For anyone who doesn’t know, MAFIAA is a blanket slang term used for the combination of RIAA, MPIAA and their worldwide alternatives. In short, MAFIAA stands for all the corrupt and comically deluded copyright holders out there who are proponents of unfair copyright protection and criminalising their own paying customers.

Before we begin this argument let me say that I support artists getting paid for their efforts, I support art and other copyrightable content, what I don’t support is the MAFIAA and that is why, yes, I am a pirate and no, I do not intend on ever going to prison over it, I don’t even intend on ever admiting that what I’m doing is hurting the industry because as every artist (besides Metallica) you ask knows, and Microsoft publically admited, piracy is good for business.

What MAFIAA is doing wrong

Let’s have a look at what exactly the MAFIAA does and why it’s wrong shall we.

First and foremost, suing their customers. Everyone would think that it doesn’t make a lot of business sense to sue one’s own customers each and every time they misstep, but the MAFIAA has decided to do exactly that. Because their sales have started to drop due to new and more popular media becoming available they have, instead of adopting and changing, started suing people. This is wrong.

Secondly, after the MAFIAA finally realised that perhaps record sales aren’t everything and has decided to allow downloading of their copyrighted content they ladened it with DRM (DigitalRightsManagment), which is all fine and good but not they way they decided to do it. What’s wrong with current DRM schemes is that it creates a world of trouble for anyone who legally downloads music and video by this content being useless on any device other than the one it was downloaded on. However, pirates have no such problems, they can play their downloads any where and at any time.

Thirdly, the MAFIAA is commiting an extreme act of idiocy and displaying a complete lack of business sense in how they distribute their content. This is especially apparent in videos and movies. First you are overcharged for the ticket at the gate, then you are bombarded by advertisements neatly placed in the movie and when it’s all over, if you want to watch the thing at home, you have to pay an extortionate amount of money for the DVD. Or download it at an extortionate price and then being able to only watch it five or so times. Let’s not even touch the fact of wht happens when your player breaks down and all your movies and music are only playable on the one they were bought for.

For last we have the biggest idiocy MAFIAA has ever created and it happened just yesterday. In their flamboyant taking down of youtube content, which I’m not exactly certain why they do since Monty Python has lately proved just how useful putting copyright content online for free is, by increasing their sales 23000 percent. I can personally attest that if I can’t find videos of a band on youtube, lately, I just don’t even know they exist. Oh right, what happened was that Death Cab for Cutie (I think) couldn’t share their own music on their own website because the MAFIAA took down the video, so on the band’s own site all you could see was a “This video is against copyright, go away foul pirate!”

The FUD

The MAFIAA has over the years spread a lot of FUD about copyright and all the ways they can fuck you over if you decide to pirate. They made a big deal out of convincing people that pirating equals stealing, however judges disagree, but this is something most people don’t know. MAFIAA has also done a great lot to convince both people and governments to criminalise piracy, however if piracy is such a crime, why has there only ever been ONE trial? Furthermore, if MAFIAA is so right in what they’re doing, which is what a lot of people think, why then do they fold and cower in the corner the moment somebody pushes back?

We can go further, if the MAFIAA is so incredibly certain they’re only suing pirates, why do they want to bribe ISP’s to hand over filesharers, which is by the way illegal for ISP’s to do since the MAFIAA is not a law enforcement agency. While we’re on this whole discovery thing, the MAFIAA is known for poking and proding then walking away if nothing comes up quickly enough. There have even been cases of network geeks playing around at the office, which resulted in the MAFIAA suing their printer. You know, the machine that prints out sheets of paper? Well it was sued for sharing music on the internet.

What the pirates are doing right and how MAFIAA can learn from them

Pirates, on the other hand, are doing exactly what the MAFIAA is not. They’re providing quality service completely free of charge with the only risk involved being a few viruses here and there, or some trojan. But a person can easily protect themselves against those.

Let me give you a little comparison here, I can buy something legally, go through the trouble of walking somewhere for it, then being encumbered in how I can use what I’ve bought, if I rip it for easier use I’m a pirate, so I have to buy the whole thing again in downloadable format, then if I want to play it on my iPod I have to buy the whole thing again for the iPod, if my equipment dies I have to buy the whole thing AGAIN. So in a few short months I could be buying the same thing four times if I wanted to be a law abiding citizen. Fuck you! Or I can just download it from torrents, it works anywhere I want it and it’s mine forever.

Dear MAFIAA, the reason you are losing customers is not because we’re all turning pirates, but because you are offering a subpar service at a very high price. If you would provide the same service as pirates do (downloadable, no DRM) there are MANY people who would be glad to download your stuff legally. And for the love of god, do you STILL not understand that all these years you were getting new customers by people SHARING stuff by either borrowing CD’s from one another then deciding they want to own one or … soemthing else. Guess what, that’s what we’re trying to do with youtube these days, but you won’t let us. Pray tell, if you don’t let my friend show me the cool new band/movie they’ve discovered, how do I discover it and become a customer? That’s right, I don’t.

Why I think piracy isn’t bad

I’ve already mentioned I’m a pirate, but let me explain a little about why I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong with this. What I download are mostly television series that are not yet available in my country, there is nothing wrong with this because if the MAFIAA isn’t willing to sell me their product there is nothing wrong with me borrowing it from those the MAFIAA is willing to sell to. I still pay cable television, I still pay all television fees and if the series were broadcast locally I would watch them on television and would not download. So yes, they are downloaded, they are pirated, but they are STILL paid for!

Another thing I download a lot is music. Now, the latest Amanda Palmer record WKAP (Who Killed Amanda Palmer) I bought legally straight from the band. They were so kind as to provide me with an instant download that was not DRM laden. I never felt the need to pirate this album. I also bought another of their albums that I also pirated, but I bought a CD because there was added value to it – it was signed. Usually, however, I only pay for my music by ways of propagating it upon others and have over the years gotten a lot of bands new fans and sometimes I buy merchandise, again, straight from the band.

You might have noticed a pattern here. I refuse to buy anything from the MAFIAA because almost none of that money goes to the artists, I prefer buying directly from the bands or, in case of TV series, paying royalties through my cable company.

As for movies, no I don’t pirate much of those because in the past few years the MAFIAA simply hasn’t produced anything I could deem worthy of my time and more often than not when watching a high budget movie I get this icky disgusting feeling that they should be paying ME to watch all of their advertising instead of being fucked over front and back and risking being sued if I watch it from the wrong angle and don’t see the advertising well enough.

MAFIAA, please change your business model, you’re being stupid.

Tags: commentary, food for thought, rant

With Lord of the Rings on the telly and my dear old aluminium Merrick warming my thighs I embark upon a mission of high importance, a mission of dire beginnings, a mission of great consequence and a mission of practicing the useless. I a stand before you today to try and teach you of the dangers we are all facing – the dangers brought on by the endless hordes of noobs in the world.

But first, a little introduction by Nahtze (Jeremy from Pure Pwnage):

As Nahtzee lovably explains, noobs have ruined the gaming industry, but when you think about it, noobs have destroyed much more than just the gaming industry. Just look at how, for example, noobs have destroyed the music and movie industry. Back in the good old days of radio and television whatever was of the best quality in that it told the best tale or had the best musicians or even just had very awesome character development was what made it to the top charts and gained heaps of money.

Nowadays, however, our televisions are filled with the Big Brothers and American Next Top Models out there. Hell, even the sitcoms and so called education shows are much less about being entertaining and whatnot, but just about … hell, what ARE they about? To be honest, I find it increasingly harder to tell what television is even about, it would seem all the noobs out there just sort of gobble up anything you throw at them and because they’ve been told it’s awesome they also think it’s awesome and love it. So, because of the standardless noobs even those of us who would LIKE something worthwhile to watch, but there simply isn’t anything available anymore.

Or take books for example, a while ago only good authors could become successful, geniuses like Boccaccio, Orwell and similar had a hard time succeeding and proving to everyone that they’re a good read. Nowadays … well, nowadays we have schams like Dan Brown becoming instant best sellers and stories like Harry Potter being thought of as the height of literary creation. Fucking tasteless noobs, you’ve destroyed literature for us so the good stuff doesn’t even make it onto the shelves anymore or tries so hard to be different than the popular stuff it becomes unreadable. If you want to be taken seriously as literature, you must be different than pop, but be too different and yuck, unreadable. So if we could just somehow kill all the noobs and thus give popular literature a better name, the really good books wouldn’t have to try so hard to be artsy and we could actually all enjoy them. Yes yes, chicken and egg problem. Whatever.

So what else have noobs destroyed for the rest of us? Political debates? Most certainly. Education? They’ve destroyed it with all religious campaigning against reason. Well, noobs have destroyed everything, or are on the verge of doing so … it sucks. Go away noobs, please, just all drop off the face of the planet and go live on Pluto or something.

Tags: commentary, rant, video

Earlier this week students of Slovenia suddenly discovered a large increase in student food certificate prices. Naturally a great outrage soon followed spannign multiple bulletin boards, news-like articles and at least two outraged facebook groups on top of a boycott “event”, also on facebook. How nice and lovely, students fighting unfair price increases that are wholly disproportionate to other normal price growths. In fact, prices everywhere seem to be dropping due to a so called recession, why student food went up is illogical at the least.

But is it really so illogical? Is it even unfair? And for the love of <deity> are students actually achieving anything with their outrage? The answer to all those questions is a resounding no! Prices went up because they can, it’s called supply-and-demand, meaning that for as long as we continue to make demand and fill those restaurants at lunchtime prices will continue to grow. Once they’ve grown past a certain point where demand starts falling we will see a drop in price.

Of course demand won’t go down very soon because those who are bound to student certificates as their only option for a meal will continue to demand no matter what, there simply isn’t another option (this is otherwise known as a monopoly situation). Welcome to capitalism. It’s also not unfair because those who can afford will, those who can’t won’t and will find other options. Of course then there are those like myself who could afford but WON’T. Why won’t I? Because there is no way in hell I’m paying so much for student food, when I’ll feel like having restaurant food I’ll give that euro more and buy a normal lunch. Fuck ‘em and fuck their overpriced student certificates.

As for achieving anything with facebook groups, you won’t, because nobody cares. You could of course make demonstrations and continue to shout nonsense about how the government is screwing you over, but the sad fact is that in this case they aren’t. They’re still helping you pay with exactly the same amount they were helping you before, it’s just the greedy restaurant owners who have increased their monetary demands. The only way you will achieve anything is by not eating out all the time, find a better alternative if you can.

And we’ve come to the overpolitisation. Look guys and gals, I know we live in a country that’s less than 20 years old, and of course this creates a lot of problems that otherwise would not exist but PLEASE stop pinning everything on politics. It is because of stupid idiots like our commoners that last year’s elections were all about ONE FUCKING SCANDAL and nobody even touched serious topics. it is because of stupid idiots that nothing moves forward in this bloody country, it’s not because of politicians, it’s because you think politicians are responsible for everything.

Would it be too difficult to just FOR ONCE stop thinking politics has any sort of power in the world, that politicians are anything more than puppets on a string and just for once start addressing serious issues and sensible solutions to them? When a construction company fucks up a tunnel, why on earth would the minister of transport have to resign? And when food prices increase, WHAT THE FUCK does that have to do “our government is screwing us over boo hoo”? NOT EVERYTHING is about politics, politics and politicians will not help you, help yourself by buying a cup of common sense and stop blaming everything on politics.

Tags: commentary, rant

On Tuesday I bought a blackberry to replace my old phone and make a step into the new age of ultra connectivity on the go. But there was a hitch – it was the blackberry.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Blackberry 8310, but its user interface is just such a horrible mess I feel like hunting down the UI designers and bludgeoning them with an axe or something similar. Half of the time the damn thing is making me feel like a complete idiot, even making me turn to the user manual or google for answers, and the other half of the time the blackberry’s UI is making me want to hurt somebody.

Can’t sync via bluetooth – not supported, have to turn on bluetooth receiving in media gallery (rather than the bloody SETTINGS menu) to receive files, trackball scrolling of long lists making my thumb fall apart, no obvious way of locking keyboard with a single key, having spent all night trying to figure out how to update firmware to 4.5, music player forgetting where it’s left off last time, three clicks AND scrolling to write a bloody text, several clicks to get to contacts, all different kinds of optins being scattered all over the place instead of staying inside “settings” … to name a few I can think of off the top of my head.

Seriously UI designer guys, doesn’t it tip you off that there is something horribly awry going on when you have to have access to “Help” in every single menu? Or when your phone has to ship with a special “quick tips” booklet that teaches people how to use the bloody keyboard? You might call it well documented, I call it poorly designed because a well designed UI doesn’t need a user manual since users can use it intuitively.

But there are many things I do love about the blackberry (let’s leave alone the fact it’ll take me ages to get used to its keyboard). I like that it feels big and solid in my hand while remaining light, the way it displays text as a conversation is a bloody marvelous idea, the calendar showing next two appointments on main screen and being very easy to manuever and see what you’re up to – fucking awesome. The fact that it can sync with my iCal is brilliant as well. I love the fact normal headphones plug into this phone instead of proprietary crap, regular mini USB port is brilliant as well. And I’m sure that once simobil stops being a fuckup I’ll love my internet stuff as well.

Overall I quite enjoy the blackberry and love it thusfar, just the UI … seriously, are you kidding me? Could stand to be a little quicker as well, but alright, it’s a phone and packed with stuff, I’m sure the hardware is straining to keep up.

This only leaves simobil to rant about. What the fuck guys, I bought a blackberry in a blackberry only package, and I can’t get internet working because I didn’t order a data plan!? What the hell! Sure you later admit to having given me the wrong fucking plan. But how on earth did you manage confusing the specifically-for-blackberries-and-blackberries-sold-only-with-it plan for that other generic crap? Bastards.

Hopefully simobil will correct their fuck up quickly and I’ll be able to use the blackberry to its full extent, until then I will remain with an oversized, overkeyed … telephone.

Tags: life, rant, review