IP Rights Battles Are Only Beginning

There seems to be a great deal of celebration over having derailed SOPA and PIPA in the U.S.A., but they are not completely dead yet. In the meantime, ACTA has been passed by the majority of the EU nations. It still has not yet been ratified. That is little comfort, for I suspect it will be ratified easily when the time comes. To get an understanding of why this is a big deal, please check out my earlier posts on it here and here.

Another blow to the free travel of information came when the Supreme Court ruled that works in the public domain can be taken out of that status and copyrighted again. So those of you who have downloaded eBooks and movies in the public domain may end up becoming law breakers in the future. This aggravates the erosion of having limited copyrights and sets them well on the way to perpetuity, despite what Justice Ginsburg wrote.

It is ironic that there is such an effort to stifle the flow of knowledge and creativity in a time when we can finally share such things quickly and easily. Innovation is dying out in large part to actions such as these. Sure it sounds warm and fuzzy to talk about helping families of celebrities who were ripped off by their managers/producers/record labels, but resting on the laurels of those who came before is lazy. In the end, only the big media companies and their puppets in government truly benefit as most copyrights will be held by large corporations, not individuals.

So while a battle has been temporarily won, the war continues. If things keep up the way they are going, a long period of cultural stagnation is ahead for us. I firmly believe that humanity needs to keep striving and creating to advance. To my eyes, we have ceased doing so over the past twenty five years and the momentum generated in the past is fading away. We need some intellectual turmoil and the best way to create that is to ideas, concepts, and collaborations bouncing around like mad. Caging those is a huge mistake.

A Not Quite Unexpected Journey

While Bilbo Baggins got to go on an unexpected journey, the one I embarked on yesterday did give me some warning before hand. It involved a trek to Madison to recover the totaled Subaru Outback and get it back home to attempt repairs. Plans for assistance in driving the car fell through due to miscommunications, which meant I would have to drive the car the entire three hours plus it takes to get home.

Just one problem with that – my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome problems cause me to quickly loose awareness and concentration after about an hour and a half of driving. If I am having a good day, I can stretch that to two hours. Equipped with caffeinated soda and a lot of prayers said before and during, I managed to get home without undue incident. For that, I am supremely grateful.

So today I am barely functioning and this post took over twenty minutes to write. I will say it was not much fun driving the final leg home.

Now we have to tear into the car and see what all will need replacing. While the adjustor condemned the radiator, it appears intact and is functioning without leaking. First up for replacement will be the headlight and hood, with both looking to be major endeavors. That car will not be going anywhere soon.

Panic Has Hit the File Sharing Services

So after going through my normal routine of to start the day, I decided to check on some of the tech sites to see what effect the Megaupload arrests were having on the online community. While Anonymous continues to make sporadic and ineffective attacks in retaliation, other file services are beginning to react. Filesonic has stopped allowing file sharing altogether, which means users can only upload and download their own files. Slightly less panicked, FileServe has reportedly ended their affiliate program where users were paid when they got others to join the service. As many have already commented, who needs SOPA or PIPA when the U.S. government can already reach out and have people in New Zealand arrested?

While I do not like the ease with which the international arrests were carried out at the behest of Hollywood, it was painfully obvious what these file services were created for. So I do not mourn their passing in the least. Yet I wonder what affect it will have on the legitimate file locker companies? While I am not terribly enthused about cloud based computing in general, I do use Amazon’s cloud service to back up my purchased iTunes and MP3 files. Oh and then there is Steam, which is a cloud like service that I am fond of.

I am feeling some ironic amusement though. If you went through various technology and multimedia forums in the past couple of years, the pro-pirate forces had declared bit torrenting dead and the entire future to be these file locker services. As anyone familiar with how spy and terrorist organizations operate, the easiest ones to roll up and eliminate are the highly centralized ones. That is one reason why they operate in cells. Painting big old targets on yourself is not particularly smart and that is what these companies did.

My suspicions are that we will see the file sharing sites gone or inaccessible from America in the very near future. Torrenting will increase with a move to decentralize magnet links becoming the new standard. All of this reminds me of Spy vs. Spy in Mad Magazine as Hollywood and the recording industry use the U.S. government against the pirates.

Kimi ni Todoke Volume 1 Premium Edition and Ep. 1 Review

Karuho Shiina’s beloved romance manga is adapted into a beautiful anime depicting an outcast girl’s attempts to make friends in high school. When strange feelings stir in her after meeting the most popular boy in class, Sawako finds a whole new world opening before her. But will that world accept a weird looking girl who has little in the way of social skills?

In 2005, a shojo (girl’s) manga (comic book) debuted about a shy girl falling for the most popular boy in school. It is a theme done to death in the genre, but what set Kimi ni Todoke (From Me to You) apart was the execution and attention to detail regarding the characters. Only the second series by author Shiina, it ended up becoming a smash hit and won multiple critics awards. Being a slow moving character piece, it would not have been a surprise if the anime adaptation changed things considerably. Surprisingly faithful, it not only stayed true to the story, but rendered it with such care that it became a thing of beauty.

The Problem with Newt

Articles: The Myth of 'Newt The Great Debater'

John Ziegler lays it out like it is and I imagine he will take a lot of flack for it. One of the many problems with the extended primary debate season is that it has fooled conservatives and libertarians into thinking they are the only audience. The last I checked, 40% of the country consider themselves "independents" and they will decide who gets the Oval Office after 2012. People need to remember how easy it was for people to hate Gingrich the last time he was in the national spotlight. Toxic does not even begin to describe how bad it will get if he gets the nomination. While I have problems with Santorum and Romney, I would take either of them in a heartbeat over the walking and talking train wreck called Newt.

Stop SOPA and PIPA!

Contact your local Senator and Congressman to let them know you support free speech on the Web.   Allowing web sites to be taken down by the government simply based on a complaint from someone else about copyright violations is ridiculous. The whole idea of the world wide Web is to allow linking to other sites to share information and these bills would jeopardize the very structure of the Internet.

The Wrong Box (1966) Review

Featuring an impressive group of actors, this dark farce manages to be both satirical and whimsical at the same time. Set in the Victorian era, it is a classic comedy of errors involving a corpse, a box, and an eccentric family by the name of Finsbury. Expect bizarre situations, innocent romance, scheming relatives,  bird eggs, and the best butler ever in this very amusing movie resurrected through Warner Bros. Archive’s made on demand DVD service.

Every family has at least one film that somehow becomes a tradition to watch. In my family’s case, one of those films is The Wrong Box, an unfairly obscure comedy from the 1960’s. Long before I ever had a chance to see the movie, I had heard all about it and memorized quotes from it. It would not be until the 1980’s before I got to see it on cable TV. Thankfully, it lived up to the hype from the family!

For years I had looked for it on DVD to no avail. But thanks to Warner Bros., I now have the movie and it is worth the premium price I paid for it. It was a pittance to bring back some cherished family memories. Popping the DVD into the Blu-ray player, I wondered what the quality of the picture would be. To my delight, the very 60’s animated opening credits looked great as John Barry’s whimsical score started and so I settled in to watch this deeply, wrongly funny movie.