Friday, August 26, 2011

Emulators and Bullsh*t Morality.


I should have just asked this question on Facebook, but I have to ask it again; what is the problem with emulators? An emulator is basically that; it is software that emulates something else (go to Wikipedia for a better definition dammit). From what I have seen in my life, they are mostly used to emulate older videogame hardware like NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, etc. to play old games.

Nintendo doesn’t like emulators.


The introduction of emulators created to play illegally copied Nintendo software represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers. As is the case with any business or industry, when its products become available for free, the revenue stream supporting that industry is threatened. Such emulators have the potential to significantly damage a worldwide entertainment software industry which generates over $15 billion annually, and tens of thousands of jobs.

Here’s my problem; how is Nintendo losing money? I understand if people are emulating modern systems and current games. But people are emulating systems and games that are no longer available. I can’t buy a “Nintendo Entertainment System” from Nintendo. I can buy about 80 games from them on the Wii, but what about the other 85% to 90% of the officially licensed games that they had? They only way I can play those games is if I buy it online or at a garage sale or flea market, which means Nintendo still does not see a penny from that sale. They are still not making any money off of their original product. They only saw money on the original sale (and who’s to say the seller even paid for his copy?) The illegal way screws them out of money and the legal way screws them out of money.

But wait a minute, those people at flea markets and on eBay are selling a product that they did not make and are keeping 100% of the money! Isn’t that an infringement of intellectual property? Should we outlaw eBay and garage sales? They’re Black Markets!


I love how the answers progress on the Nintendo page on emulators. Basically, it sounds like a kid being corned in an argument and then saying “because you’re stupid, that’s why!”


Distribution of an emulator developed to play illegally copied Nintendo software hurts Nintendo's goodwill, the millions of dollars invested in research & development…


Emulators developed to play illegally copied Nintendo software promote piracy…


The problem is that it's illegal. (It goes on, but I like how the first sentence of each answer gets smaller with each question…)


One, you might be able to legitimize emulators. Charge a small fee for the emulator and another small fee per game. I'm not sure if that is even possible, but it's just a suggestion. (Or, make every game available for the Wii!).

Second, the “because it’s illegal” argument bothers me. There is no sense of morality. It is like saying the only reason why you don’t drink and drive is because it is against the law. The possibility of you killing someone or yourself should be the reason for not driving drunk.

If you want me to legally obtain the game in which you make money, then allow me to legally obtain the game in which you make money. You cannot claim that you are losing money on something that you are not selling. Again, the only way to obtain the game legally, still gives Nintendo no money. And if you care about intellectual property, then release it! Sounds like a King who patronizes art but then after ten years confiscates the art and won’t allow anyone to see it. People want to see and appreciate that art, so why won’t you let them?

If they are not going to give you any legal way of obtaining the game through them, then emulators should be ok to use. To me it doesn’t sound like an issue of money or intellectual property, just a blind following of the law. Of course I can understand why a corporation doesn’t want to be caught circumventing the law.



Did you see what I had done there? I looked at an issue of morality, found holes in the opposing sides’ logic and came to a conclusion. That’s more than what some people do.

I love the “It’s alright for me to illegally download videogames/movies because they overcharge me to play/see it”. The right price for something is open for debate, but that doesn’t mean you should steal it because you personally think it is overpriced.

I’m reminded of something on Cracked.com. An independently developed bundle of games was put on sale online and you could pay as little as $.01 for it. On average, people paid $9.18 for what should have cost about $80.

~25% of people stole it.

To me, that shows that this is not about takin’ down the man (it was an indie group), or things being overpriced. It’s about hiding behind morality to justify stealing because you feel entitled. It’s like the libertarian tour guides who thought it was an infringement on their rights to pay, take, and pass an exam to prove you knew what you were talking about before giving a tour of Washington D.C.

Bullshit.

They just didn’t want to pay the fee because they are cheap/greedy (although they sued, which is more costly. I guess it WAS a matter of principles. Ha ha, right.) I’ll talk about them more in another post...

Back to the movies/games; Don’t hide behind the “corporations are evil” shit just because you are cheap. If you really do care about the little guy, you’re screwing them more by stealing. If the studios/companies and main stars are taking most of the money and giving little to the crew, stealing means the little guy will see less! Watching a bootleg video means the theater showing the movie (who has to give a certain percent of the profits to the studios each week), means the independently owned theater gets less money! And the crew and other behind-the-scenes people aren't making money!

Hooray! “Screwing the man” actually means “screwing the little guy”! I hope you feel better.

One more example of “Corporations are evil so we can justify stealing” story and then I need to hit the showers. My one friend wanted to become a Residential Advisor and was going through the weeding-out phase. They asked a series of questions about morality. One was about an older couple who stole medicine they could not afford to stay alive. They flee town and make a new life elsewhere. The do a lot of community service for their adopted town.

Years later, they are caught; what should be the punishment?

The group decided that because they had already paid off the cost of the medicine through their voluntary community service, their sentence should be light. I mostly agree with that, but then here comes the kicker…

“Also, because the company could easily afford to sell the drug for a lower price, it was right for the couple to steal.”

Goddamnit.

Let’s refer to Cracked.com again, shall we? Let’s look at the article titled “5 Useful Organizations You Think Are Evil (Thanks to Movies)”. Number Two is about Pharmaceutical Corporations. The site argues that they don’t actually make that much money and that the reason for a high price tag is that millions of dollars of research went into making the drug. Sometimes, millions of dollars are spent with nothing gained and they need to recoup their losses.

It may feel right to claim they are evil and are milking us dry because they are evil (repetition on purpose), but it may not be right. Our morality should be based on facts and rational thinking. If you spotted any flaws in my argument, please let me know. It is the only way I can learn.

Alright, time for my shower.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Isolation and Intervention (plus those damn pacifists!)

I’m happy to see that the rebels in Libya are on the cusp of overthrowing Gadhafi. With a little help from NATO, the rebels have turned the tide in this revolution. I would be talking about how Republicans are taking this time to criticize Obama for being on vacation, even though Congress is on a month long vacation, but that has been done so well by CNN.
 
 
When posting that story to Facebook, I got a response; “we shoulda never been part of it to start with let them fight their own damn fight”. Lack of punctuation aside, I responded, “I’m glad Spain and France didn’t think that way in 1779…”, referring to their intervention in our war for Independence, which helped us out dearly.
 
 
Isolationists bother me so much. I’m not a full blown interventionalist hawk either. I feel that we need a good balance between the two.
 
 
I am a big critic of Cold War era foreign policy. I hate knowing that we helped overthrow democratically elected leaders (like in Iran in the 1950s) and installed autocratic rulers, just because someone was too far left and was about to nationalize some industry. Or we found ourselves in a war without really understanding why we were there (Vietnam). And of course we just love being bi-polar and buddying up with a country one day, then invading them the next (Panama, Iraq). We should’ve kept our noses to ourselves.
 
 
I am also a critic of 1930s era isolationism. Americans didn’t know they were or didn’t want to be a major world power with events happening overseas impacting them daily. We thought the problems of Europe and Asia were none of our business. No matter how much we wanted to avoid the wars, we were still forced into them. I can't believe that the same people who boast how powerful America is can't see that we have a lot of power in the world and that we should use it for good. We can't isolate ourselves from an interconnected community and still expect to be dominate in the world (ask China how well that worked out from 1450 to 1830).
 
 
So, what is the happy medium?
 
 
The US needs to pick and choose the right time to intervene. It should not be an all-or-nothing game in which we either never intervene or always intervene. Afghanistan was harboring/run by Al Qaeda/the Taliban. We needed to directly invade and remove them from the nation and disrupt their terrorist operations. All but the most non-violent pacifists supported intervening in Afghanistan (I’ll get to pacifists in a minute).
 
 
Then we thought Iraq was a threat and needed to go. They weren’t directly threatening us, and they had no weapons of mass destruction (as we can see in hindsight). It divided us to say the least. All that unity after 9/11 and world sympathy for the US…gone. (Iran denounced the attacks, probably because they thought the attacks were done by the Jews…)
 
 
Compared to the last two interventions, Libya was very small. Even not compared to Iraq and Afghanistan it was small. There were more boots on the ground in Pakistan taking out Bin Laden than there are in Libya. This was a NATO led air mission in which we contributed very little.
 
 
And who are we supporting? People who are trying to get rid of a dictator and set up a more democratic government. These aren’t the Contras in Nicaragua. They are like the people in Egypt and Tunisia who were able to peacefully overthrow their undemocratic leaders. Mark Twain supported the war in Cuba in 1898 because he thought fighting for the independence of another nation was a noble cause. He was bitterly opposed to the Philippine-American War in 1899-1902 as it was suppressing the independence movement of the country.
 
 
I think Libya was a noble cause. We are helping people overthrow a dictator and (hopefully) establish a democratic government. It was easily done with International support and NATO that allowed the US to have a very small role, thus minimizing the risks to our nation. If only supporting these movements could always be this easy.


 
Now on to the pacifists. You would think it would be hard to detest someone who hates war and only wants peace. It isn’t. These people are so far out of reality it’s mind boggling. I think we can agree that almost everyone wants peace and that war should be avoided. But there is that group of people who do not want peace, and they will always create wars.
 
 
What disgusts me the most about pacifists is that they are so anti-war/violence that they will allow someone like Gadhafi to kill and injure his own people protesting peacefully. They come to the defense of a butcher and act is if he wasn’t so bad and that the west is the REAL criminal. The west and specifically the US love killing innocent people because it gives us a hard-on. Accidentally killing five people in a missile strike is MUCH worse than a dictator killing 10,000 of his own people when they asked for basic human rights.
 
 
War is a necessary evil. Violence and Revolution are the last means for a group of people trying to resist oppression. I can’t believe “pacifists” could side with a dictator and slander the rebels.
 
 
I’m wondering if these are real “pacifists” or they are just anti-westerners/Gadhafi supporters. Maybe my anger is misdirected. Probably.

On to the real pacifists. I guess part of my criticisms in the second paragraph hold up; using violence to stop a man using violence to suppress peaceful protestors is wrong. Being non-violent means allowing the violent person to keep committing violence unfettered. But it always bothered me to hear protestors ask “how is killing innocent children going to solve this” as if the whole reason we are going to fight is to kill children. We’re not, but unfortunately that happens in war. I don’t like seeing innocent people die either and I wish that never has to happen, but it will happen (maybe if those people didn’t intentionally put a bomb factory or anti-air guns next to a school or hospital…). As long as we try to minimize it, I can sleep at night. Sometimes a war is necessary and we take no pleasure having to take innocent life. But violence was the only way to get Hitler to stop.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Legal Precedent?


When the death penalty is brought up, Conservatives like to quote Exodus 21:24, “An Eye for an Eye, and a Tooth for a Tooth”. The same is found in Hammurabi’s Code, the earliest written code of laws from Ancient Babylon, “If a man knocks the teeth out of another man, his own teeth will be knocked out”. It seems like this is the oldest form of justice.

I’m more concerned about the Biblical quote. The good Christian Conservative will have no problem quoting Exodus up there to support the death penalty (while also telling me that all life is sacred and created in the image of God, and that is why abortion is wrong…).

But what about “But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” Matthew 5:39, i.e. “Turn the other cheek”? I’m not just trying to find a random verse; this is in direct response to “an eye for an eye” (Matthew 5:38).

To me, a Christian who quotes “an eye for an eye” is like someone claiming segregation is legal because of Plessy v. Ferguson, and completely ignoring Brown v. Board of Education.

Gee, it’s like people quote the Bible for when it suits them, but then ignore the parts they disagree with.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

In Between

They seem to be a punching bag for both the left and the right. Workers of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) are America’s number one group we love to hate (after al Qaeda). There are jokes about how we have to strip down and let them molest us just to get on our plane. You can find dozens of stories of the Transportation Security Officers (TSO) going overboard (sometimes exaggerated), and humiliating people with certain medical conditions.


But they are really between a rock and a hard place, on two fronts.
 
 
On the first front: discrimination. If they pat down a blue-eyed, blond-haired, Caucasian, middle-aged woman but let a young, dark-skin man named Mohammad go through without scrutiny, the right yells at them as being overly Politically Correct with misplaced priorities (You know how much I hate this). If they single out the Arab-looking males, the left yells at them for racially profiling. They can’t win! Find people that are looking and acting suspicious. What if an Arab man is looking suspicious? Racial Profiling! What if a Caucasian Woman looks suspicious? Political Correction! Lose-Lose every time. You can’t do your job without being a bleeding-heart liberal or a bigoted conservative.
 
 
The second front: Following orders. How closely are you supposed to follow the book and how often should you take common sense into play and freely think? If a 10-year-old boy has the same name as someone on the “Do Not Fly List”, what do you do? Most likely, the kid has the same name as another person and is clearly not a danger. If you let him through with no hassle, you didn’t follow the rules! What’s the point of rules if you throw them out at will? If you follow the rules and deny passage, you’re some idiot who can’t think for themselves and thinks a child is a terrorist! I’m guessing there are some protocols to verify the identities of the people to make sure a baby is not a terrorist. Or maybe not…
 
 
Maybe we should cut the TSA some slack. If terrorist snuck through and killed 100 people, we would be mad that they hadn’t done their job. But then we complain when the follow the book. Maybe the book needs revising to include some more common sense measures. The system needs fixing, yes, but these people are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.