Thursday 27th April 2023
anarchistmemecollective
wow tumblr really loves piracy huh. this didn’t break 100 on any other platform, but got 10k notes in less than 24 hours here. yo ho tumblrinas.
littlestfallenangel
foone
As Charles Stross said, we used to have a word for people who collected media and organized it and made it available to everyone for free. We called them "Librarians".
Pirates and Librarians and Archivists aren't different types of people, they're different sides of the same coin. Pirate if you have to, Archive if it's at risk, Library...ize? If you can.
okay the lack of a verb for "Library" slightly ruins the metaphor. But the point is: Librarians make sure everyone can access it. Archivists make sure it will always exist. Pirates make sure it can be gotten for free, without limitations. We need all these roles at different times, and they all work together.
Remember, if you've seen Nosferatu, the super influential silent horror film, it's because of piracy. All the "legal" copies were destroyed. Archivists made sure the pirated copies lasted. And Librarians made sure you could easily watch a copy.
