Here's something I wrote yesterday on my blog...
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Some thoughts over the P2P controversy
For the past 1.5 years I've been involved with P2P for Japanese dramas, I've come up with some thoughts over the whole issue of this peer-to-peer (P2P) controversy.
First off, let me make sure everyone is clear on the following point:
Protocols are not illegal. The process is being exercised by the use of an application, transferred via a protocol. In this scenario, P2P is the application, BitTorrent is the protocol, and piracy is the process. The process, that being piracy, is the issue.
Unfortunately, human beings by nature, tend to take virtually anything and turn it into something bad, immoral, or illegal. I like the philosophy of
Agent Smith in the movie
The Matrix:
Human beings are not a mammal. Mammals tend to settle and adapt to their environment. On the other hand, human beings tend to travel from place to place, eating up all the resources and destroying the environment along the way. There's another organism that's very similar to this:
A virus.
In my way of thinking, Internet users are basically viruses themselves, taking innovative and useful technologies like P2P and turn them into something that the Society of Intellectual Properties can do without.
So...
What do you do about it? Do you kill off the virus? Or do you destroy the path the virus uses to spread from place to place? If I was a physician, I'd want to kill the virus. Am I right? I mean, even if I destroy the virus' path, I'm still stuck with the virus. And, the virus, by its nature, will become more intelligent and stronger, and therefore will find other methods of traveling. So, I'd want to kill off the virus so that the path can be used for other things that benefits the environment.
Now, let's take the MPAA and the RIAA. The MPAA/RIAA is the physician, and their clients are the patients. The symptom is that their clients aren't maximizing their profits. The extreme left believes that there is a finite point called
enough, and they use this term in the context of, "The MPAA/RIAA is making
enough money as it is. They don't need anymore money." The extreme right believes that there is no such thing as enough, and the goal in the Monetary World is to maximize profits from their intellectual properties.
What's wrong with maximizing profits? We all want as much money as we want. We're the same as Universal Pictures or MGM. We all at one point in our lives (except for maybe the high school and college students) want an increase in pay at our jobs. We want more money so that we can buy more stuff, improve our lifestyles, and when all is said and done maybe have a little to put away for our golden years.
HOWEVER, when money is at a disadvantage, humans tend to perform a 180, and start complaining when they don't have enough money to buy the stuff they want. Now, viruses have a similar nature... When viruses run out of resources in order to survive, they start feeding off of the good things in their environment. In the case of humans, they start developing a process called
righteous justification. The process shuts off a part of their brain that analyzes another process called
consequences. In the human species,
righteous justification overrides
consequences.
Earlier, I always thought that humans were better than viruses in the sense that we think about the consequences before we perform an action. That's how societies were originally developed. In order to create order, humans must be placed on a set of guidelines, coated with consequences in case the humans decided to circumvent the guidelines.
There are two bodies within any given society that dictate guidelines:
government and
spirituality. Until very recently, I believe virtually humans throughout planet Earth were put into their places by these two bodies. Unfortunately, just like viruses, humans have developed an idealism where government and spirituality is only as strong as what's on paper, and that action is the ultimate act that can prove whether either of these bodies even have the strength to enforce the guidelines they're supposed to enforce. Viruses figured out a long time ago that the biological rules that's supposed to protect the human body can be broken by just simply ignoring the rules. And, because the human body can't defend the rules it originally put in place, the virus takes over.
That's really what's occurring on the Internet... I no longer believe its a matter of a lack of money. I think the users are lazy MF'ers and therefore just don't want to pay for stuff. They've figured out they can get stuff easily for free, and thereby enabling righteous justification to convince themselves that what they're doing is enough to protect them from the consequences. That's basically the entire problem, in a nutshell. And that's why I equate these users with viruses... They've taken a once clean environment called the Internet, taken great innovations like P2P, and turned everything into what I'd like to call
Anarchy on the Internet.
Yes, it's anarchy. The basic definition of anarchy is when individuals feel a sense of empowerment, inspiring them to override the rules of society, and society doesn't have the power to stop them. That's what's happening here... People can no longer create and control their intellectual properties because anarchy is voiding and ignoring the bodies that maintain the rules it once protected. Like Ferris Bueller once said, "Nothing's illegal until you get caught."
So in reality, the MPAA/RIAA did not set out to destroy P2P from the beginning. Believe me, they wanted to kill the viruses. However, because the rules of the various governing bodies around the World aren't working off the same piece of paper (Canada, for example), they have no other legal option but to destroy the virus' path, and that my friends is the protocol, in this case BitTorrent. Now, honestly, can you blame them for trying to destroy P2P?
I can't predict whether or not P2P will die at the end. However, I'm confident enough to rule that IF P2P is destroyed,
it's really the users that caused the destruction of that useful application.
Now that I have 1.5 years under my belt in the Japanese drama realm, I choose not to be a virus of the P2P application. I have studied and considered the consequences. I've studied the righteous justifications from various people. You know what? I have no idea why a supreme being of your ilk placed me on planet Earth. However, I'm quite sure the purpose of my existence in life is
not to be entertained. And, I most certainly do not want to live the rest of my life talking to myself, justifying every shady action I make. I have better methods about getting the things I want -- like working hard for every dollar I earn, and then going home and have my hard earned money start working for me.
Call me Uncle Tom of the controlled society we live in, but you know what? I don't have to justify myself on any of my actions, as long as I play along the guidelines.
And that, my friends, is priceless.
--- groink (classification: human being, and NOT a virus)
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