I Typed the Draft in OpenOffice

Every now and then Fernando has people return his movies, only for him to learn upon inspecting the discs that they are rendered nonfunctional. Sometimes this is because a combination of hemp, sawdust, and peanut butter has been smeared all over (Note to self: this is a story Fernando will need to relate in the future), and other times it is because an almost imperceptible ring of burn exists going all the way around the disc's surface. The latter troubles Fernando because it means people are renting his movies in order to steal them. Their reasons are their own, and he is certainly not the Morality Patrol, but it is very off-putting to because, 1) the disc is now ruined and needs to be replaced and 2) it's against the law.

Let me preface this opinion piece by saying that I have zero empathy for the MPAA's misguided crusade to stop technology from doing what advances in technology have always done, namely shaking up the status quo. The problems of piracy are not limited to film media, of course. Music, computer games, and console games are also exploited in a similar fashion. The digitization of entertainment media has made it much more attractive to the producers of such works to include limitations such as DRM that lessen the consumer's rights in the name of “intellectual copyright.”

Ideas can be copyrighted, and they should be copyrighted. Otherwise we'd be quite a culturally deficient bunch of primates and every branch of the arts would be the aesthetic equivalent of iwrestledabearonce. However, ideas should not, in my eyes, be able to be bought and sold willy-nilly. The creator of a work should have exclusive copyright ownership of that work, and this right cannot be traded to any other person, group or organization with one exception: that of work-for-hire (Fernando likes the idea of contracts between two consenting parties being valid because otherwise havoc would be wreaked upon the legality of his collecting of late fees), and in that case the organization for which the work was hired cannot sell it to someone else down the road, so not really an exception at all.

Furthermore, a universal system of encoding data should be used among countries that make meaningful effort to enforce copyright law (that means not yours, China). I find it somewhat hypocritical that, on the one hand, the free trade advocates push for greater global integration of markets and, on the other, unabashedly restrict it through area encoding for software. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too. It's unfair to the consumer, and it puts the consumer in a pickle. Say there's some quirky and unique Japanese console game I wish to play that will never, ever get a US release. I've got two options: either shell out a bunch of money on a Japanese console (the expensive way), or find some means of modding my own console to play this foreign game/wait for computer technology to reach the point that the game in question can be emulated and I can find the find the ROM/ISO/whatever via the 'tubes (the illegal way).

Finally, the consumer needs to have final say over what happens with his or her virtual property. Things like the Amazon Kindle fiasco of last year, when Amazon deleted due to copyright snaggles all the copies of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four from the Kindles of people who had purchased them, should not be allowed to happen (Amazon made right to those people in the end, so my beef is not with them personally. I like Amazon). If I buy a copy of any sort of hardware, I should be allowed to do what I will with the software as well, and to let whomever I wish borrow it and what do whatever he or she wants with it (within the bounds of the law). It's mine, not yours. Books made of actual paper are about the only things that do not have built-in protections to keep people from sharing them. It is a fundamental mistrust of the consumer that leads to the implementation of restrictive DRM, and that's only going to lead to resentment on the part of the consumer (as if it hasn't already). And when people get resentful, they get petty and “stick it” to “the man” in any way possible. Thus the problem of piracy is perforce perpetuated. (And not just piracy. Heck, even in running the Dominion Fernando finds that it is a much much much better idea to not treat people like they are mere sources of income because it increases the likelihood of them returning).

In an ideal world a happy medium can be reached between the people who produce works of intellectual merit and the consumers thereof, such that the former can make enough to avoid starving and the latter can do what he or she wants with what he or she buys, and everyone can be content. I feel it would be in the producers' best long-term interests to extend the first olive branch by being generally less draconian in their business methods.

Look at what the open-source movement has perpetuated on the internet, for instance. I don't run Microsoft Works anymore. I hate the idea of having to pay $400+ for a legitimate copy of Microsoft Works; and pirating it is a horrible idea because it would prevent me from ever updating it, to say nothing of the omnipresent risk of viral tag-alongs in said download that could seriously muck up my system. OpenOffice, while not the perfect substitute, works quite well enough for my word processing, spreadsheet, and database needs, and it's free. That's one hell of a bargain, and people love getting bargains. It makes us tractable, and the realm of big business loves tractable consumers. Undoubtedly, the companies and lobbyist groups will see this and will begin moving in this way immediately.

Fernando is such an optimist.