As a pedantic point though, Winston Q2038′s comment on “no more child labour” is a little misleading as there’s still the possibility of child labour / poor workplace conditions for the 3D printer manufacturing workers (unless you can print out your own fully functioning 3D printer?).

It’s a difficult balance of ethics and morals, making sure the original creator / craftsman gets recompensed appropriately for their creativity whilst not restricting / sandboxing things by creating exclusive monopolies. Not sure where it leads or how it is resolved really.

There’s the moral imperative to uphold the law, when it doesn’t conflict with God’s law, but also a moral imperative to challenge the laws that are unjust and oppressive.

I find the “I will, because I am allowed to by law…” (MP expenses scandal) is just as bad as “I won’t because the law prohibits me from…” (Philadelphia’s outlawing of handing out food to the homeless on the street).

Anyway, thanks for sharing, this Pirates book is definitely looking very interesting.

Alex

Kester and Peter, Brian Mountford, the vicar at Oxford’s biggest church, wrote a book about the nonbeliever who likes church last year called The Christian Atheist. It’s worth a quick read.

I am a huge fan of Alain De Botton for all that he has done to bring reason, philosophical thought and the joy of reflection to so many people. The School of Life is deeply important and his work is gift. That said I would love to engage critically with this book. Like you I currently only know it through interviews and snippets, but my initial thoughts are that De Botton might simply be revealing on of the worst kept secrets of the Anglican Church… that most of the ministers don’t really believe, but enjoy the liturgical dance (that is, of course, a little pejorative but I do remember a particularly good episode of “Yes Minister” where this was the central joke). I can imagine some Priests pulling De Botton aside and telling him off, not for attacking their faith, but for revealing their secret!

I think that De Botton is writing about a wide spread reality embraced privately by many religious people (at least in the more traditional churches). I am very interested in exposing this reality, however for different purposes. Instead of seeing this as positive I see it as a way of insulating us from the traumatic heart of the Christian event… that is it not an intellectual separation from the divine accompanied by psychological way of buffering that experience, but rather the existential experience of that separation regardless of our intellectual claims (“My God, my God… being an intellectual affirmation of presence with the felt loss of that presence).

My own interest is the reading of Christianity that we find in people like Eagleton, Zizek and Badiou.

While I think there is similar intention, I think there could be conflict in practical outcome – though you may well deal with that in the book. Perhaps from the religious side there is a grief that leads to action? Whereas from the atheist looking towards religion, there is consumption of rituals, but perhaps no spur to serve the other. But I may be wrong.

I think the real issue here is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of digital media. Yes, Copyright protection was created to protect intellectual property, but it was conceived during a time when protecting copies was actually feasible, i.e. books, vinyl records etc. Once something is converted to bits it becomes infinitely copyable and transmittable at the speed of light. Protecting copies is an obsolete conversation.