Times are changing and we all can see that. All the information is available online. Every movie, music and old piece of art reaches its viewers with the help of internet. There are communities gathered to discuss stuff. Forums. Besides that lot of us have our own personalized profile page. We have mail box, newspaper, calendar, notebook, communication, pictures, sites we share our thoughts and daily images. We have tons of information lying there and great indexes to help us find them.
The good thing is all of this is for free, no exceptions. You can take whatever you can and no questions will be asked, unless it is copyrighted. You can freely listen to a song that has been uploaded on the Youtube but if you download it, federals might come for you as well. If you upload and distribute the song, you are in even more trouble. Napster has been sued so as Thepiratebay. They weren’t the uploaders on the first place. They just help us reach to our destination, another version of Google so to say.
Record companies hold a great deal of power about songs in their hands and they intend to keep it that way. They earn millions and they are hungry for more. Well I mentioned that the times are changing, so does the music industry. Now thanks to sites like Youtube, Spotify and Soundcloud we can stream music for free. For an acceptable amount of money we can also download every piece of song on Spotify or Itunes. While doing that they are still protecting the artist. Buying just a one CD cost more than 1 mount of membership on Spotify where you can listen as much as you like. It is also much more struggle for fans to take the CD, download on the computer and then transfer it on the phone or mp3 player. Now with one click you are good to go.
Street artists work for free and exhibit for free. They don’t struggle for money at the end of the work. They do it to reach people, affect some lives and make someone think about what they have done. There are other artists who upload their work online and expect to have some viewers, try to make a name for them. Amateur bands upload their music, photographers upload their pictures and painters upload their drawings. The biggest joy for them is to see how many clicks, views their piece has made.
As a graphic design student, my work involves finding online images and manipulating them. If I had to pay for every single image I use, I would be broke by now. There is a vast library online waiting for me to use it. I wouldn’t want to pay for it if I have the chance to get them for free. I can’t be sure at the first glimpse, if the image that I am using will suit my design. I have to use it first to see if it is ok. Having every image for free gives me the opportunity to try different combinations.
Streaming music or movies is the same. You wouldn’t know if you will like that piece, so you give it a shot. In a record or DVD shop you can only look at the cover and then decide if you like it or not. Maybe you have read some reviews about it so you know what to expect. Well there are some computers on record shops, where you scan the cd and it lets you listen to the songs in it. But you can do all of this things on home with the tip of your fingers. It is not even piracy anymore it Is called streaming.
Sampler is a tool that lets you record any piece of guitar riff or drum beat, so you can use it again on your own composition. It is the tool responsible for birth and growing of the hip-hop music, lets you copy a piece of a song and play it again on your new one. Sampler is popular and widely used by many great artists. Downloading a song for personal use is something, but copying the exact beat of an artist and use it for your own commercial piece is something different. And the thing is it is allowed and legal.
Many programmers as well as Google’s Deep Mind department share their codes online, open source. Everyone knows that it is almost impossible to create an artificial intelligence on your own. You need a team to work on different aspects of the project at the same time. When you get stuck at somewhere you need to get help from others, or when you try to program same thing that has been already done, you just copy their code and you are released from a huge amount of work.
Wkileaks exposed documents about United States Government with the help of whistleblowers. Exposed documents show the hidden truth about Iraq and Afghanistan wars. How NSA spy on millions. They are open for every individual who wants to see the truth with their own eyes. Just like Wikileaks, Anonymous and other hacker groups are also working to reach to the secrets of governments and other corporations. Disclosure and secrets will not carry us to the bright futures, but clarity and open source sharing will.
Sharing is the idea here not pirating. While using torrent, someone with a specific file shares that file with other torrent users. On coding, a programmer shares his code with other programmers. Musicians share their beats and riffs with musicians. Street artists share their art with everyone passing by. Photographers do that, directors do that. When the idea is to reach people or help others than sharing is a great way for it.
A society that builds upon the past has much more potential to grow then a controlled one. It enables people to work together from different continents. Culturally and scientifically it is much more productive.
