Category Archives: culture

Your tax dollars at work

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The FBI is circulating a set of flyers purported to identify suspicious behaviors that indicates possible terrorist activities that therefore should be reported to the FBI by all good citizens.  The flyers are headlined “Communities Against Terrorism” and there are at least 25 versions.

The version for Internet Cafes is particularly disturbing in that is essentially says that anyone protecting their privacy online is quite possibly a terrorist.  Among the “suspicious” activities listed on the flyer are:

  • Always pay cash
  • Evidence of a residential based internet provider (signs on to Comcast, AOL, etc.)
  • Use of anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address
  • Encryption or use of software to hide encrypted data in digital photos, etc.
  • Suspicious communications using VOIP or communicating through a PC game
  • Gather information about vulnerable infrastructure or obtain photos, maps or diagrams of transportation, sporting venues, or populated locations

So people who want to protect their privacy online, or who wish to pay for things with money, or who look up a sports stadium (maybe to find their seat for an event, say) ought to be reported to the FBI?

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Piracy cannot be stopped

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The Pirate Bay logo

Image via Wikipedia

Paul Tassi, writing in Forbes, has a good overview of an underlying and unavoidable reality of the digital age in which we live: piracy cannot be stopped. Technological blocks are temporary at best, because blocking any particular digital tools for sharing content merely results in the rapid invention and deployment of new technologies. Consider Napster. When it was such down, numerous clones of its technology appeared. As the IP industry filed lawsuit after lawsuit to shut down the Napster clones, bit torrent technology was created and widely deployed, leading to Pirate Bay. Sharing sites themselves come and go as well. If Pirate Bay is shut down, it will matter little as there are dozens of alternatives already in operation.

But Tassi also notes that piracy will not kill the IP industry. The industry’s claimed number of lost sales caused by piracy are simply silly. Most pirated material is acquired by people who would never buy the content in any case, either because they don’t have the money to do so, or the content is not available in any legal fashion at the time, or because it is simply not worth the trouble or expense to buy, say, a $30 Blu-ray disc.

The real problem, in his view and mine as well, is that the IP industry has failed to adjust their its business model to something that customers actually want and are willing to pay for.   (Perhaps the exception to this is the music industry that was successfully prodded by Steve Jobs into relatively easy legal access at a modest price).

Here is how Tassi put it:

The seven step, ten minute [Pirate Bay] download process (which will be about ten seconds when US internet speeds catch up with the rest of the world) is the real enemy the studios should be trying to tackle. Right now, the industry is still stuck in the past, and is crawling oh-so-slowly into the future. They still believe people are going to want to buy DVDs or Blu-rays in five years, and that a movie ticket is well worth $15. Netflix is the closest thing they have to an advocate, but the studios are trying to drive them out of business as they see them as a threat, not a solution. It’s mind boggling.

The primary problem movie studios have to realize is that everything they charge for is massively overpriced. The fact that movie ticket prices keep going up is astonishing. How can they possibly think charging $10-15 per ticket for a new feature is going to increase the amount of people coming to theaters rather than renting the movie later or downloading it online for free? Rather than lower prices, they double down, saying that gimmicks like 3D and IMAX are worth adding another $5 to your ticket.

They have failed to realize that people want things to be easy. Physically going to the movies is hard enough without paying way too much for the privilege. Going to a store and buying a DVD instead of renting or downloading is generally an impractical thing to do unless you A) really love a particular movie or B) are an avid film buff or collector.

The essay is worth a full read.

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SOPA quote of the day

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…, the industry is fighting what amounts to a new popular culture.

Unlike the old pop culture Hollywood dominated, this one is largely independent of the music, movie and broadcast industries. In fact, people who spend hours online instead of watching TV or going to movies will probably encounter the entertainment industry only when YouTube videos of their kids dancing to Prince or spoofing Star Wars are pulled down by Hollywood’s bots, or when the RIAA threatens to sue them for their college savings, or when digital rights software makes it hard to move their stuff to a new tablet or phone.

To the entertainment industry, these episodes might seem like collateral damage in the fight to stop piracy. To the new pop culture, though, collateral damage and misuse of enforcement tools are everywhere, and they threaten everyone. The content industry has made itself into the villain. Increasingly, it looks like an occupying power, obeyed at gunpoint, despised for its ham-handed excesses and resisted from every dark corner. Unfortunately for Hollywood, as its customers migrate to the Internet, it is losing not just their money but their hearts and minds as well.

– Stewart Baker, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, and explaining how Hollywood is losing the culture war with the new online majority.

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How to break democracy

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Here is yet another example of the IP industry seeking to protect itself via secret agreements behind closed doors, thereby avoiding public input.

This time it involves a trade agreement called the Trans Pacific Partnership.  Apparently a secret meeting between industry and government participants is being held from January 31 to February 4 at a hotel in West Hollywood.

More details from Ars Technica here and from TechDirt here.

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Blu-ray of the week

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Daniel Craig

Daniel Craig (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

I have explained before how I can’t resist the genre/formula Hollywood film for action and clear story-telling. I love at least the ones with good acting, and execution beyond the ordinary. Tonight I watched the Blu-ray version of Cowboys & Aliens, and I was not disappointed.

The film has no particular message or underlying truth. But it brings together two genres that, as far as I know, have never been incorporated into a one film before. It couples the western cinematic mythology of America, i.e., the bad guy with the true heart (Daniel Craig) who rises to the occasion, with evil alien creatures threatening all of humanity. You have the outlaw who joins forces with the hated and domineering rich baron of cattle country (Harrison Ford), and you add the Apaches to the mix of team-mates, all ready to save humanity from disgusting and violent aliens. There is even a cute, and loyal, dog to sweeten things up. I mean, a dog could be viewed as sort of a cheap trick by some, but not by me in this type of film.

What could go wrong? Well, actually everything could go wrong with a movie built on that premise. But the success of this movie is that it successfully pulls it all off. An alien (not one of the bad ones) translates Apache to English, allowing all groups to come together in a common defense. There is a naive boy on the cusp of manhood who actually becomes a man by being given a knife. There is the wanted killer who becomes a hero and rides off alone into the sunset. The cattle baron joins forces with the wanted man even though that man puts the son of the baron in jail. A timid saloon keeper learns how to handle a gun in the most effective way. The wanted man pines for his woman killed by the aliens.  And the aliens are disgusting creatures. The only stereotype missing is the prostitute with a heart of gold.

I know the critics weren’t fond of this treat, perhaps because no less than eight writers are credited for the screenplay which can’t be good, but it is fun all the way through.

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Alt History

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Alternative history is a genre of media focused on the theoretical history that would have occurred had actual history not occurred.  What if the Confederacy had won? What if Nazi Germany had won?

An excellent example of the genre from Hollywood is the film “Death of a President” that examines what would have happened had President George W. Bush been assassinated after the attacks on 9/11. The film is worth a viewing and is a available via Netflix streaming.  Unfortunately, it was released while George W. Bush remained president and thereby generated huge negative commentary.

But if you view the film now, knowing as we all do that Bush was never assassinated, you can enjoy the movie for what it was likely to have been intended to show. That is, that small differences in history could lead to huge changes in history as we know it.

And in addition, we always know less than we think regarding world developments. We are all naive.

Political quote of the day

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For many right-wingers, Obama was a foreign object, whose unexpected entrance into the body politic activated their immune systems — hence the ‘birther’ movement and other bizarre right-wing obsessions. Whether the right’s aversion to Obama constitutes classic racism is a Talmudic question; what is undeniable is that his race activated a horde of (literally) white cells, rushing to expel the invader. Like organisms, cults always delineate themselves by drawing sharp lines between Us and Them.

– Gary Kamiya via The Quotation of the Day Mailing List.