Windows Halal
In pursuit of more faithfully living Catholicism, I was reading the YOUCAT the other day, and a passage from the section on the 7th commandment (Thou shalt not steal) stuck out to me:
The misappropriation of intellectual property is theft also. [2408-2409]
Not just PLAGIARISM is theft. The theft of intellectual property begins with copying other students’ work in school, continues in the illegal taking of materials from the Internet, applies to the making of unauthorized copies or trafficking in pirated copies in various media, and extends to business dealings in stolen concepts and ideas. Every acquisition of someone else’s intellectual property demands the free consent and appropriate remuneration of the author or inventor.
And then the realization hit me like a freight train - I’ve built my entire workflow of pirated media!
For laughs, I thought about the prospect of “going clean” so to speak, and reflexively repudiated the idea. Was I really going to act in the interest of greedy corporations who always screw over the author/artist? Would these (imaginary) lost profits actually dishearten the likes of Lars Ulrich trying to build a gold plated shark tank bar right next to his pool?
If you allow me the moral despooling, there are a few points of contention:
- An absolute statement like “all corporations” is probably not true. There is no way I can speak for every publisher/label ever made; I’m sure there are good deals struck and mutually beneficial relationships built every day.
- Isn’t one of the main tenants of Catholicism to refrain from judgement and leave that to God? Even if one publishing industry is outed for definitely striking an unfair deal with some up and coming talent, who am I to commit the same sin and steal what was stolen? Let God give the beating. If anything, my proper course of action would be to undo and prevent the wrongs with activism, but more on that later.
- Universilization - what if everybody pirated? What right do I have to believe I’m above the common good?
There’s a bit more that went into changing my mind, but that’s the bulk of it. Now, what does the action plan look like. Well, here’s a cool table!
| Contraband | Reconciliation | Sacrifice | Benefits | Success Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1800 MP3s of commercial music |
|
|
|
7/10 |
| 4 PDFs of college textbooks |
|
|
|
7/10 |
| 20 EPUBs of books I had already read or hoped to read soon |
|
|
|
5/10 |
| 400 MKVs of anime |
|
|
realizing that I had outgrown anime a long time ago and that it is no longer crucial for language gains | 8/10 |
| about 342 hours straight of anime dialogue |
|
|
|
6/10 |
| 7000 JPGs of downloaded memes, screenshots, artwork, wallpaper, etc. |
|
|
|
5/10 |
| 1 EXE of Sony Vegas Pro | deleting the EXE (software is pretty cutthroat; either you have it or you don’t lol) | logical, trained workflow in a competent NLE |
more strict adherence to only using free and open source software, getting really good at ffmpeg and scripting in lieu of a GUI | 9/10 |
| 200 PNGs of scanned church music |
|
|
not many tangible ones for me, at least. Sure, I guess being a good role model counts. | work in progress, but probably a 2/10 |
A few recurring themes stick out.
- It’s never been a better time to be a law-abiding normie. I recently asked my oldest brother, whose only lasting contribution to my life was blowing my mind with LimeWire back in 2005, if he still pirates, to which he said something to the effect of, “No; there’s not really any reason to anymore. I can just push the button on my phone and see whatever I want without having to hunt for it.” In my case, the wombo combo of affordable MVNOs and cheap Android phones that can run open source YouTube clients and access its bewilderingly massive catalog is a tall order that wouldn’t have been possible just 8 years ago. Among other loose ends, Casiopea’s entire discography only got uploaded to YouTube in late 2020, and Google’s acoustic fingerprinting that I have used to get my library in shape only came out in 2017.
- The “master” lists that I mention several times only have merit because I had spent hours upon hours tediously renaming every file in my collection to something more meaningful than “image.jpg” or “jazz.mp3”. If I hadn’t done that, I would have been in real hot water about ever finding the perfect dank mem or studying the song I heard only one time years ago - a luxury to be completely fair, but a massive relief nonetheless.
- One of the main goals of having hoarded my media in the first place was to have offline access to what I deemed to be essential. While trying out NewPipe, there was definitely a sense of entitlement I had to swallow and come to terms with every time I walked into an RF dead zone on campus and had the music stop. “I’m being such a cuck,” I’d tell myself. “I’m at the mercy of whatever the rich corporate billionaires want to offer me,” to which I’d follow up with, “We always have been, but breaking the law isn’t going to do anything about it. After all, that’s the closest to consent I could ever get from the content creator themself about how to use their product.”
Taking a step back from this whole endeavor, I’ve become a lot more literate and respectful of copyright notices and licenses on small content creator’s pages. I now see the logical extension of the FLOSS mentality to intellectual property and have a reason to lobby for more reasonable copyright laws that can benefit the average Joe - a reason I wouldn’t have had if I had continued to hoard media thoughtlessly and indiscriminately.