The File Pirate's Manifesto

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“A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both.  Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.  And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”  -  James Madison

Preface

n the not so distant future, historians will look back on our era and categorize us (as they have categorized earlier civilizations) by the manufacture of our tools.  Having moved beyond chipped stone and forged iron, our tools are cobbled together not of matter, but of thought.  We live in the information age.  One’s ability to master their* own destiny is governed by their access to knowledge and its application.  The tools of knowledge are familiar to us – Computers, the Internet, mass media, and less frequently, the printed word. 

Our ability to pass knowledge from one generation to the next has enabled us, as a species, to move beyond the crude methods of the past, and learn beyond the wisdom of those whose efforts removed us from the caves.  It is not simply our ability to learn and invent which has accomplished this feat – It is our ability to teach, and our ability to reinvent that sets us apart from the animals.

Those few remaining vocations requiring no specialized knowledge are modern forms of indentured servitude, offering the ignorant and desperate only enough to survive for short periods – preventing these poor souls from finding independence from their wage masters.  Those occupations providing a higher socio-economic station are little better.  Even with the advantage of greater monetary wealth, the average upper middle class family would be reduced to insolvency in a few months without employment.  In exchange for the ability to keep one’s head above the water, we will spend the bulk of our waking hours carrying out the will of another.

There is a new caste system, a more insidious method of keeping the upper crust atop the huddled masses.  Money is now the fruit, more than it is the tool of oppression.  The foundation of the new hierarchy is simple:  Maintain knowledge and inquiry as the domain of the wealthy, and encourage the general populace to strive for ignorance. 

Public schools are geared to do everything possible to discourage, punish, and alienate those who would seek knowledge outside the bounds of the accepted curriculum.  The focus of the publicly educated pupil is directed primarily towards conforming to arbitrary societal standards, and excluding – even despising – those who do not.

Consider the price of a decent education, by which I mean the sort of education that leads to presidency – Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Princeton, Stanford, Duke – Those schools with a history of success.  The price of that kind of education is around 30,000 to 50,000+ per year.  The price of the most effective erudition is beyond the means of the common man.

Consider the costs of the various certifications for the information technology field.  The training manuals alone will set you back as much as $150 each, and certification can run well into the thousands of dollars.  That’s a lot of money for someone who struggles just to keep food on the table.

Wealth follows power, and power follows knowledge, which is why ‘Old Money’ makes information that is profitable or powerful too expensive for the average Joe.

There can be no real equality in a society where the common person is denied access to the total depth and breadth of information, knowledge, culture, and education.

The aristocracy does not control these things unimpeded.  There are, among the citizenry, those who would strike back against federally mandated ignorance.  There is a new weapon against intellectual oppression.  There is a new revolution afoot.  That weapon is filesharing, and we are the revolutionaries.

Already the wealthy have taken up legal arms against our ranks, causing the less courageous among us to flee.  They know we pose a threat to their rule.  Their mistake has thinned our numbers, but left us with only the most resolute, the most capable of prosecuting this information war.  Our digital army is ever growing - we must take care to prepare and educate not just ourselves, but also the newest among us.  It is to this end that I set these words to the page.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”  -Thomas Jefferson

There is more at stake here than our ability to download music and movies for free.  Without access to culture, one cannot hope to be a part of that culture.  In his day, those who were interested could hear the works of Bach – often free of charge – in a number of venues.  Apparently, we are meant to believe that the masterworks of Britney Spears are of intrinsically greater value than the offerings of J.S. Bach.  Somewhere, I suspect there is a coffin suffering the friction burns that can only be caused by a long dead German composer rolling over in his grave.

Art is ever erected upon a foundation of antecedent works.  For an artist to create significant art, they must first have access to the media of the day.  Without access to cultural influence, there is no reference from which to contribute, and seldom the inspiration to do so.  Should inability to pay the usurious prices associated with culture bearing media (CDs, DVDs, et al.) disqualify one from the possibility of an artistic trade?  Should even the poorest among us be excluded from the sphere of human creativity?  Had this been the case in the past, we would never have known the works Johannes Brahms or Vincent van Gogh.

“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.” 

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

                                                                         The Morality of Piracy

Somewhere deep down we know that sharing is right.  Perhaps we don’t know how – but we are certain that we are doing the right thing when we open up those shares.  We are morally rewarded with the feeling of a good deed well done.  It’s hard to argue with that.

Most of us have tried to figure out how an illegal activity could possibly be morally correct.  Many of us have tried to counter by saying that copyright infringement is not really a crime.  The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language defines crime as “An act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it and for which punishment is imposed upon conviction.”  Both sending and receiving copyrighted files breaks laws.  People have been convicted for this.  those people have received punishment.  Piracy thus fits the definition of crime.

To be genuinely moral in the act of committing a crime, it behooves us to qualify our inherent gut instinct.  We must know for ourselves what greater good is served in stealing from the media vendors, and information brokers.  Without this, we are on shaky ground when entering into debate.

Already we have discussed combating socio-intellectual oppression.  Tied closely with this concept is the idea of the free exchange and flow of information – the belief that all knowledge, wisdom, information, and culture should be freely and readily accessible to all people regardless of their station.  The sum of human wisdom will increase exponentially when the right minds are given unrestricted admittance to the right knowledge at the right time.

Ultimately, it falls to the individual to discern for themself why filesharing is the right thing to do.  Each person may have completely different answers, but it is important to know for yourself what these answers are.  If you believe in the cause, you will argue it more effectively.  When you can argue effectively, you will bring more to the cause.

The Code of the File Pirate

Inherent to piracy is the potential for abuse.  Indeed, many file pirates are not at all moral.

1.     The Pirate always shares the full extent of his stash.

2.     The goal of the Pirate is to give more to the community than he takes.

3.     The Pirate doesn’t leech.  Even if he’s stuck on dial-up.  The Pirate doesn’t complain about those who do leech.  His sterling example and generosity may someday cure their ignorance.

4.     The Pirate never seeks remuneration, monetary or otherwise, for his files, regardless of how they were acquired.

5.     The Pirate shares with as many people as possible for as long as possible by keeping those shares open, round the clock.

6.     The Pirate only buys CDs, and DVDs used and never goes to the theatre.  The enemies of filesharing should never be strengthened with the pirate’s hard-earned wages.

7.     The Pirate stays politically educated and votes.    

8.     The Pirate’s reward is in helping to create a more ideal world by serving as part of an egalitarian sharing structure.

9.     The Pirate always seeks to stay ahead of the law.  An errant law is an affront to justice.  The Pirate exposes injustice to the media.

10.  The Pirate abhors censorship – even censorship of the abhorrent.

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If you feel that something has been omitted, or should be added, or if you'd like to comment, please drop me a line at alandeanavery@yahoo.com

* I realize this is grammatically improper, but as there is no singular non-gender specific third person pronoun suitable for addressing an individual, I will use the plural form instead.  Someday, perhaps, the English language and the academics who preside over its advancement will accomplish what common gutter slang has achieved so effortlessly.