Some of my favourite games of all time are Portal and Assassins Creed. But the characters in them are approached very differently.
In the Portal series you play a woman named Chell. She's adopted. And that's about all you know of her. In a way she is very much a place filler. The entire game is played from a first person's perspective, and no other characters in the games refer to you by name. In the first portal game there's very little at all, a little more information is given in the second, but she is a silent protagonist in the story.
In the Assassins Creed series you play as 3 characters in total, Desmond Miles, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad and Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Each have extensively detailed backgrounds, history's, and connections to the world around them.
In thinking about this I thought Assassins Creed was very simple to approach. They are characters.
But then I stopped. So what about when I was controlling them? What about when I was making them climb up buildings, and making them leap of strangely placed wooden beams in to conveniently located hay stacks?
The other option is that they are an Avatar. The idea of an Avatar is it is someone you embody to walk around. You become the character in the strange land.
Chell would fall solidly in to this category, as there are very few points in both games where she does anything without being made too, and she never talks at all.
But all three characters in the Assassins Creed games have cut scenes, where they become the character again. Indeed all 4 assassins Creed games have been transferred in to book form, so there is a very set structure to what they do. There are several forms of media the game has taken, including short movies, and comics on top of the books and games.
If there is a state between character and avatar, I believe that's where the assassins lie. Neither one or the other, but a state where they are both.
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Web Communities Article Four: Casual and Core Gamers
Looking through my lecture notes, and I notice a couple of pages dedicated to the differences between hardcore and casual gamers. And I have a big disagreement with that.
First, it says hardcore gamers prefer darker story lines, spending lots of time in the game play, having played lots of games before, with controls that are harder to master. While casual gamers prefer lighter storylines, having played few games, prefer easier controls, and aren't willing to invest much time in to the game.
If one can sit at the computer, playing one game for hour's at a time, it would fall in to the hardcore factor of gaming. Correct?
What if that game was solitaire?
On the other hand, spending maybe 30 minutes while waiting for something dipping in to a game would be considered casual. What if the game was World of Warcraft?
Casual and Hardcore gaming is a concept I struggle to wrap my head around.
My housemate can spend her entire day playing the Sims, which is the same amount of time my brother can spend on Skyrim. While I can spend maybe 30 minutes to an hour jumping around on Assassins Creed while I've got nothing better to do, which many people can kill playing Angry Birds.
Which is why I put it to you, there is no such thing as a casual game, only casual game play. Playing with intensity makes it a hard core game experience, while impulsively playing another makes it casual.
So I put it forward, there is no such thing as casual games, or gamers, only casual gameing. While much of what we consider to be "casual games" can be easy to master, easy to pick up and put down, casual is a style of game play that is not reflective of the way they can, and often are, played.
The Jimquisition is something that usually gets on my nerves, a lot, but despite the irritating start, he makes some very good points in this.
Also on the same website there's this article.
In another article, an interview Laurent Fischer, Nintendo's European senior marketing director says "For me, you are a gamer or non-gamer, I think most of you know that you can spend ten or twenty hours on an internet flash game and have not realised. The guy who plays these games regularly - he's a core gamer." He concludes with "There is no casual gaming. There is just a different way to play."
First, it says hardcore gamers prefer darker story lines, spending lots of time in the game play, having played lots of games before, with controls that are harder to master. While casual gamers prefer lighter storylines, having played few games, prefer easier controls, and aren't willing to invest much time in to the game.
If one can sit at the computer, playing one game for hour's at a time, it would fall in to the hardcore factor of gaming. Correct?
What if that game was solitaire?
On the other hand, spending maybe 30 minutes while waiting for something dipping in to a game would be considered casual. What if the game was World of Warcraft?
Casual and Hardcore gaming is a concept I struggle to wrap my head around.
My housemate can spend her entire day playing the Sims, which is the same amount of time my brother can spend on Skyrim. While I can spend maybe 30 minutes to an hour jumping around on Assassins Creed while I've got nothing better to do, which many people can kill playing Angry Birds.
Which is why I put it to you, there is no such thing as a casual game, only casual game play. Playing with intensity makes it a hard core game experience, while impulsively playing another makes it casual.
So I put it forward, there is no such thing as casual games, or gamers, only casual gameing. While much of what we consider to be "casual games" can be easy to master, easy to pick up and put down, casual is a style of game play that is not reflective of the way they can, and often are, played.
The Jimquisition is something that usually gets on my nerves, a lot, but despite the irritating start, he makes some very good points in this.
Also on the same website there's this article.
In another article, an interview Laurent Fischer, Nintendo's European senior marketing director says "For me, you are a gamer or non-gamer, I think most of you know that you can spend ten or twenty hours on an internet flash game and have not realised. The guy who plays these games regularly - he's a core gamer." He concludes with "There is no casual gaming. There is just a different way to play."
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Web Communities Article Three: Gamification
So while looking through my notes looking for another 3 things to blog about, I locate the lecture on Ludology, and Game play. I look down through the information, from the concept of the magic circle, to Simulation vs representation, paidia to ludus, Agon, Alea, Mimicry and Ilinex, all of which are words that set my spell check completely crazy, and my mind wanders from there.
But for those of you who read all that, and eyes glazed over, lets start from the beguining.
There are two ways to approach games. One is naratology, which is study of the narrative. Things like the story line, characters, and surroundings. The second is ludology, which is the study of play.
The magic circle is the idea that there is a special place where you go to play the games. Things like you play football on the football pitch, golf on a golf course exetera.
Paidia is a form of play, specifically free form. The kind of play where there are no rules.
Ludus is ruled play. There are rules.
Agon is competitive play, such as competitions, Alea is chance play, like with dice, mimicry is imagination, pretend, ilinex is the seek of sensation in play, like spinning till you get dizzy, or swooshing down a mountain with planks of wood strapped to your feet (but ski's are made of fiber glass these days aren't they?)
My mind wandered in two directions after this. The first was The difference between a hard core and a casual gamer. However, the second point my brain walked down was gamification.
Gamification is the application of the principles of play to the real world.
Now, games are nothing new. The ancient Greek gods played dice, it's how they decided who ran the heavens, earth and hell, but we live in a world that's so full of sensation, we're constantly engaged by something, everywhere, all the time, and when we’re not, we're bored very very quickly. And the places we're not engaged? In school, in work. In real life. How many kids would rather be playing angry birds under the table than reading Wuthering Heights?
Actualy, 5 years on from when I last got told to read wuthering heights, and I'd rather be watching paint dry than reading that book.
Beside the point. While the advancement of the world around us constantly bombarding us with noise and distraction, our education system is stuck somewhere in the 1800's.
That's a video that goes on about the difficulties with education at the moment.
So what would happen if we incorporated games in to education? They have done tests on this.
It's about motivating the kids. Counting up instead of down. I remember this happening to me. I entered highschool convinced that I could get A's in everything I did if I worked hard enough. 3 years later of being told my expected grade was a D, and if I was very lucky and worked very hard I'd get a C, I believed them. I stopped trying as hard, I stopped expecting to do well.
We were all seporated by the ability expected of us. And it was across the board, the expected grade was the same for everything, and then you were seporated by that expectation. People at the bottom don't expect to do better, and actually, the teachers don't expect them to do better either.
But in games, you are involved in an environment, a magic circle if you will, where you not only expect to get better, get more XP points, you want too. It's the compulsion that keeps you playing bejewled longer than you should, or keeps you up later than you should be when romeing through Skyrim. The "just one more level" factor. The compulsion that keeps you playing angry birds. Flick the bird, kill the pigs.
It a state of immersion, and flow. "In this state of consciousness, people often experience intense concentration and feelings of enjoyment, coupled with peak performance." (Trevor van Gorp, 2008)
It's a concept explained first by a man named Csikszentmihalyi. He made this chart.
(Found here.)
In the article by Trevor van Gorp that I read, he goes on to explain this.
Attention and Flow
The elements associated with the flow state can be classified into the three areas; 1. Causes of Flow 2. Characteristics of Flow 3. Consequences of Flow (Novak, Hoffman and Yung, 1999).
1. Causes of Flow
• A clear goal
• Immediate feedback on the success of attempts to reach that goal
• A challenge you’re confident you have the skills to handle
2. Characteristics of Flow
• Total concentration and focused attention
• A sense of control over interactions
• Openness to new things
• Increased exploratory behavior
• Increased learning
• Positive feelings
3. Consequences of Flow
• Loss of consciousness of self
• Distortions in the perception of time
• Activity is perceived as intrinsically rewarding
What if you could apply that state of immersion and flow to education? Maybe not just education, but the work place? Or in a hospital? Things in real life. It could improve things so much
I can't embed this video, as I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have an option. But check out Gameifying Education, by Extra Credits, and it explains all this wonderfully, or even just their Gamification video.
It's the same kind of thing that keeps you following links on Wikipedia for hours after all. And that's learning, isn't it?
But for those of you who read all that, and eyes glazed over, lets start from the beguining.
There are two ways to approach games. One is naratology, which is study of the narrative. Things like the story line, characters, and surroundings. The second is ludology, which is the study of play.
The magic circle is the idea that there is a special place where you go to play the games. Things like you play football on the football pitch, golf on a golf course exetera.
Paidia is a form of play, specifically free form. The kind of play where there are no rules.
Ludus is ruled play. There are rules.
Agon is competitive play, such as competitions, Alea is chance play, like with dice, mimicry is imagination, pretend, ilinex is the seek of sensation in play, like spinning till you get dizzy, or swooshing down a mountain with planks of wood strapped to your feet (but ski's are made of fiber glass these days aren't they?)
My mind wandered in two directions after this. The first was The difference between a hard core and a casual gamer. However, the second point my brain walked down was gamification.
Gamification is the application of the principles of play to the real world.
Now, games are nothing new. The ancient Greek gods played dice, it's how they decided who ran the heavens, earth and hell, but we live in a world that's so full of sensation, we're constantly engaged by something, everywhere, all the time, and when we’re not, we're bored very very quickly. And the places we're not engaged? In school, in work. In real life. How many kids would rather be playing angry birds under the table than reading Wuthering Heights?
Actualy, 5 years on from when I last got told to read wuthering heights, and I'd rather be watching paint dry than reading that book.
Beside the point. While the advancement of the world around us constantly bombarding us with noise and distraction, our education system is stuck somewhere in the 1800's.
That's a video that goes on about the difficulties with education at the moment.
So what would happen if we incorporated games in to education? They have done tests on this.
It's about motivating the kids. Counting up instead of down. I remember this happening to me. I entered highschool convinced that I could get A's in everything I did if I worked hard enough. 3 years later of being told my expected grade was a D, and if I was very lucky and worked very hard I'd get a C, I believed them. I stopped trying as hard, I stopped expecting to do well.
We were all seporated by the ability expected of us. And it was across the board, the expected grade was the same for everything, and then you were seporated by that expectation. People at the bottom don't expect to do better, and actually, the teachers don't expect them to do better either.
But in games, you are involved in an environment, a magic circle if you will, where you not only expect to get better, get more XP points, you want too. It's the compulsion that keeps you playing bejewled longer than you should, or keeps you up later than you should be when romeing through Skyrim. The "just one more level" factor. The compulsion that keeps you playing angry birds. Flick the bird, kill the pigs.
It a state of immersion, and flow. "In this state of consciousness, people often experience intense concentration and feelings of enjoyment, coupled with peak performance." (Trevor van Gorp, 2008)
It's a concept explained first by a man named Csikszentmihalyi. He made this chart.
(Found here.)
In the article by Trevor van Gorp that I read, he goes on to explain this.
Attention and Flow
The elements associated with the flow state can be classified into the three areas; 1. Causes of Flow 2. Characteristics of Flow 3. Consequences of Flow (Novak, Hoffman and Yung, 1999).
1. Causes of Flow
• A clear goal
• Immediate feedback on the success of attempts to reach that goal
• A challenge you’re confident you have the skills to handle
2. Characteristics of Flow
• Total concentration and focused attention
• A sense of control over interactions
• Openness to new things
• Increased exploratory behavior
• Increased learning
• Positive feelings
3. Consequences of Flow
• Loss of consciousness of self
• Distortions in the perception of time
• Activity is perceived as intrinsically rewarding
What if you could apply that state of immersion and flow to education? Maybe not just education, but the work place? Or in a hospital? Things in real life. It could improve things so much
I can't embed this video, as I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have an option. But check out Gameifying Education, by Extra Credits, and it explains all this wonderfully, or even just their Gamification video.
It's the same kind of thing that keeps you following links on Wikipedia for hours after all. And that's learning, isn't it?
Web Communities Article Two: A Medium of Conveniance
What do the revolutions in the middle east, and the riots in London have in common? They’re both products of a convenient medium, and a new way of thinking.
The instant communication of information, from point A to point B is something that’s been with us for years now, but it’s exactly that reason that is’ so important. As technology advances forward, we start taking a certain level of it for granted. Things like the internet, things like facebook, and things like mobile phones.
I can be sitting in my room communicating with people on the other side of the planet, back and forth, instantly, and I think nothing of it.
I have a cousin who lives in Australia, and a few months ago her sister was visiting. Her sister posted on facebook that my Australian bound cousin had gotten engaged that day.
I live in the south of England, my mother, the sister of my cousin’s mother, lives in the north of the country. So I texted her, informing her. And she already knew, as she’d been informed not a minute earlier by her sister.
And not a single person thought anything of the medium it was portrayed through. The information was the important thing. The medium was convenient, but irrelevant.
Take a different piece of information, and a different group of people, in a different setting. Person at point A posts something to facebook. Person at point B responds, maybe with communication, maybe with action. But the information is the cause; the medium is just a convenience.
What if that information was about rioting? In London, or Tripoli? That instantly shared information can then be acted on by everyone else who has access to that page, to that information, to that single post from one mobile phone in a crowd. Reinforcements can be sent, or people can decide they want to be involved, and move. Meet me here. Go do this. This place is open. Little points of communication that can be acted on instantly, portrayed through a medium that we no longer see so much as expect.
I once had a discussion with a friend about the power of thought.
Thinking is dangerous. Thinking gives you ideas. Ideas bring action. Action brings consequences. Are you will to be responsible for the consequences of those thoughts?
“What matters is not technical capital. It’s social capital. Things don’t get socially interesting, until they get technologically boring.” Clay Shirky, 2009.
This guy goes in to deeper detail about it all.
Facebook, social media, is an outlet for those thoughts. People often say they don’t see the point in updating the status, or why other people do it. Why do they want to know? And indeed, why do we? But we do. We glean information, process it, and pass it on to be reprocessed. And now it’s not so much that we suddenly have access to ways and means of sharing those little thoughts, or instant ways of collecting little sparks of conscious. It’s that we stopped seeing it’s happening. We expect it to happen. We expect to have access to this mine of humanity, of tweets and updates. The medium no longer matters, so we no longer see it. We see what it contains.
The instant communication of information, from point A to point B is something that’s been with us for years now, but it’s exactly that reason that is’ so important. As technology advances forward, we start taking a certain level of it for granted. Things like the internet, things like facebook, and things like mobile phones.
I can be sitting in my room communicating with people on the other side of the planet, back and forth, instantly, and I think nothing of it.
I have a cousin who lives in Australia, and a few months ago her sister was visiting. Her sister posted on facebook that my Australian bound cousin had gotten engaged that day.
I live in the south of England, my mother, the sister of my cousin’s mother, lives in the north of the country. So I texted her, informing her. And she already knew, as she’d been informed not a minute earlier by her sister.
And not a single person thought anything of the medium it was portrayed through. The information was the important thing. The medium was convenient, but irrelevant.
Take a different piece of information, and a different group of people, in a different setting. Person at point A posts something to facebook. Person at point B responds, maybe with communication, maybe with action. But the information is the cause; the medium is just a convenience.
What if that information was about rioting? In London, or Tripoli? That instantly shared information can then be acted on by everyone else who has access to that page, to that information, to that single post from one mobile phone in a crowd. Reinforcements can be sent, or people can decide they want to be involved, and move. Meet me here. Go do this. This place is open. Little points of communication that can be acted on instantly, portrayed through a medium that we no longer see so much as expect.
I once had a discussion with a friend about the power of thought.
Thinking is dangerous. Thinking gives you ideas. Ideas bring action. Action brings consequences. Are you will to be responsible for the consequences of those thoughts?
“What matters is not technical capital. It’s social capital. Things don’t get socially interesting, until they get technologically boring.” Clay Shirky, 2009.
This guy goes in to deeper detail about it all.
Facebook, social media, is an outlet for those thoughts. People often say they don’t see the point in updating the status, or why other people do it. Why do they want to know? And indeed, why do we? But we do. We glean information, process it, and pass it on to be reprocessed. And now it’s not so much that we suddenly have access to ways and means of sharing those little thoughts, or instant ways of collecting little sparks of conscious. It’s that we stopped seeing it’s happening. We expect it to happen. We expect to have access to this mine of humanity, of tweets and updates. The medium no longer matters, so we no longer see it. We see what it contains.
Web Communities Article One: SOPA
SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, introduced to the US on the 26th of October, 2011, is one of two acts introduced to the US in an attempt to combat online Copyright infringement. The other is PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, introduced back on the 26th of May, 2011.
The act allows anyone who feels their copyright has been infringed to “to seek a court order against” those who infringed it. It “sets forth an additional two-step process that allows an intellectual property right holder harmed by a U.S.-directed site dedicated to infringement, or a site promoted or used for infringement under certain circumstances, to first provide a written notification identifying the site to related payment network providers and Internet advertising services requiring such entities to forward the notification and suspend their services to such an identified site unless the site's owner, operator, or domain name registrant, upon receiving the forwarded notification, provides a counter notification explaining that it is not dedicated to engaging in specified violations.”
The original act’s aim was to give the right to anyone who thought their copyright had been infringed the ability to take out a court order against the website, but it has since been changed in an attempt to quell the protests that have been brought up over the act.
“In addition to going after websites allegedly directly involved in copyright infringement, a proposal in SOPA will allow the government to target sites that simply provide information that could help users get around the bills’ censorship mechanisms.”(Trevor Timm, 2012)
IT would be very easy to go in to the conspirasy’s behind everything, the theory’s, and resons for why SOPA and PIPA are coming to pass, but generally, it’s how the US has run it’s country for hundreds of years. Those with money pay those with the power to make the rules, to make the rules that sute those with the money. A cycle that is America.
Copyright law was created to protect the rights of authers when the printing press was first created, and it became possible to produce books en mass, quickly, and cheaply. “It is estimated that before Gutenberg’s printing press the number of books in all of Europe numbered in the thousands, but that within 50 years, that number approached ten million.”(2005) The Statute of Anne was passed in England in 1710, which was an “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.” (Anno Octavo, 1710)
The bill started out with
“May it please Your Majesty, that it may be En-
acted, and be it Enacted by the Queens most Excellent Majesty,
by and with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, and Commons in this present Parliament Assembled,
and by the Authority of the same, That from and after the
Tenth Day of April, One thousand seven hundred and ten, the
Author of any Book or Books already Printed, who hath not
Transferred to any other the Copy or Copies of such Book or
Books, Share or Shares thereof, or the Bookseller or Book-
Book or Books, in order to Print or Reprint the same, shall
have the sole Right and Liberty of Printing such Book and
Books for the Term of One and twenty Years”
When the work reached the end of its term, it fell in to the public domain, giving right for anyone to use and reuse and abuse the content to their hearts content, and giving way to the people who came after to build upon it.
With the development of time copyright is now considerably longer, lasting up to death, and after. Each country has there own version of copyright law, but it is American Copyright law that has brought us SOPA and PIPA. And with most things American they’re not always willing to keep it to their own shores.
Richard O’Dwyer’s is a British 23 year old student, who ran a website called TV Shack which listed links to websites where you could watch pirated content, and he faces extradition to the US for breaking US copyright law. A man from the UK, who broke US law while in the UK faces being sent to the US to face trial.
Now I personally hold very strong views on copyright and piracy. I don’t think piracy makes you clever, I personally believe it makes you an ass hole. When you download the latest film, or TV shows, I think its daylight robbery, as if you’ve ever watched the credits at the end of the film, and seen the names rolling past, every single one of those people there needs to be paid for their work. They need to be paid for every day of their 6 month’s spent on that film. Yes, 6 months, as you only get on the credits if you spend 6 months or more working on the project. There are more people who aren’t on the credits who need paying for their less than 6 months work on the film. The media does not deal in tens, or twenties. They deal in millions. They deal in billions. It costs huge quantities of money to make a blockbuster, and they need to make the money back, they need to pay the people who make it, so when people steal that work, and think they’re being clever, it really, really, annoys me. They have no perspective of where this money is going. They just want to be entertained for free, because it’s just entertainment isn’t it? It’s just one person downloading one song, because they want it, but don’t want to pay for it.
However, what right does the US have to extend its all encompassing hands in to my country, and steal it’s citizens for breaking the law in a country that that law doesn’t cover? And what’s to stop it from doing it when it comes to SOPA and PIPA?
The declaration of independence of the internet was published back in 1997. The Internet is not a country, nor is it a place to be conquered. It’s a place where the mind rules, and exists, and no matter how much legislation is put in the way, people who want to publish content for free will find a way to do it. The media industries can’t continue to fight the change that the internet brings. SOPA and PIPA won’t work. The only way forward is to find a way to work with that change. If you start demonising your customers they will only demonise the companies in their way. And there are always more people in the way.
America, get your hands off my internet.
Gladly, the White House has issued this statement on the SOPA front.
“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”
Things are due to be decided upon in early February, so we shall see what happens then.
Sources I used, and other places you can read about this stuff.
http://www.historyofcopyright.org/
http://youtu.be/WJIuYgIvKsc
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-3261&tab=summary
http://ammori.org/2011/12/31/sopapipa-copyright-bills-also-target-domestic-sites/
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#/!/response/combating-online-piracy-while-protecting-open-and-innovative-internet
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/hollywood-new-war-on-software-freedom-and-internet-innovation
http://www.booz.com/media/uploads/BoozCo-Impact-US-Internet-Copyright-Regulations-Early-Stage-Investment.pdf
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/how-pipa-and-sopa-violate-white-house-principles-supporting-free-speech
http://www.copyrighthistory.com/anne.html
http://youtu.be/1p-TV4jaCMk
The act allows anyone who feels their copyright has been infringed to “to seek a court order against” those who infringed it. It “sets forth an additional two-step process that allows an intellectual property right holder harmed by a U.S.-directed site dedicated to infringement, or a site promoted or used for infringement under certain circumstances, to first provide a written notification identifying the site to related payment network providers and Internet advertising services requiring such entities to forward the notification and suspend their services to such an identified site unless the site's owner, operator, or domain name registrant, upon receiving the forwarded notification, provides a counter notification explaining that it is not dedicated to engaging in specified violations.”
The original act’s aim was to give the right to anyone who thought their copyright had been infringed the ability to take out a court order against the website, but it has since been changed in an attempt to quell the protests that have been brought up over the act.
“In addition to going after websites allegedly directly involved in copyright infringement, a proposal in SOPA will allow the government to target sites that simply provide information that could help users get around the bills’ censorship mechanisms.”(Trevor Timm, 2012)
IT would be very easy to go in to the conspirasy’s behind everything, the theory’s, and resons for why SOPA and PIPA are coming to pass, but generally, it’s how the US has run it’s country for hundreds of years. Those with money pay those with the power to make the rules, to make the rules that sute those with the money. A cycle that is America.
Copyright law was created to protect the rights of authers when the printing press was first created, and it became possible to produce books en mass, quickly, and cheaply. “It is estimated that before Gutenberg’s printing press the number of books in all of Europe numbered in the thousands, but that within 50 years, that number approached ten million.”(2005) The Statute of Anne was passed in England in 1710, which was an “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.” (Anno Octavo, 1710)
The bill started out with
“May it please Your Majesty, that it may be En-
acted, and be it Enacted by the Queens most Excellent Majesty,
by and with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, and Commons in this present Parliament Assembled,
and by the Authority of the same, That from and after the
Tenth Day of April, One thousand seven hundred and ten, the
Author of any Book or Books already Printed, who hath not
Transferred to any other the Copy or Copies of such Book or
Books, Share or Shares thereof, or the Bookseller or Book-
sellers, Printer or Printers, or other Person or Persons, who
hath or have Purchased or Acquired the Copy or Copies of anyBook or Books, in order to Print or Reprint the same, shall
have the sole Right and Liberty of Printing such Book and
Books for the Term of One and twenty Years”
When the work reached the end of its term, it fell in to the public domain, giving right for anyone to use and reuse and abuse the content to their hearts content, and giving way to the people who came after to build upon it.
With the development of time copyright is now considerably longer, lasting up to death, and after. Each country has there own version of copyright law, but it is American Copyright law that has brought us SOPA and PIPA. And with most things American they’re not always willing to keep it to their own shores.
Richard O’Dwyer’s is a British 23 year old student, who ran a website called TV Shack which listed links to websites where you could watch pirated content, and he faces extradition to the US for breaking US copyright law. A man from the UK, who broke US law while in the UK faces being sent to the US to face trial.
Now I personally hold very strong views on copyright and piracy. I don’t think piracy makes you clever, I personally believe it makes you an ass hole. When you download the latest film, or TV shows, I think its daylight robbery, as if you’ve ever watched the credits at the end of the film, and seen the names rolling past, every single one of those people there needs to be paid for their work. They need to be paid for every day of their 6 month’s spent on that film. Yes, 6 months, as you only get on the credits if you spend 6 months or more working on the project. There are more people who aren’t on the credits who need paying for their less than 6 months work on the film. The media does not deal in tens, or twenties. They deal in millions. They deal in billions. It costs huge quantities of money to make a blockbuster, and they need to make the money back, they need to pay the people who make it, so when people steal that work, and think they’re being clever, it really, really, annoys me. They have no perspective of where this money is going. They just want to be entertained for free, because it’s just entertainment isn’t it? It’s just one person downloading one song, because they want it, but don’t want to pay for it.
However, what right does the US have to extend its all encompassing hands in to my country, and steal it’s citizens for breaking the law in a country that that law doesn’t cover? And what’s to stop it from doing it when it comes to SOPA and PIPA?
The declaration of independence of the internet was published back in 1997. The Internet is not a country, nor is it a place to be conquered. It’s a place where the mind rules, and exists, and no matter how much legislation is put in the way, people who want to publish content for free will find a way to do it. The media industries can’t continue to fight the change that the internet brings. SOPA and PIPA won’t work. The only way forward is to find a way to work with that change. If you start demonising your customers they will only demonise the companies in their way. And there are always more people in the way.
America, get your hands off my internet.
Gladly, the White House has issued this statement on the SOPA front.
“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”
Things are due to be decided upon in early February, so we shall see what happens then.
Sources I used, and other places you can read about this stuff.
http://www.historyofcopyright.org/
http://youtu.be/WJIuYgIvKsc
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-3261&tab=summary
http://ammori.org/2011/12/31/sopapipa-copyright-bills-also-target-domestic-sites/
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#/!/response/combating-online-piracy-while-protecting-open-and-innovative-internet
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/hollywood-new-war-on-software-freedom-and-internet-innovation
http://www.booz.com/media/uploads/BoozCo-Impact-US-Internet-Copyright-Regulations-Early-Stage-Investment.pdf
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/how-pipa-and-sopa-violate-white-house-principles-supporting-free-speech
http://www.copyrighthistory.com/anne.html
http://youtu.be/1p-TV4jaCMk
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