Meshta Ankarith

Here are a couple of must-see links regarding the recent events in Sweden initiated by the takedown of The Pirate Bay.

• English translation of Rickard Falkvinge’s speech at the demonstration held in Stockholm on June 3rd.
• A list of civil rights breaches in the police raid on The Pirate Bay’s webhost.

The fact that TPB was able to go back online within three days (now distributed across four countries, no less) demonstrates that no amount of underhanded feudal tactics by commercial interest groups will ever stop or even abate the free flow of culture and information. If TPB went down permanently, plenty of successors would quickly show up, just as when SuprNova, Sharereactor, Audiogalaxy and Napster went away. If they managed to destroy the usefulness of Bittorrent technology, a new and more advanced technology would replace it. Piracy has likely existed since before history, and it isn’t going away.

So what for the artists and creators? If you can’t beat them (and you can’t), join them. There are several interesting movements on this front recently, but it most certainly has not arrived yet. I read an article or blog post (though I can’t find where) that talked about how the providers have to make their product more attractive to people than a free copy. This is an undoubtedly difficult thing to do, but iTunes, although seriously flawed, has shown that it could be possible. The benefit of iTunes is range and availability: it’s all there ready to recieve as quickly as your connection allows. The two biggest downsides of iTunes are the price (why should I pay as much for an album-worth of impermanent compressed music as I pay for a practically uncompressed archiveable CD?) and the overbearing DRM (which is really just a bad idea all round).

So they’re partly there. Unfortunately, I don’t have the killer business model, and I don’t think it exists yet. But that is what the industry associations should be spending their billions on, not trying to preserve the status quo. Because if anything is inevitable, it is change. And the Internets are all about change.

As for the civil rights breaches, well, most of them are internal Swedish matters, and probably won’t have much effect outside that country (or at most the EU). All that is except for number one: the intervention of the MPAA and US Government. This is a situation that’s been building up for years, and one that was predicted a long time ago by many sci-fi authors. That corporations can have so much influence over governments is just frightening. My problem with the situation is that the primary goal of a corporation is to make profit. That’s all, plain and simple. Governments are supposed to serve and represent the people, and the primary goal of people is not to make profit, but to be happy, comfortable and secure. Government therefore cannot be achieving its purpose if it is controlled by corporations. Some would say this is a naïve view, but I don’t think it need be any more complex than that.

We certainly live in interesting times (not that any previous times weren’t interesting, because most of them were… like this or this or this or this).

P.S. Apologies for the numerous gratuitous clichés. I promise I shall avoid them henceforth.

P.P.S. If you don’t use Digg yet, you should start. You could even add me as a friend to see what items I digg, which, if not useful, is at least an interesting insight. If you don’t watch Diggnation either, you should start. Good times.

J.J. Abrams to Produce/Direct “Trek XI”

This will be interesting. Very interesting.

And William Shatner is 75? He’s doing pretty well for that age.

This will most likely be my most favourite game ever: Spore!!!

For those who don’t know, for the past three or four weeks I have been attending the Summer Filmmaking School at Melbourne Uni. Despite vague intentions of daily run-down posts, the time requirements of the course (i.e. up to ten hours per day, with no days off) have restricted my computer time considerably, but in short, the course is fantastic. I have four days off starting Thursday, followed by four more days shooting a video clip, so I may post a more thorough debrief of the course during the time in which I am not asleep.

The main point of this post, however, is as a general invite to a screening of the short film I worked on as part of the course, named Toss. Anyone is welcome. Friday, 3rd February 7:30pm at Pugg Mahone’s, corner of Elgin and Drummond Streets, Carlton. There will also be screenings of two shorts made by the other groups in the course.