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There is no difference - a pirate is a pirate
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by tintilinic | December 27, 2010 at 07:49 am
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When fighting piracy is in a question most likely the best example was President Thomas Jefferson when he in 1801 swiftly ordered the U.S. Navy to suppress the brutal Barbary pirates. In our time it took us forever to organize a collective action against piracy off Somali’s coast with almost no results. But lets be honest online piracy of government cables, computer software, creative writing, and so forth is no different from piracy and results are even worst. Digitization has made it easier than ever for pirates. And cyber warriors can do damage on a much larger scale. They can tap into our computer networks and move money, spill oil, vent gas, blow up generators, derail trains, crash airplanes, cause missiles to detonate, and wipe out reams of financial and supply chain data. Havoc can be created at the blink of an eye from remote locations overseas. Criminal groups, nation-states, terrorists, and military organizations are at work exfiltrating vast amounts of data from the U.S. public and private sectors. Not many people realize that all of our nation's air, land, and sea forces rely on network technologies that are vulnerable to cyber weapons, including logistics, command and control, fleet positioning, and targeting. If they were compromised or obliterated, the U.S. military could not operate. Our information systems have become the most aggressively targeted in the world. Each year, attacks increase in severity, frequency, and sophistication. Starting on July 4 last year, there was an assault on U.S. government sites—including the White House—as well as the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. In another 2009 cyber attack, an estimated 166,000 computers in 74 countries flooded the websites of South Korean banks and government agencies, jamming their fiber optic cables. And three young hackers penetrated classified networks believed invulnerable and managed to steal 170 million credit card numbers before the ringleader was arrested in 2008. And everybody is now talking about freedom -of what? To cheat, to steal, to revel a personal datas of those that are in charge of our security or those who are helping us? Somali pirates are explaining that they are doing it just to improve their living conditions, and a cyber pirates are hiding behind a big words of freedom of speech and democracy. But no matter what excuse is piracy is piracy and it needs to be punished. If you need to know how – just push the page-up button on your keyboard.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 09:16 on December 27th, 2010
If I walk into your kitchen and steal your cookies, you have no cookies to eat. If I steal your meat and bread and all your food, you will starve. If I steal your clothes, you will freeze. If I steal a photograph of a painting on your wall, you will have your painting on the wall and I will have an inferior copy to enjoy. Or perhaps if my camera is good enough, I will have an excellent copy to enjoy. Copywrite piracy is to digital theft what taking that picture of your prized painting is to stealing your boots. Furthermore, since that "painting" was actually hung on your outside wall in full view, it is highly unlikely you can prevent it. You might be charging people twenty dollars a look but I got a free look with my telephoto lens and now what?
I go to see movies at the theatre. If I like them very much, I see them several times. I download it and watch it some more at home. When the dvd comes out, I buy it. I've pirated the movie but the industry has not lost one single sale from the act. If I do not buy it, or attend it at the theatre, this is because I cannot afford to do so. Being unable to download it won't change my budget.
I may have seen the sistine chapel ceiling millions of times in my life in every form of reproduction imaginable but I would still pay to see it in the chapel. A pirated cd cannot compare with a factory cd. The factory releases of movies and music include value added in the professionally printed case, the little extras they may throw in like high res. images of the band or artwork, and the disk itself is not subject to light deterioration the way a home-burned disk can be.
The publishing industry needs to realize that most of the pirates downloading are consumers and they are merely embellishing their consumption of the product. The professional offering of said product is still a superior product and that will still encourage us to open our wallets if our wallets are fat enough. If they are not, we never would have made the purchase anyway.
The modern age requires new attitudes and systems for media distribution and rules. We cannot continue to strangle creativity and pleasure with out dated systems of profit and sales. When I was a student and could not afford the ridiculously expensive new editions of textbooks which made the used books effectively obsolete, I photocopied entire books. It was messy and I had crappy images and crappier media to thumb through, but at least I finished my education.
When I was a child I held the microphone of a portable cassette recorder up to the speaker of a mono record player to copy entire music albums. I wore out those cassettes, but never could afford to buy the real record. I learned to sing simply to be able to enjoy songs i loved but could not buy.
Humans have always and will always copied each other in order to have what is not directly available. We always will. You can only punish us cruelly, but you cannot stop us. Cruel punishment slows people down, but ultimately it inspires violent resistance and an increase in the undesireable behaviour.
Software/entertainment piracy is not the enemy. Businessmen in suits who cannot create but want to ride the creative trains of hard working artists are the enemy.