NO TO DIGITAL SCARCITY

the real world is imperfect. the fundamental particles of our universe are unstable and hard to manipulate. creat’g a perfect copy of an object is not possible — and even if it were, those copies would be subject to change that wouldn’t necessarily affect them in exactly the same way.

our computers are quite another matter. the fundamental particle of any file on your computer is a bit. bits are not scarce. you can create billions of them in seconds.

if your friend has a book you really want, you can borrow it from them, but you can’t easily create a copy. that would require buy’g the materials the book is made out of (paper, some material for the binding, ink…) and putt’g it all together, which could take months or years. the process would be very time- and resource-consum’g.

if your friend has a PDF of a book you really want, you can ask them to give you a copy. creat’g the copy takes fractions of a second and costs only as much as the electricity necessary for performing that operation does (which is to say, a negligible amount). what’s more, this copy is identical to the file your friend has.

digital files are not scarce. from a single original, a theoretically infinite amount of copies can be creat’d virtually for free. attempts to introduce scarcity into digital ecosystems are unacceptable and must be opposed.

the idea that scarcity shouldn’t be enforced in a space which is largely understood to be an extension of an already existing space where scarcity is an inevitable fact of life may seem radical — but i find it obvious that a new space needs new rules. we cannot simply repeat the mistakes we’ve made before.

digital scarcity is a ridiculous idea. we have a utopia, and can’t allow it to succumb to the corrupting influences governing the “real world.” everything must be archived, preserved, cracked open and rearranged. nothing is too silly, too bad or inconsequential to be exempt from this treatment. the hacker spirit must not disappear. upload your books, articles, songs, movies. become a custodian and help bring a better future forth. to borrow a phrase: water the flowers, clean the volcanoes.