With the fall of Napster, Supernova, Pirate Bay and now this I [...]]]> Recently the file sharing site Mininova decided to stop hosting any torrent that was not sent in from a registered user with rights to the material that was being posted. It was if a million file sharers suddenly screamed and then were silenced…

With the fall of Napster, Supernova, Pirate Bay and now this I wonder the impact any of these widely publicized mini-victories has had?

The American “War on Drugs” was a late 60′s initiative and while various reports indicate drug use is down, an equal or greater number seem to report little change. Which isn’t surprising to me. If I ask any random yes or no question to any x number of people the result will likely vary from survey to survey.

It is impossible to determine the exact number of drug users for a variety of reasons. Avoiding the “since drugs being illegal, there is an apprehension about discussing their use” cliche, consider how I could go about calculating the number of smokers.

Obviously countries, and regions within those have different habits of smoking habits. If you broke down those regions based on something say like #of packs sold in a week, then determined the average number of cigarettes a smoker in that region smoked you could then calculate an estimate on the number of smokers in that region. Add all the regions up and (albeit with a fairly high margin of error), you could still get an idea of # of smokers..

There is no way to do this with illegal drugs in most of the western world. There is no idea how much of the product exists, and therefore no idea how much is sold and therefore no accurate measure of the use, or for that matter the change in use.

I am not arguing that the War on Drugs hasn’t worked, I am arguing that there is little they could do to prove it has and it has been going on since the 60s!

Assuming we know that for 40 years the government of the US (and many other countries) has put billions into fighting a war on something which we also know still exists and have no real way of measuring any affect, what does that mean in the case of Internet file sharing? Is the War on Pirated Music/Video identical to the War on Drugs?

Before every movie in the UK there is an ad with a famous person saying don’t copy this movie and there are plenty of celebrity anti-drug campaigns out there.  The agencies doing the fighting have just as much propaganda available see the little bit I did on drug propaganda previously and the RIAA’s wonderful news releases on their slowly being killed industry which set a new record for profits last year.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not indicating that because music and theatres are making money this legitimises  illegal actions, what I am simply putting forth is that fighting something that isn’t going to go away is like randomly waving your hand in the air with hopes it’ll hit and kill a fly.

It took 40 years to make an insignificant dent (if there is one at all) in drug use with “The War on Drugs” and its Most Wanted culprits are still in daily use. My bet is that the Internet landscape will change so vastly in the next 40 years that by the time the corporations fighting this massive swarm of file sharing website “flies” by waving lawsuit “flyswatters” randomly around the world the technology will have advanced far past today’s torrents and will become even more widespread.  Their method is too much like peeing in the Atlantic Ocean:  It isn’t going to change the pH level of the Pacific.

Since I stated posting blog entries I have received [...]]]> I could spend a lot of time reviewing each absurdity of this book, but alas I like to branch out more. Instead I think in my final reflection I’ll finish with why I believe Mr. Keen has this sense of reality that I do not share.

Since I stated posting blog entries I have received many comments such as “Stoss, you really think about the world in a fucked up way.” And I agree. I tend to think about things differently. I am not near arrogant enough to think my opinion is the only one, or necessarily correct. To paraphrase a quote from The Truman Show _{(highly under-rated movie)}: “We all live in the reality with which we are presented.”

About 3 months ago I went on a date with a smart, pretty, 20-something professional in the bio-medical field who lives by herself away from her family. On the surface you might think we are very similar. We are both white-collar workers, we are independent, well traveled and have the means to sustain ourselves. The topic came up as to how often we order take away. I said not that often, usually just Friday night curry or something. She gasped! “Once a week?! That is really often!”

At the time we had a quick laugh and moved on, but the above story is directly related to this book. I live in a reality where once a week takeout is not only normal, it is considered infrequent. That being said, lately I also live in a world where if I am not on 4 or 6 airplanes in a month I consider it “downtime”.

The point I am trying to make is that in Mr. Keen’s reality the Internet is the culprit for the downfall of society. I am sure he truly believes that and I wouldn’t fault him on it. In my reality the Internet is one of, if not the most important technological advances ever and has potential to propel society in directions we cannot even fathom yet.

The later part of the book has a couple themes. One is human behaviour and the other is the disadvantages to an all electronic society.

Keen blames sex addiction on the vast amount of porn on the Internet. Sex addiction? The only purpose for us to exist is for sex. Monogamy, humility, these are man-made concepts. Sex addiction is fundamental to our existence. The fact birth control, condoms, abortion were invented just helps us to not over-populate the shit out of this planet. Just think, if they diverted the attention give to the industry of preventing pregnancy to a field like cancer, how would this world be different?

Our realities did meet in a few way though. Keen talks about the information gathering on the net and the potentially disastrous effects it could have if it leaks. I agree. I find it very spooky when I log into Facebook in Germany and my ads are in German, or when I land in type in www.google.com in Switzerland and get directed to www.google.ch.

What if every search, every online purchase and every website you ever visited was somehow displayed to the world? Would you be embarrassed? Would losing the expected anonymity of the Internet be detrimental to your life?

Now the big brother view is that the Information Superhighway has CCTV cameras at every metre to watch you, track you and record your every move. The truth is that this is nothing new. Credit card companies have been data mining your information for decades to find patterns and anomalies to help them prevent credit card fraud. For the most part these measures are there to help you. It lets Google know when you search for Mustang, do you mean horse or car. It lets Amazon recommend books to you to save you searching or when you are stuck for a choice. But as I discussed earlier, all technologies have the ability to be used for nefarious purposes.

How is it different that you have a subscription to a gardening magazine and that magazine sells your address to gardening supply stores so they can send you mail, than Facebook putting up a “singles in the UK” ad on my page because I am listed as single and living in the UK?

The ironic part of all of this discussion is that at the end of bashing amateurs, saying that we can have no idea when someone isn’t a paid professional on a subject if they are telling the truth or lying, the author admits in the final pages of his book that he himself is an amateur, that this is first book and he had to rely on several others in writing it. Think about that for a bit.

Mr. Keen clearly sees the Internet as something vastly different than any previous technology. I do not. I see it as an advancement, sort of like VHS->DVD->Blue Ray.  If Keen took the time to think about this in the grand scheme of our society and not in the individual case studies (The Internet poker player who robs a bank to pay off his debt, or the German teenagers who faked a political message on YouTube etc) he would see we are no worse off at all. We have just transitioned to a new form of culture, economy and values, not destroyed them at all.

Bottom line: I am glad I read this book. I hated it page after page, but sometimes it takes something that you hate for you to reflect on why you like something.

We join the book with a new hypothesis from Mr Keen. Because some people lie on the Internet, we cannot be sure if anything is truth and therefore it is all invalid.  Solid idea. Applying this to elsewhere in the world: Because airplanes crash no one should fly, because some people [...]]]> Chapter 3 – 5:

We join the book with a new hypothesis from Mr Keen. Because some people lie on the Internet, we cannot be sure if anything is truth and therefore it is all invalid.  Solid idea. Applying this to elsewhere in the world: Because airplanes crash no one should fly, because some people kill people all people kill people…

It is also the start of what appears to be this author’s favourite way to make a point… putting several questions in a row at the end of a paragraph to make you “think” about his ideas, as opposed to proving his ideas.

Does anyone remember Bree or lonleygirl15 as she was known on the web? He uses this interesting example of a new type of entertainment as an example that: “We’re never sure if what we read or see is what it seems”. Is a videoblog of a 16 year old girl who turned out to be an 18 year old actress really the best example of falsehood that we can find? How about the current Swine Flu “epidemic”, in 1st world countries no one has even died from this “epidemic”, in fact the only deaths have been in Mexico and of the 150 possible cases, only 20 swine flu deaths have even been confirmed! But wait! The fact we are in an epidemic and should be panicking all across the world is something paid, non-amateur writers are discussing, guess I better go by my $0.02 face mask! That will guarantee my health!

The next 2 chapters were sad. Mr. Keen tells us the sad story of his favourite record store going out of business and blaming it entirely on iTunes, and illegal file sharing. The sadness of his friends who will miss the choice and wisdom of the employees and how nothing will ever be the same… You know what? GET OFF MY LAWN. Things change. The vast majority of people prefer to pick and choose their songs. And in fact, this is nothing new… remember mix tapes? Isn’t that a collection of favourite songs, akin to an iPod play list? We have simply made the transportation mode more efficient. It is sad that the we won’t have the wisdom of a music geek’s opinion on music, but hell we get Ebert’s opinion on movies every day and ignore him.

Let’s think of the radio. Here is a technology that music companies embrace, but yet isn’t that really delivering their artist’s art to billions of people for “free”? The music companies found a way to make that profitable. Keen pulls out of his ass the beautiful (and smelly) estimate of 20 billion songs being illegally downloaded in a year. Coincidentally, I this comes from the RIAA’s wonderfully amazing calculation that 40 songs are illegally downloaded for every song legally paid for on the Internet. Let’s do some math. The current belief is 24% of people in the world have some sort of internet connection. 6 billion people on the planet, therefore 1.44 billion people have internet. That means every person who has access to the internet anyhere in the world has downloaded 14 illegal songs and ~ 1/3 of a song legally. Plausible? Keen even refers to the legal download industry’s $1.1 billion a year business as “paltry”!! We live in a world where $1.1 billion is paltry? What is paltry is the number of companies to jump into this space! At $1.1bn if 3 companies each took 33% of the market they would be $400million companies. That means all 3 companies would be on Forbe’s list of the 400 most profitable companies! Hardly paltry.

None-the-less I am not condoning illegal activities, but the truth is that all technology can be copied and shared. The Internet simply provides a convenient way of doing so. As we have seen so many times before, fighting the Internet is futile. Embrace the technology and you can share your piece of a $1.1bn business space.

His next topic is of course video. Same argument really. A comment I really enjoyed was his quote: “Blockbuster [is] already hedging their bets by planning downloading services of their own”. Hedging bets?! I call that a smart CEO who is making good decisions. Give that guy a $90mil bonus!

There is a common theme in this book so far. Besides the fear-mongering, Internet is out to kill all things attitude, it is that everything is better if the person is professional at it. ie. I am no good as a writer because I don’t write as a profession. The entertainers on YouTube cannot provide good entertainment as they are not professionals. He deals in so many absolutes. I tend to believe this world isn’t absolute. I keep saying adapt to technology, but in reality I am aware this isn’t possible, and definitely isn’t a short term move. The point is that amateurs have their place in our society. Some of the best magic, juggling, entertainers I have seen were street side performers in squares and parks. That doesn’t mean they should all start websites and YouTube channels. Amateurism is a title and not an indication of skill. Let’s compare Susan Boyle to WIlliam Hung. Both of them are stars and relative amateurs, but I think that is too easy of a point to have to spell out.

The other was the movie “13 going on [...]]]> So the other night I couldn’t sleep. It was about 1am and I thought, maybe some TV will put me out. So I turned on the TV and there was only one thing that sounded good… well two, but “I came, I saw, I blew” cost extra.

The other was the movie “13 going on 30″. And I figured, Jennifer Garner is hot, so it isn’t too gay if I watch it.. especially if I have a beer while I watch…mmmmm….

Now, this movie is a blatant ripoff of “Big”, and no slight to Tom Hanks, but Garner pulls of the clueless adolescent adult better than him. Which may explain how she could even consider having a baby with Ben Affleck.

Now the premise of this movie is pretty typical:  All kids want to be older. But the “hook” is that this little girl gets to experience her future. There is an interesting scene where she asks her mother “If you could do one thing over, what would it be?”, Her mother answered “Nothing”. This brings up a point, which I would bet the director/writers and the teenie boppers never got. How would the mother know about her mistake(s)? The only reason why Garner thought she made mistakes was because she skipped over the time when she made them and the future wasn’t what she would have expected. If “time” had played out normally, would she have thought her mistakes were mistakes?

In the end of course (Yes, I am going to spoil this movie, because if you didn’t predict the ending from the 1st 5 seconds of the previews before it even started you are too stupid to be reading this blog) she ends up with the guy of her dreams. But it took a trip to the future for her to realize this was the guy of her dreams.

I think this just goes to show human stupidity. Everyone meets someone who is “perfect” for them, but we are too busy looking for something else to realize it. Garner as looking for popularity, and almost lost the “perfect guy”.

If I could jump 15 years into my future, would I find a “mistake”? If you could jump into the future would you realize you lost someone or something because of an error in your judgement? A very interesting thought…. Especially in a time where divorces are about to out number marriages…

Maybe why people don’t have regrets is because they aren’t aware of what they SHOULD regret?

….and this is why I can never sleep.

I am not sure if you followed this story, basically because I have no idea who “you” are, since you are sitting at a computer looking at this at any time and in any place.. So regardless, [...]]]> I have to comment on this article, because it shows a LOT of what is wrong with society.

I am not sure if you followed this story, basically because I have no idea who “you” are, since you are sitting at a computer looking at this at any time and in any place.. So regardless, here is the Reader’s Digest version:
Morgan Spurlock (of SuperSize Me fame) was asked (NOTE: Asked) to give a talk to a group of Highschool students about his experiences.
Upon arrival to the school, the school administrators asked him not to bad mouth McDonald’s because someone on their board own’s one. This in my mind is absurd! The only reason why this man has the little amount of fame he has is because of his research into how crappy fast food is! When he refused, he became the bad guy.
Then during the lecture, he reffered to himself as retarded, and insinuated that the highschool teachers smoke pot.
Two points here:

1. He is retarded! Anyone who injects that much McDonald’s into his body, without some sort of torture being threatened upon him, has to be!  This is not an insult to the mentally handicapped people, this is an illustration of how freaking STUPID Morgan Spurlock is!
2. I dunno about you, but I think many of my highschool teacher’s smoked pot, and if they didn’t they sure as hell should have!

Because of his comments, he had to post the above mentioned article as an apology. Now I 100% agree with his decision to not apologize for the words, but explain that they were not meant as hurtful. He was hired to entertain. Making derogatory remarks IS entertainment, just ask Hollywood… Will & Grace made a sitcom out of that concept.

Some of the comments to his entry are from parents not even in the same country as him saying how ashamed he should be! (oh yeah, he said “Fuck” as well, b/c we all know that is the devil’s tongue speaking)…

Does anyone over 30 REMEMBER highschool? You used to mock the fat kid, the ugly kid, the stupid kid! And yes I mean you, the one reading this who I have no clue who you are! It’s a generaization that ACTUALLY works! Oh yeah, and I bet most of you once, just once, dropped an F-bomb!

The kids of the school wrote in some of those comments how they were not offended and how they thought he was great, and everyone else was taking this too far… these are 16 year olds being more rational than the 45 yearolds teaching them! The principal actually called them immature for laughing at such trash humour! TRASH HUMOUR! Turn on MTV! Listen to 50 cent! Morgan is a fucking saint compared the crap these kids are into!

It boggles my mind that rational people can be so irrational about a man who isn’t even famous! He is like Subway Jarrod’s evil twin! These two have the combined influence on society as a Canadian flee has on weather patterns in China! The only reason I heard about this is b/c of the uproar! Not b/c of the original comments! These parents are furthering the evil they are trying to defeat by making it more public!

People are starting to go insane. That is the only possible explanation. I hope there isn’t an insane gene that turns on inside me when I have highschool-age kids, because if I am considered sane now, you guys better watch the hell out!