There's currently a bill before congress or something to make it a felony to copy oh, just about anything. Oh sure, it's already illegal, but they want to make it a federal crime now. because they are REALLY PISSED ABOUT IT. Or, you know, the companies found an easier way to make money by threatening normal people and extorting money from them by threatening legal action if they don't pay. So now congress wants to make that extortion legal, sounds like. At least to me, and granted, I ain't no lawyer, politician, or nothin like that there.
Used to be, back in the day, if you were listening to some music, and your buddy said "Hey, that's a great tune, can you make me a tape of that?" You would say "Yea, sure." And your buddy would enjoy the music and probably buy the album it came from. Now you can argue that was in itself piracy, or that the guy was never going to buy the actual album, or that giving him the song stole the sale price of the album from the record label's bank vault, but that's all just so much bullshit. If it's good music, people will buy it. If it's shit, they won't.
The same now applies to software, games, movies and so on. Sure, you're going to get a few hardened criminals who go around with cell phones and record movies in the movie theaters or whatever to make a few bucks off them, but generally those copies are the crappiest things you've ever seen, and I certainly wouldn't pay for them. That's just the cost of doing business. I mean, it's not like the record companies, artists, and producers of these things aren't sitting in solid gold bathtubs, snorting coke off the ass of a supermodel/hooker who costs them $10,000 a night, and laughing at you while you work your ass off in your menial labor job making 7 bucks an hour. You know they are, they know they are, and congress knows they are. In fact, congress is usually in the next room smoking crack with the whores the company executives couldn't get it up for (not that there's anything wrong with being a whore, and I think legalizing it is a good idea).
So why the hell are they making it so goddamn hard for the guy making minimum wage to get any of their so-called "art?" The era of the "starving artist" is long past us, my friends. It's a sure bet Bon Jovi isn't working a Mcjob serving fries to whiny little redneck brats while he's thinking up his next song lyrics. So why make it so goddamn difficult for guys like me, end users who actually pay for their stuff, to actually get it?
I mean seriously, I love computer games. In the past it was simple, buy the game, install it on the drive, then play it. Now it's step (1) enter the key code to install the game. (2) enter the key code to play the game. (3) register the game to qualify for updates. (4) sign up for the gaming service associated with the game to be allowed to play it (which involves giving them all your information, medical records, birth defects, current location, and sometimes what you are wearing at the time). (5) login to the gaming service and validate yourself as you, preferably by presenting three valid forms of ID. (6) play it as long as all 5 of the previous steps completed successfully. Oh and a caveat, don't install the game on more than one computer, regardless of whether the game's copy protection fries your hard drive (which the company is not legally responsible for), or forevermore, all of steps one through 5 will fail for you. Period.
Why is it so hard? I paid for the game. I have a receipt. I can prove it. Why are you making it next to impossible for me to enjoy your product once you've already got my money for it? Let's think about it. if someone pirates your game, they remove all those blockages. Let's say I get the game from someone who pirated it, since I don't have a farking clue how to pirate a game myself. Then the steps are: I get the game. I install it on my drive. I play it. There's no registering, there's no providing the company with my social security number, I don't have to fax them a copy of my dead grandmothers DNA profile, I just.. play... the game... it's a staggering concept, isn't it?
And yet every producer, game company and major corporation out there is lobbying congress to make things even harder. And you KNOW they aren't going to be harder for the pirates. The pirates are smart. They've been around for generations. No matter how big the companies get, no matter if they pass the death penalty for copying a music CD, with even more stringent penalties for removing the copyright software on a game, people are still going to do it. And you're also still going to get the companies going after innocent people and accusing them of stealing it, which, if the above bill passes, allows the FBI to wiretap you without a warrant (just for the accusation, mind you), and then why the HELL would I even bother to buy your product?
The more money I give to the major companies, the more they use it to put even more copy protection into their games, the more they use it to bribe congress to pass laws to make it even easier for them to pass off total crap for games and then, when no one buys it, they say "We've lost billions on this game due to piracy! pass more laws for us!" When in fact, the few users who did buy it couldn't get it to work because they couldn't provide the company with the name of the one-called bacteria the end user evolved from 140 billion years ago. In writing. Signed by the bacteria. In blood.
So my choice seems pretty simple, become a pirate so I can play games like I used to, or just don't buy the crappy games they are trying to pass off on us. I'm going with option B. There's a lot of smaller gaming companies out there nowadays, and they make better games. So FUCK YOU, major companies. Pass your shit laws by bribing every politician you can find and then wonder how your company went bankrupt when you spend all your money on those laws, because you sure as hell aren't going to get me to pay your way.
I mean, even my game cheating site (I'm allowed to cheat at single player games, I bought, them, I own them, and I'm going to cheat at them, so FU too, Blizzard) wants an extra layer of protection just to log into their site now. And Steam, my goddamn gaming platform, is now offering extra security. I haven't really looked into it, but I can only guess it's a ploy for more money, because that's what these companies are all about. They don't care if someone steals our account, as long as we keep paying them. So this new security feature will eventually become something they can charge us for and make money off of.
And I'm not even going to mention wunderground.com's new policy of not letting me save their weather pictures for my desktop. Wtf. Seriously? Pictures of the weather, I can't have now? How the fuck is that hurting someone who uploaded them for free to begin with? Fuckin hell.
You know what else we used to have in the old days? COMMON FUCKING SENSE. it was called common sense because just about everyone had it. Not all, no. That's why it was called common sense and not just sense. But nowadays, it's not even RARE sense, it's more like NONEXISTENT sense, because congress doesn't have it, politicians don't have it, gaming companies don't have it, and movie producers don't have it.
I'm starting to think the loss of common sense is a side effect of having too much money, because that's the only things those people have in common. Either that or it's all the drugs that money buys, because there's a lot of poor, stupid, drug-addicted people too. I wonder how much money I'd make if I bet that every rich asshole who lacks common sense was actually a heavy drug user with an addled mind? I think it's a sure bet.
charlie sheen.... anyone??
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