By Ryan Broderick, Editor-in-Chief
The Chronicle is a pro-piracy paper. That statement might seem like a lazy way of saying we like to download copious amounts of free music and movies, but it’s actually a political statement. And it’s a promise to uphold net neutrality and to embrace the Internet, not only as a medium, but also as a culture, a facet that often isn’t mentioned academically.
The reason our pro-piracy stance is worth bringing up now is because of our new forays into blogging. One of our music bloggers asked at a recent meeting if she could cover leaks and pirated material. Without hesitation I said, “Yes!” On the Internet a CD leak is news. When a CD leaks it becomes a double-fold story. First, is how it leaked, why did it leak (many CDs nowadays are self-leaked to stir up hype for the official release). The second piece of the story being the critique of the material itself; did our blogger like it?
In America, it’s still considered illegal. But the RIAA is pulling lawsuits out of courts left and right. In 2009 the Swedish Pirate Party, a political party dedicated to the pirating and open trade of unrestricted data, garnered 7 percent of the votes in Swedish parliamentary elections.
Our unrestricted coverage is integral to giving our writers more than a snowball’s chance in hell of competing with the billions blogs we fight for attention with. As I told our new blogger staff, “You’re up against pornography, pictures of cats, and TMZ. Go wild.”
This doesn’t mean our blog will be a red-light district and it doesn’t mean we won’t vet content, but at the same time writing online is shoot first, ask questions later.
At a recent TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) the founder of Reddit.com, a content aggregator with a very strong community base, asked web developers and marketers to let go a little. He pleaded with web-based communities to let the users decide content. So, I’m taking this time to say that so are we.
We’re loosening the reigns on our blog. Feel free to remix, cut, paste, share, plagiarize, or torrent this article. Y’ar!
