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You may recall hearing at some point, the words "free trade" sneaked inside some of the incomprehensible political jargon we are all familiar with. The original idea behind free trade was, by allowing companies to do business without concern for national borders, you could create increased innovation and productivity the likes of which had never been seen. It sounded pretty good on paper, and before you knew it, politicians were making deals across the world. Before you know it, we've got NAFTA in the east, APTA in the west, and a bunch of alphabet soup covering everything in between. But it's all for the advancement of the world economy, so surely it must all be for the best... right?
You may also recall hearing the words "trade deficit", somewhere in the aforementioned jargon. A trade deficit is what we call it when a country's imports exceed it's exports. Or to put it more directly, it's when a county spends more than it earns. For it to even be possible to spend more than you earn, you need credit. Most people take out loans with banks, or use credit cards for this purpose. So to expand on that analogy, running a trade deficit is like having a credit card you just keep buying more and more stuff with, without ever paying it off. Anyone who has ever built up a substantial credit card bill can attest to the fact that the more money you owe, the harder it is to pay back. In this case of a trade deficit however, the only way you can actually ever pay it off is with a trade surplus. When a county's exports exceed it's imports, that is known as a "trade surplus". When you are running a trade surplus, you are raking it in at the expense of other counties. This can be potentially very weakening to a country, to the point where you can even hold them hostage economically.
When it comes to free trade, ideally you don't want to ever run a trade deficit, or a trade surplus for too long. In fact, ideally over time you would want the balance to be as close to zero as possible. In other words, your average imports over a given period of time should equal your average exports over that same period. But, just hypothetically speaking, what happens when they aren't?
When a country runs a trade deficit, it is actually caused by customers spending more money on goods and services coming from companies in foreign countries than the companies in their own counties are able to receive from consumers in foreign countries. This creates a two handed strangle on a country economy. One one hand you have decreased revenue for domestic companies, because consumers are spending less money on their goods and services. This creates a viscous cycle of reduced profitability, cutbacks, and salary reduction (when compared to inflation), which in turn leads to even more heavily reduced profitability. On the other hand, the country's government receives less tax revenue due to decreased corporate profitability and decreed earning power of it's citizens. The government needs to essentially borrow money by selling bonds to other countries in order to keep the country running.
If you are an American citizen, this scenario should sound eerily familiar to you. America's last trade surplus was in 1975. The subsequent economic fallout, has unfolded like the pages of an economics textbook... which somebody folded. It was seemingly benign at first, and at the time people were much more worried at the immediate impact of OPEC's oil price squeeze. In 80s there were two recessions, and the average salary earner was experiencing a noticeable decrease in earning power from peak levels following World War II. But staring in 1991, things started getting better. America caught a lucky break when demand in developing countries for American goods skyrocketed. We saw a great performance of the stock market, high value of the dollar, and a record breaking GDP. This also allowed the national government to balance it's budget and begin reducing it's debt. In the late 90s however, the trade deficit began to rear it's ugly head again, and we were blindsided by the dot-com bust. This however, this was only a prelude to what happened on September 11, 2001.
We all know what happened on that day, but we know equally the long tail of it's aftermath. Consumers were shaken up, and we encountered a short-term recession which lasted about 8 months. The US government declared war on Afghanistan, and then Iraq, which drastically increased overall spending, despite many cutbacks made in other areas. Combined with decreased tax intake when adjusted for inflation, this brought the US debt up to $10 trillion by the end of 2008. Furthermore, around that time the trade deficit finally caught up to the banks, who realized by way of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, that they had severely overvalued their assets. This caused many smaller banks to go out of business, and the credit market to freeze. The government stepped in to bail out many larger banks and supposedly reinvigorate the credit market, but I suspect it also had something to do with running out of money to pay out the FDIC insurance on the accounts held by banks that were going under. Corporations who depended on their credit lines to do business were also in serious danger, so the government bailed them out as well. And when the inevitable corporate cutbacks to deal with the crisis were rolled out, the job market shrank 5% in only a year, further decreasing tax revenue, and forcing the government to hand out millions of unemployment checks. This has so far increased the national debt to around $12 trillion, with no signs of slowing down. Lucky for us, China has so far been more than happy to pick up the tab.
It's interesting to think about... the fact that we live our lives in the crushing shadow of billions of other people's ideas and accomplishments. That we should consider ourselves fortunate as individuals, if what we do makes even the slightest dent in the collective consciousness. Fortunate, even when the the price of making that dent, is usually a great deal of our own time and effort (life) and the potential happiness therein. And to cinch it, the only alternative to doing this is basically to die as an irrelevant waste of life.
Then again, should this surprise us? Isn't this reality merely a product of how we and the world around us is designed? In order to be of greater benefit to others, we must suppress our natural inclinations. We have to commit ourselves to the benefit of others to earn money, respect, and prestige, because if we don't, our lives have no meaning to anyone but ourselves. If we follow this evolutionary path much further, I think that individual personality will inevitably begin to subside, and we will all be functioning like one big distributed hash table, with enough redundancy built in to make any individual one hundred percent expendable.
The only real question is, isn't this the right thing to do? We may question what the cost of loss of individuality is, but in the end I think most people are just looking for justifications for what they want to believe. That the individual, and by extension they themselves have value. And that they are then justified in taking things for themselves at the expense of others. If the value of individualism is already considered questionable, it's not a large leap to say that belief in individualism is a selfish indulgence. But perhaps, it is a necessary delusion at this stage of human evolution, to keep society healthy and productive. Humans still need an excuse to be selfish, and to value themselves as individuals. It's the carrot on a stick that keeps them moving ahead.
But it seems like an interim phase to me. Especially when I see collectivism taking root as the driving force of productivity and creativity. People are already acting in a decidedly unselfish was in in many examples. They are making open source software, or creative commons media, or even devoting their idle CPU cycles to folding proteins, all without any hope of achieving all the benefits that one would normally expect to be bestowed from individual pursuit. These people are ahead of the curve.
There is very little left to be accomplished for humanity that can be done as individual pursuit. Even those working as individuals are merely building on the ideas of others. Collectives of specialized individuals is already the norm for solving the most difficult problems we face. And that is currently spreading out to mass scale collaboration, at a rate of change which is increasing exponentially. The suppression of individualism is starting to take hold, and it's almost beginning to look like a good thing.
There is already a glimmer of light on the horizon, that may lead us to believe that the voluntary suppression of individualism is leading us to better outcomes than we could hope to achieve from stakeholder driven prospects. Just look at how the non-profit Wikipedia decimated the traditional profit run encyclopedia model. When projects build on volunteer labor decimate the best the traditional models have to offer, it's hard not to feel like the winds of change are blowing us in the right direction.
The only arguments left in favor of individual pursuit, are that of originality and versatility. Originality is tough, because group-think tends to water down ideas on the fringe into a middle ground. Versatility is tougher, because inherently the higher the complexity of a system, the more stable of an environment it needs to be able to perpetuate itself. But just because mass collaboration has problems, doesn't mean it isn't the way of the future. With the advancement of humanity at stake, it's hard to imagine it won't be. I can easily envision a scenario in which this very article could be derived as the product of high speed telepathy involving a group of individuals who occupy a similar, yet diverse space in the hash table of humanity. And they'd probably do a better job of it than I did.
Edit (10/6/2008): After some additional time to listen to this album I warmed up to a few songs, and I thought raising the scores and/or updating the comments was warranted. All updates are marked in bold.
PIED PIPER: 9/10
We start off on a high note here. Pied Piper is definitely on of the best songs I've heard from the pillows in recent years. The blend of rhythm and melody reminds me a lot of the best stuff from the "classic" pillows era, but the intro reminds you to expect the unexpected.
New Animal:
There is a very good basic melody they had here, which they almost completely fail to put to good use, due to a mediocre rhythm, and general unimaginativeness. This is a symptom of many recent pillows songs, but its still disappointing to be brought down from the previous song so abruptly.
I think that maybe this song is a little better than I initially gave it credit for. It's still leaning a bit toward mediocrity, but there are some high points that make a 6 justifiable.
No Surrender: 2/10
Not only does this song totally go nowhere, but it treads dangerously close to standard fare pop drivel (don't cry please now). This is just plain bad, and I wouldn't accept this from a mediocre band, let alone the pillows.
Last Holiday: 7/10
Normally I'm not a fan of cord progressions that get dragged out way past the point of maximum impact, but something about this song came dangerously close to making it work. If only the drum work hadn't been so flat...
Tokyo Zombie: 8/10
Wow, a good old fashioned jam session from the pillows? Not what I was expecting, but certainly not a disappointment. To me, this is seems to be one of the best instrumentals the pillows have done. Not quite Thunder Whales Picnic, but one hell of a lot better than Bad Dreams, or similar crap.
Across the metropolis: 3/10
...what? Oh, I'm sorry, I seem to have fallen asleep half way through the song. Oh well, next!
To hear what is in my opinion the best attempt at a slow mellow song by the pillows, you can check out 昇らない太陽 (Noborania Taiyou) [The Sun That Will Not Rise] on their album Penalty life. It's mainly as a result of using that song as a comparison that I rated this one poorly.
Purple Apple:
And now for something completely different. The clapping and snappy rhythm here are a bit catchy, but overall there's just not a whole lot of depth. The lyrics are cool though, Sawao is definitely getting better at writing in english.
My opinion of this song changed quite a bit, mainly because I realized the depth I was looking for was actually there, but it was being hidden by the distraction of the songs superfluous elements (clapping, whistling, "fafafa" background singing, etc.). After going through it several times and paying more attention to all the songs nuances, I can honestly say I think this is one of the best songs on the album.
Tokyo Bambi: 8/10
The PV for this song was my first exposure to it, so I was already familiar with it before hearing it on this album (it's a great video by the way, filmed entirely in one shot). Maybe I am being a bit generous on this one. It's a cool song, and fun to listen to, but it is a bit on the flat side. What can I say? Every time I listen to this song I can't help but see the awesome PV playing, and that helps my perception a good deal.
Ladybird girl: 3/10
I really don't understand how Shinichirou-san can be content to sit back and play a mediocre fill for practically the entire song. Seriously, what happened here? Three songs that go absolutely nowhere on the same album? This is a disappointing first for the pillows. I hope it's not a sign of things to come.
That's a wonderful world: 8/10
Ok, here we go. Catchy rhythm, simple yet sweet cord progressions, and some interesting stylistic experimentation. Could've been a bit better I think, if they had thrown in a few more mix-ups and really ran with it, but I'm not complaining.
POISON ROCK'N'ROLL: 10/10
Instant classic.
Don't you understand?
Who do you think I am?
I'm not probably the man
as whom you regard.
Why should you misunderstand?
You should know my strange songs.
Still don't you understand?
I'm not considerate man.
I'd just like to feel music.
I make and sing a favorite song.
Only that thing.
If you're dissatisfied, disappear.
I'd like to play with people
besides that.
That's you
I'll do a rock'n'roll!
This album had its ups and downs, but hearing Sawao singing something like this with such confidence is enough to reassure me he still understands what real rock is about. Considering how poppy this album felt at some points, that's very good to know.
FINAL SCORE: 6/10
I would really like to give this album a higher rating, because the stuff that's good is really good. Unfortunately the songs on this album that are bad drag it down way too much. Good albums dragged down by the inclusion of very mediocre tracks has become an established pattern for the pillows ever since Good Dreams, and I'm sorry to say this is one of the worst offenders. On the other hand, does this mean the pillows are really getting worse as a band? I've had to spend a good deal of time considering that after hearing the past few albums. The conclusion I've come to is that they are not really getting worse, but they are not being selective enough about what they record. For instance, if you were to take the best songs from Wake up!x3 and Pied Piper, I think you would undeniably have a very kick-ass album. As it is, you have two mediocre albums instead of one great one. I'm not really sure if I agree with the way the pillows are doing things here, but hey, you can always just download the best songs off iTunes and skip the crap.
Even after I updated some of the scores, it wasn't enough to overcome the overall drag of the album's worst songs. I really tried to like some of the songs that got lower scores too, but in the end I just couldn't come up with anything to justify a score that was higher. The fact of the matter is, they just aren't that good. Especially when you put them up against the pillows' past work, or even the rest of this album.
I prefer to take the middle road on divisive issues, but taking the middle road on piracy is about as practical as taking the middle road on abortion. Which I guess would be the system we have now, where abortions are available within reasonable limits. Neither side is completely satisfied, but most people have no problem living with the way things are... except the babies who are getting killed. But, I digress.
Before we really get into this, we have to establish that people who do creative work deserve to be compensated for what they do. There is really no debating on this point, so it's as good of a place as any to begin a reasonable discussion. Another point for which there can be no debate, is that the reason we need to protect intellectual property by law, is to promote the creation of new intellectual property. If people who create intellectual property don't retain enough control of what they create to make money from it, there will be a lot less intellectual property available, for any price.
In terms of copyright law, they are three major categories of people that must be considered, the creators, the consumers, and the owners. The creators are the people who create intellectual property as a profession. The consumers are people who pay money for access to intellectual property. And the owners are the people who legally own the rights to intellectual property. Usually if the owner isn't the creator, they became the owner by working with creators to finance the creative work being done in exchange for ownership upon the work's completion. The creators and the consumers are both getting screwed over by the deal to some extent, but not by as much as some people may think. Getting cutting edge creative work done without outside financing is nigh on impossible for most creators, and there are plenty of fair deals to be had for financing out there.
The perception that because people are getting rich off intellectual property other than it's creators, they don't deserve the money they make, is mostly a false one. As with anything in a free market, a return on an investment based on the market value of what gets created is how you maintain a good, fair, and productive economic environment. The fact there are so many creators out there who will agree to almost anything to get their work out is more of a sign of an over-saturated marked than anything else. However, we must recognize there are dangers of a market based on intellectual property. The idea that you can create artificial scarcity for ideas through legal enforcement of control of said ideas is a shaky premise. It goes beyond the original scope of the idea of the free market, which was conceptually based on the trade of goods with real scarcity behind their value. With real scarcity, the value of something is based on it's scarcity. In other words, it's rarity, and the expense making or otherwise obtaining it. Real scarcity is impossible to circumvent, so few people argue on the economic validity of a price determined by real scarcity. Artificial scarcity on the other hand, whose purpose is to give something a value greater that what it has in a true free market, is quite a dirty business. There are various ways to create artificial scarcity, but for intellectual property it is essentially a legally enforced monopoly of the dissemination of a particular piece of information to the legal entity that "owns" it. In other words, the government puts it's backing behind the owners of intellectual property and says if anyone takes or copies a piece of information without their permission, they will be able to legally prosecute that person for any losses they incur as the result of that person's actions.
Enter the pirates. Pirates are opportunists. They see something which is not adequately protected, and they take it. They used to accomplish this through escapades on the high seas, but modern day pirates are riding the waves of information coursing across the face of the planet. Today's pirates understand that one of the basic principles of information is that it wants to be free. So they know, that no matter how hard the law tries to stop them, all they have to do is successfully disseminate a piece of information without revealing themselves or their sources, and that information will be forever free to anyone who wants it. Once a piece of information reaches a certain level of availability, catching everyone who's copying it becomes impractical, and at that point the legally enforced artificially scarcity is defeated.
During the formative years of modern copyright law, things were different. The impractical thing was spreading information so widely it couldn't be stopped. Well, that's not entirely true. There were always places where enforcement of copyright was a practical impossibility, and certain things too desirable to be kept locked away, but enough of the civilized world was willing to put energy into enforcement to make copyright a workable idea. Back then the effort involved in illegally spreading intellectual property was higher, the risks were greater, and even the pirates weren't willing to do it for free. Today, the internet makes it so easy to spread information, the situation has completely changed. The enforcement agencies can't deal with the sheer scale and speed piracy is working at. They try to keep up by attacking piracy as high up on the supply chain as they can, but when new material can be injected into the supply chain at any point, it's pretty much futile. In other words, modern copyright laws are currently unenforceable.
Could they be made enforceable? Perhaps. It would require two major things to happen though. First of all, big brother style enforcement of copyright law by constantly monitoring people's internet activity. Secondly, making darknets illegal, so people could not participate in closed networks which circumvent the monitoring. Anything short of this, or a complete shutdown of the internet, is doomed to failure. And realistically, imposing this level of enforcement on people would be pretty hard to do, both from a logistical standpoint, and from the standpoint of preventing massive rioting and overthrow of the government.
That's bad news for intellectual property owners. They are looking at some hard times ahead. It's no secret that the music industry is in quite a slump. The movie industry is doing ok, but the television market is shrinking by the day. And software companies will continue having to charge outrageous prices for their products, although thats nothing new. Pretty much 99% of computer software has been pirated since the very beginning, so the software companies have always priced their products to the market of people or organizations that can't afford to be caught pirating.
I would like to point out that more people should have seen this coming. The premise of creating artificial scarcity of information and then pouring a huge portion of the world's economic resources into intellectual property was questionable from the beginning. But now that the house of cards is collapsing, we must ask ourselves, is there any way to fix the system so it is fair, balanced, and stable with consideration to how things work in the modern world?
As with anything that costs money, you inevitably end up with your haves and have-nots. The haves have everything to gain by supporting intellectual property. It makes many of them money, and they rarely come upon any desirable intellectual property which is outside of their means. On the other hand, the have-nots have everything to gain by supporting piracy. One thing you'll find is pretty consistent among people who download pirated content, is that they don't usually have a lot of money. The finer things in life are outside of their reach, and piracy is a way for them to gain access to something that they normally couldn't afford.
The key to understanding why people pirate, is a simple risk/reward scenario. As long as the risks are low, piracy is a golden opportunity. It's as good as getting something for nothing. And when it is done on the internet, piracy isn't risky at all. Oh sure, a few people have gotten sued, for pirating certain types of content in certain places. But one thing all these people have in common is that they are extremely careless, and likely not even aware of what you can do to avoid getting caught.
The smart pirate who releases content knows paranoia is their friend, and closed networks are always the way to go. Trusting no one, and not being careless, are always safe bets. And it also helps to live somewhere with lax copyright enforcement.
The smart downloader knows to turn off their shared folder, block the ip addresses of copyright enforcement agencies, avoid newly released content, and to always try to obtain their stuff from a trusted source whenever possible. No one who has ever followed all four of these golden rules has ever been prosecuted for filesharing. And none of these things are even remotely hard to do.
For the content releasers it's a matter of cleverly slipping through the cracks. For the downloaders its a matter of safety in numbers. And for both groups the risks are obvious and easy to avoid. Real risk implies something in the scope of a 1 in 10 chance of getting caught. Not one in a million, which is where online piracy is sitting at right now. Online piracy is almost like playing the lottery, only with the odds turned upside down. I know I'd buy a ticket for that lottery, and wouldn't you? Even if the losing ticket does cost you a hefty, although still affordable fine.
If copyright is ever going to work again, piracy has to either become a practical impossibility, or too risky for people to justify. There are a lot of motivated groups trying to make this happen on both fronts. As far as risk is concerned, little can be accomplished beyond what is already going on, due to the ludicrous volume of people pirating. You can't just throw them all in prison. You'd run out of space before you housed even one percent of them behind bars. And imposing fines through the legal system is just too long and involved to deal in the necessary volume.
So what about just making it a practical impossibility to pirate online? The DMCA specifically provides safe harbor to ISPs for copyright infringement on their pipes. And ISPs are really the only people in a position to make piracy impractical right now. Say what you will about the DMCA but this is actually one of the best and most insightful decisions that has been made in the history of copyright law. If ISPs are liable for what happens on their pipes, that forces them to become big brother, or open themselves to a legal ass raping whenever one of their clients breaks the law.
As I mentioned earlier, big brother style enforcement is a viable way to cut off access to piracy. As of the time that I'm writing this entry, many ISPs are already putting in place policies that make them active copyright enforcers. ISPs aren't ready to commit to being tattlers on their customers just yet, but many of them are becoming willing to kick pirates off their network. For ISPs, the pirates were the early adaptors of their broadband services, because for a long time piracy was just about the only justifiable reason to even have broadband. Now that average person, who use very little bandwidth, but pays the same price for internet service, is really starting to get on board, the ISPs are looking to boot the pirates and make more room on their pipes for legitimate content providers.
Is this good news? Not really. On the surface it seems like having the ISPs stepping up to the plate put a stop to the piracy on their networks is exactly whats needed. And the ISPs can still protect freedom of speech, as long as there are no laws preventing them from doing so. There is a problems here though. You have now created a market for ISPs that don't boot pirates. Once that market is exploited, you will then see enormous pressure from the content owners to force government intervention (not that there isn't plenty of effort being but into it already) and legally force ISPs to filter copyrighted content. ISPs now have to boot people they suspect as pirates off their network. Including people whose computers have succumbed to viruses that make it look like they are sharing files, and people who have unwittingly had their wireless networks tapped.
But that's just the start. What happens when you have to deal with something like copyright infringement on an encrypted darknet? In other words, a network where cryptographic security allows true annonyminity, and there is no way for a third party to tell what information is being transferred and to whom. Such networks already exist, but they are currently undesirable to use due to the high overhead of using them and the low risk of faster and more reliable unencrypted networks. But once they are the only practical means of circumventing copyright enforcement on the internet, people will use them. If the darknets are well designed, it will be even harder to catch people infringing on copyright than it is now. We will certainly be back to our low risk scenario. ISPs can attempt to cripple every darknet they come across but all they will do is instigate an arms race that they likely cannot win without severely compromising their ability to serve legitimate users.
And looking even further into the future, information networks will continue to increase in speed and diversity, and as this happens the futility of the struggle to enforce copyright will exponentially increase.
Unfortunately, the inevitable conclusion here, is that no one can beat piracy. I hope now that you at least understand why that is. Even if you can win a few minor victories here and there, it's an unwinnable war. Piracy goes down to one of the most basics elements of human nature. The desire to take whatever you can get, as long as it's from people you don't know or care about. If this aspect of human nature could be overcome, maybe piracy could be stopped, and maybe the world would be a better place for it. For now, as the saying goes "shift happens". The loss of copyright enforceability may be a change we live to regret, but it is a change too late to stop. It's better to know that now and plan for the future accordingly than to live in denial.
Of course, a blog is only as good at it's writer, so a blog is not inherently a bad thing. It's just the type of thing that requires too little effort for it's own good. If anyone can write a blog, that means that anyone can write a blog, so of course there's going to be a lot of crap out there. I will try my best not to write a crappy blog. I may get lazy and completely abandon this page without writing another entry, but at least I won't fill it up with the first mundane trivialities of no interest to anyone but myself that pop into my head when I sit in front of a keyboard. Err... except for this post I guess. After this no more. Promise.
