough for government work.
Look:
1. This is not a religion. This is a moronic, transparent ploy to rationalize stealing files. No sane person is buying this. This is not anyone's religion, and only the terminally sophomoric would even attempt to deny that.
2. Freedom of religion is an important principle. You want something genuinely sacred, that principle is about as close as you can get. Transparent, bullshit attempts to get your bad habits deemed religious weakens respect for the important principle. Stop it. You are idiots.
Interlude: look, weed should be legal. There's really no denying that. But I've never had any patience for folks who have, periodically, tried to pretend that smoking weed was part of their religion. Some religions do actually have an established history of using drugs (Rastas: you're a borderline case, dudes. I'm going to allow it.) The thing is, smoking weed is genuinely harmless. Stealing files isn't. Allowing some folks to get by with recreational drug use is, in part, an acknowledgement that there's really nothing wrong with what they're doing. But you can't just start, e.g., the High Church of the Pedobear and expect the state to condone your nonsense.
3. I don't know how the file-sharing madness will ultimately shake out, but currently we seem to have big corporations--who are already ripping off artists--doing loonier and loonier things to protect their files, and pirate-friendly kids saying loonier and loonier things to defend their penchant for riskless theft. Look, I don't think there's any big problem pirating the occasional file. Individual cases aren't the problem. It's folks who routinely pirate that's the problem. I simply don't see a big problem with snagging an album or movie when you can't find a way to buy it, or if you're checking it out because you're not sure you're going to like it, or whatever. But a policy of pirating stuff all the time is deserving of prosecution. Why people think it's ok to steal something simply because it's easy to do so really is beyond me.
But look: if you are going to steal files, at least be honest about it and admit you're stealing. Don't get mad because someone wants to get paid for his work, and don't pretend you aren't stealing just because you wish you weren't. And, fer chrissake, don't pretend it's a damn religion.
4. Oh and: should religion be accorded this special status? Well, it should probably just be freedom of thought that's protected. Atheists' metaphysical beliefs deserve as much protection as those of theists. But "freedom of religion" is probably a decent approximation. It's probably close enough for government work.
posted by Winston Smith at
7:54 AM
4 Comments:
Usually when you steal things, you deprive the owner of its use. If I steal your toaster, you don't have use of your toaster. But when we share files, the owner of the original file isn't without his file. There are at least some important differences between stealing and file sharing.
File sharing is pretty clearly a violation of copyright law, but insofar as that has a moral justification, it seems largely utilitarian. We protect stuff with copyright in order to encourage people to keep doing what they're doing. It's certainly not obvious to me, though, that file sharing is discouraging people from, e.g., making music. If that's right, it's not clear to me what is wrong with file sharing.
How many times must a customer purchase a musical piece?
If I have an LP, cassette, 8 track, CD do I also have to buy the music on itunes or via other digital download?
But, like all things it's those who pirate millions of files that cause the problem...
It really hard to get past all the special pleading in this area, since just about everyone has an interest in one side or another. That being said, just labeling all violation of copyright "stealing" is clearly now right. Remember, copyright holders would have their level of control extend well beyond anything remotely resenmpling property, if they could. As I recall, the RIAA lobbied hard to have used-record stores deemed violation of copyright, and therefore "theft".
Well, I think the main thing to recognize here is that people are allowing their interest in this issue to extend beyond reason. I think WS is pointing that out.
People are angry that the RIAA and whoever is constantly attempting to take money from consumers in any way imaginable, but the result of that anger should not be the fabrication of a "religion."
People love to talk up capitalism until it works against them. People insist that the music out there just isn't worth the amount they have to pay now, so they turn to piracy. Of course, if they were being honest, they would simply stop purchasing the music, not start stealing it.
But they don't. The problem is, people really badly want music and they simply don't want to pay for it.
But all of that is beside the more interesting (to me) point here about Kopimism and reddit.
Reddit is a festering cesspool of self-proclaimed philosophers and scholars writhing in their own ignorance. I can't even look at the front page anymore because the /r/atheism people, among others, are astonishingly and painfully stupid. They constantly put up memes like "Scumbag Christian" who allegedly knows nothing about science but condemns it anyway.
Replace "science" with "religion" and "Christian" with "atheist" and you've got yourself /r/atheism. Or hell, how about this:
Scumbag Reddit Atheist: Knows nothing about science, insists it is the answer to every question imaginable anyway.
To the vast majority of reddit, religion is nothing but a feverish, masturbatory group dance around a collection of straw man idols they've constructed to facilitate their reveling in mutual, groundless acknowledgement of one another's purported superiority over those stupid straw men.
Reddit sucks. I was psyched when I found it because people seemed to have a capacity there for genuine humaneness in a medium which so commonly seems incapable of generating such a thing, but now I see that it's nothing more than an elaborate, tribal circlejerk.
One last rant: Did you see the recent post on reddit regarding the kid who killed himself by jumping off of his dorm? The girls' dorm across from the guys' dorm from which the suicide occurred put up words all along one of their floors' windows, saying something like "Remember we love you."
Instantly, the reddit comments light up with bitter assholes talking about how those girls would've treated the guys like shit if they had come over there just the week before.
Yeah, reddit, you're not just a group of fat, lazy Internet nerds stewing in your own misogyny and ignorance.
Nah.
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