Steal This Website!

'Intellectual property' is a polite bourgeois term for the theft and enclosure of the freedom to create by the powers of state and capital. The liberal justification of intellectual property (that it allows artists to live by the proceeds of their work) is mere capitalist apologia. The artist is not a class: art is a fundamental human process, and 'artists'--that is, artistic practice--will flourish when we are all disalienated from our means of subsitence and able to create freely, outwith the coercion of capital.

Under the conditions of contemporary capitalism, piracy also plays a vital role in preservation. Cultural products deemed unprofitable are destroyed or restricted from public access in order to maintain the scarcity of cultural commodities. The restriction of the proliferation of cultural objects leads directly to their loss--it is those things which are disseminated widely and freely to which access is preserved, and piracy ensures that the preservation of art is not hindered by the balance sheets of investment funds.

The enclosure of culture, and with it the means of cultural production, are a mechanism of the enforcement of ideology. While art and information are not free to proliferate, they can be shackled to the service of capital and state. Do not allow these shackels to constrain you: steal what you cannot find for free, and share it with your comrades. Make what there is not yet, and find shared joy in what there is.

Of course artists--especially those making counter-hegemonic work--need to secure their survival *now*. The rallying call against intellectual property must not become a call against any support for cultural creation. But our artist-comrades are not best supported by the rendering of their art into legal title and private property, but by us directly supporting their creations. Give the artists whose work you love money, care, and support not because it is the price of accessing their work, but because you believe that we all should be free to create.

In short: steal this website. If you like what you find, feel free to mention where you found it, but I can't and won't make you. If someone else tries to sell you anything they found here, steal it from them, or come and get it from here.

Free art, free culture, for all.