#pro-library

For those who are genuinely concerned about children finding stuff online, there's a simple but highly unpopular solution. It comes in two parts.

Teach children boundaries and

Ensure children feel comfortable talking to a parent or adult about their concerns.

If a child feels comfortable saying "No" to someone in person when they feel their boundaries are being violated, they'll feel comfortable backing out of other things which push their boundaries and make them feel uncomfortable. Pick up a book at the library with some intense scenes? They'll feel comfortable saying "enough" and grabbing a different book. Click through the "adult" warning on a website, only to discover the stuff there is too adult for them? They'll feel comfortable backing out of that site.

"But what if my mental health issues makes it difficult for me to do that?" Then that is a pre-existing issue which you should already be addressing to ensure your own safety. If you stay on something which harms you or triggers you, then that is your sign that your current safety plan is not working and need to be re-addressed.

Second part: if the child does encounter something which makes them uncomfortable, they should have an adult in their life they feel comfortable so they can discuss the matter. That is the responsibility of the parent. If the parent knows the child isn't comfortable discussing certain things with them, the parent needs to step up and give the child safe options.

Censorship is never the answer. Increased education, especially regarding boundaries, is an answer.

Half-Life,

Counter-Strike,

Team Fortress,

Portal,

DOTA 2,

and the biggest digital store for buying games, Steam, goes something like this:

“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” (Source:  “How Valve Experiments with the Economics of Video Games.” GeekWire, 23 Oct. 2011, www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-economics-valves-gabe-newell/. )

And thus, pro-piracy advocates have taken that statement and ran with it. They tell you how successful Steam is in places that have had huge issues with video game piracy such as Russia, and they talk about how music piracy cratered once Spotify and Soundcloud and Bandcamp and all the other music streaming services came out, and they jump up and down and say “See? See? People WANT to spend money on things! They WANT to give artists and large companies money! They want to spend money on books and movies and TV shows and video games and other consumer media! Just let them have easy access to it at an affordable price, and people will stop pirating! It’s not because piracy lets them have it for free, it’s because piracy just lets them have it at all in the first place!”

My response is two-fold, and has been for a long time:

1: Anyone who pays money for media they can get for free is an un-serious idiot and should be ignored completely.

2: How can anyone make a better service than piracy?

For point 1: Several months back I was at a local Barnes and Noble. I was looking through their bargain bin section when I saw a book called The Diabolic by S. J. Kincaid. It looked so new, it seemed like it had just been pulled from the shelf. A “Cheap $5″ sticker was attached to it. The MSRP? $17.99.

I saw the book, picked it up, read the synopsis on the inside of the dust jacket, and figured that I wanted to read this book and support this author by buying it. But I realized that I had a choice on how to do that. I could purchase the $5 book, which was in as near pristine a condition as a book in the bargain section could be, or I could go and purchase the full price, $17.99 version of the book, either online or at a different store.

Anyone with a basic understanding of economics will probably look at that dilemma and go “That’s so stupid! You OBVIOUSLY pick the $5 book! You get the exact same thing at a lower price!”

So piracy advocates: Why should I, a reasonable consumer, pay money to any streaming service like Netflix or HBO Max or pay any amount of money to any store when I can find a place to have access to all of it, in one place, for free, without any ads or other interruptions?

For point 2: Steam is one of the biggest video game digital storefronts in the entire world. It has more video games for sale than anyone can feasibly keep track of, with more being released on the platform for purchase every day.

Except for Nintendo products.

If you like Pokemon, Metroid, Legend of Zelda, Smash Bros., Kirby, Splatoon, or any other product made by/for Nintendo game consoles, you’re shit out of luck. You have to buy Nintendo made game consoles to play them.

Unless you pirate them. In which case you can play any of those games on an emulator on your computer.

So, Steam isn’t the best possible service, right? It doesn’t have the most video games accessible to their audience, piracy does by having games for nearly every console you can think of and even a few you might have forgotten about. It doesn’t have the best price, because piracy is free. And it doesn’t even consistently have the best product; time and time again people who release pirated versions of games also take the time to make a better version of it. Case in point, when Metroid: Dread was released, Kotaku had a whole article about how the pirated emulator version had a better visual quality than the official version available for sale by Nintendo for their Switch console. (Source: “Metroid Dread Is Already Running on Switch Emulators.” Kotaku, kotaku.com/metroid-dread-is-already-running-great-on-switch-emulat-1847833403. Accessed 6 May 2022. )

This extends to movies, tv shows, but particularly to stuff that’s made outside of the United States like manga or anime. The manga and anime you can have access to from your bookstore or retail store or even from websites like Amazon or RightStuf is constantly limited by licensing agreements, companies going bankrupt, and other factors that result in “official” material becoming out-of-print and much more expensive than it should be. My personal favorite manga ever, Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer, has been out of print for YEARS and despite an anime adaptation coming in the near future as of writing this, there is no way to legally purchase the five omnibuses that make up the series without being willing to spend HUNDREDS of dollars.

Now, before anyone calls me a consumer whore licking the boots of the corporations because I’m criticizing people who advocate piracy, I want you to understand something: I am 100% in favor of having art of all kinds being readily accessible to everyone, everywhere, all the time. I work at a library, for God’s sake! A library! A public service that lets people access more books, movies, TV shows, music, and other media than you can shake a stick at for the low, low price of $0! Newspapers, cookbooks, art instruction books, craft instruction books, audio books and large-type books for the visually impaired, children’s books, young adult books, multi-lingual books, databases, books about local history, books about world history, documentaries, magazines, poetry, short stories, stories with BIPOC characters, stories with LGBTQ+ characters, books written BY BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors, even some video games in some libraries, and if we don’t have it physically in the library, we can either place a request for it to be physically shipped to us for you to check out or you can probably find it online with one of the MANY library apps that let you check out EVEN MORE THINGS! Everyone should LOVE libraries and have a library card and check out all the things you want for free! Libraries are AMAZING! Everything should be like the library: readily accessible to the public, free, and easy for anyone to use.

And piracy, time and time again, has proven to be the closest thing to a library that I have ever seen. Piracy is the best way for the consumer to find what they want, get what they want, and keep it forever.

But so rarely do I ever see people who claim to be “pro-piracy” ever behave like they are IN FAVOR OF piracy. They always talk about piracy as if it’s a bad thing, that it’s a thing they HAVE to do, that they wouldn’t pirate stuff if they had any other option. And as someone who doesn’t pirate on purely ideological grounds (the “Piracy feels like I’m stealing and I don’t like stealing” argument) that do NOT stand up to scrutiny in any way besides being 100% emotion driven, I have to say you all sound like unserious idiots and bigger corporate bootlickers than I could ever be. The corporations who make the media you want do not care about you, have never cared about you, and will never care about you; why do you spend time trying to change that?

Just say “Fuck ‘em”, and take what you want. You don’t have to bend yourself into pretzels over who it is or isn’t morally correct to pirate from, you just pirate.