Alternatively, we could retain the love story by rerouting their courtship to be less disturbing. Bella Swan would rebuff his advances, despite her desire to yield to him. Her crush on him would be unable to subvert good sense. Edward would continue to be a creepy bastard, but eventually, he too recognizes his behavior was inappropriate and banishes himself from her company. If he could channel his interest into her by corresponding with her from afar, an epistolary romance could develop based upon mutual respect and shared interests. Twilight would become the story of a supernatural long-distance relationship, and much like people who fall in love online, they get past physical and lifestyle differences. At the end, he could cautiously return, and they would give “going steady” a whirl.
I thought this was a good summary of some of what is wrong with the mindset behind SOPA. Of course, none of this even mentions other problems with SOPA, such as a lack of due process, but I think it well explains the illogical attack on “pirating”.
But first, a VERY IMPORTANT NOTE. I am not advocating illegal behavior. I am not advocating pirating. I am not advocating illegal downloading of videos.
However, I do believe that copyrights on digital media are a little silly and ineffective and that something will change in the industry. Ask me about that in real life for a somewhat rough and unformed spiel on what I think could be the future of media industries.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in arguments for a change in copyrights, go read just about anything Seth Godin’s written on copyrights and any of Cory Doctorow’s essays on copyright, particularly this one.
And, finally, here is the Pirate Bay’s SOPA Press Release:
INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012.
PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.
Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.
So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations – it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.
The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).
It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition. We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.
And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.
The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe – but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the
rest of us obedient consumers.
The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.
SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.
To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.
In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world – because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.
Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.
THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012
And even if I don’t say anything… It’s just because I’m suppressing my natural instinct in the pursuit of not being an outcast.
By PETER STULTS on every day posters every day.
Do what you say you’re going to do.
That’s it. It’s that simple. Do what you say you’re going to do in all areas of your life and eventually you’ll be making more money than you know what to do with.
[...]
You’re going to consistently promise to only do the things you know you have the hard drive capacity for. Then, you’ll actually do them. People will be so shocked you delivered (and continue to) that you’ll stick out in their minds. They’ll keep coming back for more and more and more.You’ll be an enigma that gives people what they expect, when they expect it.
That’s how you make a million dollars.
Your Next Million Dollar Idea on Be Deviant
By the time you’ve read this sentence three people have been born into the world.
By the time you’ve read this sentence two will have passed away.
By the time you’ve lived through this twelve-hour day there will be 100,000 more children on the planet. And in the same twelve hours 70,000 people will have died.Birthday is a work which sets out to record every individual birth and death over a twelve-hour period. Initially imagined to be realised in real time, marking the beat of each life with a small circle. But I immediately realised it was impossible to keep up with events and it would take many months to graphically capture the rhythm of life and death.
Sam Winston produced these two works to capture life and death over twelve hours.
The white circles on the black paper represent the number of births over a waking day.
The black circles on the white paper represent the number of deaths over a waking day.
via booooooom
Perhaps love is a minor madness. And as with madness, it’s unendurable alone. The one person who can relieve us is of course the sole person we cannot go to: the one we love. So instead we seek out allies, even among strangers and wives, fellow patients who, if they can’t touch the edge of our particular sorrow, have felt something that cuts nearly as deep.
Andrew Sean Greer, The Story of a Marriage via slaughterhouse 90210
Donald Miller wrote the book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, two years ago. I bought the hardcover version last year, and now he’s releasing a paper-back version.
In And It Was Good, Madeleine L’Engle wrote:
And of course as soon as this glorious creature appeared on the scene, along came confusion and conflict. And story.
No matter what else can be said about human beings, we do provide good stories. One of my favourite Hassidic tales ends,God made man because he loves stories.And story is where we have learned to look for truth.
The question Donald Miller asks is: are you living a good story?
What story are you telling? from Rhetorik Creative on Vimeo.
eating foodsto be an annoying habit.
I just can’t seem to stop doing it. Any suggestions to help me quit this teeth-yellowing habit?
Almost everyone would agree that they would like to have whiter teeth. We all know what causes our teeth to become yellow and tarnished looking: age, drinking coffee, cola’s, teas, cigarette smoking and eating foods, especially those that contains a lot of acid. Yet, it is hard to stop all of these habits and we can’t do anything about the aging process.
How to Bleach Your Teeth on ehow.com
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