I’d make a related point about open source development. Many large scale projects are developed as open source without any financial incentive. These projects are just as complex as anything commercial companies can produce.
Open source development completely dismantles arguments that people won’t work without a profit motive, that you need capitalism for innovation, or that you can’t organize labour without a traditional company structure.
It seems “free software” would be more suited to the point you’re making than “open source”. But I agree with you https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html
Sure, GNU is the best example of this. I do think this applies to any projects people develop because they’re interested in building something they want to share, even if they don’t use a decent copyleft license.
Paradoxically, the phenomenon of piracy (but also theft and similar crimes) is an integral feature of the capitalist system, even though such an act is deemed illegal and damaging to the values of free market.
Now the act itself does not intrinsically possess a revolutionary character. When browsing r/piracy, for example, one can notice that users who partake in piracy rarely have emancipatory sentiments in their philosophy. They operate from within the capitalist system and genuinely believe in the values maintained by capitalism. Their identity as pirates depends on its existence. Video games and movies today are the product of the capitalist system and, I suspect, they are the biggest source of ideological diffusion. Book piracy is a bit different, because pirates relate the activity to a noble idea or cause which is the openness of knowledge and the means to accumulate it, a sentiment that gives way to social consciousness.
