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.

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.

 

Self-destruction is best served unknowingly

I have had a few wake up calls in my fairly short life to realize that when you are destroying yourself, you never realize it.

Several cases of self-destruction have popped up into the media recently.

Watching Herman Cain’s message machine fumble about is entertaining, but watching Rick Perry fumble over the English language is embarrassing.

The debacle at Penn State is just outright disgusting. In that situation, it was one man’s actions that led to countless other men’s inactions, which has led to several cases of self-destruction.

The thing about the Penn State issue, once you see the full path to where it is now, it isn’t hard to comprehend how it got so out of control. It isn’t hard to comprehend how men could be filled with so much cowardice. But man is a fickle being.

The up-and-ups were watching their own skin. They did not care that a potential predator was on the loose. They did not care that, according to the court documents, eight victims will forever be traumatized by one man. They did not care that all of this happened under their watch.

They cared about how things looked to those who had no idea. They wanted a secret to remain in the shadows. They wanted icons and athletes to still come to the university. They wanted prestige.

I understand mistakes, and I have made plenty. I have made situations worse by trying to help. I get that people aren’t perfect.

However, JoePa and the like, while trying to potentially save the name of the university all those years ago, simply began then to drag it into the ground.

People think his legacy of success will rise above it, and for him, that is probably true. But what child is going to go to this school now? What parents will send their student-athlete to a program that knowingly hid allegations of child-molestation?

This isn’t buying cars with booster money, or trading rings for tattoos, or taking athletes out for fancy dinners, or bending all the NCAA rules to recruit athletes. This isn’t a university padding grades or offering incentives to faculty to let their athletes have a little slack. This is a university that hid criminal allegations of child molestation. Paterno was involved, the coaching staff was involved and the top-tier of the university was involved in hiding this information. They all knowingly did this.

What they unknowingly did was destroy themselves. And they deserve it.