My views on SOPA/PIPA

I know no one cares about my personal views on many subjects, but this is one I can’t leave alone without sharing first.

I work with technology constantly. I was born and raised in a time where I remember cassette tapes and saw their evolution into MP3 players and how music is nothing but bit and bytes stored in multiple places today.

I watched the rise and fall of Napster. I watched iTunes become the prominent platform for music purchases. I watched TVs go from tubes to flat to Plasma to LED. I have watched computers become smaller, faster, better. I have seen floppy disks evolve to 3 and 1/2 inch disks then going to CDs, and then flash drives and to DVDs and to Blu-Rays.

I have watched the demise of print as a viable medium of information for my generation. I have watched cellphones that once were bricks now act as small computers.

All of this, and countless other advances in technology sit on the idea of the Internet. The idea that I can send, share, download, upload, find, research, read, listen, watch, post, like, comment on, reply to, update, add and subtract to anything on the Internet.

The Internet was first created so professors could SHARE information. Information that inherently belonged to their respective institutions, however, they knew at that time that sharing information allowed for a larger public discourse about the information.

SOPA/PIPA looks to curb online piracy. This is in a year when record sales have gone up for the first time since 2002. Movies continue to costs millions and make millions on ticket sales, DVD sales and products sold in unison with the movies.

But what SOPA/PIPA could ultimately become is a kill switch to websites.

Currently, if a website such as Youtube is hosting material that infringes on copyright law, the person who posted the video in liable for any fines or charges. The site is not held accountable for material that infringes on copyright.

Under SOPA/PIPA, websites would be held accountable for ACCUSATIONS OF INFRINGEMENT, and would be shut down accordingly.

There is a lot wrong with that, and I am certain I hardly have to go into details to further progress the point I am trying to make.

The one thing I keep coming back to is this, the Entertainment industry thinks it is a massive contributor to the Internet. It can be, when done correctly. Sites like Netflix and Hulu leverage the Entertainment industry in order to provide content for the Web users.

However, the Entertainment industry continues to stifle innovation. They dump millions of dollars into Congress, just so they can get their way, a dying way.

These are the death knells of giants. The Entertainment industry is lazy. They don’t want to innovate. They don’t even want to evolve their products they are selling. Shitty music and shitty movies are the same now as they were in the 60s. Shitty.

People who download torrents of whole albums or movies are still going to do this. China censors its Internet, the outcome of that? Some of the best hackers in the world, and they are concentrated in one country. Why? Because when government builds walls, the people will dig wholes. And when the government pours concrete in the ground, the people will build wings. And when the government builds turrets to take down flyers, the people will use dynamite.

Instead of attempting to box people in, the Entertainment industry should allow for innovation. It should welcome change, and the Internet.

The Internet helps original and creative content. For instance, “The Hurt Locker,” which won Best Picture at the 2010 Academy Awards, was the lowest grossing movie (at the time it won) to ever win an Academy Award for Best Picture. It was also one of the most illegally downloaded films. Think about why it was downloaded first.

The film was constantly in limited release, so unless you lived in certain locations you may have never seen the movie. This allowed for public hype of the film, and allowed for the those who did not download it, an attempt to listen to their peers. Once this dialogue occurs, people are more likely to buy/go see certain entertainment.

Did it hurt it? Sure, but DVD sales put the movie into the green for revenue, and the movie cost around $11 million to makes, grossing a theater total of $13 million and grossing a DVD total of $35 million.

Thus, drawing a profit (excluding marketing, packaging, and distribution costs) of $37 million. Taking into account the expenses, it would wind up making around $15-20 million (estimate).

So, one of the highest illegally downloaded movies of 2010 made a good bit of cash. Could it have done better with SOPA/PIPA? Could it have done worse with SOPA/PIPA?

There is always a bump in sales for Best Picture winners. That accounts for some of the sales of DVDs for this example. However, the downloading cannot be ignored as a contributor to the spread of word about this or other types of entertainment.

So, what do you do? Do you shut down websites because they allow for this kind or thing to occur? Do you embrace it and watch your company go bankrupt because you give away everything for free?

Or do you innovate? Do you create, as oppose to destroy? Do you build growth, or do you stifle competition, simply because you have more money than the common man? It is funny, those who claim to have busted their ass to get somewhere in life, simply rest on the laurels of days gone by. They shouldn’t have to innovate, or create anything anymore. They can just throw money at the problem. They just become content and lazy.

That is my biggest issue with SOPA/PIPA. It makes an industry that is so vibrant, so amazing, become so God damn lazy.

‘You Complete Me’

I have a Facebook account. I have had one since 2005-ish, I think. Thanks to the new timeline feature, I can see exactly when I created my account, but I care little about my birth into the world of social media.

One of the staples of Facebook, other than completely indulging people’s narcissistic and voyeuristic tendencies, is to point out to the world that you are, in fact, in a motherfucking relationship. Pointing out indefinitely to all those relationship-less losers that you found someone who thinks you are at least semi-attractive enough to be associated with on the Internet. Boo-yah, asshats.

I have never been a proponent of publicly displaying my relationship status on said social media platform. There is no real logic to it, just not my style. If someone on the street asks me, “Do you have a girlfriend,” I would think they were crazy, but answer with the affirmative. So, no logic, just not my thing to post relationship statuses on social media.

However, I was the sappy asshole who would post videos to love songs and quote ridiculous lyrics or lines from songs, poetry, books or whatever I thought inclined me to believe I was with “the one.”

And I am not talking about “the one” as is Neo kicking Agent Smith’s ass up and down the street for days with an over-inflated and relatively ineffective Kung-Fu fighting style. I am not talking about “The One,” that awful Jet Li movie. And I am not even referencing “the great one, Wayne Gretzky.

See, the implications of a relationship are many. But the one thing that always happens is everyone mistakes infatuation for attraction and attraction for interest and interest for respect and respect for love. This is a stripped down version of the mess we call “a relationship” but I feel it to somewhat close to the truth.

And that is the thing. relationships are never simple. They are never clean and easy. They can be fun, they can last a long time, but they take work. They take effort and sacrifice and compromise. They take arguments and love-making. They take every idea of the human condition, all the ones you are good at and all the ones you are bad at, then make you try to share those things with someone else.

And it isn’t your family, people who have known you since you were born. It is someone you have an idea of, you barely know. They present their best intentions to you and you to them.But you haven’t been in the trenches with them. You haven’t had those knock down drag out fights where your love is truly tested. You haven’t grown with the person at all.

Which is why I get so fucking annoyed when (usually is just) women, and these women seem to handle relationships like a turnstile, post crap about being the “happiest I have ever been” and “my life is so perfect” and “my boyfriend completes me.”

Little secret ladies, odds are none of those things are true. And, considering your tendency to implode your own relationships frequently enough that no one knows it you are ever truly single or with someone, you should know it is true by now.

No one should complete you but you. No one should have to make you happy but you. No life is ever perfect, and that is the way it should be.

Your significant other should compliment you, assist you, guide you when you are lost. They should offer suggestions, not solutions. They should never be your everything, but always something that is there.

If you have been on this planet longer than 20 years, you should get head out of your ass about love. Love doesn’t last forever, nothing does.

What does last forever is realizing you cannot even love someone for a month if you do not love yourself. And filling the void of self-hatred and loathing with someone else’s time and energy is selfish, idiotic and insecure. Once you do that, then you have the ability to love someone until you cease to be. Which may not be forever, but it is good enough for me.

Let Me Tell You About This Guy I Know

See, it is a funny thing, when you realize that the one you look up to, is pretty much just you. You from a different time, a different place, a different idea entirely.

It is funny, how you read the words of your mentor, your idol, and see that you use the same language, the same flow, the same syntax. Fuck, the punctuation is the same. And the swearing.

It is funny how you see yourself in his place, and him in yours, and you wonder what he would do. And you know what you should do.

It is funny how you can hear him say, “Go for it, son.” You can hear him say, “You shouldn’t do that, son.”

It is funny how those word will always give you the courage to do the right thing.

“The right thing is rarely the popular thing,” he would say. And you will find yourself reminding this god that exact same notion.

It is funny how you can understand so little about a man, yet know so much.

It is funny how you can see the man he is and the man you want to be.

It is funny how you try to be better than him, and will always fall short.

It is funny how you can strive to be perfect.

It is funny how you know he that is not, and yet, if you are a fraction of that idol, you will be everything you wanted to be.

My father is what I want to be, but I want to better. Not that he isn’t great, he is a near perfect father. Flaws and all, he is the man who I strive to be.

He wants me to be better. He wants me be quick to listen and slow to talk. He wants me to have more guts, more brain and more brawn. He wants me to be better than him and his father and my grandfather’s father. He wants me to be better than anyone to bear the name that is my last name.

It is funny to realize, that your god, your idol, your role model looks up to you.

I missed posting this on his birthday, but Happy Birthday Dad.

And challenge accepted.

Words and things of that nature

One of the most pleasurable experiences in this world, at least for me, is language.

Inflection, enunciation, grammar and syntax are things of beauty. They are also things to be revered, respected, studied and practiced. I write how I talk, which has a certain flow to it.

I talk quickly. So, I write in manner that can be read easily and quickly. However, the written word is different from the spoken word. Focusing on the someone like Shakespeare, you can see how spoken word can appear so differently on paper.

Reading Shakespeare in your head is daunting. Saying the words out loud as you read is to hear eloquence, even if your delivery is nowhere near Kenneth Branagh.

But, it is the word that makes the difference. It is how we use the word, where we place the word in sentences, and how we place punctuation around the word. The word is spoken throughout the world. We organize sentences differently, we use different pronunciations, dialects and language.

We, as humans, may use all of these things differently, but we use them all for the same purpose.

Pain is never equal

One thing I am beginning to recognize is that I have a long way to go to be where I want to get to.

But I will get there.