Happy Halloween, folks. In honor of the scariest holiday of the year (in America, anyway), I present to you the Geek-O-Lantern gallery:
The Death Star's winning at the moment. It's a pretty sweet pumpkin, that's for sure.
ABC News (via digg)
Just watch the video. It really is appalling what they're wearing in the elementary schools these days.
As if they've ever not been at it... But I figured I ought to write about this story, since I noticed at least 7 different articles on it in the CNet RSS feed alone. I was about to post all of them for you, but CNet was nice enough to wrap it all up into a single link:
But judging from the amount of CNet coverage, you could say they quite enjoy this story. I don't particularly enjoy discussing the record industry or the movie industry, mainly because I find them detestable in several ways. I also don't particularly enjoy discussing stories of people with lots of money suing people who can only dream of ever having that much. However... I'll do it anyway, because I can never resist ranting about people I don't like. It's a weakness of mine...
So the story goes that a woman in Minnesota got sued by the RIAA for a little over 200,000 USD, and the RIAA won. The RIAA has been doing this for a while now, but hasn't actually been able to take anyone to court until now. When they finally get to court, they win. Long story short, everyone's up in arms about it, and CNet writes about it endlessly.
Now... first on the list is Mr. Chris Israel, a Bush administration spokesman, and U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement. He says that the verdict shows that the U.S. law enforcement system works, and seeing as he doesn't like music pirates much, he will be all for using it over and over again in the future. As a side note, CNet mentions that "...before joining the Bush administration, worked for Time Warner's public policy arm." Make of that what you will. I think it just means he's in with the folks with the money, and the only thing the verdict shows about the U.S. law enforcement system is that you can win in court if you have money.
Next, we have Democratic congressman Rick Boucher. CNet says he's "...one of the Recording Industry Association of America's most ardent foes on copyright legislation." Cool. I like him already, even if he is a Democrat. That's not to say that he's for music piracy, but he thinks the RIAA is being ridiculous. The fines are "excessive," copyright laws are badly written, and all this litigation is completely unnecessary. I must agree with that. Obviously many things need to change, and he's of the opinion that the RIAA must first come to that realization before anything happens. Yes, but... how long will it be before that realization occurs...?
The other articles seem to say that even though the verdict was correct, the fine was too high. I'd tend to agree, though what kind of money would you say is a good amount? Personally, I don't think the RIAA really needs anymore money in its pockets, so I'd go for a number around 2,000 USD, if that. Actually, if I was the judge, I'd throw the case out of court on grounds of current copyright law being too ridiculous to even talk about.
All of this is really beside the point. The CNet article that really interested me is the one that talks about how none of this will stop the illegal downloads. If anything, it will increase them. Everything that the RIAA does rubs real computer users the wrong way. People think they already have too much money, don't make very good music, have stupid marketing campaigns, don't understand and/or are scared of technology... well, that's what I think, at least. Others may share my views as well, and the number of those will probably continue to increase. This will most likely not be the last time I write about the RIAA, unfortunately...