For myself, when I think of the hacker ethos I think of Stallman and the GPL, which is explicitly designed around the idea that information can be ethically sold as long as you're actually selling it [0]. It's free as in freedom, not free as in beer, and under that philosophy being able to pay for services that respect your rights as a free human (which most current streaming services don't) is a desirable end state, not something to be condemned.
> Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible—just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.
> Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.
The lesson here is that attrition and shrinkage will always be with us, it's only the rate that varies in market accordance with the enshittification of product.
The 'better' the product, the lower the shrinkage.
As supported by a majority of thread comments "I used to pirate when I was poor, then I didn't - now I do again as the commercial offering sucks".
[attribution] https://thebillionscompanion.net/all/tag/Tibetan+Book+of+the...
In any case, hacking as a concept predates Stallman and FSF - indeed, they're the product of that mindset, not its originators. And the original hackers didn't care about copyright - just look at the early history of Unix.
I sincerely reject your entire premise.
The problem is: how does one make something "free as in libre" without affecting the "not free as in beer".
Including your personal information, browsing habits, purchase history, genome, genetic disorders, medical history, sexual partners, kinks, embarrassing photos and videos, moments of social faux pas, biggest fears, darkest secrets, cheating, illegal behaviors, personal psychiatrist notes, privileged lawyer information, passwords, private keys, bitcoin keys, financial statements, tax records, debts, etc. ?
The notion of "information wants to be free" should be taken as an observation about the nature of things and the folly of corporations trying to have it both ways—information made broadly available yet on their exact terms—not as a value statement on any inherent goodness behind freeing information.
??
I've never heard that definition.
You may be too young (not an insult) or in a different geography to have been seen this, however it was definitely a thing.
“On the one hand you have—the point you’re making Woz—is that information sort of wants to be expensive because it is so valuable—the right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information almost wants to be free because the costs of getting it out is getting lower and lower all of the time. So you have these two things fighting against each other.”
I find this to be a much more intelligent formulation of the concept, as it recognizes the reasons and the tension.
We simply can’t get much of the media I like for free (gratis). That being said, it is maddening to have so much great content locked up. It feels insanely inefficient and that we produce far too much content unnecessarily.
There are probably ways to balance this better- separation of content ownership, production, and distribution; more limits on copyright length; mandatory content licensing; simplification of older content license rules…
That doesn’t mean it’s morally wrong to pay for content or put restrictions on distribution, just that optimum probably isn’t where we are.