Quote:
Originally Posted by Irenicus
Tomorrow we will see if the Free World is about to crash down on us and bring us to a Brave New (Old) World of our corporate overlords. 
Anyway, a link to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs website tells much by telling so little. No mention of any real criticisms, public participation, or any such democratic nonsense. Just the simple, celebratory "mission successful" kind of statements. The symbolism of Japan being the center of the "final" negotiations is also important. It -- alongside the USA -- are leading the negotiations. Both major world economies are plagued by deep interrelationships between the business establishment and the governmental apparatii, and both are under heavy recessions which seem to encourage scapegoating. It's the filthy pirates' fault, not, oh, the system.
Also utterly missing is any mention of this intensely controversial treaty-to-be within mainstream Japanese media. They're busy day and night with "reporting" the Floppy Disk Scandal and the "ascension" of Kim whateverthefuckhisnameis in North Korea. Oh and the yen-dollar exchange rate maelstrom, but that's actually something of a real issue. Even the major diplomatic incident surrounding the Senkaku Islands dispute is receiving less media attention than I expected.
I have always been a little guilty about pirating, thinking that once I've started to earn real income that I would "pay back" some of it. But if this indeed passes and comes into effect it will wash away the last of my guilt and convince me to happily pirate away the rest of my days, and the moral copyrighters can fuck off. The less easily regulated parts of the Internet will indeed "reroute" around it, albeit with higher risks, but the higher stakes are also worth taking. Self-righteous, perhaps (though again moral copyrighters can fuck off), but the simple and selfish act of consuming entertainment for free will become something far more -- a form of passive civil protest -- if one is doing it in spite of the efforts to suppress rights and liberties associated with modern liberal democracy and human rights. |
Yes there will be ways around it, but they will be ways you have to be very tech savvy to understand and operate. I get myself banned from IRC, once torrenting and such is gone, I'm out of the anime game(Pretty much am anyways, but you get what I'm saying).
We need a Karl Marx of the internet, lol.