Why History Needs Software Piracy

Your honor, I wasn't pirating software...I was preserving it for the future of mankind. Why are you laughing? I am being serious. Wait, are those handcuffs?

It may seem counterintuitive, but piracy has actually saved more software than it has destroyed. Already, pirates have spared tens of thousands of programs from extinction, proving themselves the unintentional stewards of our digital culture. Software pirates promote data survival through ubiquity and media independence. Like an ant that works as part of a larger system it doesn’t understand, the selfish action of each digital pirate, when taken in aggregate, has created a vast web of redundant data that ensures many digital works will live on.

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