Sooner or later we will have to do it.

If we first learned where we are and where we are striving, we could decide what to do and how to achieve it.

On June 16, 1858, three years before the beginning of the US civil war, during the debate with his opponent in the Senate elections Stephen Douglas, future President Abraham Lincoln delivered one of his most famous speeches - “The House of Divided”.
Being perhaps the best-known anti-slavery speech, she (like the policies promoted by Lincoln regarding slavery), provoked heated debate and resentment from the politically active population of the southern states. Lincoln was an opponent of slavery in general, and in particular an opponent of the expansion of slavery to new territories, and believed that in the newly formed states all citizens should be free by default.

This was at odds with the lifestyle of the southern states, whose agrarian economy existed solely due to slave labor and the development of new territories. The magnates, who owned huge plantations and thousands of slaves, had enormous political influence in the southern region and, naturally, support for the white population of these states. After all, all industry was concentrated in the north, and with the abolition of slavery, the southern states were threatened with a collapse of the economy, which was not supported by anything else.
Naturally, it also threatened the loss of huge capital of magnates, because as a result of the abolition of slavery, they lost not only their influence, but also the funds invested in plantations and the agrarian industry.

The Senate elections for Lincoln lost, however, having prepared a solid ground for the presidential election, which took place two years later. Lincoln's victory in this election led to a split of the country and the beginning of a civil war between the free northern and slave-owning southern states, many of which announced their withdrawal from the US even before the inauguration of the new president.
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Some series of events of recent years, including the trial of the creators of The Pirate Bay, the PIPA and SOPA discussions in the US, the recent discussions of the 187-FZ (“Anti-Piracy Law”), an interview with Lenta.ru with the President of the Amedia film company , who believes that in a year, people will forget about “pirated products”, etc ...
so, a series of events made me think, and what is freedom in general, and how can the future of human freedom regarding information exchange?

For decades, publishers have not been particularly interested in the Internet audience and what files they share and how. While people continued to rent movies and go to the cinema for the most part, profits grew, and the rest was not very interesting for media companies.
Of course, piracy existed, mainly in the form of music and video tapes, which were illegally recorded and sold (as a rule, cheaper than the original), naturally bringing a profit to those who did it. But the pirates were quite easy to catch, because they existed in the form of real outlets and people who sold unlicensed products.
In addition, there were people who shared licensed tapes / discs with their friends and acquaintances, but naturally, the share of such people was small (and even letting a few hundred acquaintances watch the movie was at least problematic), so these people were not very interesting to publishers. and it was quite foolish and difficult to impose or impose fines on a person for letting his friend see his tape.

Ten to fifteen years have passed, and piracy in the form in which it existed has gone almost completely. But the profits of publishers and media tycoons from this did not become higher. At one point, they began to find out why people do not buy their products and do not watch their films, and found that the sale of unlicensed copies of films / music has exhausted itself for the most part, but people continue to share content, and the possibilities of such an exchange and volumes are very greatly increased with the development of the internet and p2p.
The publishers formulated their problem quite simply - they just called all the people who exchange files, "pirates", and under this pretext they began to fight with them, and not only with them.

Using the fight against piracy as an excuse, these people want to get the right to close any sites, file-sharing networks, to fine those who participate in file sharing and are on hand. In the broad masses (in the USA and Europe especially), piracy is promoted as an undoubted evil that must be fought.

And you know, it is not surprising. It's so convenient to sell someone else's information, hiding behind the “distribution rights”, to get a lot of money from this, which you don’t really want to lose.
Media moguls and publishers of music and films, for the most part, no longer even produce any "physical" products. All they do is to acquire the rights to distribute and (at best) invest their money in the making of films and music (and not often). These people do not produce anything useful, they simply buy the rights to sell from the authors, convincing them beforehand that without a publisher, they will have a commercial failure, that they will not be able to release their products and put them on the shelves, that their films will not be shown in cinemas, that "evil Internet pirates will download your music from torrents and will not pay you a cent, and you will be left without pants." And after the contract of signature and rights are acquired, they begin to vomit and toss and are ready to cut the throat of anyone who encroaches on this very “right of distribution”. Naturally, after all, these rights are that in which they invested their money and that on which their entire capital rests.

But we all understand that their rhetoric is a lie. And you know, something reminds me of it.

Moguls, millionaires who have enormous influence, they hide behind lies, promote laws that allow them to preserve their methods of accumulating capital. We have already seen all this in the history of the USA of the 19th century, when the magnates of the agrarian industry tried to preserve their huge capital and influence, hiding behind the lie that people with different skin color should be their slaves by default. By themselves, they did not produce anything - they simply invested their money in slaves and used slave labor to produce and grow crops, which were mainly exported.
They were hiding behind the lie that people with different skin colors could never live on a par with them, that if they were given freedom, they would simply revolt and kill all whites, etc.
Now, after almost 150 years, we see that it was a lie, and a silly calculation that this lie will help the liars to save influence and money.

But now, 150 years later, they are beginning to lie to us again. This time, people are lying who claim that we have no right to freely exchange information , that this causes enormous damage to the industry, etc. That the exclusive rights to distribute certain information belong to a small group of individuals.

But everyone understands that this is a lie. Unless, having bought and having watched a movie, I have no right to give it to another person? When I buy a car, I can do with it everything I want (within the law, of course). I can open a company and deliver people to it. I can sell it. I can show it to other people. I can destroy him. I can do with him everything that pleases me, because this car is my private property. Why, having received any information (if I didn’t steal it), I can not dispose of this information as I please?
This rule works with any property, so why doesn't it work with information? They are trying to limit my rights to disseminate information, guided by the fact that they paid money for these rights. But if I suddenly pay someone money for the right to jump on one leg, can I forbid you to do this? This is absurd.

A person cannot be considered a slave of another person just because the latter paid for it. Every person should be free by default, this is the truth that they tried to dispute 150 years ago. Fortunately, now, after a while, it has become obvious to us.
I believe that the following statement is the same truth:

Everyone has the right to freely share and disseminate information that is not a state or commercial secret, and no one has the right to forbid him to do so, arguing that previously someone had paid for this right.

All the arguments against this statement are false.
They argue that intellectual property is the fruit of the long and hard work of people, which we must respect. Yes it is. But were not slave markets in the United States the fruits of hard work? There were - someone after all organized them. But does this cancel the fact that, from a moral point of view, slavery is evil, and everyone has the right to be free?

I infinitely respect the intellectual work of writers, artists, screenwriters, directors, etc. But let's face it - most of these people do not need multimillion-dollar profits. On the contrary, they would like that as many people as possible would listen or watch their work. Recently, there are more and more examples of people - musicians, writers who "made themselves" themselves, simply by working and posting their works on the Internet.
Of course, they want to make money. But this has nothing to do with publishers and “copyright owners.”
When I personally saw my application for iOS hacked under jailbreaked delays and laid out on torrents, I just had a smile on my face. I was glad that my game (being very simple) was interesting for people, and that someone had spent the time to hack, to lay out, just not to pay $ 0.99. Well, let them play on their health!
I am sure that in this regard, 99% of the authors of applications and games, as well as music, books, etc. agree with me.
Moreover, everyone understands that if a person really likes it very much, then most likely, if he is not a miser and not a schoolboy, he will spend his dollar.

Unfortunately, copyright holders, publishers and media giants do not understand such simple truths. Let's get clean - they understand very little how the Internet and the exchange of information work now. But naturally, they are ready to do anything, just to save their profits.

It was always, and always progress won. Yes, the introduction of the right to free exchange of information will change entire industries. But it is inevitable. Ultimately, things are not so bad, this is not the United States in the 19th century. Then only the postulate that all people should be equally free, led to a split of the country and civil war.
Now everything is not so bad. For example, the majority of serials already rests solely on television advertising. And such things as product placement and unobtrusive advertising in films are already classics. Almost all films are shown in cinemas first, and then released for sale. For example, I have not watched the screens for a very long time - it is much more pleasant for me to go to the cinema and watch in high quality. Yes, the quality of amateur camcorders is increasing.
But let's be frank. The problem of screen piracy, even now, is being solved very, very simply - it is enough to prohibit video cameras from being brought into cinemas. I don’t even speak about cinema employees who are ready to close their eyes and not to “see” a camera with a tripod in the middle of the hall.

Well, what about the software and games, you say? After all, if we legally allow free exchange of information and cancel such a thing as copyright ...
Everything is very simple. Cloud technologies have already entered everyday life. I am sure that over time 99% of the software will be transferred to cloud computing. But the games will be mostly multiplayer or with multiplayer features. Singleplayer can work as a free “demo” for those who have not decided whether he is ready to pay.

As you can see, there are no objective reasons why it would be impossible to legislatively introduce an act on the freedom to exchange information. But of course, it will affect multi-million dollar industries and make people change their ways of earning money.
And people who earn on their “exclusive right” for which they paid money will always resist.

About 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln was able to win the civil war. This was a war for truth, for the fact that all people have the right to freedom from slavery. Regardless of the color of the skin or the money that the slave owner paid. No matter what kind of economic decline in some states will follow.
The price of victory in the war and the truth was also the life of Abraham Lincoln himself.

Freedom to exchange information as the absolute right of every person is not only an opportunity to watch movies and listen to music. This is, first of all, the exchange of knowledge, the opportunity to get acquainted and distribute the cultural heritage of your country without risking to get into the multi-million dollar fines or go to jail for it. This is the right that everyone should have.

I do not know how many years must pass, so that people would understand this. Perhaps ten, perhaps a hundred.
But when this time comes, we will need to defend our right to freedom of information exchange.

Sooner or later we will have to do it.