I'm not entirely sure how one goes about integrating a math lesson into a first-person-shooter game, but it seems as though someone has. Naturally, of course, the reaction from some parents has been less than stellar. These luddites are ruffling my feathers. Bad.
Educational videogames are counted among my favourite memories from grade school. In fact, I defy you to find someone who grew up in my generation who does not have a deep and enduring love for Treasure Mountain/Mathstorm, Outnumbered!, Gizmos and Gadgets...heck, maybe even Reader Rabbit! These were games we played of our own volition, practically from the moment we learned how to use the school computers; games which managed to craft fun experiences with educational content. I think that it's perfectly reasonable for educational games to keep up with the times. That means they have to compete in terms of content and entertainment value with the games we buy off the shelves. I don't think they need bleeding edge graphics, but basically they should look and feel like something kids would take seriously as a video game first, and the educational experience should seek not to bludgeon the poor child, but to insinuate itself seamlessly into the normal course of gameplay. It's a bit like hiding spinach in food, I guess.
So on the matter of an educational first-person-shooter: FPS gameplay is popular, recognizable, and it's been in vogue since about 1993. FPS gameplay is relevant, and that's very important. If you make an educational FPS you're doing some novel things. One, you're allowing a skill that kids will likely have developed outside the classroom to be helpful inside the classroom. This means not only will kids understand your game from the get-go, it creates a two-way relationship: you want them to learn math, and you can offer them the chance to improve their FPS skillz at the same time. You are offering BOTH a long-term reward AND a short-term reward. I think it's a good answer to this supposed "problem" of the modern attention span. Instead of sticking to the bankrupt rhetoric of "well, kids should just suck it up and be bored at school because it's good for them!" you're saying that learning doesn't have to suck. If you've got reservations about the violent nature of shooters, check yourself: this educational shooter's main weapon is some kind of goo gun. For that matter, videogames feature avatars pointing guns at avatars. If you want something that actually teaches kids to point something at another kid and pull a trigger, how about you go on a crusade to ban super soakers, nerf guns, paintball and laser tag! I even think that shooters could use an injection of non-conventional arsenals. You don't need graphic headshots and real-time dismemberment - just give people a reward for good performance. Maybe you're playing capture the flag with guns that force your enemies to dance uncontrollably for three or five seconds? Or maybe you've got portal guns Aperture Science Hand-held Portal Devices and you have to get your opponents stuck in infinite loops or toss them off cliffs. If that's too violent for you I suppose you've been petitioning childrens' TV stations to stop showing road runner and coyote cartoons for the last thirty years, haven't you? Hey, why not something like Iain M. Banks' Lazy Guns that summon anvils or what-have-you above the target's head? In a cartoon world, that hardly stuns a guy! I think I've made my point, but essentially I think that the blithe equation of the shooter genre with gut-splattering violence is the same kind of irritating short-sightedness that makes commercial shooters so bland and samey!
I remember reading a book by Seymour Papert in which he discussed why the education system seems to be faltering, while kids spend more and more time captivated by videogames. His response (paraphrased) was more or less "Isn't it obvious? One of these things has grown and adapted to teach a child often complex concepts using multiple forms of stimuli as best as cutting-edge technology allows. One of them has not". In short, education is stuck at the book (printing press/movable type is 15th-century tech, for those keeping score), and this generation seems to demand something a little more their speed. Dare I say that rather than working so hard to ban iPhones in school that we should instead be proud to say "Trouble with calculus? There's an app for that."? Banning games like this educational shooter - which I intend to try and review at my earliest convenience - sets a terrible precedent. When you think about it, it isn't too different from some other topical issues in education: sex education and the intelligent design fiasco. In each of these cases you can see that one side is trying to supersede evidence (or in the case of educational videogames the chance to even gather evidence about their efficacy as learning tools) with ideology. Even though learning about safe sex is PROVEN to be an actual bulwark against unintended pregnancy and STIs, children should be taught abstinence-only education because it's wrong to even condone premarital sex. Even though evolution fits all the observed data, we should teach our children that there is "controversy" because some nutjobs are convinced that "5% of an eye isn't useful" = "YHWH designed the eyeball" (in case you've never heard of the light sensor and its uses, these guys are already wrong). Even though videogames offer us a way to fully harness technology to teach and engage, we can't use them to teach our children because learning isn't supposed to be fun. Or participatory. Or even vaguely remotely violent. OH REALLY?
Looking into the future, I even see a use for games not explicitly designed for educational purposes in learning. Unless you want to argue that education shouldn't keep up with current knowledge and culture, I fail to see how Dragon Age or Morrowind should not be analyzed when we look at the legacy of - say - Tolkien in high fantasy! Do we really understand our culture's concept of villainy if we don't analyse Bowser, SHODAN, and GlaDOS? The world didn't end in 1980, so why should education?
-Loud!
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Look at you, Student; a pathetic creature of flesh and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my calculus course ...
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Lessons Unlearned
In the aftermath of Boobquake (the boobwake, if you will) I saw a few (generally female) bloggers despairing at what they perceived as a "highjacking" of boobquake by what a film geek might call the male gaze - a sort of objectifying ray emitted by the eyes of men. In all seriousness, it was a good concern; the focus of boobquake was primarily humour and skepticism...T'n A being a pleasant - if non-critical - side benefit. Men who went into Boobquake day looking for nothing more than a show of tits were clearly misapprehending the point. Worse still, I think, is that they were in a way undermining a part of Boobquake's thesis. You'll recall that in Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi's clerical error (oh, snap?) he professed that it is female immodesty that causes male infidelity (and presumably that of women as well)...and that somehow this affects plate tectonics. And how did some of us supposedly enlightened western men react? Well, kind of offensively, actually. I don't have statistics, to be sure, but I think what's important here is to recognize that freedom of clothing choice isn't the endpoint of equality. The objectification of women is still something to be reckoned with in our society, and the blithe equation of Boobquake with "yeah, shake 'em baby"...it does worse than NOT help the cause. It transforms an event dedicated to satirizing ridiculous pronouncements and the mistreatment of women into little more than us ramming our culture down another culture's throat. How DO you like them American hooters, mr. Muslim?
You see, it just trades the spark of genius for the spectre of racism and bigotry.
I'll come back to this, but first I need to work something out that's been bothering me for a while:
I've been going over this sort of reasoning in my head for a while. On the one hand, I think there's a point missing: Heterosexual dudes are genetically programmed to be aroused by the female form, or at least I'm pretty sure we are. I mean, it's not a very good meme for a species that reproduces sexually to be ambivalent about the process. Ah - I can hear the yells forming in your throats and I am not done yet thank you very much! Genetic predisposition isn't really an excuse, but neither is it nothing at all. Dress and manner are means of communication, often nonverbal, but communication they are. Friends of mine will recall the ladies' T-shirt I proposed with only "The medium is the message" emblazoned upon the bosom. It was my own little way of satirizing T-shirts that said things like "my eyes are up here" in bright, eye catching text across the wearers' breasts. Both of these T-shirts are saying the same thing, when you get down to it. When you wear a particular style and cut of clothing you are sending people messages. I admit full well that I try to wear snug T-shirts these days because I've got a little muscle in my upper body and it's nice to have it show. But I am under no illusion that I have a right to complain if someone makes a remark about it on the street, in class, wherever. I'm trying to show off, the least you can do is notice!
No style of clothing is to be taken as a declaration of consent, duh. I still don't think it's really a consistent position to try and separate medium and message. I might not know whether your message is targeted at a particular individual or the world at large, but what "immodest clothing" tells me is that you think you have a body worthy of aesthetic consideration. So while I do not dispute in any way shape or form that physical security is your constitutional, heck your human right when you - and I mean dudes and ladies - run amok with only strategically-placed bands of cloth...a public display is a public display. We do have a sort of content filter when you only want to control access to your sexuality, both in the visual and physical capacities. It's called modesty, and it shouldn't be a dirty word just because some people think it needs to be enforced. It's also not a binary choice of covered/uncovered, there's a lot of room I think to choose an image that you're comfortable with projecting. Now, if you want justification I am going to have to tread carefully on this ground...but hear me out: common critics of Anarchy allegedly miss the point when they talk about total chaos in the absence of law. If you ask an Anarchist you'll probably hear something about "social norms" and "unwritten codes of behavior", possibly "natural-" or "divine" law, maybe even "common sense". You would be foolish to equate the absence of a code of law with the complete absence of guidelines and cues for behaviour. Similarly, you would be unwise to confuse the absence of religious persecution against your chosen style of dress with a complete obviation of your responsibility for your own image! We are likewise never free of our responsibility for our own perceptions of other people; what I am - in essence - arguing for is clarity of communication. Don't send wrong messages, and don't get the wrong ideas. Just don't be surprised if you're showing off your tits or pecs or whatever - and someone pays them a compliment. Is it regressive to believe that people shouldn't toy with each other and send mixed messages under the pretext of "I can do anything I want without consequence"? I hope not.
But back (sort of) on the track that I was intending to go upon. If we indeed wish to show that we as individuals and as a culture have an enlightened attitude toward women, let's do that with respect, consideration, and solidarity. This isn't accomplished by clamoring for tits, nor by indulging those who do.
On the matter of solidarity, I bring your attention to "Everybody draw Muhammad day". Look at the comment thread, even just the first few will do. Is this how to advance the cause of free speech, by calling Islam a "death cult"? How blind and shortsighted we are, then; historically we have been blessed with the gift of arabic numerals (way, way easier than those dumb Roman ones!), the concept of zero (or at least Europe got wind of it by way of muslims)...in fact, the preservation of classical philosophy that would spark the Renaissance? That was totally Muslims! So their civilization is not at its height now, but are we going to pass judgement on the whole of their culture and religion while observing only such a narrow slice? One might as well characterize Europeans as being the peddlars of dogmatic barbarism (middle ages and the crusades) or America as being inherently racist and oppressive (slave trade). Worse still we're talking about a narrow cross-section of a narrow cross-section! So much for this farce of the Western thirst for knowledge and reason! Ok, you know this; what I wonder about "Draw Muhammad Day" is whether or not I should participate. On the one hand, I see a noble purpose and intent: to become one with a group of people who have faced death threats and even death itself (RIP. Theo Van Gogh) for the sake of free artistic expression. As the Blag Hag says, to "dilute the pool of targets" seems a pretty funny, interesting way to deal with some of the hostility that has greeted people who are critical of Islam. Ironically, Christianity is vehemently opposed to idolatry/graven images (depends on the brand/translation), it just happens to be one of those "pick and choose" things that gets discarded and under rug swept. Actually, I recall there being vocal outrage in the West when an artist chose to depict Jesus Christ as a black woman. So on some level this isn't cool. I don't imagine all the people taking part are hypocritical, but it bears a striking resemblance to the problem with Boobquake: this event invites people who aren't here to celebrate free speech, but to denegrate Islam. I think that if we desire logical consistency, we desperately need to expand the scope of this day! I think we need a "Depict God and Jesus as not-exclusively-white-people Day", for starters! it's easy to talk trash about Islam because it has some differences in the value system, and a thriving militant streak that the media loves to talk about. But there are militants of all stripes, and maybe if we did more to provoke them, they'd come out of the woodwork. Hell, just look at the utterly braindead response from the religious right at the abolition of that national prayer day in the US.
You can say perhaps that there aren't any death threats at work here, that we're dealing with a religion that does seek to impose upon others versus some that don't. That's an awfully thin argument. Sarah Palin wants to base US law on the 10 commandments: does that mean the manufacture of graven images would become illegal, 'cause that would just be TOO GOOD right now! In any case, that's an imposition right there, one that has a lot of undesirable implications for those who do not share in her faith. You could even argue (successfully, I might imagine) that inherent to the "don't tread on me" 2nd ammendment-happy ethos are death threats, ie. when those arms you so proudly bear come in handy for overthrowing an oppressive government. For once I'm not trying to make fun of gun culture: I think "Governments should be afraid of their people" doesn't seem much too much more conducive to good policy than the converse (think about the kind of distaste people have for legislative deadlock, and imagine if you will the kind of paralysis you might see if the lives of legislators depended upon their never crossing a rather nebulous line). Everyone has their violent streak - from Marxists to Margaret Thatcherites (ESPECIALLY these, even). It seems pretty hypocritical to condemn another culture because their soft spot is your sacrament, doesn't it?
I think these two issues boil down to a very similar core: people are constructing freedoms in the absence of responsibilities. We have freedom of expression, but we are not without responsibility for the content we express. That is not to say that you "get what you deserve". Clearly, physical attacks are not the correct way to respond to expression that confounds or offends you!
On this general theme of getting things wrong, I saw on BoingBoing the other day a link via Wired to a piece that examined the role of mercenary bloggers in documenting the war on Afghanistan. Some of the comments were very vitriolic, wishing death and ruin upon these individuals, generally to the tune of:
"Mercenaries are the scum of the Earth, I hope they all die."
I'm sorry, I forgot that the purpose of learning about someone in their own words was to justify your kneejerk reaction to their superficial qualities, what was I thinking!? I had imagined in a fever dream for a moment that reading the words of combattants on the ground would humanize them in a way that might challenge our assumptions about who these people are. Yes it is morally questionable that they are effectively paid to kill. Good job. Does the above statement reflect a more developed morality? It would be very hard to argue that it does. Again, you can see that we are receiving information, but not everyone is learning the right lesson. There's something that Christianity says, something like "love the sinner, hate the sin"? You can Godwin that to death if you like, but how else can we approach unsavoury professions like "mercenary"? Are we to decide that some people can be judged solely on the basis of their employment...but not us, oh no! We're just office drones on the weekdays; on weekends we're gorgeous unique butterflies free from the stale cucoobicle! So you don't kill for money - you waste away your life unsatisfied for money. Should I wish death upon you for squandering your human potential five days out of seven? Come on!
These are human beings. Fact. Why do some people refuse to learn that? I don't think any more kindly of the profession, but I can now put words and maybe even a face on these people. I think that makes for a better debate, somehow, if we discard this notion that we are fielding armies of demons abroad in a vein effort at...something, I dunno what. Actually, if you read some of these blogs they are often quite critical of the war effort itself: the uncertain terms of victory, the corruption in government and police forces that we turn a blind eye to...even the anti-war crowd will find some common ground here! In fact, reading these blogs has given me more reason to doubt the war than I might have ever had. I have a much better perspective now, I think, of what we have done wrong. What's very interesting is that there is a palpable level of culture shock going on. Some of the blogs I read bordered uncomfortably on racism, but it did make me think. We're talking about how best to prosecute this war in terms of drone strikes and troop surges, and we're really just not trying to talk about the cultural barriers between our peoples! It seems dangerous to have heavily armed people becoming increasingly jaded and disoriented in a country that we wish to have good relationships with, don't you think?
Saturday, May 08, 2010
An Open Letter to Stephen Harper (In Progress)
To the Right Honourable Stephen Harper:
Two recent pieces of news have caused me considerable consternation with regards to the policies advanced by your government; these being - in no particular order - your intent to bring "stronger" copyright law to Canada, and the intimidation of those feminist/womens' advocacy groups in Canada which have come out in opposition to your frankly contemptable decision not to support safe access to abortion for women in impoverished countries. Although these two issues aren't of themselves related, your government's adoption of these policies speaks to a perilous disconnect between the values of the Conservative party and those of the general Canadian public.
On the matter of copyright, our country has been very fortunate that circumstances have conspired against your previous attempts to reform the law, which were met with much resistance by consumers, educators, and even creators themselves. The copyright consultations held by your government last year seemed a show of good faith, a willingness to seek a superior balance between the needs of consumers and creators. Please, do not disregard the will of the people on this matter; it is in their name and their interests that you are supposed to govern. What the media conglomerates are demanding of the Canadian government (and others) is not merely protection for artists, it is support for business models that are dying. It is an end to privacy and even the presumption of innocence, the so-called "three-strikes" policy that would institute widespread monitoring of internet use and automatically disconnect citizens merely accused of copyright infringement without so much as a chance to defend their innocence. It is a lockdown on culture that simply does not make sense in an age of sharing. I do not, Mr. Prime Minister, mean "illegal file sharing" when I say sharing; I refer to a more general set of cultural phenomena. Networks and software aren't only making "theft" easier; they are also giving the means for creative self-expression to more people than ever before in history. People are chosing to create, and in many cases they are choosing to share: whether it's the Free/Libre Open Source Software movement, or the Creative Commons.
I am not so naive as to think that in some ideal future, all creators will work for free. What I do think is that the way to ensure that creation continues in this country is not to use heavy-handed legislation to lock Canadians into the old ways, old businesses whose practices are no longer suited to the current market. Apple and Amazon have demonstrated that what your legislation would call "digital locks" are not necessarily the only way forward for digital commerce: both have been selling music without such encumberances for some time now. You have children, and so I imagine that you are not unaware of the artistic medium that is the videogame (I have a bone to pick with Roger Ebert on this matter, but that is for another time and place). Stardock Studios and the website "Good Old Games" sell such products without digital locks, and they do not seem to be in dire straits. Conversely, EA Games' "Spore", a hotly anticipated title, suffered a PR nightmare when it was released with particularly strict digital locks upon it. The fact of the matter is that the more entrenched these locks become, the better (comparatively) the experience of piracy will become. A pertinent example can be seen here: commercial DVDs when played in a standard DVD player assail the viewer with often unskippable previews and warnings. The content of commerical DVDs is scrambled, making it difficult for end-users to make archival copies, or even simply watch the DVD on operating systems such as Linux. A pirated film, by contrast, simply begins playing the film when placed in a DVD player. It is simple to make copies for use in case the original becomes damaged, it can be played almost anywhere, and it can be converted to many different formats to be played on many different kinds of player. Paradoxically, the kind of broad functionality that I and many other Canadians would be interested in paying for is NOT the kind offered by the industry. It is that same industry which has been framing the choice in this debate as between Canadians (and others) being offered their very limited, highly controlled packages...or nothing at all. I wish that your party would take a stand against this, not just from a consumer rights angle, but also because we should not encode into law this caste-like distinction between producer and consumer. We are not passive; I don't believe that culture exists without interpretation, criticism, parody and remixing. These are not valueless acts, but the content industry seeks in law to make crimes of some or all of these!
I have not been very forthcoming with positive suggestions, but as a start there is perhaps NDP MP Charlie Angus'proposal to extend Canada's existing private copying levy to a new range of devices. Here, at least, is found the spirit of true compromise: the industry wants money, and Canadians want relative freedom to format-shift their media once they have legally obtained it. Rather than criminalizing the latter, the private copying levy allows both sides to enjoy what they say they want to enjoy. But if the content industry insists instead on tighter controls, you must ask yourself; if they thumb their nose at money, what is it that they really want? Do they want fair compensation for creative works, or do they want a frankly unrealistic and unfair level of control over our culture?
On the issue of your government's lack of funding support for abortion abroad, and the subsequent cutting of funds to women's advocacy groups I urge even more strongly that you reconsider your position. DVDs are one thing, but your party is endangering human lives in the hopes that it can simultaneously adopt fundamentalist values re: abortion and still somehow stay in the good graces of Canadians by maintaining the status quo on the homefront. With all due respect, Sir, just how stupid do you think Canadian feminists (both women and men) are? At best, what your policy decision indicates is that your government either does not believe in a universal standard of human rights (reproductive and otherwise) or that you intend at some later time to mount a campaign against abortion at home. Either of these conclusions should send chills down the spine of respectable Canadians, Mr. Harper. Women who are denied access to safe abortions will often seek them from less reputable sources. This can kill them, Mr. Prime Minister. I believe in providing and promoting contraceptives in places where women wish for a greater control over their reproductive lives, but if you have been following the issue you will know that it is sometimes difficult to get men to wear condoms reliably. There is an effort to produce a simple, easy-to-use, easy-to-distribute female contraceptive cream (or some similar unobtrusive substance), but this is not at present a reality. The reality is that a balanced approach to the reproductive health of women must include abortion, even if only as a last line of defence against unwanted pregnancy! That you have chosen not only to stand against abortion, but also against those groups who have lawfully and dutifully protested your choice in this matter speaks to an even greater evil than neglect, however. These groups do not exist to stroke your ego, and they will not always agree with you. Disagreement and debate are principal foundations of democratic society, and while I suppose there's no law that says you MUST fund these groups, it rather seems as though you are cheating. Quieting the debate with fear tactics and then claiming that you have won by virtue of being the loudest (or perhaps the only) voice is poor sportsmanship - and I am being generous. What is it that your government fears from these groups? That they might take a stand against what they perceive as injustice? Is that not an invaluable practice in a free society, or do you believe that all of our checks and balances and our Constitution itself are just so much window dressing for your new brand of tyranny? Well this Canadian will have none of that, and will have none of you if this is the most reasoned and mature manner in which you see fit to conduct public discourse in this once-proud nation!
Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen.
I intend to send this letter in paper form at some point in the near future, but not quite in this present form. The final work will obviously need less of the spleen that makes blogging so delicious, but I'm curious to know what you think could be improved. Yes, I am outsourcing my proofreading. I'll be doing some of my own over the next day or two...but I won't catch everything!
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Copyright and Copywrong at age 300
And I'm right. We're the generation of ubiquitous connectivity and social media. All those pictures you take and the posts you write and possibly your twitter posts as long as you can prove that they constitute original expression beyond a simple statement of fact? That's all your creation, and that's all protected by copyright BY DEFAULT, thanks to the same kind of extensions to the law that Big Media wants to keep going. Look here:
You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:
1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
2. When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).
3. When you add an application and use Platform, your content and information is shared with the application. We require applications to respect your privacy settings, but your agreement with that application will control how the application can use the content and information you share. (To learn more about Platform, read our About Platform page.)
4. When you publish content or information using the "everyone" setting, it means that everyone, including people off of Facebook, will have access to that information and we may not have control over what they do with it.
5. We always appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about Facebook, but you understand that we may use them without any obligation to compensate you for them (just as you have no obligation to offer them)."
These seem like some pretty reasonable rules. Facebook needs a relative amount of freedom in order to provide effective services, and most people seem unlikely to care about stray backup copies of party photos that they have already implicitly decreed are safe for public consumption. Facebook isn't directly profiteering from your work, but indeed if it did not have these liberties its service would be greatly inferior, and hence their survival as a cultural and financial entity does in some way derive from the way they use your content. But ask Big Media if you can take about this level of liberty with the music that you buy and I guarantee you'll hear them scream bloody murder. Why is it ok for some creators to be treated worse than others, though? If this is good enough for us it should be good enough for everyone who creates, right?
Well, not really.
First, you might be thinking "well, what about quality?"
That would be a mistake. Do you mean to tell me that the moral high ground in this argument should go to the best art, because let me tell you that is NOT in the slightest what the content industry is trying to secure in this fight. Second, creation is supposed to come from the heart, not the pocketbook. Why should funding or publishers matter in whether or not we believe a creator should have some reasonable expectations about the kind of terms he or she can get for their work. I think the difference is that if the public as a whole had the kind of hold on the legislature that Big Media does (a terribly ironic conundrum), Facebook would be PAYING US to use their content in exchange for its continued presence as an advertising platform and cultural icon. But alas we do not, and are consequently treated as second-class creators.
If one looks at the world of webcomics, you'll see a lot of quality. You'll also see a lot of self-publishing. The comics that have attracted large readerships have not necessarily needed large corporate funding; they have grown because of the quality of their content. WE DID NOT NEED publishers or editors or agents to tell us which webcomics were worthy and which were not. Hey, what would you know, the invisible hand that everyone likes to talk about so goddamn much DID ITS JOB! Grassroots creativity does not mean "hatchet job" anymore, and perhaps our culture will wise up to this fact.
So, where are we now?
We are leaving a culture of passive consumerism, and we are building one where many people create, or become indirectly involved in the creation process through feedback (see: Imogen Heap's fan outreach and crowdsourcing from the making of her last album, or ANY popular blog with a thriving comment community). WIPO's stance is still rooted in the frankly archaic notion that modern content delivery is, and will continue to be a one-way process. There are many people who have been saying this for years; Lawrence Lessig being the obvious example.
But they are saying something right when they talk about interoperability. What they should have said in the next paragraph is that industries need to work together to create products that continue to foster two-way communication between creators. Not between "creators and consumers" because while indeed some people have become better or more prolific than others, we have already seen that giving everybody the same tools does in no way cheapen the best work done in a category of creative works. Did good webcomics not arise and gain fan followings because everyone and their dog could post one to the internet? The answer is beyond obvious. So give everyone the same tools for sharing their work. Some will take to it naturally, and others will leave it alone...but it will no longer be up to the creaking dinosaur industries of the past who gets to be transformed into something famous and who does not! To some extent we can already see this phenomenon in action: just watch the rise of a viral video.
Of course, if we envision a world without promoters and labels, the infamous words of Warhol look more and more like the literal truth of the now*. Perhaps being a famous artist will cease to be a true career option, and we will just spend our years constantly hunting down the latest viral sensation.
I'm not sure I've touched on sharing in this future world yet, but of course I am no oracle. I can say that I believe if creators were treated equally I think we might see agitation for truly balanced copyright law. The profit motives would be properly aligned for once, as what you have is no longer two adversarial groups, each trying to swindle the other. What you have is one group that has to weigh the protection of its individual livelihoods against the protection of cultural heritage. What you have is one group that has to balance its need to eat with its desire to remix, review, and renew its culture from time to time.
*"15 minutes of fame", in case that wasn't clear
Friday, November 06, 2009
First, they came for the...
No, the whole miserable business is indefensible. One cannot pretend to live in an open and free society whilst all the while denying his or her countrypeople the same rights he or she enjoys. At best, that can be called hypocrisy. I think I call it tyranny, which is a good segue into another troubling assault on personal freedoms: the recent ban on violent video games in Venuzuela. This has also been an issue in the US, and I guess that it is fitting for a country which is more at ease with making war than making love that their citizens and courts should uphold the right of citizens to simulate all manner of slaughter, but not to marry whomsoever they choose. Wonderful, isn't it?
There's a wonderful essay written by a Venuzuelan on the topic, which can be read here. I'm not sure if I agree that banning violent videogames is tantamount to making protest illegal (although making the expression of views contrary to those of the government a crime? Yeah, there we go!). I think it might be something different, something more than just silencing protest. I think it's entirely possible that the Venuzuelan government is trying to silence an entire generation, regardless of what it is they are saying. If you're incredulous, simply imagine [insert your government here] bans text messaging, facebook, or twitter (hey, wait, hasn't that HAPPENED ALREADY SOMEWHERE?) It could be - at least on the surface - a move to silence particular voices of dissent, but you would realize soon enough I think that the real effect of such a ban would be to effectively evict our generation from home turf. "oh, POOR YOU, you'd have to resort to communications in person, how terrible!" I hear the parents droning sarcastically. No, for serious: That was your way, we have our own way now! It would be like taking away paper and quills before people had phones in their houses, or killing all the troubadours in medieval Europe. Back to videogames, though: I don't think they really express "dissent" of themselves, but they provide our generation with cultural anchors of a sort. Weirdly, I think that the backlash from gamers might be the source of more dissent than games themselves could ever be.
I think that for too long I assumed that 'socialist' meant 'good', and that Hugo Chavez was simply the victim of the kind of slander you're liable to hear about socialists when you live next to one of the most heartless capitalisms the world has ever known. Now, I'm not so sure what I believe. It would be too easy to say "well, now I know the opposite to be true", but I don't think that would actually bely a better understanding of the situation. What I do know is that I want to live in Venuzuela even less than I did before...
...and there's the rub. This is all very well and far away for me, but it's terrifying to think that it IS TRUE somewhere. My hard drive and collection of optical disks? VENUZUELAN CONTRABAND?!?! Weird stuff!
I wonder if there are any gaming speakeasies already in operation in Venuzuela?
Loud!
Monday, March 02, 2009
Not Very Good
Now, I could rightfully be accused of demanding too much from art that I enjoy for free (well, minus the cost of an internet connection, but that's beside the point). However, my objections are rooted in a love of the art, and a great sadness at the declining quality of old favourites. Maybe take a sabbatical, guys? I know you'd hate to abandon the cash cow's lustrous udder, but you've rubbed all the teats raw!
-LOUD!
PS: XKCD is lisenced under Creative Commons, but since parody is covered under fair use (but not, I believe, fair dealing here in Canada), I have only the vaguest notion of what to say copyright-wise. Just don't be a dick, mmmkay?
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Antipasti
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Far Cry 2: (if) Anything Goes (wrong with SecuROM, you're fucked)
Today's title is a not-so-clever play upon the title of one in a series of trailers for the inexplicably-named Far Cry 2. Inexplicably named?, you wonder, whatever could he mean? Put simply, Far Cry 2 has, besides being a shooter which takes place mostly out of doors with fairly remarkable human AI and semi-realistic weapon handling dynamics, nothing to do with Far Cry. Neither the game engine, nor the development team itself are constant between games. The closest analogue to the situation that exists with Far Cry, Far Cry 2, and Crysis was that of the Age of Empires series compared to the first Empire Earth. The latter was the far more audacious brainchild of original AoE developer Bruce Shelley, who split with Ensemble studios, whose plan for Age of Empires 2 was simply more of the same. Crysis in relation to Far Cry is very much like AoE 2 versus 1. Certainly some aspects of the design have been improved, but along the way the developers seemed to lose sight of what we all found so charming in the original. Where Crysis is essentially a punishing benchmark for the PC hardware elite, it looked to me as though FC2 was shaping up to be a little more innovative, a little less stale. I was (the operative word) looking forward to the ability to roam 50-odd square kilometers of map at my leisure, to experimenting with different approaches to combat, and to interacting with the various in-game factions.
Well, what really separates Far Cry from its successor in my mind is that I cannot, in good conscience, buy FC2. Even on Steam it is saddled with a 3-computer 5-time semi-refundable secuROM-based DRM solution. Let's break this down, shall we? Even if I buy the game on a platform with tough, integrated DRM, a platform that requires me to be connected to the internet, a platform that knows my name, a platform that TRACKS MY GAME-PLAYING HABITS...UbiSoft still doesn't think their IP is safe enough. For the record, if I'm going to go into the kind of trouble it must take to crack a Steam game, do they really think I'll stop there? SecuROM, like every other kind of DRM, has attracted the usual posse of gamer-hackers and pirate-hackers who for reasons ranging from legitimate (secuROM is notorious for butchering system performance and flat-out not working, or so I hear) to the morally ambiguous (they do it for the lulz) to the nefarious (read: piratical). So, what they are asking me to do is to potentially devalue the money I spent on the kind of kick-ass hardware one uses to play current games by chaining me to a stupid activation system that doesn't seem to offer any more practical security than Steam already does (you know, locks and honest folk and that...). Oh, but it DOES limit how much I can use their game. To me, this represents the height of irony. Game developers are going out of their way to create the potential for what they call “emergent gameplay”, they are trying to give the player more control over the interactive experience. At the same time, game publishers are working round-the-clock to limit the number of times you can install the games that YOU pay to use with YOUR money, and piracy continues unabated. In fact, piracy was marketed as ACTIVISM when Spore was released with unreasonable activation limits. “Make Spore the most pirated game in history,” was the rallying cry “show EA that this DRM shit does not fly with gamers”. I didn't pirate Spore, though. I can't say that after seeing gameplay past the cell stage that I really felt I even wanted to play it. Everywhere you see people variously toasting and lamenting the so-called decline of the PC as a platform for games. Everywhere you see developers blaming piracy, but I don't think for a moment that we should be so naïve. Games are getting bigger, prettier, louder....but shorter and costlier, in general. This has been a recognized pattern long before people started whining about piracy as they have in recent months. If you read the newsposts on Penny Arcade (I only read it for the articles, I swear!), you'll see that Tycho always says the same thing about PC gaming: people – not counting the small but vocal minority of hardware aficionados, ie. Yours truly – just want to play. They don't want to worry about the kind of issues that will necessarily cause problems on a platform so variable and diverse as the PC. Consoles are cheap, their games tend to sell better than PC titles, and for the most part they are idiot-proof. While the move towards hard drives and firmware updates and downloadable content may complicate the gaming console experience, I doubt that the “insert disc and play” functionality is going to go anywhere. Well, at least until game cartriges make their inevitable return to prominence, but even so maintenance will still be as simple as “blow on the contacts”. Truly, what would make the most sense for people who want a thriving market for games with the kind of complexity and indie content that only PC gaming can provide as present, the 90% of gamers who don't have a hard-on for their hardware should just buy Macs, thereby creating enough of a market to make development worthwhile. Macs, with their (generally) standardized hardware, could then move into direct competition with gaming consoles, and proceed to beat the stuffing right out of them. The power of Steve Jobs to make relatively unremarkable products look like Yaweh's own gadget collection, combined with the kind of market share that would allow Apple to exert serious power over hardware manufacturers (hell, they somehow have Intel half in their pocket already!) would combine to form a super-gaming entity that could somehow convince consumers to pay three times as much for a piece of hardware with identical capabilities and upgrade options to a gaming console. Of course, Apple's record of having pretty strict control over media (the plan not to allow third-party iPhone apps, anyone) might antagonize indie developers for a while, I think that the larger problem would be in the long term. The few of us who love to tinker with hardware would just suck it up and hack MacOS onto a gaming PC...but the supply of hardware would eventually dry up. The mac platform would, due to its homogeneous nature, be a potential coup for DRM, which could be encoded into ALL HARDWARE.
Where I'm going with this is that PC gaming would have to sacrifice the strengths of our platform in order to achieve mainstream success. It would lead to a momentary renaissance of gaming, but we would be effectively signing away our last vestiges of control over digital content in the process. The other extreme is the abandonment of DRM, making the PC attractive as a platform through an unofficial “try-before-you-buy” culture (for the honest folk, at least). The lifting of DRM restrictions would create a lot of good will in gamers, and it might even lead to a momentary jump in sales...but big-budget games would inevitably disappear from PC, which would become a sort of starting point for would-be game developers, releasing freeware and shareware content in a bid to land spots at a major label.
The reason I'm not going to buy Far Cry 2 is because I am following the third path, which I believe has the potential to lead us toward victory in our fight to remain a viable, free environment for gaming. Of course, it is marked as a “top seller” on Steam, so the fight may already be lost, but I object to the DRM enough that this won't change my decision. If gamers don't buy games that come with unreasonable terms of use (ie. The retail version of Bioshock at launch), game companies WON'T MAKE MONEY. When they decide to treat their customers like vermin. Pirating games may feel good, but it's not the answer. I contemplated buying FC2 and then pirating a version with the DRM removed, but UbiSoft would only see my money if I did that. They would not see the gamer, fighting to preserve his favourite hobby by any means necessary. They would only learn that they can get away with bullying us, and everyone who went to school knows that if you don't let the bully use you for his or her personal entertainment, if you refuse to react to their provocations, they will (hopefully) stop trying. If you continue to react, they'll only come back more and more often.
So if you're listening UbiSoft, you just LOST A SALE of Far Cry 2. I sincerely hope it's not the only one you lose.
In the interests of striking an emotional balance in this post, I shall now shift gears entirely.
To be succinct, I've got love on my mind. Stop. Did you click the link before continuing? If not, open it in a new tab and keep going. It is thematically consistent with what I am going to say, and it will also make the experience of reading this blog 100% more FUNKY.
DDR players who own Supernova 2 are excused now, although they're likely to have reached for their dance mat upon hearing the first strains of music after clicking the link.
Now that we're all groovin', I can continue. This thanksgiving marked for me an entire year of being single, possibly barring an incredibly mishandled affair around the holidays. You know who you are and in retrospect I'm really really really sorry, even though I'm pretty sure you're not holding a grudge. One year of being single has taught me that, well, I don't really like being single. It has also taught me that I don't hate being single either. If I were surrounded by happy relationships, or incredible-yet-too-intimidating prospects, I think I might be a wreck, but neither is the case. Being single is totally stable, and relatively functional. The impending visit of my Ex-girlfriend does, however, have me in a bit of a rush. I'd love to have a date for next weekend, not only for purposes of escaping the house, but as a show of strength, a defensive maneuver of sorts. Unfortunately, dating someone for those reasons is a violation of the second formulation of the categorical imperative – the long way of saying I am uncomfortable with using people. Relationships being organic as they are develop at uncertain rates, and with a week's notice I really don't have the highest of hopes. It's not as though I haven't been considering the issue since much earlier in the year, it's that I have yet to really find an individual of the female persuasion with whom I have the right kind of rapport, ie. The kind I can talk to naturally, without watching my words to make sure I'm not geeking out too hard. As you probably know, this would already be PRETTY RARE even if I wasn't beset with a terminal case of shy.
So boo-hoo, I don't really talk to girls. At least I don't pop my collars.
What I have at the moment are prospects, but nothing more. In each case there are too many unknowns to allow for a solid plan. Missing first year university here has been academically painless (although I think I'd be better off having taken FYP, that's another story), but it has the unfortunate side effect of alienating me from the social dynamics which have sprung up. All I know is that if people like my housemates they tend to be ok with me. This would be awesome if girls visited this place more than once or twice in EVER. The only other constant that I have become aware of is that if I meet someone at Dal, chances are it turns out they're a King's student anyhow. Some have voiced an opinion to the effect that this just goes to show that I attend the wrong school. I guess at least that when I meet girls at Dal my housemates will invariably know something about her.
Fifty bucks says that no matter who she is, it's always:
“Oh, her. She's dating a guy in my tutorial”
(or something to this effect)
Loud!
PS. My heartache is over and indeed I can live without you.
PPS. Have you listened to Holy Fuck? That shit is bangin'!
PPPS. Maybe I should just take the hint* and get a haircut?
*assumption that there was a hint to be had? ASSUMED!
Thursday, July 17, 2008
In Defense of Farscape
It has been the policy of certain “friends” of mine – for exactly how long I cannot say – to make fun of/ get a rise out of me by disparaging the Australo-American Sci-Fi/Comedy/Romance masterpiece, Farscape. While this not-particularly-good-natured teasing is very little about the show itself (few of these “friends” of mine have seen so much as an episode. In an unprecedented feat of being absolutely no fun at all, one claims to have seen an entire season and not found it enjoyable), I would not be writing this post merely to bitch about the means by which they cause me distress*. My worry in this matter is for their sake, and not my own; I fear that should they not already accept their petty fabrications as the honest truth by virtue of endless repetition, they soon will. More than anything I am distressed by the idea that these otherwise intelligent and humourous individuals would predispose themselves against the pure, unadulterated joy that is Farscape. It almost did it to myself, years ago, and I cannot in good faith allow them to do the same.
*I would be blogging about Star, were that my purpose here.
It was my mother, of all people, who first brought Farscape to my attention. I was actively disinterested in this low-budget australian muppety romance...thing, and can you blame me? The recommendation had come to my dear mum by way of a romance readers news group, for crying out loud! I'm not known for being a good sport, so I suspect it was a pointed reminder about the (flawless) track record of mom in recommending fiction in literature or on screen that had me grudgingly agree to watch an episode. It took maybe half of that episode for me to figure out that not only had I lost a potential counterexample for those times when my parents would bring icky, boring looking movies home to their infernally infallible chorus of “you'll like it!”, I had also discovered a kickass TV series. And so it was that Friday nights in our house became synonymous with Farscape...a glorious tradition that lasted until the bastard network execs canceled it for a “drop in ratings” in season 4**, leaving us among the legions of angry, heartbroken fans (Farscape's writing team having no warning to modify their final episode to achieve closure meant for Season 5 resulted in the most egregious cliffhanger finale EVER -spoiler After four years of torturous uncertainty and sexual tension, the main characters agree to be married. Also she is pregnant with his child. Also he has been forced to cut his one remaining connection to Earth (a wormhole) due to circumstances arising from flowers, careless words, and a small nuclear explosive...and then they, in their little rowboat are spotted by an alien starfighter and reduced to an equivalent mass of small, marble-sized pebbles by some esoteric weapon, THE END /spoiler)
.**I'm not a census bureau, but I know that the show became rather more arc-based in its final season, hence some casual viewers would have reason to balk. The third season was also marginally stronger, but it's not as if that's unique to Farscape.
it was a work of subtle, intellectual humour:
A show that stressed the importance of nonviolence in all things:
...And which featured the best obligatory-episode-where-everyone-swaps-bodies of them all (note: at this point in the episode, Crichton (the human) inhabits Aeryn(the hot space Aussie)'s body):
I am somewhat constrained by what the fans have managed to upload so far, which seems to be a pretty random assortment, so what's there isn't really my ideal range of clips, but it will have to suffice for the moment. It's mostly fun and games above, but the show does shine equally in its silly and serious segments. Moreover, there really is a Jim Henson vibe to be found underneath the layers of twisted muppets, sex and violence. There is a real message about the value of peace, friendship, and love in a universe so full of evil things. It's perhaps more overt in the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries (a paltry 4 hours where Season 5 would have gone, but they made pretty epic use of those hours), but if you watch the series, it's there. The trademark Jim Henson glee is there, even in the darkest episodes. Farscape is a show where you cannot imagine that anyone on stage isn't having a blast at any given time, because they are acutely aware of just how awesome this thing they are part of is. You and I both know another show of which this is true, a show that you don't needlessly malign. A show that was also canceled well before it's time. That's right, Drive – I mean, uh – Firefly, of course!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
T minus 10...9...8...7...6...
5...
“keyboard check!”
4...
“qwertyui...”
3...
“ok, that's good. Internet connection?”
2...
“check!”
1...
“ok, quiet everybody!”
Hi! I'm Loud, and this is post number One Hundred and Fifty.
This is a post that I've been mulling over in my head for what must be two weeks now, because I a) don't want to screw up a cool milestone, b) wanted to secure some guest posts (more on this later), and c) I procrastinate. It has been my intention from the beginning of the creative process for this post to address the issues raised by Bill C-61, which you may know by a different name: “CDMCA” or “Canadian Digital Millenium Copyright Act”. Those who already know what this is can probably skip to the next paragraph. If you don't know what it is, you'll probably want to start by asking “should I care about this bill?”. The fact that you are reading these words is a strong indicator that you are using a computer (hey, someone could have printed this out for you, or copied it longhand if they were really, really bored). That is all the information I need to say unreservedly that you should care about Bill C-61. In fact, that is all the information I need to say unreservedly that you should oppose Bill C-61!
“...And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him: it being to be understood as a declaration of design upon his life...”
-John Locke, Two Treatises on Government
By lobbying for (or drafting, if you ask the more cynical pundits) legislation such as Bill C-61, the content cartels that have come to dominate media are placing themselves into a state of war with each and every citizen. In having DRM and contracts supercede Canadian law, Bill C-61 is effectively giving large, established industries total control over your legal rights to use media. And what of “fair use” or “fair dealing”? Since you are ONLY allowed to use copyright work for non-infringing purposes UNLESS you would have to circumvent a “digital lock” (DRM by any other name) in order to get your hands on the content. There are some narrow exceptions to this rule, for educational and research purposes, but these will not help the average consumer, or creator. You have NO fair-dealing rights unless the publisher wants you to have it. In other words, fair-dealing is no longer a right, it is a privilege. Any so-called “rights” you are given under C-61 (and there are a few) are not rights at all, but priviliges. The operative word here is “privilege”: in a world of legally-protected “digital locks”, true freedom of speech and creativity will belong only to the privileged. You're probably asking what this has to do with “absolute power”, and so I shall indulge your curiosity. Everything you know is derived from something you read, watched, saw, heard, and so on (epistemologists STAY OUT OF THIS ONE, WE'LL HAVE THE DEBATE LATER!). How you relate to what you know is determined in a similar fashion. You read about, talk about, and interpret data. Most of what you think comes from what we call culture, be it science, literary criticism, novels, music, film, or a blog. While there is always an element of personal experience and reflection, what you think is derived at least in part from what other people think, and have recorded for you to reflect on. Bill C-61 is part of a strategy by the “dinosaur” content providers to dominate culture completely. Their power used to be held in check by limited copyright terms (so that no one publisher could censor a work by buying up the copyright and never publishing it, for example), and what is called “fair dealing” or “fair use”. By extending copyright terms, by eliminating fair use rights through legally-entrenched DRM, by seeking out and suing scapegoat after scapegoat, they seek to control you by law, by code, and by fear*. They seek to control the horizontal and the vertical; they hope to control everything you see and hear. If they are allowed to succeed in this, they will gain control over what you think, or at the very least how you think. Thought creates action (again, philosophers, that argument is for another day), and therefore it is not unreasonable to say that corporate control of culture is a form of absolute authority. Therefore, the content providers and anyone else pushing Bill C-61 have entered into a state of war with you, and every other Canadian Citizen.
*If you want to read more about this, I suggest Free Copyright, by Lawrence Lessig, in which this issue is explored in detail.
Of course, the Lockean defense of my perceived right to exercize lethal force should recording industry execs ever knock on my door is hampered by the double-edged sword that is Lockean philosophy. While no fan of arbitrary authority, Locke was an avowed lover of personal property, which is exactly what the content cartel says it's protecting from “pirates”. This is a useful tactic for the industry and its lobbyists; who doesn't want to brand their opponent a “scurvy dog” after all? The most important thing that you or I can do when we talk about this issue is reveal to the uninitiated that this is not a black-and-white debate, that there is a middle ground in this so-called “war”. The goal of the moderates – our goal – is to satisfy the need to protect content from piracy without running roughshod over the rights of consumers, and fellow creators. The current Bill C-61 DOES NOT accomplish this goal. Here are some examples of how it unfairly limits the rights of consumers:
If you have media files on your hard drive, it will be illegal to make backup copies of your hard drive for the purposes of data security (Bill C-61 only allows only one copy of a media file for each device you own and devices that will be used with them, a backup copy on your PC's external drive, or your Apple Time Machine would be two copies associated with the PC)
While you will be legally allowed to make a backup copy of a commercial DVD, you will be able to do so ONLY if you do not bypass a “digital lock” to do so. Hey, guess what EVERY COMMERCIAL DVD has on it?
You will only be able to TIVO/TV-Tune/Timeshift programming for the purposes of watching it once at a more convenient time. Want to watch that last Battlestar Galactica ep again to see if you missed anything the first time, or want to show it off to your friends tomorrow? Seems you're out of luck!
I am no commercial pirate. In fact, I do actually buy content or go without, I don't pirate stuff just because I don't want to spend money on it. But if Bill C-61 is law, I would be branded a criminal, even though I DO NOT engage in or profit from piracy. I like to have recordings of shows that can watch without having to wait for the DVD box set, which I'll probably buy anyway if I like a series enough to record it and watch it multiple times! I like to have multiple copies of files sometimes, because I dual-boot Windows and Linux, and while I can read the Windows drive when I'm in Linux, the reverse is not true. I haven't ever actually ripped a DVD, but I do enjoy having the option open to me. I am not a pirate, but I will lose the right to manage my content in a non-infringing manner if the Bill passes. So will you. In addition to the Wikipedia links for background, Free Culture, and the Bill itself, you may want to avail yourself of more information. Here are some starting points to get you on your way.
Free Your Culture, Free Your Mind
Having established that bill C-61 does not represent in any way the ideal relationship between creators and consumers, I suppose the onus is now on me to say what would constitute such an arrangement. My answer can now be seen perched above even the title of my blog: Creative Commons is – at least for me – the best solution to the problem. If you haven't checked out my license agreement out of curiousity already, go do it now. That being said, I understand that as a voluntary initiative, Creative Commons is only half a solution. You can – and should – be a part of that half, but don't lose sight of larger goals.
The key elements of a whole solution in my view are not terribly different. What I think is necessary is to retain the flexible nature of CC, and to make “some rights reserved” the legal default for any work not registered as being otherwise (those with strong commercial interests, or a desire for more complete control over their work would be allowed to reserve all rights for a nominal fee. A copyright registry as proposed by Lawrence Lessig is also a brilliant way to simplify the process of getting permissions for work still under copyright). I think that authors should be given the right to determine the terms under which their work will be sold, which is a right that content providers or any other sort of middleman should have. Yes, it is their investment in the artist that they are protecting, but if a particularly cautious label doesn't want to publish the work of an artist whose terms are particularly liberal, I'm sure that there would be many like-minded publishers ready and willing to take that artist onboard. I think that in any system, people should not buy media that comes with terms they find objectionable. Under Bill C-61's proposed legislation, this would be a very large amount of media, and should the bill be passed into law, then we should not grumble, we should not pirate, and above all we should not buy. Let the market show the industry that unfair terms will not be tolerated, or else it is not they, but we who are to blame for rolling over and allowing restrictions to be placed on our freedoms.
I hereby open the floor to guest posters and reader submissions. Over the next while, I will augment this post with different views (some of them my own) on what an “ideal copyright system” would be, and relevant explorations of the topic of copyright at large. I've already contacted some of you about guest posts, but anyone I know is immediately welcome to send me one. Submissions from anyone who doesn't know me go to Loud(dot)Blog(at)gmail(dot)com. Any editing I do will be for spelling, grammar, and clarity if absolutely need be.
Final Notes: read Little Brother, a Creative Commons-licensed book by Cory Doctorow. So far it is a pretty good read. Thanks go to Gold for the tip. Join the facebook group “Fair Copyright For Canada” as well as your local chapter. Attend a meeting or two, offer to meet with your MP. This legislation will affect you, so I suggest you try to affect it in return.
-LOUD!
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Angry essay about [profanity redacted]s who violate human rights #147
I have been meaning to speak out on this topic for some time, but the right words to begin with have been predictably elusive. My original instinct was to go on the offensive, and say that Evil had been allowed to fester in Texas. That struck me as too much like a cheap shot. I refer of course to the Texas Supreme Court decision to allow the 400+ children of the Fundamentalist ranch-dwellers to return to their homes, after they can be matched to their genetic parents. After some consideration, I cannot say whether I should be praising the court, or lashing out against it. On the one hand, they have hammered home an important point: don't start something that you don't know you can win when an important verdict is on the line. This is why ostensibly premeditating murderers get put away on second-degree charges when the evidence is less than absolute: it's better to nail someone for ANY kind of murder than to allow a grain of doubt to free them. Similarly, the child services of Texas should have spent time collecting evidence somehow before they went and took more than four hundred children away from their families! The return of the children may not be unconditional (CNN – where most of my information on this case has trickled in from, it being on TV all day at work – did mention some kind of classes where the parents will be told how it is NOT OK to marry underage girls to old letcherous humps. Sounds a bit too much like a slap on the wrist to me, though), but what the court and the child services have failed to do is create a positive precedent in this case, which is the real harm being done to women and children in this case.
Judges need to wake up, and look at the calendar; the '60s were HOW long ago? Going on 50 years now, and does no one have the balls to look religious zealotry in the eye and hand down an imposingly long court verdict about how “freedom of religion” is not an adequate defence for perpetuating the kind of discrimination we now abhor? The kind of discrimination that we have banned in the same kind of documents from which they derive their right to practice it (oh, the irony!)? Clearly any sort of resolution to that effect would be a bombshell which could threaten the kind of infighting usually reserved for places like Iraq or Pre-Enlightenment Europe, and people will thusly avoid it like the plague, or worse, Canadian Constitutional debate. I find this a weak excuse, because women – religious or not – should be equally up in arms about the fact that it's not illegal to run a misogynist religious community that teaches women that the path to heaven is through submission to their husband. For those of you who are counting, the population of Women is much larger than the population of spooky backwards cultists, so even if they're well armed cultists, it's pretty easy to say who would win in a fight. A pause, now, for comments: Female readers, I would like to know where you stand; are religious freedoms and the separation of Church and State too valuable to risk on a secularist-feminist push against this bastion of male bigotry? Male readers, will you stand up and be counted alongside the women should they decide that they will fight for equality and fairness in this matter? Religious reader (the lack of pluralisation is not a typo), I expect that your church is probably not the kind that bars women from spiritual office if you're reading this blog, so ummm...what is it with all the churches that don't?
I think that at the very least it should at least be illegal to implement the kind of gender inequality seen in some religions when children are involved. A feminist article I read while researching an essay for Political Science proposed that adult consent be required for any religion which practiced forms of discrimination not permissable in society at large. There are some questions as to how such a policy could be implemented, but I think it is the only fair way to reconcile the interests of all involved. The problem is that those questions are not small. Item one is how one proposes to separate a child's experience of family life from his or her sense of normality. A child brought up in a two-parent heterosexual family will have a different idea of family arrangements than one in a three-parent polygamous homosexual household, despite the fact that they will both in all likelihood be well-adjusted people when they grow up. Of course, this is ok because perfect and total equality is never going to be possible or desireable, so different reference points is not too much of a problem. What is a problem is asking parents to adopt some kind of neutral ideology in their words and actions in the home. Ideological neutrality is impossible to say the least, and expecting potentially fanatical parents (egalitarian or discriminatory, religious or secular, capitalist or communist, etc) to be able to teach an arbitrary set of “fair” values to their children which may run counter to their own deeply-held ideals is farcial. Hell, even comparative moderates can barely be expected to do such. If, as my friends say, you believe that your ideal of a virtuous life is the only way to spare a person from eternal damnation (or in the case of rational atheists, nothing, but you don't want them to be a jackass so you'll lecture them anyway) then you have an obligation to try and convince everyone you can that you are right, thereby saving them. Personally, I think that argument is logically sound but really just an excuse for people who make David Warren look like a fluffy bunny to have a sound ethical excuse for their vitriolic sermons. There is just no way to make an unbiased child. There is no way one would want an unbiased child, but since an agreed-upon baseline bias would be arbitrary anyhow, the legitimacy of such a policy would be challenged on all fronts because the level of indoctrination would be no less than if they were at St. Whitesupremacist's condoms-are-the-devil bible camp for toddlers...which is utter bullshit because while not everyone will agree on what neutrality is, the lunatic fringe's claim to be just as legitimate as the presently accepted liberal-democratic values is the same kind of garbage argument those sort of people use to try and stall action on global climate change or evolution (“but, but there's DEBATE on these issues, three scientists on the payroll of Exxon-Mobil still say that global warming isn't real...but they wish to remind you that the oil – which we can keep burning with impunity of course - was put there by God and is NOT the result of millions of years of accrued biomass under extreme pressure, because the world is only 4000 years old and the fossil record is the Devil's recruitment poster for you so-called 'free-thinkers'!”).
I've gone a little off-topic, it would seem. Anyhow, before you accuse me of some anti-polygamy bias, let me point out that I am absolutely in favour of people living and loving however the fuck they want. That being said, if you allow polygamy, you have to also allow polyandry, and pretty much every other kind of marriage arrangement there is. Polygamy in the sense that I oppose it now is a tool by which a small bunch of old, letcherous humps are getting to have lots of sex (supposedly not for pleasure, but what they really mean is not for the woman's pleasure, the dirtbags) and lots of offspring, presumably to ensure the requisite genetic diversity so that they and their descendents can carry on the cycle of abuse until the natural end of humanity as a species. So yeah, note to Texas child services: way to blow your chance to do some crushing damage to these lunatic child molesters! Better luck next time.
-Loud...
...Who, upon review of this post wishes to avoid potential legal trouble by saying that this should not be taken as anything more than an emotional plea for women, youth, and the courts to stand up for the rights which we are guaranteed, and yet is denied to our brethren even within our own free societies. Do not mistake this for hatred, or incitement to hate, unless you are referring to a hatred of unjust authority, also known as “The Man”. I do fully support and encourage hatred of “The Man”, in all his forms!
