Arrr!

I know it's been forever, and as I'm no longer in California, the purpose of this blog has changed slightly. I'm not going to explain why I haven't been updating regularly, other than to say that I suck at this and you shouldn't expect me to write very much very often.

That said, I was listening to Stephen Fry's podgram from the 2009 iTunes Live Festival, which got me thinking about piracy and copyright issues in the digital age.

In his podgram, the amazing Mr. Fry talks about the history of intellectual property, starting from the first homo sapiens telling stories to one another around the fire; to the invention of writing on clay, wax, and papyrus; to the church taking over and restricting access to language; through to Gutenberg's printing press, Edison's phonograph, reel-to-reel tap recorders, readily available cassette recorders; all the way to bittorrent, YouTube, and Napster. He expresses his somewhat controversial views that the recording/production industry is taking entirely the wrong approach to file sharing by coming down too hard on so-called "pirates." He says that certainly people who do it on a large enough scale as to make money off of bootlegging enterprises should be stopped and held responsible for their actions, but the average consumer, who is merely a fan of music or movies or whatever, but is either too poor or too lazy to buy something for themselves, isn't really doing anything wrong.

When cassette tape recorders and VCRs were first released to the public, people were able to start copying albums, movies, radio and TV programs, and sharing them with friends. This isn't so different than what goes on today, except with the World Wide Web, it's happening on a much larger scale. Now it's possible to listen to singles before the album is released, watch movies before they come out on DVD, or even while they're still playing in theaters. Yes, the quality suffers, but it's possible nonetheless.






I pirate music, movies, and TV.

There, I said it. I might get in a lot of trouble for saying it in a public venue, but it's the truth, and I don't think it's an unexpected revelation. (Besides, hardly enough people read this blog as to turn me in to the RIAA or MPAA or whomever)

I'll admit that some of what I download is stuff I should watch/listen to legitimately, but the majority of what I download/stream from less-than-legal sources I do because I can't watch it otherwise.

Those who know me know that I'm an Anglophile and Japanophile, but that I currently live in Ohio, which is almost as far away from England and Japan as one can get. I also don't own a TV, and even when I'm somewhere with a TV, I hardly have time to watch it. Still, there are shows/movies I want to watch, things I am a huge fan of! So I download as many episodes as I can get my hands on. Later, when I have the means, I very well might purchase legitimate merchandise from these people, but as a broke-ass college student who can't afford to import paraphernalia from Japan or the UK all the time, I have to make do.

Another thing I download a lot of are shows that are no longer on television, or backlogs of shows that I've only now jumped on the bandwagon of. Part of it is nostalgia for shows of my childhood, part of it are shows I didn't know about until years or even decades after they left the airwaves.

I don't think my actions make me a criminal. I think they make me a fan. The entertainment industry-- which I have the intention of entering as soon as possible-- survives on fans. Without fans, music, movies, TV, books, video games, et cetera ad infinitum, would serve no purpose and die out. Without people to watch/listen/read/enjoy their work, everything artists do is pure self-indulgence and wouldn't be able to exist in this world/culture/economy.

So you need me, entertainment big-wigs. I contribute.

...just, maybe not as much (financially) as I could or should.