So after a lot of procrastination this week, I have to figure out how to find parallels between God and the Trinity and Simon, Ralph, and Piggy in Lord of the Flies. I have a few ideas, but the details are fuzzy like the borders on dream sequences. And then I have those stupid writing assignments where I have to write poems and a myth. So much to do. I guess school isn’t over yet.

A few years ago, a funny little cat thing wearing sunglasses adorned the desktops of millions. It represented Napster, the first shot that was fired in the controversy that is digital content. Today, we still have millions upon millions of people downloading and uploading music, movies, and software and we have the respective industries file lawsuit after lawsuit. And just like anything in the world, the issue is making everyone wonder: is it right to download music?

The simple answer that most people will give is that downloading music is akin to stealing music. It’s also the answer of the RIAA. And everyone knows that stealing is wrong.

Last night, we had a Bible Study and one of the situations was confronting a friend who downloads music. Downloading is stealing. And stealing is stealing is stealing and it’s wrong.

But is downloading really stealing? Well, legally, no. Downloading is not stealing; it’s copyright infringement.

Copyright apologists often use words like “stolen” and “theft” to describe copyright infringement. At the same time, they ask us to treat the legal system as an authority on ethics: if copying is forbidden, it must be wrong.

So it is pertinent to mention that the legal system–at least in the US–rejects the idea that copyright infringement is “theft.” Copyright apologists are making an appeal to authority…and misrepresenting what authority says.

The idea that laws decide what is right or wrong is mistaken in general. Laws are, at their best, an attempt to achieve justice; to say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down.

You can’t steal something intangible like ideas or music because the person still has them. The cost to reproduce such things is almost zero. What does it take to reproduce a table? A lot more than it does to pass on ideas.

Copyright was created to encourage publishers to keep on creating works for the public. Copyright was intended to benefit the public, not the publishers. The RIAA is not supposed to restrict how we use the works.

Today, copying stuff and giving it to other people is considered inherently wrong. Why? Has anyone really thought about why copying is not ethically acceptable? We never think as being able to copy materials as a right of ours. What are the consequences? The RIAA’s income drops. But does that mean something is wrong if the RIAA’s revenues drop? Do we measure our own good by the successes of corporations?

And when the RIAA wails about lost profits and how their artists will go hungry, many don’t realize that artists don’t see most of the money that is made from their efforts. Almost all of it goes to the record labels. Other reasons against the current structure of the recording industry include bad business practices and artistic diversity and freedom. Downhill Battle has several reasons why the RIAA needs to go.

The reason the RIAA hates downloading so much is because the artists can skip a step. Before, artists needed labels to pay for the recording and production of their CDs so they can sell them. Now, with the Internet, artists have instant exposure to consumers. They don’t need the RIAA anymore. So what do they do? They start a smear campaign against filesharing. Now, it’s so entrenched into a lot of people that filesharing is wrong.

So what the RIAA wants to do now is to control how people use their music. That’s a bit like controlling how you use ideas. That’s controlling how you think and act. So basically, the RIAA wants to control your lives, as much as they don’t admit it. It’s really what they’re doing subconsciously.

Music should be free. Everyone will have more rights that way. Everyone except for greedy corporations and cartels. Musicians will have more exposure and they won’t be tied down by what the RIAA wants them to do. Prices will be lower and more people will buy music and support artists.

Right now, it is legal to download and upload music in Canada because of Fair Use allowances. However, I know a lot of Christians are probably wondering if downloading is still right. Again, this has to do with the misconception that downloading is synonymous with stealing.

We know that we have Fair Use allowances. So say I bought Passion’s “How Great Is Our God.” It’s a great CD. I loves it to bits, so I play it every day. I’m usually at school, in front of the computer, or in the car. Well, easy, my car has a CD player, I can listen to it in there. But, I realize that it’s going to be a hassle to use CDs in my computer because I only have one CD drive and I want to listen to something while doing something else with the CD drive. So I rip the CD to my hard drive. That’s still covered by Fair Use. Then I decide I want to listen to it at school on my MD. Well, as much of a pain it is to convert the CD to ATRAC to put on my MD, I do it and I can listen to it at school now. Fair Use again. So let’s say my family wants to listen to it on another computer, I can set it up so that they can copy the MP3s from my computer to theirs and now they can listen to it. Then they want a copy of the CD so they can listen to it in another room.

Wait a second. Is that fair use or is that copyright infringement? Well now, let’s extend that to friends and extended family. And let’s also record TV shows and movies on our brand new VCR. All of these are Fair Use, and none of these are considered wrong. So what’s the difference from downloading music?

And this extends to movies and software as well. It’s the underlying philosophy for free and open source software like Linux. People wonder how I can run an entire computer system for free legally. Well, it’s possible. The developers have managed to create a high quality work and are giving it away for free because they believe that we should have that freedom.

Keep on downloading and burning stuff. Information wants to be free, yo.

Apparently, my teacher showed this to everyone in the math department.

And I could have gotten perfect if I didn’t read parabola and interpret it as ellipse in my head. :(

Here’s the regular size for your reading pleasure.

So now the president of Sony, Ken Kutaragi is saying that the Playstation 3 is not a game console.

Er, what? Did Sony somehow forget that it also makes other home electronics as well? What’s the point in creating a game console, targetting it towards gamers, and then turning it into a super high-tech entertainment computer? I’m sure that there are many families who are going to buy a Playstation 3 for the sole purpose of enjoying a nice movie or listening to a relaxing CD.

Who the hell are they kidding? We don’t need a better processor to watch DVDs. Our current players are fine, thank you very much. We don’t need super high quality graphics to listen to music. We don’t need to do any of this stuff to game. If they’re so adamant about creating an entertainment supercomputer, then make one! Market it towards people who’ll actually want an entertainment supercomputer, not people who just want to shoot things in Killzone 2!

Are they trying to shoot themselves in the foot or what?

Ever notice Microsoft always seems to realize things after a few years of everyone shouting at them?

Let’s have another look at IE7. As well as fully compliant web standards support, people were really, really wanting tabs with their Internet Explorer. A few months ago, Microsoft said that they would focus on what their customers wanted and their customers sure as hell did not want tabs. Today, we seem to have a change of heart. Yes, it’s true: IE7 has tabs. Good job. It only took a few years and a threat to IE’s dominance to get you to improve your browser.

There are many people who are like “why in bloody hell would you use something like DOS instead of those snazzy looking windows?” To that I reply, “because it’s faster and easier.” And seven out of five administrators agree: “For the love of all that is holy, will you please let me get away from the GUI?” One of the advantages UNIX based systems have over Windows is that it has access to the command line, whereas Windows has always been about removing as much command line as possible.

So how does the black screen with text help? Imagine we want to copy a whole bunch of pictures you took with your digital camera in a folder, but not the entire folder itself, to another location, say a USB flash drive. In Windows, you’d have to sort the files by type (since the pictures are probably going to be JPGs), select all of the files with a mouse or keyboard, and copy and paste (or drag to another window if that’s your thing).

With a command line, all I’d have to do is navigate to the folder and type a simple command:
$ cp *.jpg /mnt/usbdrive
That tells the computer to copy (cp) all files that end with .jpg to where I mounted my USB drive.

So yes, administrators that have to do this sort of work and configuring stuff, scripting things, etc. would rejoice at being able to use a command line in Windows. They’d also rejoice because those who do things remotely (that is, through the Internet or a LAN from another computer) will be able to use up less bandwidth, as well as not having any of that graphical stuff being transmitted, which you really don’t need when you’re fixing up twenty boxes.

Lesson of the day? Microsoft is slow and gets their ideas from people who’ve done it before for several years before they fix anything.