#piracy

Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold. ↗

— Lemony Snicket

#piracy #traditional #humor

I don't think you should be an Auror, Harry," said Luna unexpectedly. Everybody looked at her. "The Aurors are part of the Rotfang Conspiracy, I thought everyone knew that. They're working to bring down the Ministry of Magic from within using a mixture of dark magic and gum disease. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#conspiracy #gum-disease #harry-potter #humor #luna-lovegood

The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country. ↗

— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

#conspiracy-theories #democracy #dictatorship #freedom #human-rights

If “piracy” means using value from someone else’s creative property without permission from that creator–as it is increasingly described today – then every industry affected by copyright today is the product and beneficiary of a certain kind of piracy. Film, records, radio, cable TV… Extremists in this debate love to say “You wouldn’t go into Barnes & Noble and take a book off of the shelf without paying; why should it be any different with online music?” The difference is, of course, that when you take a book from Barnes & Noble, it has one less book to sell. By contrast, when you take an MP3 from a computer network, there is not one less CD that can be sold. The physics of piracy of the intangible are different from the physics of piracy of the tangible. ↗

— Lawrence Lessig

#piracy #love

Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy. ↗

— Martin Amis

#conspiracy #evil #fiction #goes #mind

The grand jury, composed of 12 eminent New Orleans citizens, heard our evidence and indicted the defendant for participation in a conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy. ↗

— Jim Garrison

#citizens #composed #conspiracy #defendant #eminent

Let me say what I actually believe. I believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy, by Al Qaeda, and Osama Bin Laden, and no one else trying to hurt America. ↗

— Van Jones

#al #america #believe #bin #conspiracy

Antisemitism is unique among religious hatreds. It is a racist conspiracy theory fashioned for the needs of messianic and brutal rulers, as dictators from the Tsars to the Islamists via the Nazis have shown. Many other alleged religious 'hatreds' are not hatreds in the true sense. If I criticise Islamic, Orthodox Jewish or Catholic attitudes towards women, for instance, and I'm accused of being a bigot, I shrug and say it is not bigoted to oppose bigotry. ↗

— Nick Cohen

#bigotry #catholicism #conspiracy-theories #dictatorship #feminism

Piracy is robbery with violence, often segueing into murder, rape and kidnapping. It is one of the most frightening crimes in the world. Using the same term to describe a twelve-year-old swapping music with friends, even thousands of songs, is evidence of a loss of perspective so astounding that it invites and deserves the derision it receives. ↗

— Nick Harkaway

#culture #digital #ip #piracy #technology

Better for real things to be uncontrollable, better for one's life to be undecipherable and intellectually impenetrable than to attempt to make casual sense of what is unknown with a fantasy that is mad. Better, I thought, that the events of these past three days should remain incomprehensible to me forever than to posit, as I had just been doing, a conspiracy of foreign intelligence agents who are determined to control my mind. We've all heard that one before. ↗

— Philip Roth

#control-my-mind #indecipherable #intelligence