Downloading: A Biased Opinion

So Thursday a Minnesota woman was given the ruling on a court case in which she was accused of violation of copyright. The woman, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, is a 32 year old single mother of four. She is being charged a total of $1.92 million. And how many songs did she download? Twenty-four. 24. four and twenty. That is about $80,000 per song.

Just a bit harsh I think.

So what lesson does this teach us? Don't download illegally? Not likely. Lets have some honesty here. Most people don't download music, this is true. But when narrowing down to our demographic of computer users to those who have the knowledge of even how to do such a thing, we get into an age range of 15-30 (with obvious outliers). Then we take into account who has the money to buy music and can narrow a bit more to 15-22 (especially since past that age most people pretty much have their music collection set). The lower portion of this group of people more often than not is listening to crappy music which I would NEVER spend a dollar on, let alone 80,000 of them. Not of course that that is really an argument, but still.
So here IS an actual argument: Free advertisement.
Guess what? Music is for free everywhere. Youtube is a prime example of this. If one wanted to they could just download a video off youtube and move it to their ipod. Its not hard. For a while there youtube was muting videos with copyrighted music. Stupid. Then youtubers complained, and now we see little popup ads at the bottom of videos, providing links to the itunes store for the song playing. Smart.


The same sort of rule should be applied, but modified.
This holds very true for movies and tv shows. People will download them to watch them, but usually you can't get great quality, or a version which can play in a dvd player. This automatically pushes people to buy the real deal. Companies also have learned to reel people in by putting some great extras on the dvd.
The same has held true for music. Something as simple as great artwork can draw someone in to buying a CD. Offering deals online for whole albums at cheap prices in addition to giving the customer a discount at the band's store or entering them in a contest for tickets to their show. Something. Be inventive. I mean yes, people should support artists and buy their music, and they shouldn't be involved in illegal activities, BUT today is a new age. We are used to getting things fast and free. (I'm honestly more interested in how they are going to deal with newspapers going out of business!)
But even then there is something to be said for the actual act of purchasing art. Many many many times a person will still go buy the CD or DVD even if they first downloaded it and even if there are no *extras* because ultimately our subconscious works us into it. The real product plays into our brains just as having a brand name item of clothing does. It feels official, we have bragging rights, we are supporting who we like, not to mention it is transient and we are a nation of materialists!
You can continue to charge and incriminate people, but the internet and the people who use them are just far too innovative to prevent the transfer of information. So there it is. People are going to do it. You just make yourselves look like douchebags when you freak out about it. Quit complaining about "theoretical dollars", move on.

Add-Art Love

So being a lover of most things technological and geeky, as well as being a student in the modern world, I spend a lot of time online. Now there are certainly drawbacks to the internet, some which are obvious and direct and some subtle and indirect like let's say, having no social life in the real world (or the rw as they say). Since internet has existed the need to make money off of it has also existed. Today as the idea of free information takes over, the use of advertisements has become a primary method of sites with heavy traffic to create profit. Ads on the internet have honestly become less invasive over the years, with sites using subtler integration (such as inlaid background images) and less annoying popup windows with seisure inducing graphics and peircing noises.
However this doesn't mean everyone is still all hunkydory with seeing ugly blocky graphics and text- we want something aesthetically pleasing! Well now thanks to American artist Steve Lambert, us Firefox users can experience less ads and more art with a free ad-on called Add-Art (http://add-art.org/). This thing is neat-o. You just install it, and it will automatically replace ads with artwork, AND I think about every two weeks new art is cycled in. Some of the art is cute animation, some is warped still life, odd photography, classic images... I really haven't had it longer than two months, so that is the extent of how many genres I can honestly claim it has.




Here is my Yahoo home before with a big Progressive ad, staring at me.









And here is a screenshot of my Yahoo home after addart, with some crazy Ganesha in neon.








Right now they have been using modified religious imagery and old timey looking book drawings. It always changes.
BUT some people mights find the app alightly annoying if only because it doesn't automatically block everything. Here is the demo from the website:

Some items it will replace, no problem, but sometimes the ads are still there and you have to click a little button on it's corner that saus block. Although that might just be me not bothering to mess around with the settings! But it doesn't bother me to have to do that.
The app also doesn't block pop-ups, but most people have something which already does that.
Lambert also makes another clever addon called Self-Control (http://visitsteve.com/work/selfcontrol/) which can bar you from checking your e-mail or other addictive techno innovation for a set time. This is of course something I could never have enough self-control to do, but I think many probably need :)

So anyway props to Steve, he has cauhgt my attention by playing in to my obsessive techno-joy. Maybe I'll spend an unhealthy amount of time browsing his site!