My apologies, again, for not posting up anything here for the past month. Writing has always been about my biorhythms, if anyone begs a reason for my absence. Once again, many apologies, but I draw the line of posting every day (even though that’s a reader’s paradise), because even I myself get burnout sometimes. XD
OK, to spruce up this post, let me talk to you about conflicts of interests, especially in the field of P2P arena.
There are currently two sides of the argument: those who vehemently wished that the P2P scene be exterminated (anti-piracy outfits, major labels and publishers, privacy-invasive-prone filesharing detective companies etc.), and those that fight for the consumers’ right to fileshare.
I do believe that we should honor intellectual property, because we acknowledge the creative processes and efforts that goes into a product. However, at its current state, intellectual property laws are based on a defunct and obsolete 19th century rules which can never be practically applied in the age of the Internet. Major entities that you can find in major record labels (for music), production companies (for film and media), and publishers (for books), have been behind some of the most repressive actions against their customers, potential and/or otherwise. When we mentioned RIAA, MPAA or the like, we are referring to the same entities that sued dead people and the elderly for exhorbitant amounts of money (millions of US dollars) for “compensation” that many academics have solidly questioned their claims. Because of the abovementioned companies’ refusal to accept the new business realities of the Internet — because they never gave the new generation of Internet users the speed and availability, as well as the ease of transaction, needed to acquire legal products — and their draconian measures to stop the “piracy,” even rightful consumers are being “punished” for buying legitimately, in the form of digital rights management (DRM)-enforced products and rootkits, which Sony has made the ultimate “slap-in-the-face” to its customers.
Around the world, similar efforts have been replicated. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is a similar RIAA-like organization that employs the same legal tactics in Europe. (I would like to highlight the story of their origins, and think for yourself whether we should allow such entities to continue their activities.) Major Internet service providers (ISP) around the world — the most famous, the Comcast scandal — have practised some form of “repressive networking” to infuriate its consumers of using popular P2P technology, even though there are legal uses to it. (On that front, Vuze has launched a formal complaint to the US statuory board, FCC, against Comcast.) Oh, don’t get me started on the Odex issue in Singapore; even Odex themselves knew that they are not the right people to launch such legal complaint. These — and other reasons — are why I have become so dismayed by the owners of content i.e. people that own the rights of what we listen, watch and enjoy, that I appreciate what The Pirate Bay, other Bittorrent portals, and other similar entites had done, to up the fight against corporate bullying towards their customers. Essentially, they represent the wishes of consumers that the original copyright owners have not been listening to for so long. They are paying the price of ignorance. But for me, I know that in time to come, this fight must come to a close. Either way, the consumers must always win, because, as they say, “the customer is always right.”
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