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Last Updated on August 5, 2015

We’re all aware of pirating, and there are few folk in our society who have not pirated (copied) something with copyright protection at one point or another. Whether recording TV and radio broadcasts, photocopying more than the “allowed” number of pages from a book as part of a research assignment, copying cassette tapes as a child, ripping a CD to your computer and then giving away the CD, or ripping a CD from a friend. The list goes on. We don’t have to be hardened criminals or even a petty thief to have engaged in breaking copyright laws.

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As an author and a speaker on human liberties I am sometimes asked what I think about copyright infringement. The following video from Michael Moore pretty much sums up my answer. My first book, Peace, Power, and Presence, was pirated not long after it was published. As far as I can tell (after some small scale searching online), it has been downloaded on through the BitTorrent systems at least 10,000 times. I doubt all 10,000 of those people have read it, but I think it is safe to assume at least some have. Do I consider this a loss? Not at all. As far as I am concerned, the more people who read the information I share, the better. I don’t write in order to earn money. I write to share what I feel is an important message. That is the primary purpose of my writing, to share ideas, perceptions, and experiences. If I happen to earn much in the way of money from my writing, so be it. That’s secondary to sharing for the sake of sharing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVYhwKu7J5E

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