There's something that's been bothering me for awhile concerning the music recording industries cracking down on piracy. First of all, I think it's important to point out that I have never pirated music, nor do I ever have any intention of doing so. However, in the past, WAY in the past, I used to buy tons of music whenever it was released. Music these days is so overpriced for minimal content that I rarely buy any new music.

So, one would think that I shouldn't give a care about the conflict going on between the pirates and the gatekeepers. But I do. The reason I care is something no one is really thinking about.

First of all, the recent tactics of the recording industries has been to crack down heavily on the people they suspect, and they are cracking down on the universities themselves that maintain these sites for the students. Now, someone who never pirates this stuff would probably think: "good, let's get them all." But that's not what I think because I realize what is eventually going to happen. A school, fearing potential high-impact lawsuits, is going to start limiting broadband capabilties for students. Right now, we have a really good thing, but because of the music industry going after people with a blanket approach to catching those doing what's wrong, everyone is going to start suffering.

Personally, I love ethernet because one of the things I do is play games online. I find it a wonderful way to spend the few hours a week that I do have to myself. People like me will be completely shut out because of the fear of lawsuits from paranoid universities. I also do a lot of online research which will then start becoming limited because for the most part, the way you figure out who is downloading a lot of music is by first going after the individuals who are doing a lot of downloading of any sorts. The easiest way to police this problem is to force people to have to download content through official proxies, in which the freedom to surf for info will start becoming legislated by universities that fear backdoor internet access through the main firewall lines.

In other words, every student will be punished because the music industry has chosen to target the universities where a small percentage of the criminals are located.

If the music industry wants to solve its problems, perhaps it should take a closer look at itself. First of all, when they went from vinyl to CDs, they sold us on the idea that these things would be cheaper to make, and we could look at $9.99 as the price of music albums. That never happened. They then started changing their claims on this, and next thing we knew, $15-20 was the "listed" price. Recently, the music industry, in several of their own big conventions, pointed out that they would start moving their prices back down to $9.99 because of the realization that they were losing tons of money through lack of sales. This was two years ago. It never happened.

Now, just a few months ago, music conglomerates have banded together to create a new "internet music downloading service" of which they promise that an entire album will cost "only $9.99". Now, this is with zero overhead other than the initial set-up costs and labor involved in running the service (which students have shown only takes one very dedicated student and a decent programmer). Yet, this figure of $9.99...where have we heard this before?

The music industry is NOT going to make up its money by going after students in an environment that a bunch of old music executives cannot possibly understand. They are trying to sell an old medium onto a new marketplace and not realizing that they are trying to sell ponies in car dealerships.

Perhaps they need to stop running focus groups amongst people who are part of the old paradigm and start running focus groups where THEY are not the ones asking the questions. They are so out of touch with consumers these days, and they don't even realize it.

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My personal email box seems to be filled constantly with nothing but junk and spam mail. Why are these people destroying the internet like this? Do they honestly think they're going to get people to buy their stuff when they place a fake subject line that says something like "arpcrft presntation" to get by the filters? How many ads do I need about the usual, sexually suggestive crap?

I used to be one of the huge fans of the internet back in the day. Now, I find myself hating to sign on because my email box is filled with nothing but spam. I even have an account where I do nothing but send one or two emails from it a month. It is spam packed with crap. It's everything from viagra, to penis pills, to Iraqi (formerly Nigerian) get rich schemes, to these really annoying packs of cards of the "evil" Iraqi most-wanted.

I so much wish the internet could go back to being fun again, and not some telemarketer's place to defecate on the rest of us who are just using it to communicate.

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You know, I'm pretty much open to a lot of things in life, but I was just flipping through channels and came across MTV's Sex2k, or something like that, and the "sex" thing they were focusing on was people who have a "thing" for wearing furry costumes. Like I said, I'm usually pretty accepting of most things, but I have to apologize because I found myself laughing hysterically throughout the whole show as these people took themselves so seriously.

I know. It's wrong to laugh that hard about something like that, but when the guy in the dalmation suit started jumping on the person with the wolf suit, I just sort of lost it.

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This is kind of a strange victory, but the Forensics Team came back from the National Tournament for the National Forensics Association, and our team won first place in the country under our entry division. It's a strange victory because this is my last semester with Forensics. Next year, I'm in the Political Science Department, and I'll no longer have anything to do with Forensics. I've been the Director of Forensics for four years now here at Western.

But we won first, and I don't even think the rest of the university is even cognizant, or even cares.

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Here is an article I just had published today in The Western Herald (I'd link it but they're really slow sometimes in getting those things up there):

We Must Liberate Oppressed TV From Neighbors (title changed from Operation: “My Next Door Neighbor’s TV’s Freedom”; further proof that I hate when they destroy the titles I put on these articles)

I was walking by my neighbor’s window the other day, and I noticed that he has this really big, expensive television set. I also noticed that he was watching some kind of sports game on television, and he was yelling at it, so I began to feel sorry for that TV. I also noticed that my neighbor has a temper tantrum problem, and on more than one occasion, I have actually seen him throw physical objects at his television, injuring it.

Now, I know that my own television enjoys a state of complete freedom. It is free to choose whatever channel it wants to, and I’m quite okay with that. I mean, sometimes I’ll change the channel, but most of the time, I’m happy watching whatever my TV has chosen for me. But I noticed that this neighbor’s television is required to watch all sorts of dirty television shows that I assume are on some cable channel that I refuse to admit I have access to. Yet, that poor TV has no ability to stop these horrible shows from being shown on it.

The other day, a reliable source, of whose identity I cannot reveal because it could possibly result in harm coming to him, brought it to my attention that my neighbor might actually have an illegal cable box. So, I contacted my neighborhood’s association and told them that I want that television released from this guy’s house, or I was going to take personal control of the situation and get that TV out of there. In the beginning, the neighborhood association didn’t even take me seriously. They said they’d look into the situation but to just go back to my own business and then they’d deal with it. Well, they didn’t deal with it because I could still see him beating on his television set through his window. So I went back to the neighborhood association and said that me and my other neighbor Brian were very much against this guy beating up his TV, so we gave them two weeks to make him comply with our demands, which were kind of along the lines of “make things better for the TV, or we’ll make him pay.” They told me to stop complaining and that if I didn’t stop, they’d call the cops. Well, this just really pissed me off because I paid my money to the neighborhood association, and I couldn’t believe they weren’t going to do anything about this guy and his abusive attitude towards his TV.

So, I went to his door and I told him that under no circumstance would I stand aside as he abused his TV. I guess the guy thought I was nuts, so he ignored me, but this just pissed me off more. So, finally, I made an ultimatum and told him that if he didn’t leave his apartment and never come back again, I would raid his apartment, free his TV, and possibly do all sorts of damage to his stereo, his cat and Xbox system in the process.

He ignored me, even reporting me to the neighborhood association who then decided they felt he just needed more time to stop damaging his television. They said they’d send someone over to look in on him from time to time.

So my friend Brian and I decided we had to do something about it. We went to all of our other neighbors and told them we were going to liberate this enslaved television, but for the most part, they kept telling us we’d be better off going to the neighborhood association. When I explained that they were too wimpy to do anything about it, my neighbors just said it wasn’t worth it, and that it was better to let the association handle it.

So, realizing we had no other choice, Brian and I decided to take matters into our own hands. We figured that after we freed the television set, our other neighbors would help us clean up the mess because they are our neighbors, and that’s part of their responsibility as neighbors. If not, we’d report them to the neighborhood association for not living up to their responsibilities.

But before Brian and I launched our assault on the guy’s apartment, we started to hear stories of the atrocities that our neighbor was often accused of. One of our neighbors, Irene, said that our neighbor had a habit of forcing people into his home to listen to long stories about how he used to play the accordion. She stated that sometimes those people were never the same again.

So we realized there were risks, so we both bought ear plugs, and as we looked in through his window, we could tell that he also had ear plugs, so we had all the proof we needed that he was quite willing to subject people to this type of torture.

But we’re available of the risks, and we’re convinced that it’s completely worth the risk. We’re ready to go, regardless of how many times the neighborhood association has warned us not to. I mean, if we don’t do this, who knows who might have to listen to this guy’s accordion stories in the future?

But we’re not doing it for ourselves. We’re doing it for that television set. No television set should ever have to go through what that poor TV has gone through. Could we forgive ourselves if we didn’t do something while we had the ability?

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I'm down to one more paper and then I'm done for the semester. The summer is finally going to be mine.

Well, at least until the end of June, and then I go to Prague to take a course there for a month. I've never been to Prague before, so I'm looking forward to it.

I intend to finish off one of my novels this summer. Most likely, it will be The Ameriad, a novel I've been working on for a few years now. Up until last year, I hadn't completed a novel in nearly five years. But during the winter of last year (think it was the winter), I managed to finish my 11th novel. The Ameriad should be the 12th. I also need to start sending out my short stories as well. I've really fallen behind on that, even though I've continued to write more of them little by little.

I still need to register for next year, and hopefully I'll do it next week. I have a lot to accomplish over the next few days before the summer becomes my own. I hope to be completely free to do my own thing after Tuesday.

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The paper presentation went pretty well. I was suprised at how well it went. A number of professors indicated later that they were impressed with my individual voter approach rather than the usual aggregate approach in which the data is usually easier to obtain. Dr. Swanson did the review of the paper, and she had some really good comments. I intend to incorporate them into the rewrite of the paper that I will turn in on Wednesday.

This was a really interesting project this semester. I can't say I was loving it during the semester of preparation for it, because it was a LOT of work. I am glad that it's winding down now, and I'm glad that I actually succeeded in putting something together that didn't suck. Dr. Corder indicated I should fix it up and then send it out; I think that's a good idea as it would be nice to get something of mine out there in academic circles.

What this class HAS done for me is indicate that perhaps I need to take on one of these subjects again and then put forth the same amount of work, and then have something else yet to submit. I have a number of ideas I've been playing around with; perhaps it is time to bring them to some scrutiny beyond my own.

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I was in the Bernhard Center (never sure if I spell that right) today having some lunch when some guy came up to me with his girlfriend and felt a need to tell me how happy he was about our success in the war. I'm not sure why I get these people coming up to me, other than the fact that I'm a regular columnist for the Herald, but he obviously felt he recognized me so he came over and started his rant. Well, at the end of it, he asked my opinion, and I indicated that regardless of the "success" of the operation, I'm still not very happy about the war. He then proceeded to question my loyalties to this country and indicated that perhaps I wasn't a "real" American.

Now, I took a look at both of these people, and I'm sure neither was older that 22-23, which indicated that neither of them has ever served in the military before, so I indicated that my experience in being a "real" American includes 4 separate conflicts. Could they say the same? The response I got indicated that perhaps people don't really think about what they're saying.

So much for an interesting lunch.

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I haven't had as much time to post as I'd like, but I hope to catch up on a continuous blog (that no one reads) soon, now that this semester is finally finishing.

I submitted my big paper last night, and I have to present the paper in front of a conference panel at school in a few days. I'm really not looking forward to this part of the situation, mainly because I really don't believe too much in the subject I ended up choosing, but I can say that I'll be quite happy when this project is finally over and I can get on with the summer.

I found out I'm receiving a doctoral associateship which definitely makes my life a lot easier next year. I'll be able to relax a bit, rather than worry about how I was going to fund the next year.

I saw a really interesting movie on HBO the other night (one of the HBO's...not sure which one). It was called something like The Road Home, and it was a movie made in China. This got me to thinking about how so many of our movies tend to be so violent without any real purpose to them. This movie had no violence, no sex or anything like that at all. It was just a beautiful story. I really wish there could be more movies like that here.

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