errr… the news
i’m kind of frustrated with two things in the news lately:
1) our government’s war posturing with iraq
2) the massive copyright/copy protection legal resurgence from the entertainment and closed-source, anti-free software industry
the first i see as hopelessly bound to stir up greater anti-american sentiment abroad, while adding instability and chaos to an already crappy situation. it just doesn’t seem right, i hate it, i vote no.
the second i see as hopelessly bound to stifle innovation and creativity. the whole reason for moving from an analog world to a digital world was so that information could be made ethereal, could be separated from physical matter. no one wants to go back to a world of typewriters after experiencing computer word processing*. but there is an old stodgy world (of which microsoft and the riaa are a part) that still thinks software/music/movies (which consist only of infinitely duplicatable 1s and 0s) should be treated the same as physical goods. i believe they are wrong. the only thing that maintains the astronomical earnings for these organizations (in the face of poor quality, bloated products and non-existent support) is US copyright law–which congress seems very keen on expanding lately. my hope is that the new and old organizations began to act in a way that allows them to still be profitable (by offering services) without needing big brother helping to collect the dues.
*well, there are those slightly obnoxious folk who buy old typewriters in hope that their poetry/songwriting will improve
