Close reading is far less miraculous than loaves and fishes, but I would nevertheless share this humble miracle with you of finding more in something than seems there on a casual reading: a sharing, even multiplying, of meanings….

http://manzanamecanica.org/2009/06/jesus_la_pirateria_y_las_patentes.html

‘Dis-tribute’…the opposite of “paying tribute”, or “paying the royalty”, right?

Perhaps this parable is more “on point” than you realize.

PS Good morning, Ito! Sun’s up…

@phoomp He’s just pissed at the mega-corps cause they stole his dad’s work!

+1

And I hate religion. (disclaimer)

The white spots Maggie was referring to are actually about the only symptoms commonly listed among Biblical “lepers.”

Consider that the premise is just silly. Five thousand people follow Jesus to a remote valley to hear him preach, and no one thinks to pack a lunch? I’m certain not everyone did. I’ll even buy that some large percentage, maybe half, were too concerned about getting their relig on to bother with provisions. Most people these days can’t go on a half hour walk without their trail mix, bottled beverage, energy bar, etc, and soft as we may have become, back then they were keenly aware of where their next meal was coming from.

After that, the miracle’s plain as day. If god himself is sharing his lunch with you, are you going to play the miser? Especially after he split everyone into groups of less than a hundred, where the guys hoarding their food couldn’t hide in anonymity. The basket came around, people took, people added, it left slightly heavier.

Same result, no need for witchery. The real miracle was clever social manipulation of peer pressure.

The fish and bread were his intellectual property, though.

I realize you may be joking here; but, just for the sake of making what I believe to be an important point, permit me to respond to your statement as if you were being serious:

The problem with this sort of response is that it assumes that “intellectual property” is a valid concept. But the validity of the concept of “intellectual property” is at the crux of the debate over file sharing. You can’t simply resolve a debate that hinges on the question of whether or not “intellectual property” is a valid concept by assuming that it is. Too many opponents of file sharing simply cite “intellectual property” as if those two magic words ought to settle the issue once and for all. They don’t even try to defend the idea of “intellectual property”. They don’t bother to provide a logical argument for why someone ought to have the exclusive right to control and to profit from the products of his or her own intellectual effort, that trump the ordinary sort of property rights that usually apply to tangible assets.

If Abel builds a house and sells it to Baker, it becomes Baker’s property; and Baker is presumed to have the right to dispose of that property as she sees fit — even selling it for a profit, or giving it away. Once Abel sells the house to Baker, Abel’s property rights in that house are terminated; and Abel can no longer claim any right to control or profit from that property. But, if Abel writes, performs, and records a song, and sells a copy of that recording to Baker, the concept of “intellectual property” presumes that Abel still retains rights over that recording, even after it has been sold. Thus, “intellectual property” rights trump ordinary property rights. But why? What is the justification for this?

You can’t just say the magic words “intellectual property” as if that settles the issue; because the validity of the concept of “intellectual property” IS the issue.

Only “doubt“? :)

I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, I’m saying that’s what happens. We have to acknowledge reality even when we don’t like it.

But in my experience, if you ask for reasonable compensation, you will get it. I have been writing software for more than 30 years and I haven’t had any trouble feeding my family. Of course what you write has to be worth buying – Linus Torvalds has never charged anything for his software, but it’s value is so high that people pay him anyway. Same with Andrew Tridgell – he wrote a better copy command (rsync) and people send him pizzas from all over the world.

Costless multiplication of value why not?
Just wait till the rights expire – oh right, in the USA copyrights effectively NEVER expire, do they?
Oh well – maybe in the NEXT lifetime, things will be better.

By which I mean, the next generation.
We only live once! Or so I’ve been told, anyway.

Fortunately Martin Luther broke their DRM hold over the bible by translating it into the language of the people.

Yeah; after posting that I realized that it sounded as if I was referring to the intention of the story in the Bible. Actually, I was referring to the intention of whoever created the “PIRACY (Jesus did it)” graphic above. I doubt that the person who created that graphic intended for us to conclude that the biblical story of Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes proves that file sharing is okay. (Whereas, I’m 99.99999% certain that Mark wasn’t thinking about file sharing when he included that story in his gospel.)

Besides, the text specifically says that there were 12 baskets full of leftovers. If you tell me that you started with 2 apples and ended up with 5 apples, you don’t have to explicitly tell me that the number of apples you have “increased” — I can figure that out for myself. And it would be absurd to claim that I can’t know for sure that the number of apples you have increased simply because you didn’t say the word. Likewise, if we know that Jesus started with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, and he ended up with 12 baskets full of leftovers, you don’t have to use the word “multiply” for me to figure out that he somehow increased the amount of food he had. This is not reading into the text something that’s not there. It’s simply reading what the text clearly says using ordinary commonsense reasoning. That may not be sufficient for purposes of theology; but for an analogy about file sharing, I think it will suffice.

The drawback is that you have to have at least ten peers, the transmission network takes a year to perform the copy, the copying doesn’t work with devices from any other provider, and system downtime is from Friday evening to Saturday evening.