One of the more amusing facets of the ongoing battle against piracy is the hyperbole — gross exaggerations of how badly piracy is crushing our economy. The content industry likes to claim that piracy has cost the United States alone over 750,000 jobs (a quarter of a million — you read that right), and nearly $250 billion in revenue.

Yeah. So when you download some random CD that retails for $15 (that costs a buck to make, tops), you’re part of some colossal machine that’s stealing billions of dollars from the industry every year.

Or not. I love it when people make insane claims like these only to have someone actually do the damned math to see if there’s any truth to it or not. Guess what? In this case, there isn’t any. Read the full story...

Technorati Tags: Content Cartel Geeky Politics

Well, hell, it was done to me last year (by a smaller, less-significant company run by an egotistical would-be megalomaniac with a bruised ego), so why shouldn’t the RIAA try to silence one of its most vocal critics by pursuing legal sanctions against him¹ for calling their litigious activities frivolous and wasteful? Trouble is, this guy’s a lawyer.

This is the single best example of how broken our nation is. The court system wasn’t put in place so people could abuse each other. Imagine the look on a founding father’s face if he realized that a couple hundred years after he created our modern legal system, it would be used to bankrupt people for bootlegging a CD. The legislature wasn’t put in place to be purchased to the point that it simply rubber-stamps laws that private corporate interests wanted on the books, but that’s where we are now (with the DMCA long-codified in law, enhanced last year with additional laws, and now the Senate Judiciary Committee fast-tracking yet another enhancement that gives the federal government the power and mandate to bring civil suits against file sharers itself). The executive branch wasn’t mean to be a de facto dictatorship, but here we are.

How much more of this will it take to get some of you people off your asses to vote, to hold your elected officials accountable, to demand punishment of the real criminals, and to reclaim our fucking country?

Technorati Tags: Content Cartel Politics

About a year and a half ago, a client of mine sent me an unexpected gift in the form of five books: Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card, and Titan, Wizard, and Demon by John Varley. The three Varley books were a trilogy, and I actually really enjoyed it. The two books by Card are the first in their respective series of books set in the Ender’s Game universe … I’ll let you guess which one started the whole thing

It’s important to note I didn’t pay for the books. They were shipped to me straight from Amazon, so it’s clear they were brand new, but money didn’t leave my pockets to cause those books to land in my possession.

I actually read the Titan trilogy first — when I realized how big the Ender’s Game series was, I decided to tackle a smaller pile of books first. When I finally got to Ender’s Game, I absolutely loved it, and immediately set about acquiring the rest of the books in both Ender’s Game series and the Ender’s Shadow series. To do this, I went to half.com … no point in paying retail for six books when I could snag them all for under $20 (including shipping). Read the full story...

Technorati Tags: Content Cartel Frugal Living Money Politics Rants

Well, I suppose we should have expected this, but it’s still disgusting to actually see it come to light. In its ever-increasingly desperate efforts to convince the world that a person who downloads a copy of a copyrighted song is the worst kind of criminal in existence, the idiots at the RIAA have concocted a feature-length film (!) aimed at law enforcement agents, suggesting that intensifying prosecution of “pirates” will lead them to more “tantalizing” targets, like drug dealers, thieves, and terrorists.

Though they didn’t mention the term “Nazi” directly, did the RIAA just Godwin itself out of this argument? They’ve obviously made two bad mistakes here:

1. By suggesting that following the “antics” of a music pirate, law enforcement might find evidence of other crimes, like drug dealing, terrorism, etc., haven’t they just admitted that “stealing music electronically” lands really low on the priority list for reasonable law enforcement efforts?
2. They’ve just implied that every person who has ever downloaded a piece of music without tithing to the music industry is a terrorist. It’s a cheap shot, and it’s also pretty shitty. Methinks even more “everyday people” will see this steaming pile of bullshit for what it’s worth, even more so than the eyebrows that get raised whenever the RIAA sues a child or a grandparent.

Read some other opinions on the matter so you don’t just think I’m a wingnut Also, it shouldn’t surprise anybody at all that the Pirate Bay has already, well, pirated a copy of this video from the RIAA. Grab your copy here.

• A Wired article on the subject.
• Slashdot.org covers the issue.

Technorati Tags: Content Cartel MAFIAA Politics Stupid People

I laugh hysterically at the MPAA as I write this, since they’ve just been caught (and called out) committing a breach of copyright law.

When you are crusading against the American public for “rampant acts of piracy,” suing your own customers for pirating movies, you probably shouldn’t rip off a copy of Ubuntu, mutate it to have your name, logos, and “approved software” on it, and redistribute it without honoring the license (the GPL) it’s released under.

You also shouldn’t sue your bread & butter customers either, but the MPAA isn’t known for doing smart things. Read the full story...

Technorati Tags: Content Cartel Law Linux MAFIAA Politics