Well, those who know me and have read things I’ve put up here at the Apocalypse area know how I feel about piracy: it’s not all THAT bad.
What? You think I’m only saying that because I want to be able to download Blake’s 7 or Eureka without some jackass accusing me of stealing their television show and somehow using the act of watching TV to steal your rights and claim the souls of the actors involved? You’re crazy.
First of all, Blake’s 7 ended with a metaphorical boulder killing everyone in five minutes flat. And Eureka insulted me when the studio accused us of doing that to our internet provider, thereby making me lose work for a full day and thus 10 hours of paycheck time. But yes, I would like the right to watch TV on my own terms, especially since our internet provider is now imposing usage limits which means live-streaming is *right out*. That whole freedom thing.
No, it’s because piracy has been proven time and again to increase sales and the number of fans. It spreads music, TV and books to areas where it would not otherwise be available (like my living room *cough* Eureka *cough*). In the old days we didn’t call it piracy. We called it SHARING. We also had other terms like freeware and shareware, and those terms didn’t mean anything near the money-grubbing meanings they have now. They’d earned their names.
But being as I’m just a little nobody, you don’t have to take my word for it. Rather, sit back and enjoy this interview with Neil Gaiman, writer of American Gods and the Sandman among other greats. I’m uploading my own copy, lest the Youtube version get taken down for… ahem… copyright violation or something.
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