Seeing db0’s stance on AI has been depressing.

“Back in my day”, the sense among piracy advocates seemed to be that cultural artifacts are so important to society and human dignity that they shouldn’t be held hostage by gatekeepers who are only interested in profit and see exposure to a wide audience as a monetization failure. It was a respect tor the value of a creative work, a duty to preserve that signal and not let it be consumed by the noise of commerce.

Today, it seems that the pirate scene views cultural artifacts as disposable and fungible, raw materials with no essence or signal in their own right. It’s more about speedrunning towards some inevitable nihilistic chaos, tearing everything down to spite the old gatekeepers and joining forces with the new gatekeepers so long as they seem to be on the side of destruction and “free shit”. There’s no allegiance to society, just a brutal individualistic free-for-all.

It’s the antithesis of what I believed the internet was going to do to the old copyright regime. And I’m not sure there’s a home for people who still think like me.