@ribo

The liberation of women is still an ongoing process. In the last 50 years we have made great advances in the legal, economic and political rights of women. There is much to do in the world on this. But there is much more to do in the social and cultural dimensions. In our societies, we still hear how women are verbally misrepresented, attacked or discriminated. We still see how women are sexually attacked and violently beaten. We still treat women as inferior beings, which don’t think like us, and so don’t deserve the same responsibilities. Even if consciously we don’t realise it, in our everyday lives we often treat women as objects, trophies or servants. When I say “we”, I am not only referring to men, I am referring to society, men and women. It is our cultural values and social practices that put women in this position. Some benefit from it, many suffer from it.

The real liberation of women. The one in which they have the opportunity to be women without being attacked, discriminated against or dominated. It does touch me directly since I was born. Now, it touches me even more.
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The title of this post seems counter-intuitive. Common sense tells us that battling successfully against the consequences of the financial crisis, capitalism is more alive than ever, thriving in India and China, making states tremble on their foundations. Yet I dare to say that, against this common sense and in line with Marxists, anarchists, socialists of all kinds and other anti-system movements, capitalism as we know it, i.e a socio-economic system based on the ownership and accumulation of capital, is showing its last moments of life. Yet I don’t affirm its decease for the reasons that these other ideological movements assume i.e. capitalism is failing, but because thanks to both its success and its deficiencies, it’s letting way to a new system that, like capitalism itself and contrary to communism or I would even say (paradoxically) anarchism, doesn’t need to be imposed for its popular acceptance, for it feeds from a characteristic that makes us human. In capitalism it was greed, in compartism it’s generosity.
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For many, “online piracy” appears to be a bad thing. The music, film and software industries and governments want to convince us that IT IS bad. Bad not only for the poor artist or programmer, but also for innovation and for society as a whole. However, many practice it. Many copy songs, movies or software using the Internet. And I say, many do a good thing.

Before the Internet, people could indeed photocopy a book, copy a record on tape or duplicate a movie on VHS, these were possible, though somehow cumbersome and quality-reducing mechanisms of reducing the cost of our “intellectual consumption”. Without them, many people would have probably read less books, listened to less new songs and watched less stories on the screen. Nevertheless, the scale of it was small, thus its social effect tiny. Today, the liberty and usability feature of the Internet have opened unimaginable venues for these “unauthorized” reproduction of intellectual goods, the scale is, indeed, very, very relevant. Thanks to file sharing, hundreds of thousands of people have at their disposal a myriad of intellectual products that were unattainable before, be it for price or accessibility. Thanks to “piracy”, these people, adults and children, are expanding their intellectual scope, they are probably becoming more demanding, in search of more and more varied things.

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