4. "Hey, you forgot 'not stu—'" Just keep reading.
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15. Almost no corporate actor manifests some principled and consistent vision of copyright. Copyright is great when it can be used as a hammer against creators! Flouting copyright is great when it can be used as a hammer against creators!
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16. Thus, pro-piracy positions are also not themselves principled anti-corporate or anti-capitalist positions. Plenty of the time "Oh yeah, information needs to be free!" business is just some kid with a bad haircut and funny glasses forming an objective bloc with ConHugeCo.
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17. So copyright is a site of struggle and that struggle largely manifests in common practice of licensing rights and then in the courts—and as you probably already know, large companies have more and better lawyers than even your favorite rich writer or inventor.
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18. So in fact there are times when it might make sense to take a pro-piracy position (are corporations using copyright to hammer creators?) and there are times when it might make sense to take an anti-piracy position (are corporations flouting copyright to hammer creators?).
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19. But isn't it best that all intangibles be free? Yes! It is also best that food, shelter, healthcare, utilities, and other commanding heights of the economy be free, workplaces democratic, and the market a Cockshott-Cottrell tatonnement within a cybernetic planned economy.
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20. Does one get to commanding heights/workplace democracy/shadow markets by siding with corporations that flout copyright? Not anymore than one destroys the wage-labour system by siding with corporations that withhold wages.
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21. It was interesting to see, earlier this week, people calling for certain novels in popular series to be released early, the way certain current films are going to streaming immediately. The studios don't care if you're safe at home. The fucking theaters are closed!
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22. Books also stay in print much longer than movies stay in the theater, plus half of them already get to readers via mail order. There's no need other than baby-hand gimme-gimmie that a novel needs to be released early during a pandemic.
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23. There's little principled talk from supporters of Open Library—which by the way has a dumb interface and awful-looking scans, so it's worth what you pay for it—despite the left gloss on today's rhetoric. It's still siding with a big corporate complex. (NGOs *are* corps.)
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24. Just keep in mind, whenever any institution says that they just want to help by either opening the floodgates, or by slamming them shut...THEY DO NOT WANT TO HELP. Fin.
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End of conversation
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