Disagree on the stance of digital files. What you call "sharing" I call "theft".
This is a very simple concept, even a child could understand it. Let me help you deprogram your brainwashing:
Copying is not theft.
I'm so sorry. I realize this must be painful for you (unlearning lies always is), but there is really zero room for debate here. You're wrong. Accept it and move on.
Because the world will, and if you won't, you will be mercilessly left behind in the information age. Just like theists were in the scientific age. Yes, theists are still around today. And capitalists will still be around tomorrow.
But you'll be a laughing stock. Mocked and derided at every turn by enlightened, free-thinking people who will know that
intellectual slavery is as much an ethical abomination as the physical sort.
Have you prepared your mind for this outcome ?
This kind of begs a question.
Well first of all, you're using the very commonly mistaken definition of that phrase.
Here is what begging the question actually means.
Do we own what we make?
Property is theft!If you wrote a song would you have the right to ask for payment for someone else to download it?
Only if I was providing power for the electricity of the computers involved by riding a stationary-bicycle which generated electricity. Only then would I ask for some payment.
Or is intellectual property owned by society?
Why does it need to be OWNED by anyone? Why can it not simply "be"?
The often invisible architecture of your language comes with all sorts of nasty assumptions about the world and your place in it... Do you see the damage capitalism has done to your mind? Language wires our brains to think a certain way.
You have been taught obedience to capitalism and property since you could speak - your formative years as a human being. Think about that. Think about how difficult it is to unlearn something that you've been learning your entire life - without even knowing you've been programmed!
To assume it is owned by society kind of makes the original author an intellectual slave does it not?
Once again, songs, thoughts, art - these things do not need to be owned. When nature paints for you a breathtaking sunset or stunning rainbow, does a forest fairy pop from the ground and demand a payment for the pleasure you derived from viewing these things? When you swim naked in a lake, does a mermaid come and ask for payment? No, only humans do this insane thing, and only for the past few thousands years. We lived for half a million years before some asshole looked up at the sun and said, "hey, the sky-god says you should give me your share. If you don't you will be punished by the gods".
Such was the birth of capitalism.