From: Miriam English (miriam@werple.net.au)
Date: Mon Sep 10 2001 - 11:07:15 MDT
James Rogers wrote:
>That said, I have to grudgingly admire the sheer magnitude of evil genius it
>takes to have the balls to attempt something so extreme. I don't like it,
>but it *is* impressive.
:-) Hmmm...
Yes, I can see the depth of evil empire-building going on here as being
impressive in its arrogance, but I can also see it pissing off an
incredible number of people to an insane degree.
The movie industry has already generated enormous negative karma points by
actively impeding people's ability to buy the DVDs that they want, and have
spawned a small and growing industry of DVD players that have no area
codes. I was chatting to a friend tonight who was telling me he happened
across a shop recently that advertised in the window that their DVD players
had no area codes. He, up until then, had not intended to buy a DVD player.
I have some time ago subverted the area coding of my own player after
having accidentally bought a Fantasia 3 DVD pack encoded for USA.
The music industry is creating an immense amount of nasty karma from not
only the buying public but also the artists they represent -- even quite
famous ones.
Napster, and similar organisations have been attempts to get around such
creepy monsters. People freely distribute the binaries to undo DVD drive
encoding to rid themselves of restrictive straightjackets imposed upon
them. And this is only the beginning.
We live in a society more highly connected than ever before. Such attempts
to tie all of humanity up into tight little boxes for all of eternity might
seem to work for a time, but I can't believe it will last. The more
strongly they piss people off, the more strong will be the backlash.
Microsoft et al may think they are being really cute trying to rig the net
so that they have total control, but I can't help feeling that they are
just aiming an incredibly big cannon at their own feet.
I am not saying we should be complacent. On the contrary, we should speak
out at every opportunity about restrictive practices and infringements upon
our freedoms. But in the words of the wonderful Douglas Adams: "Don't panic."
Excuse me if I mix my metaphors, but I'll happily watch the big nasties
fiddle while they burn their bridges. :-)
Anyway, my own 2 cents.
Cheers,
- Miriam
---------=---------=---------=---------=---------=---------=------
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
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http://werple.net.au/~miriam
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Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au
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