March 22, 2003
There. I've made an insidious remark. In our society and culture, there are really only two sacred cows. Not the ones you think. Sooner or later, everything else that you think is forbidden will be permissable. Sooner or later every sacred cow will be butchered and eaten. We will debate tolerance and diversity and libertarianism until we are bone-dry. There will be room for all forms of strangeness and desire.
But the real powers-that-be in our world will never permit a genuine threat to the god of consumerism to go unchallenged. If you preach the gospel of simplicity and un-desire, you will never get on tv, you'll never get on the radio, you'll never appear on CNN, and you'll never be welcomed to a state dinner. Forget about it. You will be ignored, denied, co-opted, or killed.
And if you teach forgiveness, you will never be forgiven. Even the people who claim to follow Jesus Christ nowadays preach the opposite: they are in favor of capital punishment, a massive military capability, and guns.
Jesus was always a revolutionary. The societies that make the loudest noise about having adopted his message would be first to crucify him again if he ever re-appeared.
I don't think there's ever been anything like it since... well, I don't think there's been anything like it.
Here's to the unsung hackers, the programmers and rippers who provide free music and movie downloads to anyone in the world with an internet connection and a file-sharing program. A toast to you boys! You even delete those annoying commercials from television programs! You are wonderful.
I think of you when I delete 30 spam a day. I think of you when my kids watch a television program that seems to consist almost entirely of commercials. Even the supposed "drama" parts are really commercials for make-up and fashion and cars. I think of you when I configure a new computer and have to spend about two hours deleting unwanted software and services, and watch as all the performance of this new rip-roaring 2.6 mhz Pentium IV gets sucked away by idiotic background services that I don't want, didn't ask for, and sometimes can't even delete.
You have been dissed by the powers that be, the authorities, Congress, the RIAA and the MPAA. Why? Because, without asking a cent, you have invested your time and effort to make music and software and video entertainment widely available, without the advertising, and without all the bullshit. Never have "criminals" profited so little from their "crimes", while their jailers stuff their pockets with royalties cheated away from the creative talent, and campaign contributions.
I know-- the toadies of the status-quo are tsk-tsking me right now! Where would all this great software come from in the future if no one ever got paid for it? Well, I do believe that people should get paid for their work. So if you really believe it too, all you have to do is make the following changes:
1. make sure that software, music, and videos are priced fairly. Windows should cost about $35. If Microsoft tells you that it needs $365 because it has to pay all those brilliant innovators that find new ways of cramming MSN down your throat, tell them to go to hell, and offer older versions of their operating systems to people who don't want the new innovations. They'll tell you that everyone wants the new innovations. If that was true, they would offer Windows 95 and Windows 98 for about $35 each right now, because it would cost them nothing to do it, and it would increase their returns on their original investments in that product. But they won't. No no no-- you can't buy Windows 95 or Windows 98. You are not allowed to. You are on the upgrade treadmill, buying faster hardware to run bloated software more slowly.
If you were allowed to, you see, some computer makers might continue to offer Windows 95 or Windows 98 compatible machines, for those who couldn't afford the big expensive newer machines. Not a chance.
Tell the music industry that they promised that the price of CD's would come down once they got into mass production. Tell Hollywood that we know that it only costs about $1 to press a DVD. Tell Toshiba that I don't want the damn Microsoft Gaming Network on my laptop taking up precious space on my hard drive!
2. Make sure that the people who really create the value in these products are paid fairly for their work. We know what the Recording Industry does to their talent. We know how Hollywood cheats actors and writers out of their percentages. Clean up your own act.
3. Stop corporations from buying congressman. We may not know exactly what the law on copy protection and copyright should be, but we know who is writing those laws right now, and we know that consumers do not get heard when these laws are scripted. Does anyone believe that the RIAA wants a law that balances the interests of the consumer with the interests of the industry? Ha ha ha! If they did, consumers would have been at the table when these laws were drafted.
There is such a thing as fair use, and producers should not be allowed to try to prevent consumers from making backup copies of their software or installing it on more than one playback device.
That's all. Until the Corporations clean up their act, I'm going to continue to admire those who subvert the status quo, even if they break the "law".