RE: Banning Downloaders from the Internet

"Greetings. I'm a representative from Her Majesty's British Government© . How are you? Actually, don't bother answering that. Allow us to get straight to the point. As Her Majesty's British Government©, we have decided that the issue of music and film piracy is one of utmost importance. Millions of beautiful American dollars are lost to the filthy scum who chose to download their entertainment for free via the use of 'The Internet'. Therefore we have given the go ahead for a new plan to be formulated by our top scientists in order to hunt down these thieves. Do not say we did not warn you - we have spent much of our own money on ingenious threats, such as the advert that plays every time you put a DVD into your Playstations, or our recent message displayed in our 'Knock Off Nigel" campaign. What is wrong with you people? Do you not understand that the artists and the actors, the visionaries and the talented, and most importantly, the movie studios and record labels need money to feed you your 'entertainments'? As a result of your selfishness, Her Majesty's British Government© has now decided to take it upon it's own shoulders to tackle this problem, and we will defeat you. But do not worry for now. Go on, make a cup of tea - as long as you have paid for the teabags of course. Goodbye, and long may Britain prosper!"

Yes yes, this is of course a little exaggerated. The subject is concerning the recent story that our MP's have been spending their time concluding that something must be done about the seemingly ever increasing problem of illegal file sharing on the internet. The basic concept these idle minds have come up with so far is thus: if people are downloading illegally, ban them from the internet.

Now. I do not know a lot about the technicalities of the internet. I know what WWW stands for, and I know some HTML, so allow me to establish that this is by no means an expert's view on this proposed idea. However, what I do know is that this plan seems absolutely bloody ridiculous. Here is our Government, now fighting the fight on behalf of these whining big league record companies who for once have no answer to such a vast change in the market.

There was once a time when things were the other way round - record labels introduced CD's, making vinyl and cassette owners grumble relentlessly as they were forced to follow the tide and re-purchase all their albums on these new fangled 'compact discies'. But now, with the internet and mp3's the tide has changed. It's the customer that has performed the switcharoo on the labels, and now they're the ones complaining and like a granddad using a CD player for the first time, they're shit scared of all this new technology, and just don't know what to do with it.

"Yargh."

The trouble is, how do you solve a problem like Mari...erm, filesharing? It's so easy, all the kids are doing it these days. I remember when I downloaded my first track off Limewire and how quick I was to get caught up in the world of torrents and Rapidshare. Music for free? Fuck yeah! And generally this is the attitude of the younger generations today - if it's out there for free, why should I bother paying a bloated price for it?

However, I think one of the biggest misconceptions made by record company executives today is that their fear of the pirate overwhelms the respect they should have for the customer. The majority of music today is absolute trash - they know that, and they pray that the drones who buy or download the next X-Factor release don't realize this fact. But beneath the purchasing power of these plebs, is the kind of music fan who the labels should really be appreciating. And I'm one of them.

The idea of downloading your music, to me, is repulsive. I love CD's. I spend far too much on them, and all they really do is sit arranged alphabetically. I love picking up an album - not just one song that I heard on the radio, but a cohesive collection of songs that take me on a rollercoaster ride of emotions. And what's more, I know I'm not the only one. Since coming to university (where music piracy is apparently at it's most rife) I've met loads of people like me, who buy their music honestly, and love having a physical collection to admire. Call us nerds, geeks or dickheads - we're what the labels should be aiming to please.

Tool's latest album was a great example of how ingenious CD content can become.

Piracy will never go away. It is a problem that will, eventually, destroy the music industry as we know it. But it isn't the pirates who are to blame. No, it is the labels themselves, for allowing music to become a commodity. A thing that means nothing, has no worth or value to it. A hollow artform. How can you charge an audience for something as shallow and unrewarding as three minutes of a girl singing about Umbrella's? The sooner this trash is got rid of, the sooner the music world can begin to rebuild itself anew. It won't happen any time soon, but slowly, within the next few years, the industry as we know it will be no more. Artist's will have to actually try and create something worthy of our attention, and only then will they get the money they deserve.


Michael apologies for any tangents that may have been wandered down in this article. He's a passionate bugger.

Youtube Video Review: The Lord of all Farts

The Lord of all Farts, is a brand new edit of the popular Lord of the Rings trilogy, and is an effort by the creator, 'gwizie' to bring the grandiose rumblings of the big screen to a short and sweet five minutes of sheer pleasure.

As with all re-edits, some liberties have been taken with the storyline. In order to keep viewers in the know, the video is subtitled with cue cards, that re-tell the epic storyline so it might fit into it's shorter running time. The storyline follows the traditional fantasy fare, keeping alongside the lines of Todorov's theory of balance and equilibrium.

The video opens with an epic score composed by Howard Shore. As the low ebb of the cello's draw you into where the sun no longer shines (after the Shire is pillaged by Orcs) we hear two hobbits whispering, creating a vastly epic atmosphere that chills you to the bone. "A foul stench plagues the land" hovers a caption, and indeed this is the unsurmountable force that these mere hobbits must battle against.

As the score escalates, so does the tension. "A pressure builds" the video threatens, keeping the viewer just on the edge of their seat, leaning forward in a desperate effort to relieve the tension. All of this leads to a shocking scene, visceraly and aurally thrilling as in a gloomy forest, one of the hobbits experiences this shocking force for themselves.

The video goes on, and the power that threatens these innocent people increases in strength, dominating the senses like a World War Two nerve gas. The video does a fantastic job of building atmosphere, with the edits smooth and natural, never feeling as if the scene has been cut too soon.

Of particular note is the simply superb display of talent on offer from the thespians. The reactions and physical awareness of this silent but violent enemy remain believeable throughout, and in some cases it is generally shocking and heartbreaking to see how the evil affects and contort's the character's bodies, notably their faces. There are certainly some career making performances here.

A brilliant example of how the re-edit can bring cinema to a completely new audience, this video is certainly one that you deserve to treat yourself to. Just make sure you aren't sitting on a plastic chair, otherwise the video might have an overpowering result upon you.

Who's on t'Internet then?

There are a lot of statistics bandied about regarding the internet, all massive numbers in this modern world that demands almost everyone have at least a rudimentary connection to the World Wide Web.
One survey carried out by the National Statistics Omnibus Survey in April 2006 estimated that 13.9 million households in the UK alone had access to the internet, a figure that has increased to 15 million by 2007. The graph below visually shows the exponential expansion of internet connectivity in the UK.

Percentage of households with access to the Internet in GB

Now, that statistic is just households - we aren't talking working environments here (of which I would have thought that nearly all businesses are connected to the Internet), and most importantly we haven't even considered the amount of people on the net.

These ever increasing numbers just go some way to show how the internet has invaded every aspect of our lives. A lot of India and the Middle East was recently crippled when an undersea cable carrying 'the internet' was severely damaged, leaving millions without basic internet connectivity, and the results were fairly catastrophic.

It acts as a firm reminder that the incredible service that is the internet is something not to be taken for granted, and could destroy societies just as quickly as it helped build and reinforce them.

I Want Some Answers: Who's to Blame for this Blog?

When put into perspective, blogging is a mere infant child compared to the father figures of newspapers and broadcast reporting it so aspires to be. But like any child, you need parents. People who combine to create a new entity, a new opportunity, a fresh start. That and people just love getting jiggy with it.

So who put their creative 'bits' to good use in order to conceive the rapidly growing baby that is Blogging?

It's a pretty widely debated area. One thing's for sure - no-one is really certain of who made the first bona fide blog post, but there are a series of important landmarks and people who have led to the universe of blogging that we are so used to now.

A quick Google search for "first blogger" brings up a plethora of arguments and suggested names. A brief scan of the results lists names such as 'Richard Steele' and 'Dougie Howser' (the blogosphere's equal to Snoop Dogg perhaps?).

A great article by Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache on the subject guides us through an extremely brief history of how the act of blogging came to be, however even they are having a stab in the dark, beginning their article thusly:

"Someone, somewhere created the very first Web log. It's just not quite clear who."

There's a few egocentric members of the internet universe who are keen to lay claim to the invention of the blog, one of these being John Barger who started his website as a means to post up articles he had found, stating that the day to day logging of his intellectual pursuits and findings heralded the creation of a new term - the WebLog.

So perhaps that was the foundations that the blogosphere was built upon? It's a fairly reasonable claim to the title of world's first blogger, but it certainly isn't the only one, and it's all but impossible to really ascertain just who really began this whole blogging shishkebang.

Some even argue that someone called Jesus was the inventor of blogging, so you can see how this whole argument could go on. One thing's for sure, it might not be the first blog, but it's certainly the best, so stop worrying about pedantic questions such as these and read this.