Have your cake and eat it too?

Yes, bitchez, i'm back! Just had some changes in my life that required my full attention. This one will be a little short as i still have stuff to do, but who cares. Oh, and wow, a couple of weeks ago i kinda had this blog's one year anniversary! I missed it but again, who cares.

Anyway, this time, the bullshitting will be about having your cake and eating it too. For example, copyrights. Media and software companies now insist that piracy is theft. It is a very convenient way to equate analog world with digital world, but it's misleading. When you sell a physical CD, you can't sell it again later. With digital distribution this is not the case - you can make as many copies as you like and sell them.

In fact, in the simplest case, to "sell" digital copies you just need only one copy, means of receiving payments and some form of distribution, be it a rapidshare account or a personal website (both of which don't require any effort whatsoever). To sell analog copies, you need... Well, you know what you need - a distribution platform, a place to store all these CD's and loads of other expensive stuff. So selling digital copies is in no way analogous to selling analog copies, and thus downloading a song for free from elsewhere does not equate to stealing. If anything, it's more like getting it from another retailer, one that has a better price, more convenient delivery and DRM-free format.

You insist that it is stealing? OK, you want to equate digital copies to analog copies. Fine. Then give back our rights of first sale, rights to share it with a friend (like you would share a hammer for example), returns and refunds in case of bad product and loads of other things that are associated with physical goods. Oh, you're now insisting that selling digital copies is not actually selling, but "licensing", so those pesky consumer rights don't apply? OK then, if "selling" isn't actually selling, then stealing isn't actually stealing.

And no, rent analogy does not apply here. After all, you don't have to upload back (read - return) your song after some time passes, do you? So how is that renting? OK, not renting, licensing? Fine, but then piracy is not theft either, it's simply a license violation - kinda like driving without a license. While license violations could have serious consequences, it's still in no way similar to stealing. So shut up and fuck off.