Piracy: The Moral Ideal

There is a technique by which much of the world is kept controlled. It is called ‘guilt’. By engendering a sense of guilt in a person, that person comes to naturally believe that they deserve punishment. They will accept suffering or hardship as fair payment for their guilt. They will do what others say to avoid further guilt, and to atone. By this method, many individuals have come to wrongfully associate morality with legality. This association is incorrect. What is moral is decided by an individual, and when upheld by many individuals, it becomes law. But manmade laws are not the laws of reality, just as a majority belief in a lie does not make it the truth.

Piracy, while not condoned by human law, is regardless a law of reality.

Copyrighting is a system that was devised to ensure that the original creator of an artistic work could receive payment for any use or reproduction of that work. This was instigated at a time when it was nigh impossible to be self-supporting in an artistic field. The audience for an artistic work was too thinly spread. Only in the meeting halls – taverns and churches and markets – could bards busk a living. Those who were known for their skill could, when lucky, find a patron who would provide for them while they carried about their art, often in exchange for an endorsement of their patron in the cover of a book, the subject of a painting, or the introduction to a ballad. Patronage was not ironclad, as sometimes an artist’s patron would grow bored and forget about their promise of support. Writers who approached a printing house directly could sell their manuscript to a publisher for a lump fee.

When copyrighting was first decreed, it was a mix of good and bad, as all new laws are. It was limiting in the sense that all copyrights had to be sanctioned by The Stationer’s Company, who beside this service were entitled to seize and censor materials they deemed hazardous to the public interest. The implication being that all valid creations in the new system would be supportable not according to the beliefs of the artist or the audience, but a third party censor.

But copyrighting was, at that moment in history, good, for the prevailing reason that made even the most popular bards suffer: an inability to reach a wide audience. Even a performance in the most tightly packed tavern would afford a bard a fraction of what their work was worth, should they compare it to playing for the whole world of people who would pay to hear their songs. The function of the publishers was Distribution. They printed as close a replica of an artist’s work as they could, and spread it across as wide an audience as possible. Before copyrighting they could do this without the artist getting paid for the irreplaceable, intellectual component of the work. The Distributors would profit not only from the Distribution, but claim the rights of Creation, too. Take note of that: Distributers are not the Creators of a work. Copyright ensured that Distributors were symbionts of that work rather than parasites making use of the creative talents of others.

Then entered smugglers, or as they are more generally painted, pirates. Smugglers are those who have found a way to be Distributors at a fraction of the cost of a product’s value. They do this by avoiding taxes; aside from the ‘tax’ of copyright, this includes shipping taxes, road taxes, tax for warehouses, bureaucratic taxes, and service taxes. In short, they are those who have found the most efficient route for Distribution, where other Distributors stick to the mainstream, ‘legal’ avenues of logistics. Because the smugglers were not part of an official empire or navy, governments lost a lot of money due to their operation. They painted a picture of them as ‘Pirates’ – cutthroat, filthy criminals infested with lice, perpetually drunk, whoring and stealing wherever they went. They identified them with the highwaymen who stole at the point of gun, or the mercenary privateers of foreign nations who attacked their trade routes. ‘Pirate’ is a word for anyone who disobeys the law, conveniently clumped together as ‘the enemy’.

Copyright evolved over the centuries. Particularly when minds such as Thomas Jefferson realized the worth of free information, and worked towards ending individually placed copyrights after a number of years, so that information – though outdated – would be free. This presented an interesting new concept: the act of Creation of information, or art, or technology, cannot be free because the Creator needs to make a living. But once that information reaches a critical point of Distribution; when it has reached the shores of every continent, when it has become endemic to the structure of a nation, is it not then in a sense the property of whatever mind is capable of holding it?

Copyright remained a stable and fair system until one critical change in the reality of our world: 

Cyberspace.

Cyberspace is a reality in which information exists in a state of maximum Distribution. It is at once available across the world: on every shore, in every nation, with such a wide user base that the cost of its infrastructure is negligible. It is, in short, the most efficient Distributor. It has made the traditional modes of transferring information – DVD, VHS, TV – obsolete. Distribution costs nothing.

Copyright entitles a publisher to a percentage of the cost of each distributed product.

What is any percentage of a nil cost?

Distributors will warn you about the evil of piracy, the importance of copyrighting, and how ‘stealing’ information is hurting their industry – an industry which they waste no time claiming to be responsible for. They remove any distinction between being a ‘Creator’ or a ‘Distributor’. They profit from the widespread belief that it means the same thing, and that by evading a non-essential and costly Distributor, the Creator will be destroyed too.

Make no mistake, piracy will destroy the industry of the Distributors. Millions of people will lose their jobs if that happens, and many artists who profit from the clever distribution of an inferior product will not be able to compete with those who have managed to extract funds from the patrons of a better one. But there is a word for the sentimental payment of a group which earns as much for their work as other, more skilled workers: Communism.

This leads to a realization that many are afraid to face: artists no longer need publishers to distribute their product, and cannot rely on the outdated copyright system to pay them the true value of their work. But along with this there come expected benefits.

Who benefits the most from a product being distributed as widely as possible?

Talented artists.

Bad artists will quickly be discovered as frauds, and will not be able to rely on advertisers to peddle their inferior product at more than its worth, as its true value (the information, themes and sensations it contains) are freely available for consideration. It is only through the promise of additional good work on top of the successful Artistic creations they have already made accessible across cyberspace that an Artist will be able to turn a profit. In short, they will be paid for the act of Creation, at the highest price they feel they can sell it.

Cyberspace is, in effect, a planetary tavern, where they as bards can play to an audience of millions. Any patrons seeking an artist can find them, no matter where they are in the world. Where before the idea of having more than one patron was a logistic impossibility, today crowd funding is a reality, where millions of donators – even those without the funds to finance an entire artistic project – can contribute to the survival of their favourite creators.

Other fund sources, like advertising and merchandising, will also be able to benefit from their support of artists. Merchandisers in particular should be in favour of maximum distribution, as they generate profit through the fanatical adulation of successful artists. As such, it benefits them to fund artistic projects they feel are likely to be a success.

Advertisers will also benefit from stepping in to sponsor emerging artists directly, rather than sponsoring their former Distributors. Cyberspace is a competitive market because of the fact that it is the most efficient means of distribution. Often the prevalence of information makes finding the right information difficult. Advertisers will be needed as information brokers to help people find the best projects to fund, and artists will need them to advertise their product to gain the edge over others not yet established in the field, and to make the particulars of their project known. Advertisers can develop their own symbiosis with artists by managing their public image, giving money to artists in order to help their project be actualized (taking a percentage of each donation), and receiving money from other, less promising artists who never-the-less believe their project will be a success.

In short, Distributors are deadweight. ‘The industry’ is larger than them, consisting of the far more important Artists, Merchandisers, Advertisers, and – by no means forgettable – Consumers who need Art in their lives, and will pay artists to make it for them.

The phasing out of meatspace (‘real life’) Distributors is happening slowly, giving time for the Industry to reestablish itself. This is a good thing – if it were to cease to exist tomorrow, we would not have the infrastructure to support the newer, better system of a Free Information Economy. But in its death throes, the Distributors are doing something very wrong: they are attempting to brand those capable of doing a better job than them as criminals, and the supporters of pirate distributors as criminals. They wish to sell their products based on the idea that there is something wrong with using a superior service provider. This is the very antithesis of the Free Market, an immoral predation of superior value, though not an illegal predation.

This is my plea to those who do practice Piracy:

Don’t feel guilty about it. You aren’t doing anything wrong, or hurting good artists, or breaking any law deserving of that term. You have found the most direct and efficient way of exposing yourself to human culture, and the chances are you’re a pirate because you can’t afford to pay the taxes that come with meatspace distribution. Invest your money in ways to improve your life. One day, when your bank balance is fat and healthy, you can find the way that suits you best to fund the creation of art you know you will both appreciate and enjoy.

This is my plea to those who don’t:

Stop condemning pirates. You are not better than them because you do what is Legal without considering its Moral implications. You are not better because your cable package supports artists indifferently, rather than awarding them individually for their merit and skill. You are not better because you are in a position to waste money on a costly, inferior Distribution system. You are not better because you base your superiority on the debasement of others. Do what is best for you, by all means, but don’t hate those who do what is best for themselves.

Information Wants to be Expensive. High Calibre. Valued.

but never forget -

Information Wants to be Free.

Discursive Essay: Doctor Who S8.02 - Into the Dalek

The Time:            2000 + more years AD

The Place:           A Dalek

The Situation:    Mapping the Anatomy of Good and Evil

In this episode the Doctor meets up with the Combined Galactic Resistance on the medical ship Aristotle where they are hiding from a force of Daleks. They have captured an injured Dalek who by all appearances is ‘good’ – in the sense that he wishes to exterminate Daleks rather than regular people. But his injuries are killing him. Knowing what a difference having even one good Dalek might make, the Doctor agrees to be shrunk and sent into the Dalek’s body to locate and fix the damage.

“Fantastic idea for a movie. Terrible idea for a proctologist.”

~The Doctor

The main conflict in this episode is the classic one of good and evil. What is ‘Good’? What is ‘Evil’?

The contrast is placed between two morally dubious characters: The Doctor, and his patient.

The Doctor is conflicted because he is one of the most dangerous people in the universe: a justified racist. Every encounter he has had with the Daleks has asserted their genocidal, single-minded nature, their disrespect for life and individuality. This is his first encounter with one who does not fit into that mold, and so he is now left in the difficult position of overcoming his own racial hatred. It’s a kind reminder that all judgment is technically prejudice, because things can always change tomorrow. After seeing a stone fall a thousand times, we are certain – and right – to act on the notion that gravity will intervene the next time the stone is dropped. But that does not mean that it can’t float when dropped. It is just highly improbable. For The Doctor to see a floating Dalek after 2000 years of seeing them fall, it is the most improbable thing in the world. He needs one who has has not felt the gravity of the Daleks so deeply.

Knowing that he needs a companion at his side to govern his nature and hold him back when his prejudice blinds him, he fetches Clara.

“Yeah, my carer. She cares so that I don’t have to.”

The Doctor and his Dalek, Rusty, are greatly similar in the sense that both hate Daleks. In Rusty this is a malfunction, and to an extent it is also a malfunction in The Doctor. The racism they share is described as a ‘block’ in their memory filters that discounts any evidence to the contrary of what they have been told to believe. In The Doctor it is a malfunction for this block to exist. It the Dalek it is a malfunction for the block to be removed.

In light of this, is ‘function’ something that can be an indicator of morality? Is a ‘good’ Dalek one who behaves like a Dalek? Do we only see The Doctor as ‘good’ when he functions as we expect humans to behave, even if he is not human?

This is the idea of morality as a social construct. It is very often seen as being the case in real life, too. Only in very close-minded communities is sex now seen as a sin if done as an act of pleasure, but even two centuries ago this ban on pleasure was an idea of the mainstream, and an indication of morality. There are other constructs we have that allow us to make assertions on people’s moral nature that are almost certainly a product of social norms, from judgment passed on piercings to hairstyles to blood types. The question is, is the moral relativity between the Daleks and everyone else a matter of social norm, or is there a deeper, more universal measure of morality to direct it?

We get to see the Doctor portrayed in the light of evil as the Aristotle’s crew descends through the Dalek’s body. He tells a lie of convenience to a soldier who is about to be killed by antibodies. He does not mourn the soldier’s death even when swimming in his digesting proteins. He distrusts and belittles the Dalek as they converse. The Doctor is always like this, of course, but it is doubly important in the context of this episode because it strips away what might be termed as Superficial Morality. It is very easy to judge people as ‘good’ because they are sweet, or polite. But in the end, are these really the qualities that make a ‘good’ person? Especially a good Doctor? Or do we rather judge the goodness of a Doctor on its ability to deal with that wonderfully impossible vow, ‘To do no harm’, and to cure any patient who asks for their aid?

Bedside manner isn’t really worth all that much. Treating a patient’s feelings rarely takes preference over treating their wellbeing.

As the Dalek is explored further, the reason for its conversion becomes clear. It has witnessed and processed the memory of the birth of a star – undeniable proof that the universe itself creates life, and will perpetuate the conditions under which life will arise. This is an example of another type of morality: Universal Law. If the universe has an objective contrary to that of any of its internal forces, that internal force puts itself in competition with the universe, and is doomed to fail. There is in fact an objective, universal morality which exists outside of social construct. Is it then moral to side with the will of something so large and undeniable that it is godlike? Is ‘the will of the universe’ morality?

"Resistance is futile. Life returns. Life prevails. Resistance is futile.”

Ultimately, the Dalek cannot be saved. As soon as its injury is healed, the electronic filters in its memory kick in and it forgets the star birth which led it to conclude that the Daleks were evil. It’s back to what it always was, led by the chains of its species and social morality. Exterminate. Exterminate. Exterminate.

The significance of this is to point out that there are no ‘fixes’ to make us good or evil. It isn’t an on-off switch, and even when we are healthy and at our best, we are still capable of being evil because prejudice is part of our nature, something in our brains that blurs experiences together to make a firm operating code. It is never a war that can be fought passively. It is based on active choice.

The Doctor gives up hope for a little while, until his external conscience reminds him not to be a racist.

“Is that really what we’ve learned today? Think about it. Is that what we’ve learned?

~The Inestimable Clara Oswald

What they learn inside the Dalek is that Dalek’s are capable of independent thought, but that independent thought has been stripped from them to make the perfect soldiers. They have been forced to hold one particular belief, no matter what changes they perceive in the world around them. They have an engineered prejudice, an inner code which overwrites their reason and forbids choice.

So long as they cannot act on their own initiative or learn from the memories incarcerated in their Cortex Vaults, they remain evil beings. Evil, in other words, is to take perceptions on the level that they are presented: as orders, as motivators of instinct, without thinking about them and reaching new conclusions. Evil is the unthinking prejudice of a soldier, the absence of free will.

“Am I a good man?”

The Doctor reveals that after going to Scaro and meeting the Daleks, he realized who he was by knowing he was not them. He positioned himself in direct opposition to them, knowing that everything they were was everything he hated. This is yet another type of morality in being the morality of opposition. In a sense it is an instinctive morality, because it judges right and wrong based on feelings. But most importantly, it is Subjective morality. It is the act of deciding on what is right not as social propriety, or as deference to a superior force of nature, but rather from the perspective of an individual actor set against all of these things. An individual’s morals are based on choices that are made despite the pressure of these external forces.

But there’s a problem that comes with subjectivity: it marks all choices as equal. It presents the notion that choices are little more than personal opinion, whim and emotion. If The Doctor’s nature was primarily based on hatred, could he honestly say his choice was any better than a Dalek’s?

“I see beauty. I see endless, divine perfection.”

“Make it a part of you. Put it inside of you, and live by it.”

“I see into your soul, Doctor. I see beauty. I see divinity. I see… HATRED. Hatred of the Daleks. And it is good.”

Here we see the war between the subjective hate The Doctor has nurtured, and the objective acceptance of the perfection of the universe. Both are fighting within him. The Doctor does hate. By seeing beauty, he admits love. Love and hate are inside of him simultaneously, fighting for supremacy. He makes a conscious effort to choose love over hate; peace over war. Understanding over obliteration. In this the nature of morality cannot be more clear: it is choice. Not only having a choice, or producing choices, but in making a choice you can live with. The Doctor’s choice is to unite his subjective morality with an objective morality, claiming one as the other and through it holding himself up to something higher than race or emotion; he is a scientist. He sees the perfection of the universe as his own personal perfection.

But Rusty does not. Even turned into a tool against the Dalek empire, it lets hate dominate over beauty. It fails to become good, even though it fights evil, because extermination is more important to it than perfection. It makes the wrong subjective choice, falling to the trap of believing an objective will has no relevance.

“I am not a good Dalek. You are a good Dalek.”

~Rusty

It doesn’t really matter that the Doctor is flesh and time and the Daleks are pus and metal: in a similar way that we could speak of Daleks as humane or inhumane, and endow them with the potential of humanity, they speak of The Doctor as Dalek, having inside of him the potential for both good and evil. It is individual choice that makes a person good or evil. Not their race.

A bad wolf follows the orders of her stomach. A good man chooses its own orders.

Miniaturization?

Symbolically this looks at the idea of what happens when a body becomes a person’s universe, the objective “Universal Law” that is one component in choosing moral behavior. The intention of this is to point out that moral objectivity isn’t only something that operates out in the world, but inside people, too. The Doctor, if taken as a follower of objective morality, believes in beauty and perfection because everything in the world around him gravitates towards beauty and perfection. But in entering a universal body of a Dalek, everything around him instead gravitates to disgust and extermination. If he were purely objective, he would adopt these policies as his guiding laws. Good becomes the subjective decision to act against the will of the universal Dalek. It is questionable whether The Doctor would succeed in fighting against this evil universe if he had not brought his own external (objective) conscience with him in the form of Clara. He himself sees that his subjective will towards the Daleks is to commit evil, and if the objective decision too is evil, he has lost sight of all possibility of good.

Companions as Conscience

A recurring theme in Doctor Who is in that he lacks the moral centre needed to make good judgments. This is why he chooses human companions, and debatably, female companions. Being an immensely ancient and powerful being, there are times when his bedside manner is truly deplorable, as he has the power to do anything – anything – and none of the awareness of how it might impact an individual life, governed by fragmented perceptions (feelings) of what he sees clearly. While he tackles the big problem of fixing wounds in the galaxy, his companion acts as a nurse and treats the individuals affected by the problem, just as when combatting a plague a doctor investigates and fights the symptoms while the nurse keeps the patients alive long enough to benefit from a cure. Because of this, they often arise as his best resource for acquiring important details he may have overlooked in the course of diagnosis, such as in this episode when Clara points out that when liberated from anatomy, Rusty would act against the Daleks.

Humans, perishing little things that we are, imperfect in sense and sensibility, are the perfect companions for The Doctor, being the emotional or ‘subjective’ component functioning in a universe where he plays as an objective god. Females are selected over males because they are seen to be more in tune with the emotional, more likely to use diplomacy and understanding over ‘Soldiering’ when confronted with the unknown. They stand up to him when he is losing his ‘humanity’ rather than blindly following his orders.

This is the function of a conscience: a con-sci-ence: a complete condition of knowledge, or a regard of all things. To have an awareness of all factors of the universe, both very complex and very basic. While The Doctor has a knowledge of complex things, he could never be accused of being basic. He needs a human for that. Together they form conscience, making good decisions for the patient and for their condition.

Aristotle: Medicine & Ethics

The medical spacecraft where this episode takes place is called the Aristotle, named (presumably) for the forefather of the scientific movement. Aristotle did not make his mark on medicine so much as he did on ethics. But it is important to note how deeply the two are entwined. Who is put in the position of doing more good or harm to an individual life than a doctor? Doctors blur the line between good and evil, hurting others in the process of healing them. Sometimes they are even called upon to fix things that are not broken, and are faced with the ethics of changing a person’s nature to be socially acceptable, even if doing so is against that person’s will. This episode cleverly portrays the obscurity of morality through the practice of medicine.

Particular to this episode, Aristotle’s concept of Ergon is exhibited, the idea that all things have a proper function and are judged as ‘good’ by adhering to it. A good pencil writes marvelously without splintering or needing to be sharpened regularly. A good poison kills efficiently and with the required amount of suffering. Ergon is goodness as functionality. In this sense, Daleks are good by exterminating efficiently. The Doctor’s haunting question, “Am I a good man?” takes on a darker edge: does he possess any of the qualities of a functional human being? Can he even pretend to be one? Or is he so utterly alien as to be unable of even knowing what is right by other species?

To continue the course in Aristotelian ethics we have Logos, or Reason, which is taken as the correct framework for the animating spirit of man. In a sense this spirit it the ‘objective’, or the ‘form’ common to all men, oftentimes contradicted by the ethics of contextual decisions. An ideal human does not hack off people’s limbs. But a doctor might, to stop an infection. This is Phronesis, practical wisdom under which decisions can be made in the grey between Logos and Ergon.

Recap on Subjectivity and Objectivity:

Subjectivity   – The belief that the Subject of the universe is the Self, or the Observer, or the Decision-Maker (in brief, You, reader). All other things in existence are objects on which the Subject acts.

Objectivity     – The belief that the Subject of the universe is external to the Self. The self and other things in existence are all objects, acting according to the will of a conceptual Subject.

While some might say “Well it’s all perspective, innit?” it really isn’t. Yes, we all make decisions. But who we are to begin with is entirely a sum of nature and nurture, determined by contact with objects around us and our ability to reason out their meaning. Rebellion to an Objective Subject is based on the failure to reason, and while it is entertaining resistance is ultimately futile and a predetermined failure, just as if at this very moment you chose never to urinate again. Objects act against others until logic forces an assertion of universal will. While an illusory freewill gives us all an impression of being a Subjective Subject, it is an awareness of the limitations of choice that offer a counterexample, and an ultimate truth: what is Subjective and acts askew to the Objective is suicidal, whether as an individual or as a society, such as in the Dalek Empire. What is done from a Subjective vantage aligned with the Objective may temporarily fail but will ultimately succeed, promoting life, longevity, and perfection.

PINK

Clara is joined in this episode by a new love interest: ‘Rupert’ Danny Pink, who ironically enough used to be a soldier. The Doctor hates soldiers for the same reason he hates Daleks: they kill indiscriminately, following orders rather than making choices themselves, and they destroy things they do not fully understand (most soldiers die in Doctor Who, and in many cases are killed by things acting in self-defense. Many, but not all. When they shoot at things they don’t understand that really are trying to kill them, the Doctor is reasonably quiet.)

Pink is an interesting mess of emotions. On the one hand he respects soldiers (markedly distinct from the officers who direct them), and on the other he is wracked by guilt for accidentally shooting a civilian in the war. He rejects the idea that the only purpose soldiers serve is killing, and makes it known that he spent much of the war digging wells in drought areas.