Thou Shalt Pirate Pornography

A few people are pointing this out as an example of some of the religious hypocrisy endemic in organized Catholicism. While they’re making a good case about it — this is in fact hypocritical, if you consider piracy stealing — I’d rather point out that this makes these people every bit as human as anyone else. They are not special, they are not sacred, and they are not better than anyone else in any way.

What am I talking about this time? Another sex scandal, perhaps? Well, tangentially, maybe. But in this case, it’s priests admitting to downloading DVD screeners of yet-unreleased movies, and logs of holy men downloading some perfectly ordinary lesbian and BDSM pornography.

But not just any holy men… the IPs in question belong to people inside the Holy See.

Helped by Scaneye, TorrentFreak decided to take a look at the recent downloading habits of people living in the most religious city-state in the world – the Vatican.

The Vatican is a small place so downloading levels are very low. However, we did notice that one particular IP address came up a number of times, on each occasion linked to TV shows such as Chicago Fire, Lightfields, The Neighbours and Touch. Another IP address showed an interest in The Americans.
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In the interests of science we researched each of the titles (including the curiously named RS77_Episode 01) and discovered that downloaders in the Vatican have one or two unusual ‘niche’ interests. We won’t link to our discoveries here, but feel free to do your own ‘research’ using the titles shown above. There isn’t a commandment that covers these films directly, but some might argue there should be.

Continue reading “Thou Shalt Pirate Pornography”

Thou Shalt Pirate Pornography
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How do you value things that are freely obtained?

Amanda Palmer talks about how she’s monetized her art in a non-traditional manner, and how much success she has had and how much money she has made despite giving her music away for free.

Her husband had some words about piracy that dovetail beautifully with Amanda’s philosophy. They got me to thinking — how much do we really value the things that we get without paying for them?
Continue reading “How do you value things that are freely obtained?”

How do you value things that are freely obtained?

Neil Gaiman: Piracy boosts sales

It’s very telling to see someone extraordinarily popular, extraordinarily widely-read, and with a great deal to lose, put his own works up on the internet for free as an experiment, and change his mind about piracy when the empirical evidence proves his original thoughts on the matter wrong.

Just yesterday, I bought a copy of Watchmen — my first ever — despite having read it years ago. Why would I have bought it, if I already know the story? If I already read it for free once before? Because the content is worth it to me, and I never would have known that for certain if I hadn’t read it first.
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Neil Gaiman: Piracy boosts sales

The Worldwide Copyfight

The Internet won a blow for sanity in defeating SOPA/PIPA, the content middleman industry’s latest salvo in the fight to keep the old ways of making money off content profitable. And yet, the content middleman industry lumbers on, as only a dying cash cow can.

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The Worldwide Copyfight