Internet

Hypocrite and Thief No Longer

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My posts on intellectual property here and here generated  many interesting comments.   I have more to add to this discussion, and have come to some realizations and conclusions – but am left with even more questions.

In the “Hypocrite” post, what I did was clearly wrong.   To review, what I did was watch a recently  aired pay per view event on a website that I found that was hosting a video of the event.   I didn’t email the site owner to see if he had a permission from the owners of the content to air the video, but it is virtually certain that he did not.   What I did there was wrong, illegal, and unethical.   I won’t do it again.   Which means that I won’t be watching UFC events until they come out for free on cable.   The price is just too steep for me.  

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Hypocrite?

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In the past I have been known to tell people who “share” music online that they are thieves. Not as if they are doing anything worth throwing them in jail for – don’t get me wrong there. But the fact that people who share files that happen to be copyrighted music to me smells like stealing. In other words, the product is being taken and used, and no royalty paid.

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“The Perfect Storm”

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A fascinating post by Wretchard on the dynamics of public events in the Internet age, and on the ways in which such events are now subject to quantitative analysis of the type that has previously been reserved for quantum systems and securities markets:

Internet storms are emergent events which are difficult to predict. They are like rogue waves on the ocean, arising from the complex interaction between many factors, none in themselves particularly threatening. Yet combined they can suddenly throw up a devastating phenomenon, able to sweep all before it. About all people can do to gain a semblance of influence over emergent events is to shorten their reaction times to events. In the jargon of the trade they must increase the speed of their feedback loops to have any hope of evading the avalanche or deflecting it decisively. Because there is no easy way to predict what direction emergent events will take, the prudent manager must do all he can to detect them while they are building up. A number of methodologies exist to do this. But perhaps the most simple consists of an analyst trained to look at prediction markets, aggregators and sentiment analysis software in ways designed to detect the edge of the storm.

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Post WW2 Occupation Slides

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As of late I have been not only discouraged, but pissed off by the level of decorum on a lot of sites and blogs that  I visit. It seems that people can’t make informed opinions about anything remotely related to politics, current events or anything even the slightest bit controversial without being greeted by swarms of ideologues, sycophants, and idiots.

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