Regarding file sharing

In 1790 there were about six hundred for-pay lending libraries in England. As public libraries began to offer for free what these offered for a price, for-pay libraries gradually ceased to exist. In the twenty-first century, digital technology makes it possible to reproduce books, recordings and films at essentially no cost. The for-pay bookstore, record store and cinema are now also threatened with extinction. File sharers occupy the same threatening position in the twenty-first century that public libraries did in the nineteenth. Access to culture for the poor has always been opposed by commercial interests that hope to profit by making culture accessible to the rich. We who sincerely care about culture, however, have always applauded free access to culture.

Opponents of file sharing argue that it lessens the rewards for those who create culture. But the sincere artist produces art for the sake of art, not for the sake of rewards. The only art that file sharing threatens is commodity art. Anything we can do to remove the taint of profit is a boon to genuine culture.