Moral Suits
Via Slashdot, a news story about Hollywood’s anti-piracy efforts. While it’s mostly a good article, it misses the point in one big way:
The music industry’s approach has contributed to a decline in downloading but has also produced a powerful public backlash, angering millions of its customers. That is one reason, among others, that Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, said that his industry would not be following the music companies’ path any time soon.
“I’m not ruling out anything, but at this moment we don’t have any specific plans to sue anyone,” Valenti said. “I think we have learned from the music industry.” ...
The movie industry, he said, has to ask itself what the music industry should have asked years ago: “Why do they want to steal from us?” The answer, he said, is simple: “Because you won’t sell them what they want.”
Well, no. Actually, they want to steal from you, because then they
can have all the free music they want.
Which is why the music industry has been trying desperately — and, I
think, mostly successfully — to change cultural norms. Back when
Napster was hitting big, nobody was worried much about the ethics of
music sharing; yeah, there were some ethics discussions here and
there, but to people who were sharing music, they were abstract and
irrelevant, like debating the morality of going 65 in a 55 zone.
No matter what the music industry folks said, regular people treated
music sharing like taping shows off HBO or copying a computer game.
(Aside: That latter is a case where the industry didn’t move
aggressively enough to fend off piracy, and it’s now culturally okay.
Over the holidays, I was visiting my in-laws; talking to their
Flanders-esque, goody-goody, clean-cut kids, I was shocked when I
found out that the games they were playing were all pirated — and
neither they nor their ultra-moral parents had any problem with
that.)
Then the music industry started suing. They shut down Napster,
they shut down the biggest pirates, they started going after kids who
were just “innocently” downloading music. And people started to shift
their attitudes, because anything that can bring you into court and
forced to pay a hefty fine isn’t just a casual and meaningless
etiquette violation — it’s something big and serious. Downloading a
low-quality copy of “The Final Countdown” isn’t worth a risk of going
to the courthouse.
When geeks talk about copy protection, they largely ignore this
social dimension. They focus on the fact that copy protection can be
broken technically, but ignore the reality that people don’t want to
be part of a criminal underworld. So, sure, you can download DeCSS
from hacker sites and copy all the DVDs you want; but for regular
people, DVD copying is verboten in a way that VHS copying never was;
it’s not something that people do, it’s something that hackers and
pirates do. And as long as the industry keeps directing lawsuits at
DeCSS, so that the only place you can get it is those illicit hacker
sites, it’ll stay that way.
As for backlashes: Whatever. Everyone’s outraged at a few
dozen things, and only a few nuts really have the time and inclination
to boycott all the companies they want to boycott. Besides, hating
the RIAA is perfect for the music industry, because it’s the most
faceless and abstract entity possible. Hating the RIAA won’t keep me
from buying a CD of Lowell Liebermann’s Piano Concertos; nor, I
suspect, will it keep many others from buying whatever music they want
to buy.
| December
27,
2003
National Insecurity
In a turbulent, confused and insecure time, it’s important that we
have a leader who is strong and clear-eyed in the defense of our
national security. Instead, we have George W. Bush, who apparently can’t tell the difference between having a gun and
thinking it’d be kinda cool to have one:
In the debate over the necessity for the war in
Iraq, few issues have been more contentious than whether Saddam
Hussein possessed arsenals of banned weapons, as the Bush
administration repeatedly said, or instead was pursuing weapons
programs that might one day constitute a threat.
On Tuesday, with Mr. Hussein in American custody and polls showing
support for the White House’s Iraq policy rebounding, Mr. Bush
suggested that he no longer saw much distinction between the
possibilities.
“So what’s the difference?” he responded at one point as he was
pressed on the topic during an interview by Diane Sawyer of ABC News.
Fortunately, Bush’s giggly, hair-tossing, “like, you know, whatever” approach to national security hasn’t caused any real harm or anything. Right? Er.
For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission
investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could
have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent
Randall Pinkston.
“This is a very, very important part of history and we’ve got to tell
it right,” said Thomas Kean.
“As you read the report, you’re going to have a pretty clear idea what
wasn’t done and what should have been done,” he said. “This was not
something that had to happen.”
Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican
governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the
administration and laying blame.
“There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be
in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They
simply failed,” Kean said.
| December
18,
2003
Subgenre
Adam Cadre, author of fiction both interactive and non, uses a book review as an excuse to muse about the nature of interactive fiction.
It’s a rambling, personal sort of article, and one that’ll make the most sense to someone who’s familiar with contemporary IF, but the most interesting passage to me is the one that explains why you probably aren’t familiar with contemporary IF:
Interactive fiction and American comics are both
caught in a trap described by Scott
McCloud in
Reinventing
Comics
. There was a time (the 1940s) that a diverse lineup of
comics, while not of very high quality, sold very well to a wide
demographic: boys and girls, and men (GIs read millions
of 'em). Then came the hammers: first, censorship (largely thanks to
one Fredric Wertham) killed American comics for adults. The surviving
companies managed to hang on thanks to the success of one genre,
superheroes — and responded by ditching the rest of their output,
maximizing their short-term profit at the expense of the health of the
industry (not to mention the artform). Comics were now just for boys.
And then came the day that other media (eg, video games) proved
superior at entertaining boys, and in order to survive comics
companies had to hang on to their existing audience, the last
generation to get hooked on comics when they were ubiquitous. Today,
American comic books are written for a cult of a hundred thousand men
in their 30s. Some of those books are really good! Some of today’s
best writers are working in superhero comics, turning out fare that’s
sophisticated, intelligent and entertaining. But it’s all tailored to
the initiated, an increasingly tiny group. ...
IF’s history didn’t follow exactly the same track, but
there are some parallels. ... [J]ust as comics are tied in the popular
imagination to Batman punching the Riddler in the nose accompanied by
a “POW!” sound effect, those who’ve heard of IF tend to associate it
with grabbing treasures and hitting trolls with swords — or, if
they’re slightly more familiar with it, they associate it with
figuring out the fifteen steps to get out of the Babel Fish room.
Mazes. Finding keys. Puzzles. The miscue here wasn’t genre, the way
it was with comics — Infocom was pretty good about diversifying
the genres it offered — but about positioning IF as a form of
gaming. Yeah, Infocom gave lip service to the storytelling angle, but
seeing the gray boxes wedged between Karateka and Ultima
IV said a lot more than the press releases. Customers at Software
Etc. had a different set of priorities from those next door at the
B. Dalton. They weren’t looking for literary pleasures; they wanted
to play a game, and graphics were primitive enough that a screenful of
text was more pleasant to look at. And then came the day that
graphical games proved superior at entertaining gamers, and IF’s
audience evaporated down to a cult of a hundred men in their 30s.
Most of those who might enjoy a Shade or a Galatea are
put off by the interface, having been blissfully unaware of IF as it
came and went, and not feeling particularly motivated to learn about
it now; meanwhile, those who aren’t put off by the interface are
disappointed because Photopia doesn’t make them fix a toaster.
| December
15,
2003
Alleged Super-Geniuses
Patrick Nielsen-Hayden counsels against over-estimating the political genius of the Bush folks, and Matthew Yglesias provides evidence for their sub-genius nature in the form of a New York Times article which states:
Still, Dr. Dean's ability to energize Democrats and potentially
attract new voters, while raising large sums of money without the
benefit of an established national reputation, has generated some
concern within the Bush campaign, where much of the early betting had
been on Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri as the most
likely nominee.
They, these allegedly brilliant practitioners of devious and subtle political arts, they thought that Gephardt was going to win the nomination? Gephardt?
| December
11,
2003
The Pussification of America
Lore Sjoberg, of the late Brunching Shuttlecocks, bemoans the growth of the nanny state:
Clearly, one sign of the increased wimpiness of our society is that we
no longer use actual candles on our Christmas trees. The same cultural
nannies who have banned those slightly-serrated butterknives from
eighteen states, and who successfully campaigned to have street curbs
in Cincinnati covered in ankle-protecting velour, have now convinced
us that precariously attaching live flame to a dead, resin-exuding
tree is somehow dangerous. The fact is, I don’t know anyone who has
died in a tree-candle fire. I don’t even know anyone who suffered
burns to more than about a third of their body. Mark my words, if this
keeps up we’ll soon see prominently marked fire exits in all public
buildings.
| December
9,
2003