3: Our Internet-Instilled Ethics

Jonathan Lethem "The Ecstacy of Influence" page 61

***

So if you are here to stay, you should know

We do things our way around here.

We steal
everything.

And we don't feel bad about it. 

An open-source culture is the future – 

– even if it's so far ahead we can't see it yet

and our elders think we're blind for looking.

Sure, we abide by protocol

To be able to participate.

But we use it to share our "stolen" goods.

... "Goods."

They can only jail so many of us.

With Internet in each of our pockets, the hierarchical powers will lose their grip

eventually

when they can no longer stop the flow of Information.

Music is just the beginning, and the end, and the all of it.

Lethem says, "Today an endless, gloriously impure, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of music" (60).

There are pirates and DJs to thank.

And since we actually don't need a degree to be creators,

very little is not up for grabs. 

We're a bit scrappy, I suppose.

Copyright laws no longer reflect the speed of our consumption, 

so we piss on copyright laws. 

These are not our parents' ethics.

We are not our parents.

See: Banksy

***

“The gun-book  wasn't  readable, exactly, but I couldn't take offense at that. The fertile spirit of stray connection this appropriated  object conveyed  back to me—the strange beauty of its second use—was a reward for being a published writer I could never have fathomed in advance. And the world makes room for both my novel and Robert The’s gun-book. There's no need to choose between the two” (Lethem 64).