I was teaching a class on Isaac Asimov recently and wanted to show a clip from the movie, I, Robot. It's not out on DVD yet. But a helpful student, whom I'll call Jonas (because that isn't his name), offered me a copy, pirated from the Internet.
The practice is widespread on American campuses. The actual downloading is both easy and difficult. Easy because it just means going to a peer-to-peer Web site, such as www.suprnova.org, and using its "bit torrent'' program. Last time I looked there were 10 versions of I, Robot, between 700 and 5,000 megabytes, depending on quality.
Someone, somewhere, has converted them into a format that can be run through a laptop to a TV monitor. Easy peasy.
The difficult part is that you'll need a high-speed connection. Even so, it will take an hour or so for a low-grade "theater rip" (i.e., a copy taken clandestinely in an auditorium) and twice as long for a copy lifted from a "screening version" of the film (pre-released for review, or to privileged insiders).
The site carries a prim war-ning: "You may not use this service to obtain or distribute software or any other copyrighted material that you do not have the right to. Any violators must leave this site immediately. This site is meant for educational purposes only." I can't see much educational purpose in a download of I Piss on Your Corpse, I Spit on Your Grave (a gore-flick on P2P offer from "Sickboy"). But some spoilsports might say the same of I, Robot.
Student consciences are clear. "They can afford it" is a common justification. Why worry about expropriating a few dollars from an industry that gives Michael Ovitz a US$140 million payoff? The Robin Hood defense has, of course, never gone down well with the courts.
More persuasive is the "time is money" line. Students, Jonas argues, apply a calculus. A DVD costs US$22 to buy and US$4 to rent. But renting means two return trips which eat into out-of-class time. If you are paying, as many undergraduates do, US$30K a year for your education, you budget hours as carefully as dollars.
American students (unlike most adults) inhabit an environment that is continuously online. Downloading means simply hitting the keyboard then going off to do something useful. Like homework.
A frequently heard justification is that downloading permits sampling before buying. It's a kind of test drive. It doesn't threaten the store-bought prod-uct: It advertises the "raw'' movie to the discriminating consumer.
The most sophisticated line of defense is that campus piracy drives technological progress. "If it hadn't been for Napster," students ask, "do you think we'd have iPod, or WalMart selling CDs for US$10?"
Jonas argues that far from destroying the film industry, movie downloading has made it raise its game, exploit its visual advantages, and lower its prices.
There are multiplex, mam-moth-screen, stadium-seating cinemas going up in every city center and mall. Box-office is at record levels. Commercially legitimate DVDs come packaged with a whole range of peripherals: Deleted scenes, interviews, background stuff. Blockbuster booms, as do myriad specialist outlets.
Historically, cinema has always been propelled by outlawry. The reason Hollywood is where it is, rather than in New York, is because out in the far west, pioneer movie-makers were beyond the reach of Thomas Edison and his strangling motion-picture camera patents.
In California the studios (like today's students) could violate the law with impunity. Had the industry remained in New York, we'd still be in the kinematograph era: Law-abiding and backward.
The authorities seem, tacitly, to agree with this analysis. The MPAA (which reckons piracy costs it US$3.5 billion a year) directs its wrath at bootleg factories in China. Campus downloaders get little attention. The local LAPD piracy squad has never raided Jonas's college.
The college itself turns a blind(ish) eye to the practice. Students caught using the institutional server are reprimanded and required to read copyright law and take a quiz on the subject (Jonas is very knowledgeable). Fines or expulsion haven't happened, nor do they seem likely.
A revolution is happening in the film industry.
Behind every revolution lies crime. Until after the revolution, that is, when crime is redefined as the people's hammer blow for freedom. Forward with the student downloaders, say I. And thanks, Jonas, for the loan.
RESTAURANT POISONING? Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang at a press conference last night said this was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan An autopsy discovered bongkrekic acid in a specimen collected from a person who died from food poisoning after dining at the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said at a news conference last night. It was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said. The testing conducted by forensic specialists at National Taiwan University was facilitated after a hospital voluntarily offered standard samples it had in stock that are required to test for bongkrekic acid, he said. Wang told the news conference that testing would continue despite
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)