Great comment on Digg: When geeks lose it
Someone is heralding the finding of the movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley” on YouTube.com at Digg, and the conversation worked it’s way to file-sharing, as it’s prone to:
Amazing. 50+ posts and only one person has the guts to point out that posting or watching this movie online is illegal.
The response, about an hour after:
Just because it is “illegal” today doesn’t mean it will be tomorrow. Not all laws are good laws. Remember not to long ago it was illegal for women and black people to vote. It was also illegal to create, posses and/or consume alcohol. Oh and being accused of being a “witch” was an offense that required burning at the stake… just to make sure that you were not in fact a witch.
If we as a community have anything to say about it, media such as this won’t be “illegal” to watch on sites such as YouTube for long
This is why I feel confident that the Internet will be sticking around for some time and that technology will continue to thrive. The Geeks and their supporters are much too spastic, over-the-top, overdramatic and downright insane in their shrill attempts to stave of the opposition. They are willing to go as far as need be to save their toys. I mean, think about it:
Illegal for women and black people to vote = Watching Pirates of Silicon Valley on YouTube
Mark this down: Hyperbolic geeks will be America’s next Neocons. This type of dedication and ridiculousness tells me one thing: The geek shall inherit the Earth.
–WKW
February 19th, 2007 at 1:02 am
You cannot believe that when I made that comment, I was in any way saying that women and black folks not being able to vote was in any way equal to what is happening today with digital media. If you do then you are taking it way too literally.
That paragraph was only to illustrate that just because something is a law today does not mean that it is correct right or justified. That fact is proven time and again by how the law constantly changes to suit our moral needs. I simply used a glaring example, such as black people and women not being legally allowed to vote, to drive the point home. I could have just as easily used an example such as how not too long ago, in many parts of this country, it was illegal for a male and female couple to kiss in public.