It’s funny the title of the thread though! I used to pirate everything. Then I bought a Macbook, oh, 10 maybe 15 years ago. Windows is the main problem. The “PC” was always the problem. You go to the city to the industrial/commercial area and buy a 286, loaded with pirated software, often including the OS. LOL.
I think that, with the right intentions, to wield an idea, you have to understand it. You can make use of ideas, but to truly claim an idea you must get the nod from the ancestors. Only the present lives. So we care for our culture by updating it.
Philosophically, there has been a trend to shrug at messy problems – to understand that searching for symmetries can be harmful. The whole computer culture has a problem. It wants things scientific, but language is metaphoric, so there will never be a way to code ethics. This is why I often mention DeLanda, which is just Deleuze, in terms of territories (in terms of soft and hard boarders).
If I created a synthesizer and someone came along and copied it, I wouldn’t be happy. I don’t think its simple. But I wouldn’t be happy.
Here’s the thing though: Just because I don’t like it, doesn’t mean I need to will it to be a universal law (Kant). Kant thought that any ethical claim had to be a categorical imperative. I think that this holds, but mostly for each expert culture to decide for themselves. So I am fine with other people getting behind Berlinger. But I do not identify with that community in that way.
So, the idea is to move away from “rights talk” to “goods talk.” Rights are almost defined as undebatable. Goods, by definition are debatable. The next move is not to cook up some logical edifice that tells us how to organize our cultures, but instead to dream up some suggestions, some options for us to choose based on taste, not Truth.
The other thing people have lost, is conversations are not for convincing. They are for trotting out possibly offensive views, so that you can be told why they are offensive and stop thinking that way. So I am not try to convince. It’s more like spring cleaning.