living in amerika
By Todd Stadler · Friday, July 26, 2002 2:42am
Let's play a game. Pretend that you are brought in by a Congressional committee to recommend a solution to the rampant problem of videocassette piracy.
While police are able to break up a few of the larger piracy rackets, the problem is that there are simply too many people copying videocassettes for the cops to stop them all. What should be done?
If you answered, "Vigilantism! Make it legal for employees of the movie studios to break in to wherever the illegal copies are being made and destroy the copying equipment, furthermore making it difficult for those allegedly engaged in piracy to recoup any (accidental) losses incurred as a result of this sabotage", then take a deep breath, and meet Senator Howard Berman.
Mr. Berman is upset at the fact that the record companies (all five of them) are completely incapable of making money now that peer-to-peer applications have proliferated (think of them as the mammals to the record companies' dinosaurs).
And as a U.S. Senator, Mr. Berman knows that all those millions of stupid laws that already exist can't possibly stem this tide of illegal behavior - not even if we tried to enforce them!
Furthermore, as a Democrat, Mr. Berman knows that big business always succeeds where government fails, and preventing illegal behavior is no exception! That's why he wants to make it legal for the music industry to hack into your computer and stop you from doing anything illegal. We can trust them, since they obviously care about the customers.
And, of course, if the companies accidentally delete something that you own legally, or otherwise mess things up, whoops! After you jump through the correct procedural hoops and prove that the damage done was over $250, justice is served!
Every day, I get more and more cynical, and more and more convinced it's the most logical reaction I can have to all this crap.
(Many links initially found on Tom Tomorrow's blog, he of This Modern World fame.)
7 comments so far
1 Jul 26 '02 3:23pm:
Josh replied:
"I can't imagine that this will ever get passed. Too loopy.
"
2 Jul 28 '02 5:31pm:
aaron replied:
"Another URL for useful information about Senator Berman is this one. It's always enlightening to see who funds political campaigns..."
3 Aug 05 '02 9:34am:
Jon replied:
"To make no comment on the main thrust of your article, ludicrous though it is, and concentrate entirely on all this crap, it's interesting to note that at a time when we are fighting those who wish to take our freedoms away, it is necessary, in order to do this, that our freedoms must first be taken away."
4 Aug 05 '02 11:38pm:
tODD replied:
"Huh? Jon, maybe I missed something, but it sounded like you said "in order to protest people doing bad thing x, there must first be an instance of bad thing x".
Certainly the current administration is all about pre-emptive strikes. I should expect that those who would like to rein them in would have to be just as "proactive".
Sure, protesting before any published, widely acknowledged instances of civil rights abuses (and surely Jose Padilla doesn't count - he did something bad, right?) sounds like whining, but I'd rather whine now than be justified later in having done so. As, I assume, would those whose civil liberties are threatened these days."
5 Aug 06 '02 10:16pm:
aaron replied:
""They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" -- Benjamin Franklin"
6 Aug 09 '02 3:41am:
Jon replied:
"Yeah, apparently I wasn't exactly as clear as I could have been, basically what I was trying to say was what Ben Franklin had so eloquently many years ago. Thanks aaron.
It was supposed to be all clever and ironic, it would seem I failed miserably."
7 Jan 17 '03 3:14am:
mysterious replied:
"this is an artikle who really SUCKS!!!"