…Of Reality Problem Solving
The anti-SOPA/PIPA blitz yesterday got me to thinking…
…And in less time than it will probably take me to type out and publish this blog post, I cooked up an electronic solution, all in my head, to the piracy problem that media corporations are trying to use as an excuse to take over content control of the Internet in the USA…
…And I am not even a programmer.
I’m a poet and filmmaker, albeit one whose day job involves a huge level of digital marketing, and sometimes brain-melting levels of creating customized solutions to managing massive amounts of information (are you tired, yet?).
That boasted, I couldn’t type out a working string of javascript or phtml if my life depended on it.
So here’s my point, if somebody like me can dream up an electronic solution to solving the piracy problem, imagine what a programming genius could dream up…
If banks can protect my money online, if libraries can discreetly find the book I want online, if universities can securely accept my kids’ applications online, if the government can securely process tax returns online, if Amazon can sell me almost anything in the universe online, including fresh episodes of my favorite TV shows, if we can get to the moon in a machine, and send rovers to Mars, I think media companies are probably capable of finding an electronic way to solve their piracy problems.
Of course, such an effort would require money - oh dear: serious IT investment, programmers and database designers, brainy worker bees to help out, generous salaries and benefits that are fair, and most of all, collaboration and cooperation and probably some financial exchange with the biggies, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Wikipedia, Tumblr:), Wordpress, etc, etal.
And, of course, any developer worth his or her IQ should not only demand at least one episode’s worth of Charlie Sheen’s old salary on Two and Half Men to create an electronic anti-piracy solution, but lifetime royalties on the outcomes, if his/her solution works.
Should I share my own solution here?
Heck no! I’d be ripped-off faster than you could pronounce the “r” in ripped. Besides, you may have already figured it out yourself, by now.
Don’t get me wrong, I despise plagiarism, and am all-for artists, musicians, actors, writers, photographers and filmmakers making money and protecting their intellectual properties; but I am also all-against any idea, including SOPA and PIPA, that could inhibit free expression by the rest of us, and I mean “free” in every sense of the word.
Congress should ignore the media corporations’ whining, thus forcing them to PAY to find their own flipping solution to the piracy problem, rather than trying to foist another unworkable law into the US lawbooks on the taxpayer’s dime.
- Laura Mauney
