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Whoring for the BSA
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Only in Singapore do you find the government owned media (which is all of them) acting also as the official mouthpiece of an industry special interest group. I found this gem of a piece in TODAYonline.
THEY may find it innocent enough but when users post or share songs or other copyrighted material on their MySpace page or Facebook, they could be engaging in piracy.
And that intro was followed by this delightful quote from Vice-President and Regional Director of the BSA, Jeffrey J Hardee:
Internet service providers have reported that 50 per cent of their traffic arises from illegal file sharing, said BSA’s vice-president and regional director Jeffrey J Hardee. Content providers, obviously, are none too pleased and Mr Hardee said: “The government should take a proactive role in regulating the Internet and making it safe. The Internet has to operate efficiently as a market place.”
So what Mr Hardee is saying is that, when some 11 year old girl posts up a video of her friends, dubbed in with their favourite pop song, on the video pages of Facebook, the government should proactively send in a SWAT team to her home, arrest her whole family and confiscate all their computers and electronic equipment capable of copying electronic data. That Sir, is what we normal people call “fucked up”.
Furthermore, from which orifice did Mr Hardee pull out the figure that 50% of traffic over the internet is from illegal file sharing? Firstly, we know that ISPs are capable of distinguishing whether data sent over their networks are from P2P applications. However, it is not possible for them to know the CONTENT of those data. There is no way to know whether the data is copyrighted content or not, or if they are copyrighted, whether it has been legally obtained.
The most popular and efficient P2P protocol is Bittorrent and the legal uses of Bittorrent far outweigh the illegal. Most open source software are distributed using Bittorrent, such as OpenOffice, and most flavours of Linux. Oh, hang on, BSA is a special interest group comprising owners of PROPRIETARY software. Hmmm… perhaps there is a pattern here?
People who don’t know what they are talking about 2
Thursday, February 7, 2008
There’s this lady here, her name is Christine Ang Cheng Moy. As can be seen from her letter to The Straits Times, apart from being a moron, she also likes people in authority to tell her how she can or cannot think.
Not all kinds of ‘arts and entertainment’ have artistic value. While it is true that an excessively heavy-handed approach towards censorship may stifle creativity and artistic expression, this does not mean that there should be no censorship or licensing at all.
In fact, what astounds me is that it appears that this intellectually challenged lady might not have watched the supposedly offending performance, which can be easily found on Youtube. She says:
These foreigners leverage a small select group of disgruntled individuals who masquerade their grouses as views of the average Singaporean. Contrary to their misrepresentation, their values and opinions are not widely held and remain controversial even in their respective countries.
Er… ok lady. If you’ve watched the video and your conclusion is that it shows the above comment, then clearly you need to up your medication and bring forward your next appointment with the shrink. If you’ve not watched the video, then I have no idea what you’re pulling out of your arse with that complaints letter to the ST Forum.
I think if there ever was a reason for censorship to exist, it would be to prevent people like you from contributing to the decline of the average Singaporean’s intelligence.
People who don’t know what they are talking about
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
There’s this guy, he’s called George Lim Heng Chye. This person is a frequent letter writer to The Straits Times [google]. He also happens to be a moron, as can be seen from his latest insipid contribution to the effort by the ST Forum to reduce the intelligence of the average Singaporean.
Frankly I am astounded that he is even allowed to have children (4 heterosexual ones, as he proudly proclaims). The question now is how much/many of his genetic defects has he passed on to his poor children.
