So I just read Bill Gates’ 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.


ai is the rich stealing from us, piracy is usually us taking it from the rich.
That’s true in the same way that Trump’s tariffs are paid by other countries. Which is to say: Not at all.
Bill Gates was no billionaire at the time. His background was probably shared by almost all computer hobbyists at the time.
Hardly. Bill Gates came from a wealthy family, attended a private school, and through it had thousands of hours of computer programming time several years before even the Altair 8800 came out. He had a personal connection to IBM through his mother, which is how Microsoft got the DOS deal. His circumstances were unique, and his success the result of a hefty dose of luck.
What kind of person owned a computer as a hobby in 1976?
a rich person
AI is theft in the same way that all private property theft. It isnt the piracy of media, it’s the alienation of labor from its product, and withholding it for profit.
Private property is not theft, it is exploitation. Marx already refuted this anarchist childish way of thinking
The exploitation of private property is derived from the exclusion of labor from its product - maybe you have a different understanding of what ‘theft’ means, but it’s the principled exclusion of what labor produces from the labor producing it that is the basis of marx’s claim of ‘exploitation’
All private property is theft? Lmao go back to your cave tankie
Some people on the Left regretfully tried to redefine Private Property and split off some private property into “personal property” but since that’s not how the language works it’s caused endless miscommunication. By private property is theft he means Private Mean’s of Production with the caveat that people essentially own their owns but homes can’t be bought/sold/inherited.
“Property is theft.”
Lmao sorry for not being able to take this seriously
yes.
???
Clearly one of those horrible anarchotankapalists.
Anarchists believe that “all property is theft”? Lol
There is some disagreement between people who, for example, favor Proudhon versus those who favor Kropotkin over the ownership of personal tools that are involved in individual trade-craft. As with any ideology there are varying schools of thought but the common ideological baseline is that anything that requires capital investment should be collectively controlled and operated for the common good. A person’s personal possessions including their home and tools required for self sufficiency are not considered “property” or a “means of production” by almost anyone.
A good real world example is the FOSS community, most of us would be quite vexed to say the least if someone started changing stuff on our personal computers but we also actively share our code, experience, and knowledge with the world for free. Same goes for the open hardware folks, permacomputing community, and the open research community.
Yet none of that can be interpreted as “all property is theft” unless you redefine what “property” itself means which is a terrible strategy for advertising Anarchy.
private property, distinct from personal property.
Is it? This dichotomy seems incredibly artificial and unsustainable.
Does it really? I don’t find it to be a challenging distinction at all
tbf that’s also the tankie view about it.
Even libertarians, who are on the exact opposite side economically, agree IP is garbage made and manipulated to enrich the few.
And piracy is actual enjoyment of art made by hardworking devs who unfortunately work for multi billion dollar companies T-T