On Digital Piracy

Now, I haven't done much on here. This isn't currently an active blog. But! Maybe I should change that. So, here I am, posting something heartfelt and full of personal belief.

Before I begin, though, this is a response to this IGN article, linky'd here. It talks about how pirated movies are being shown to Ohio prison inmates, even though many of the actual inmates are in there because of copyright theft/piracy. Funny, right? But here is where we begin!

First, let's subscribe to the 'colloquial' meaning of digital piracy, and just for now say that 'piracy' refers to the act of unlawfully downloading digital products without paying anything for them.

Now, I know for a fact that, if not for piracy, many indie movie developers would not have been able to survive. How so? Absolutely free advertising. Let's outline this process:

Person A downloads it, watches it, and recommends it to Person B. Person B then downloads it, watches it, and recommends it to Person C-Z. Persons C-Z download it, watch it, and recommend it to Person 1Z - Person 3455ZCX. Somewhere along the line, hundreds of thousands of people decided they would buy it instead of just download it. Sure, it may not be MILLIONS of people paying for it, but those hundreds of thousands wouldn't have been reached AT ALL without the piracy component. Oh, right. And then those hundreds of thousands show their legally-purchased product to friends. THEY then go download it, show it off to others, and the chain continues gaining momentum. Sometimes enough to finally secure millions of customers.

Another couple super-famous gaming dev examples. Super Meat Boy and Minecraft. They would've gone NOWHERE without being pirated first.

See, the thing about 'normal' means of distribution - including setting up downloadable options - is that they all cost a boatload of money. You have to pay for the purchase and maintenance of servers to make sure downloads remain available for all potential customers. You have to pay someone to process the video into a not-gargantuan file format and then upload it. Pay some here, pay some there...just the act of doing it 'normally' costs money.

Putting something on ThePirateBay, though? Absolutely free. Volunteers do it. They do all the processing. Hosting costs? Gone. Every seeder is a host. And for every few thousands of downloads, you get a hundred or so people who WATCH a movie, like it, and then BUY it. That kind of exposure is simply not possible through 'traditional' methods. More and more, a powerful way of sussing out whether or not a show/movie will sell when it makes the transition to DVD is not just reviewing the TV ratings/ticket sales, but also having someone pop onto ThePirateBay to see how often it's downloaded.

If you listen to the massive movie/games/music giants about how every download is a theft, you subscribe to idiocy. Why? Because without those downloads, we can guarantee that millions of potential consumers just wouldn't have even bothered watching/playing/listening to those products in the first place.

2012 Republican Nonsense

Now, I am not American. I will say this first and foremost, since I'm just a bit NORTH of the American border. The nation known for maple syrup, beavers, and winning the 2010 Winter Olympics.

And like many of my fellow Canadians, I end up worrying about the political environment just south of our border. Some may advise me to just let the United States do what they want and not worry about it, but the thing is, the United States are too big and powerful to ignore. The crap that happens down there effects the WHOLE world, and we saw a good example of this with the semi-recent market meltdown caused by something having to do with mortgages being given to people not able to afford them, or something of the sort.

Well, now, looking south of the border reveals one thing above all else: Republicans are idiots. This can't be iterated enough. It's gone beyond opinion and into objective facts. So when I say that Republicans are idiots, the events that have happened down in the US of A only prove me right.

To start this, we'll take exhibit A: Budget stuffs!

According to this report, the Republican party's top priority is, as it seems to always be, giving the richest people of America even more money, and always at the expense of the little people on the bottom that have to work their asses off for every dollar. I mean, $3 trillion in tax breaks for corporations? An average of $187,000 less taxes for every millionaire? This obviously shows that the Republican party doesn't give even the slightest concern for the common citizen, for the vast majority of United States citizens. Why would they? After all, they haven't had to LOOK at them for YEARS. They probably don't even know what a normal citizen looks like anymore; they're too busy buying yachts, overpriced luxury cars, and playing golf with their fellow millionaires.

And to add insult to injury, I present exhibit B, where we see that the Republicans think that they're actually HELPING the American people by doing this nonsense.

Now, to be fair, that budget proposed above is what would happen IF a Republican candidate is elected President later this year. God forbid.

But how can the Republican party honestly get off claiming that they deserve all the credit for recent improvements in the economy? How can they say they deserve the pat on the back when their representatives in Congress have been fighting tooth and nail to PREVENT any improvement from happening? How can they possibly think they're helping when they've devoted all of their efforts into thwarting President Obama's every attempt to bring about social and economic reform in the United States?

Here's a schoolyard bullying equivalent: one nice kid helps out during recess by helping pick up garbage around the playground. The bully kicks him over, scatters the trash, then goes to a teacher to claim that HE was trying to clean up and that the other kid was the one littering.

See what happened there? The Republican party is that bully. Taking credit for the good actions of others, and blaming others for problems when they themselves are the cause of them.

So, for any Americans voting in the upcoming election in 2012 (this year), keep this in mind. A vote for the Republican party is a vote for a bunch of lying scumbags that will steal from you, kick you to the curb, and then say that you should blame the Democrats for your problems while counting your cash.

Righteous outrage!

Alrighty, so I didn't end up using that video thingy that I posted. That's fine. I still found it awesome, and I hope the five of you that saw my page found it awesome too.

Now, here's a small snippet about myself: I'm a bit of a nerd.

Not a nerd in the way that I can program my own version of Zork, no. But a nerd in that I play lots of computer games, video games, watch Japanese anime, and so on. So that makes me a gamer nerd, I suppose. With glasses.

Anyways, the purpose of this post is to express outrage! Righteous outrage! And here's why: Clicky!

In the wake of the whole SOPA and PIPA fiasco...which is still not something we should rule out of existence just yet, because you can be sure someone will try to do the same thing again...here's a publisher trying to do a bit of that 'stealing' that the SOPA and PIPA acts were trying to put down. This is one guy, applying his hard-earned skills and creativity to make something for the people, something that, if it becomes profitable, would reward him for his work. And then this publisher, under the pretense of HELPING him bring his work to fruition, blatantly STEALS all his work, applies a fresh layer of paint and a new name, cuts off their agreement, and then publishes the game as if it was their own.

This is certainly a violation of his rights, and obvious thievery of his hard work and talent! On the one side, we have publishers, developers, and big entertainment industry companies lobbying in support of acts that will let them shut down anyone that seems to have made use of their Intellectual Properties in any way...even if the resemblance is, say, a coincidence or a work of parody...while, on the other hand, we have those people stealing and copying the works of independent developers and artists!

They're trying to keep the Internet peoples from pirating and stealing their stuff, but are perfectly fine with stealing OUR stuff? This is just low. Rock-bottom low.

Hello world!

Greetings, people who don't know me! This is my first blog. I don't know who you are, and you don't know who I am.

And that's fine. Maybe you'll read what I have to say. Maybe you'll pass me over.

I'm just going to continue writing.

But not today! I'm, at the moment, in the middle of writing a paper for my university course. The final paper. I'm just procrastinating. Always fun, ain't it?

Sometimes it's productive, too. I procrastinated, and found this YouTube video. I'm now resolved on using it in my paper somehow. Yes, it's THAT kind of course.

And here it is!



Until next time!