Solar as it is today exists because the Germans put a shit ton of R&D funds into it, and because the Chinese used state-funds to built an industry, and now it’s a competitive industry that will take over the energy market. People sometimes think you have to wait for the technology to develop. That’s usually not the case though, governments invest and make it happen. If you wait nothing happens.

I generally don’t believe in intellectual property, I think it creates artificial scarcity and limits creativity. Of course the real tragedies in this field have to do with medicine and other serious business. But still, artists claiming ownership of their style of painting is fundamentally no different. Why can’t I paint in your style? Do you really own it? Are you suggesting you didn’t base your idea mostly on the work of others, and no one in turn can take your idea, be inspired by it and do with it as they please? Do my means have to be a pencil, why can’t my means be a computer, why not an algorythm? Limitations, limitations, limitations. We need to reform our system and make the public domain the standard for ideas (in all their forms). Society doesn’t treat artists properly, I am well aware of that. Generally creative minds are often troubled because they fall outside norms. There are many tragic examples. Also money-wise many artists don’t get enough credit for their contributions to society, but making every idea a restricted area is not the solution. People should support the artists they like on a voluntary basis. Pirate the album but go to concerts, pirate the artwork but donate to the artist. And if that doesn’t make you enough money, that’s very unfortunate. But make no mistake: that’s how almost all artists live. Only the top 0.something% actually make enough money by selling their work, and that’s is usually the percentile that’s best at marketing their arts, in other words: it’s usually the industry. The others already depend upon donations or other sources of income. We can surely keep art alive, while still removing all these artificial limitations, copying is, was and will never be in any way similar to stealing. Let freedom rule. Join your local pirate party.

Intellectual property is a scam. A commonly heard defense of intellectual property is that it is needed for companies to fund their R&D. However pharmaceutical companies typically spent a lot more money on marketing & sales than they do on R&D. Big Pharma spending money on marketing and sales is harmful to our health. Apparently it’s a lot more lucrative to get people drugged up on painkillers or whatever than to discover new medicine. If we didn’t have intellectual property then we would have competition resulting in the lowest possible medicine prices. Companies would have no money for marketing so medicine would be judged on their actual properties, only the best would be given to patients, not the best marketed, but best health-wise. Companies would have no money for R&D either, but the government could fund R&D We shouldn’t blame the players, we created a system that produces these bad actors. Let’s change the system so that these bad actors couldn’t exist. Intellectual property is a international problem, join the pirate party of your country and let’s make it happen!

Good excuse to plug ListenBrainz. On ListenBrainz you can track the music you listen to whether you listen to local files or services like Spotify. ListenBrainz also supplies you with playlists to discover new music based on what you’ve listened to so far. It’s a great solution for music lovers that don’t want to depend on companies like Spotify.

Intellectual property should not be a thing. Music should be free. pay to go to a concert or support artists voluntarily.

Yup, theirs guilt as well as innocence on either side. It’s simply hate spiraling out of control for generations. Hate in response to hate, in response to hate, in response to hate. Some say the solution is to hate on Palestinians for all sorts of reasons. Others say the solution is to hate on Israelis for all sorts of reasons. I think the hatred-solution has been tried out sufficiently now.

qBittorrent

Been using it for 15 years or so. It was good back then, it’s still good now. Chrome has never been an alternative for anyone who knows what Google is.

People who say piracy is theft are wrong, actually holders of intellectual property are thieves that are stealing that what should belong to the public domain. When you pirate you make a copy of something, you don’t take anything away from the other person. That’s fundamentally different from theft. When you force people to pay for a free resource (copying data) you are creating artificial scarcity. To think that construction is helping society in any way is fooling yourself. It’s very clearly limiting human creativity and freedom. Allowing people to do with it as they please free of charge would allow for better ideas and applications to emerge. When someone comes up with an idea (a medicine, product, song, whatever) they claim it as theirs and no-one can touch it. Look at it this way: someone invents the wheel. The wheel is a concept that is out their, waiting to be discovered by someone. Before it was discovered it was readily available for anyone to discover, but than someone finally invents it and suddenly he can claim it as his? Is the first one to discover the moon, the one who owns it? Ultimately songs and books and such are not fundamentally different. Also, no-one writes a songs out of nothing, you build upon the ideas of others. You walk the path, use all the stepping stones laid down by others, it brings you to a point and suddenly it’s all yours? It doesn’t make any sense at all, but we’re so used to it that we can’t see it for what it is. It’s a scam. It’s a monopoly and it doesn’t belong in a free society. You should support creators and be thankful for their efforts, that’s why trademarks should exist, if you want to buy the copy from the author himself you should know which product to buy through the trademark, which one is by the original creator and which copies are from third-parties. But all other intellectual property is theft from the public domain.