Driving down civilisation road, it takes effort to grapple with the ramifications of our choices along the way. Out of basic self-interest, we often ignore our own effects upon the world. You throw your rubbish out the window as you drive on by, thinking “I’m just one person, so why worry?”
Such was my mentality as a college student during what we might call the Napster Boom, where suddenly recorded music was digitised and transformed into free content via one “file-sharing” service after another. And yes, those are ironic quotation marks. Because describing exploitative digital piracy sites as though they are benign swap-shops where one can ‘share’ ‘files’ is just one of the many kinds of bollocks that pepper this debate.
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