Notes

Author rights and pirates

I greet the great army of intellectual pirates, hackers and crackers, smugglers and plagiarists!

They do a good job bringing to the poor what was intended for the rich only, and uncovering information that was intentionally concealed.

What is worth your vaunted freedom without the freedom to know everything and employ every product available for one's own purposes, if there is a need? Why those with thick wallets are more free in that than those without wallets at all?

The situation is full of sarcasm: those who do not produce anything at all, may have the means of production, while those who make everything can have nearly nothing of what they need to work.

You may say: this is so in the underdeveloped countries like Russia only, and the workers may well buy everything they need for their work in the industrial countries like UK or USA. But what is the difference? If the people in one country are richer in average than those in another, isn't it something wrong with the global distribution of wealth? All the "civilized" countries have debts they won't ever pay, and the well-being of their citizens is based on robbery.

You may say: the patent law stimulates the people to invent new things they would never ventured without the prospects of personal profit. A pharmaceutics company would not invest money into a costly research on a new medicine if everybody could just take the results of research and be healthy. So, the new drugs are produced for the benefit of all the humanity. But what is the purpose of all such commercial undertakings? To give the new products to the rich and make better the life of those who do live well already? What humanity is meant? The poor will have no interest in that kind of development, with the only hope left that they will be allowed to play with the toys the rich don't need any more. If you really want to do something for the humanity, why not just take money from those who have too much of it and invest in research? - and then set up international control for equal accessibility to the results in every corner of the globe?

You may say: the patents defend the rights of the inventor. Which rights? And do they really? If the right to conceal information from those who badly needs it is to be defended - the patents must be burnt! And - a big company can always buy the patent, paying nothing comparable with its real value to the inventor, and then pump profits for those who have nothing to do with creativity. The company may even forbid using the inventions if this seems more profitable - so what about the interests of the humanity? The concentration of author rights in the hands of the proprietors of the companies is one more way to leave the inventors without the means of production they need, so that they will have to apply for work in those very companies, thus becoming their intellectual slaves.

You may say: the patents have a limited duration, so that everybody may use the invention after, say, 17 years - and hence the humanity still gets it anyway. But what will be the use of the invention after 17 years? Technological environment changes so fast, and the thing may become outdated after 3 or 4 years already! Does anybody need the secrets of MS DOS 3.x today, except for pure curiosity? Every knowledge is valuable in its time, and the patent terms let it be opened only long after when it may be of any interest.

Finally, you may say: but the pirates do not want to do anything good to anybody, they just make money. Yes, they do. But objectively, their business brings knowledge to the people who are full of creativity but cannot afford buying expensive products. A software CD sold for $10 may contain applications that would cost a few thousand dollars in the legal market. A pirate audio CD is 5-10 times less expensive than the same licensed copy.

The competition with the pirate market compels the author rights holders to make the legal prices lower - and this one more reason to praise the pirates. However, many companies are not too much interested in seriously fighting the illegal copiers of their products, since the pirate distribution is the best advertising of all. The people who got used to the products of some company obtained in the pirate market, may be much more inclined to buy other products of the same company when they get enough money to do it - or they may influence those who can buy but does not have much experience.