Piracy has become so normalised that people take it for granted that there are no legal risks involved. Normalising piracy is the first step for the ideals of software freedom to flourish.

After all what is a digital file if not a bunch of writing that instructs the computer to draw pixels on your screen. You wouldn’t copyright the words to ask a human to make a drawing about a copyrighted something, so why do it for a computer?

[–] moody@lemmings.world 18 points 2 days ago (2 children)

After all what is a digital file if not a bunch of writing that instructs the computer to draw pixels on your screen.

A digital file is just a number, potentially a very big number, but that's all it is.

[–] tatterdemalion@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Oh come on. What's next?

"Child pornography is just a really big number, after all."

"I didn't murder anyone, I just rearranged some atoms. We're all just really big collections of atoms after all."

If you remove enough semantic layers, you can make anything sound benign.

I'm not anti-piracy, I just think these lines of argumentation are so flimsy as to be entirely worthless for the cause.

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

To be fair, that's also like, all information

[–] matey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

I think that's the point.

[–] m4a@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Funny thing is, if the instructions are written down I'm pretty sure they are copyrightable

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 days ago

Thats what copyleft licensing is for and why physical things are increasingly using gpl and other open software licenses.