Modern Day Privateers

 You've GOT to be kidding! ANOTHER post about Telus? Well this is basically a continuation of the previous post but it won't be about Telus exactly, more about pirates, and the general privateering business has become with the deterioration of regulative bodies orchestrated by the powers that be over the last... EVER.

It starts with my Telus situation. Yesterday's call was followed coincidentally (???) by like 7 notices about the IP address here at Rob and Terri's being used to download the TV show Survivor. The notices were sent by Telus saying that CBS/Paramount pictures has traced an illegal download of Survivor to their IP address. That was me. Guilty. I have been downloading TV and movies for quite some time on torrent sites because over in Asia they don't have the TV shows I like to watch. Or they have them on at times that I can't watch them or they have Korean commercials I don't want to watch, or whatever. I have also followed with interest the debate and court cases regarding torrent sites and whether they are stealing or sharing. 

"A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is the tension between the contradictory answers." This is a quote from Leonard Bernstein presumably about music but I think it applies to good debate topics too. I will admit to having a very biased point of view on the "tension" between the arguments of the business interests who believe sharing torrents of TV shows and movies is costing them money and the members of the public who believe that when people have paid for the TV shows or movies and want to share them with other people there's nothing wrong with that. 

I can already hear friends and family citing laws but let's not over simplify this issue in that way. Even lawmakers admit there are no perfect laws, we operate under the best laws we can devise, but even THAT is a laughably inaccurate statement. We all know of stupid laws that have remained "on the books" in defiance of any attempts by legislators to devise the best legal system they can. The number one reason these stupid laws remain is the number one reason for the majority of that which is evil on this earth: somebody's getting greased. 

So let's not be naive about copyright laws. They can be and have been abused by greedy folks, the issue at hand today is whether downloading Survivor from a torrent site is one of those examples. The torrent site I used is called Pirate Bay. If you're like my brother Rob you might feel that the very title of the site should be a red (or maybe skull and crossbones) flag. But if you're like me, and again, I AM totally biased cuz I get free shit from Pirate Bay, but I see the name of the site as ironic. Calling themselves pirates cuz they're not the real pirates. We were born in Hamilton, the steel city of Canada. That's why Rob's a huge fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers. So if he got into baseball, would he choose the club from that same city? What are they called again? The Pirates. But they're not real pirates. If you wanna see some REAL pirates, keep reading.

I think Pirate Bay started in Sweden and there was a court case about whether it was right or wrong and several times Pirate Bay was shut down, and several times it was back up again. The case went through many stages of appeal and in the end the guys who were behind it were found guilty of copyright infringement. End of story right? Well, why is it still up and running? And if I don't want these alerts from the cable company about downloading Survivor, all I really need to do is turn on my VPN and use a "pirated" IP address. Are VPN's illegal? Are they complicit in internet movie and TV show (not to mention music) piracy? These are some of the "tensions" between contradictory answers I find intriguing in this case, but read on, the tension builds.

Surprise, surprise! It turns out that the main police investigator in the investigation that eventually led to the indictment had started working for one of the plaintiffs (Warner Brothers) before the date of the indictment. Also one of the judges was a member of a copyright protection group and another of the judges worked for Spotify! Conflict of interest much? Big money can make big things happen. Shenanigans like this are mainstream. Which adds to the drama and the ART, if you will, of the debate. 

Let's stay on the pirate thing for a bit longer because it brings up a useful analogy. In the opening paragraph I used the term "privateering." That's the same as pirating, isn't it? The history is quite interesting actually! Pirates were, and still are, just scurvy swine raping, pillaging, murdering, and doing other generally despicable things on the high seas. Privateers were different. They were private individuals commissioned by governments to raid enemy ships, but eventually the booty one could haul in as a privateer made the business virtually indistinguishable from piracy. So they were raping, pillaging, killing, and doing their skullduggery by permission of the King or Queen or ruling government. They were pirates with papers. The words "pirate" and "privateer" are now are used by most interchangeably. 

Let me ask you this: What has been the buzzword for business since time immemorial when they want to get meddling government off their backs? Privatization. Capitalists are privateers themselves. And in the past couple of decades "regulated capitalism" has been replaced by "neoliberal capitalism" to the detriment of almost all of us. In my opinion businesses today, ignobled by the steady removal of government regulation, are like pirates with papers - the privateers of today. Will they go off the rails and just become regular pirates like they did on the high seas of yesteryear? They already have.

So think of the largest companies in the world. Some of our modern privateers. Do you think they have not been involved in raping, pillaging, killing, and skullduggery? Well, maybe not so much raping but they more than make up for it in skullduggery! And I, with some assistance from Roget, might go so far as to add monkeyshines, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery. And if you use "raping" as a figurative term they're like the outlaw signing up for the gang from Blazing Saddles, a movie I downloaded many years ago from Pirate Bay.

HEY! How did I just do that? Didn't I steal the intellectual property of Mel Brooks and that plaintiff in the Pirate Bay court case Warner Brothers? Well now we're getting into another example of the tensions between contradictory answers and it has a name. It's called "fair use." I guess when I create lessons 100% from my head and use them in "schools" that slide into their contracts clauses that state that intellectual property created while in the employ of this business becomes the property of the business would qualify as "fair use" under the legal and commercial principles of the times. It has happened many times to me but my feeling is that if someone can use my lessons to teach another person, fine. Go ahead. I made them for the purposes of education. Ah, this re-exhumes that concept we brought up before. Money. Although artists make movies, music, and TV shows for entertainment, we're talking about the people who exploit the creators here, the business side of art which, like banks and telecom companies, has been made an essential part of life... at least in the entertainment industry. We're talking shinplasters, splosh, spondoollicks, wanga, moolah, mazulahs... money, and, as I find with so many of the issues I tackle on this blog, therein lies our problem. Filthy lucre. Forgot that one.

If I buy a car and lend it to a friend to drive and Chrysler or Ford or with luck Ferrari chase me down and say that I have exceeded their standards of "fair use" I think I'd tell them to suck my fat, white arse. I bought the car from them and it's now mine to do with what I please. "Well it's not the same with movies, TV shows, and music." Why not? Here in the land of Canada where we pay exorbitant rates for internet and TV, why can't a guy download and watch an episode of Survivor if he can't find it on TV? The internet and cable have been paid for here. And don't fall for that example of flimflammery you might have seen in an ad for Telus while watching on Telus. Canadians do pay high prices for internet. The fact that Canada is rich and the commercial tells us we can afford it conflates affordability with price and they got busted for lying to us. But businesses do this kind of scamming every day! They call it researching "what the market will bear." I call it charging too much. Potato - Potahto. In fact there ARE cheaper internet providers but Canadians are just so worn out fighting the capitalist price gauging to use them apparently. Just look at the surrender in the guy in this video! His face, his tone, his body language... he's a nub! "They raise the price. What can I do?" That, my friends, is a guy who's been raped and pillaged.

But technically it wasn't the internet provider that sent the message, it was CBS-Paramount. They are worried about me watching one episode of their show Survivor without paying for it. Actually I don' think that's quite the truth. I think they're worried about me watching it WITHOUT COMMERCIALS BEING JAMMED DOWN MY THROAT. What did this struggling company make from the Superbowl ads alone? $650,000,000! Just try to imagine what they make when you pay the cable company to watch their channel with commercials. Or what they make from their cut of the money you pay the cable company to watch their channel WITHOUT commercials. Boggles the mind doesn't it?

So what it comes down to is simple: It's got nothing to do with copyright laws or intellectual property or any of that shit. They want MORE money. And in this world of unethical moral relativism piracy is not right or wrong, it just depends who's doing it.