The Nature of Piracy

The link a few days ago to Jim C. Hines's blog was the closest I really wanted to come to saying something about the Oatmeal and that site's recent comic about pirating the Game of Thrones TV show. Then this happened. Particularly this one paragraph (emphasis mine):

Many of them based their retort on the fact that Game of Thrones would ship from Amazon on March 6th and I just needed to wait longer. Truth be told, the show started airing almost 40 weeks ago -- I just happened to publish my comic right around the corner from when it was being released on Blu-ray. 40 weeks is a long time to wait. The sentiment that we pirate because it's easier not because we're thieves still rings true; Game of Thrones just happened to be an untimely example.

To me, arguing that timing has anything to do with it is very much a specious course of argument. Yes, it's been the better part of a year since the show started airing, on April 17th, 2011. And yes, I can imagine that that kind of wait would factor into any decision that one would make. I know this in part because I've faced the same decision.

As I've mentioned, my favorite anime series is Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. A movie, one that I had been almost intensely looking forward to, began airing in theaters on January 23rd, 2010. I was not in Japan at the time and had no ability to watch the movie, short of looking for pirated copies, until the (Japanese) DVD release on November 26th of that same year. To make a long story short, I did not watch the movie until the day of its DVD release, when I bought a copy of the DVD and watched that. (I was in Japan at the time. To date, there is no American DVD release of the movie, although the Japanese DVD has English subtitles.)

Or, take Puella Magi Madoka Magica, one of the best new magical girl shows. That began airing on the 6th of January, 2011, running until April 21st. (Its run was delayed slightly in the aftermath of the earthquake, as an aside.) The American DVDs are just now releasing - the first released on Valentine's Day this year, and the entire run won't be available on DVD until June, if I recall correctly. As of this moment, I still have not watched the entire series.

I bring up these examples not to denigrate the Oatmeal's choices, but to emphasize my own personal experience in similar situations. 40 weeks is a long time to wait, and it certainly would be easier for me to pirate these shows rather than continue to wait. I can respect that for many people, the primary factor in their decision does have to do with that ease of access - the idea that these people are mustache-twirling super-villains out to suck all of the money out of HBO's or Aniplex's coffers is ridiculous.

All the same, the defense doesn't ring true. Because regardless of the reasons behind it, choosing to pirate the series is in the end a choice to become a thief. Saying that you were acting as you did for the sake of easier access is a mitigating factor, but it is not a defense and does not change the fundamental facts of the situation. As a result, what I want to see from the Oatmeal and from the people that pirate shows is not this kind of evasion, not the "we're really not thieves, honest!" line of argument.

I direct you back to Jim C. Hines: Own. Your. Choice. Take responsibility for your decision, whether that decision was to wait or not to wait, to pirate or not to pirate. I will not outright condemn you for choosing either one, but I can have little respect for someone who refuses to admit to themselves the nature of their actions.

Consequences for LulzSec

Hey look, consequences!

According to the FBI, the head of LulzSec, known online as Sabu, is really Hector Xavier Monsegur, a 28-year-old father of two from New York. And apparently, as a report from Fox News states, he's been informing on LulzSec since being caught last June.

The Fox News report itself is here. If you would prefer news from the New York Times, that is also available.

Personally, I very strongly disapprove of actions like those from LulzSec and Anonymous. I mean, seriously, hacking into PBS's website because a program that the network aired was overly negative to Wikileaks? Setting aside the fact that reasonable people will probably still be able to disagree over the value and effectiveness of Wikileaks (we'll come back to that in a bit), and setting aside even the actual content of the program itself, there are ways to make that kind of displeasure known that don't involve committing illegal acts. Especially if you have ties to the communications network that is Anonymous, or the site designed to make information publicly available like Wikileaks!

This, of course, ignores any of the other LulzSec-led hacking attempts during its short time in the public eye, such as those against Sony, Nintendo, or BioWare. I don't even see a point to any of those. Is there one? Am I just not paying enough attention?

What annoys me most are the legions of people that rush to the defense of these groups; there are some examples in the comments on the New York Times piece. There are two closely related main threads to focus on: the "what about the government and/or Wall Street's crimes" angle and the "these people are heroes" angle. (Usually, they're heroes because they expose the depredations of the government or of Wall Street.)

For the former, I will repeat the same damned line that no one seems to fully understand yet: the existence of greater crimes does not mean that lesser ones vanish. Saying "but this is worse!" merely redirects the conversation, and in no way answers the question that started it.

The question that started it, then - are they heroes? No. Not even slightly. Hackers such as LulzSec are at best vigilantes, doing whatever they damn well please in defense of whatever morality they can justify themselves with. And as it stands, carrying out such actions - anything from hacking a corporation's server to revealing classified information - is illegal, and rightly so. I tend to believe that there are things the government keeps secret for a reason, after all.

If you disagree? By all means, reveal the secrets, take whatever action you believe is necessary in defense of information that the public needs to know about, and let the rest of the world judge for themselves whether you were right or not. Frankly, all you're doing is replacing the government's judgement with your own, and hoping that the rest of us will agree with you rather than said government. Regardless of who comes out on top, though, such action is and will remain illegal, and part of making the decision to reveal such information anyway should be accepting that there will be consequences for that action.

In short, as one of my favorite authors said in regards to piracy (which is in many ways a similar phenomenon): own your choice. Right now, LulzSec's leaders are facing the consequences for the decisions they've made. Had they not been willing to accept that when they carried out their first hacking operation, they never should have started it in the first place.

Transportation and Affordability

So it's kind of important that you be able to pay for the basic costs of living. And there are a lot of people out there that can't, as an aside - but problems of poverty aren't what I'm looking at today. You see, even if you take a family with a house and a steady job, we still need to be asking whether or not that family is able to afford that house and that lifestyle. And I just found a new website to play with that looks into some of those questions.

Particularly, it plays into my political pet peeve - transportation and infrastructure. Apparently, housing is considered affordable if it consumes less than 30% of a family's household budget. (I had not known this before.) That said, though, the next largest expenditure for most households is transportation. I can agree that most people don't really think about it - fill the car up with gas when it gets empty, and fix it if it breaks. Right?

Shockingly, that's surprisingly inefficient. It's quite educational to examine the maps they've created, adding transportation costs to housing costs and comparing that to 45% of a household budget. Taking transportation costs into account generally decreases the amount of area marked as "affordable", but oddly enough, there's usually a core of "affordable" territory in the inner city - this is true of Boston, D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, and New York at the very least. This despite the fact that housing usually costs more, not less, within the city as opposed to out in the suburbs. You don't think that this would have anything to do with intelligent city design (walkability) and access to effective public transportation such as subways and commuter rail lines, do you?

But surely we should keep building highways, upgrade our national air traffic control network, and spend money basically on everything except the things that make that affordable core possible. Never mind that trains (to a greater extent than almost anything else) rely on a large number of people using them to be cost-effective, and that we have to make them effective before people will use them in large numbers. Nope, we'll just keep building the U.S. so that you have to drive or fly anywhere you want to go, and complain that trains are getting special favors when anyone dares suggest trying to upgrade that aspect of our transportation network.

And maybe when that entire damn map is blue (that is to say, marked "not affordable"), we'll figure out that we've royally screwed over our national infrastructure.

Reports from Katsucon 18

So I'm over a weekend late on this one, but whatever - I did end up going to Katsucon 18, which was held the weekend of the 17th, a little over a week ago. I must say, it was interesting taking the overnight train from Boston all the way to D.C. for once, and having only a few hours of sleep from the train made the con even more interesting! Thankfully breakfast was available - I've learned over four years of college that I can function (with some loss of ability) without adequate sleep or without adequate food, but trying to function without both causes problems.

Anyway! Honestly, I feel like there's not all that much to report. Admired all of the well-done cosplays, again without taking any pictures. Went to the dealer's hall and spent way too much money, mostly on new games and new figurines. Oh, and one of the dealers refused to take a five dollar bill that I had on me, on suspicion of it being counterfeit - I really need to get around to running that down to the bank to get it checked out in more detail. I only wish I could remember where I got it from. Thankfully I had another five on hand.

There was also the video gaming hall. Oddly enough, they were charging money for the Bemani machines, so I had to actually use some quarters on the DDR one. But, no huge loss, and as always the chance to play on an actual DDR machine was well worth it. Also, there was Project Diva set up on a PS3, with an arcade-style controller no less. So it's not like I couldn't find things to do.

Honestly, the highlight of the convention was the workshop near the end of the day on Saturday. I rather suspect most people have not heard of the Weiss Schwarz card game, but I have - while I was studying abroad, I ended up buying some of the cards, and I think I've mentioned the portable game before. Well, apparently there actually are people on this side of the Pacific who've also heard of the game! And they were running a workshop about the game.

Most of it was stuff I didn't need - I know the rules already, thanks to the aforementioned portable game and a decent command of Japanese. (As I said when we were talking about understanding the cards, "Or, like me, you could spend three and a half years studying Japanese. That's probably not for everyone though.") I did learn that these cards are in fact distributed in the U.S., by Heart of the Cards, which makes it easier for me to get cards and does absolutely nothing for my ability to find people to play with. Anyone in the Boston area? Anyone at all?

Honestly, I feel like I don't do much at conventions these days. I wasn't really cosplaying, but I did go for a black cloak and the Hero of Space god tier T-shirt from Homestuck. Not really a cosplay of anyone, unless you count my own entirely fictional session in which I am the Knight of Space as a valid cosplay target, and frankly I myself wouldn't count that.

It was absolutely worth it though. Conventions usually are, and Katsucon didn't disappoint.

Jon Stewart on Contraceptive Coverage

Where would the world be without Jon Stewart? If nothing else, we'd have one less epic takedown of this entire invented controversy over birth control.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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If there is one takeaway quote, it is this: "You've confused a war on your religion with not always getting everything you want!" But the entire video is absolutely worth watching. You should do that now.

The Rise of Rick Santorum

Well, it looks like it's Santorum's turn to be the Flavor of the Week in this Republican primary.

This is something that scares me deeply. Mitt Romney is a classic politician, in that he can be trusted only to say whatever will put him farther ahead in the race in question. He was solidly center of the road during his time as Massachusetts governor, to take one example, going to far as to seek Planned Parenthood's endorsement of his campaign. To be fair, even that kind of centrism is farther to the right than I prefer, truly... but at least it's something I could live with, for four or even eight years. That of course is assuming he is more center-right, in contravention of the way he's been acting this primary season.

Rick Santorum is a right-wing ideologue in the sense that I am a left-wing ideologue - he is a True Believer in the cause of conservatism. Really I shouldn't need to say any more than that to clarify why I fear him and his ideas taking the Presidency; we are representatives of diametrically opposed visions of the way American should be.

But I'm going to point out some things anyway. Not to clarify my intense dislike for him, but to demonstrate why he and I are not the same. While we are both firebrands, his vision of America is destructive in a way that mine is most assuredly not. In short, I explain what precisely I fear to show why everyone should fear his ideas and his vision of America.

I could point to specific policy ideas: his stance on certain military issues is beyond ridiculous. (He is also not a fan of gays openly in the military, despite that now being a settled decision.) Women and gays should, by all rights, be able to serve in the military just as well as anyone else, and inventing this kind of random pseudo-sciencey "women are more emotional" bullshit displays a fundamental disrespect for half of the human population.

Or I could suggest that he has no idea what he's saying. Requiring religious institutions to cover contraceptives is not new, given that the groups complaining often employ people who are not Catholic and should not be bound by Catholic dictates. There already is a narrower exception for specific groups that do employ primarily members of their same religion. And the idea that Rick Santorum should make this about government control is patently absurd. This is the same Rick Santorum who believes the government should be able to ban contraceptives outright, is it not?

And in large part because of his ideology, he is simply immune to criticism. The idea that the modern Republican Party spouts anything even approaching the truth on a regular basis is absurd. While I am so rarely called out on anything I believe, I would like to think that I am capable of listening to valid criticism and changing the way I act, however high my standard of "valid" might end up being.

For Santorum and the conservatism he represents, though, nothing short of a scorched earth policy will ever be appropriate. If Rick Santorum ends up in the White House from January 2013 onward, the society he will work to create will be frightening to behold: a regression to the world of centuries past, where women could be shoved back into the kitchen, where the One True Religion dominated society and government, and where the rich happily took all the money while oh-so-generously handing out tiny scraps of food to the poor.

What scares me more than anything else is that a large part of the Republican Party seems to agree with him.

Milestones in Japanese

I'm taking two history classes this semester. In at least one of them, the fact that I'm taking my notes in Japanese seems to have become somewhat of an open secret. Although I would have no idea whether or not the professors (of either class) are aware of the situation. It's not something I bothered to hide last semester either, really. In my classes on the two World Wars, I did the same thing, and in those classes the professors did find out.

Simply put, my Japanese is now at the level where simply trying to study disconnected vocabulary and grammar points becomes somewhat pointless. Certainly, I still need to work on my vocabulary, but then that will be true for years to come. At this point, what I need to focus on is using Japanese.

My trip to Japan for study abroad was probably what drove that point home. Prior to leaving for Japan, I was reasonably confident in my Japanese ability, and I was looking forward to using it to get me from the airport to the hotel where my program was gathering. I don't think I had fully accounted for a few things. Like the difference between classroom and reality, or the existence of jet lag, or a number of other problems. And two quick encounters, one at the airport's train station ticket counter and the other in the taxi at Kyoto Station, made it abundantly clear how much harder it is to actually use the language.

This is why I think study abroad is such a powerful boost to language, and why it served that purpose for me. Mastery over a language comes with its constant use, and studying in a country where that language is spoken ensures that you can (and in some cases, must) use it for literally everything. Here in the U.S., that's harder to do. I make up for it by surrounding myself with Japanese as much as possible;  all of my music is in Japanese, I watch Japanese anime, I even try to read Japanese books and manga sometimes. But then again, I did that before I left for Japan, too.

Part of that does speak to the necessity of classroom-style learning. Taking someone who knows no Japanese, or very little Japanese, and asking them to process the language anyway only works when the person in question is unusually motivated to learn Japanese, which few people are. Once the base knowledge is there, using the language for anything (including asking about new words or grammar points) becomes important; before that point, doing so usually just sparks confusion at best.

The other half of that, though, suggests that even that isn't enough in the end. Listening to music, watching anime, even reading a book... they're all input. And no matter how much that helps me understand Japanese (which it does), I still need to be able to generate the language as well. So, I take notes in Japanese -  because this is the kind of thing I need to be able to do if I want to be able to function entirely in Japanese.