If I’ve more or less given up on the thought of increasing the difference a year or so ago, I’ve been managing to keep the number of personal posts steadily at five less than the non-personal ones for several months now, usually by writing one of each per week and a few times by writing two personal ones in one week and two non-personal ones the next, but this is not the case anymore. Wrote two personal posts last week and simply can’t make up for it now, and I’m quite certain that I won’t do it next week either, so I’m down to only two “slots” for personal posts at any one time, since I’m determined to have them make up less than half of the total number.
Certainly had things to write about this week, but you can see for yourselves that all I managed was basically half of one post. I meant to write that entire list of demands at once, thought I had it pretty well in mind when I put down the basic ideas Wednesday night, after thinking about it for two days, but then everything ground to a halt when it came to actually writing it, as even what little you see there took me two days to manage. The rest of it is, as usual, very clear in my mind but at the same time basically impossible to put into words in any way that’d make much sense for anyone who may happen to be reading.
Still, until last evening I certainly meant to put some effort into a non-personal post today, only resorting to a personal one if I’ll see that it’s getting close to midnight and I’m nowhere near finished. However, I eventually realized that it wasn’t a matter of struggling for hours to get through the first couple of paragraphs but then find that the rest is slowly starting to come together, as it often happens, but the simple fact that I didn’t have it in me. After all, one of the things I mean to post is on the topic of overpopulation and anyone who knows anything about me should know how easily I get carried away when it comes to that, not to mention that this time I already have most of it, albeit in Romanian, but I can’t bring myself to even start writing that…
But this certainly comes as no surprise. The more I tried to write, the harder it got, and this has been going on for years, so reaching the very limit of the rules I set for myself and noticing that I’m about to run out of ways to avoid breaking them was the obvious outcome. I even slowed down with my story since the start of the month, not that I had any pace to speak of before either, but that failed to make what I do still manage to write any easier or any better, the only difference being that there’s less of it.
I just can’t do anything without her, all right? Granted that I’m not sure if I’d manage to do anything if we’d somehow be back together either, because then I’d be focusing on her as much as possible and therefore either lack the time and energy to get much else done or not even care to try anymore, but at that point all these other things wouldn’t exactly matter anymore. But, of course, they already don’t, no matter how much I may try now and then to tell myself that I really want to do one thing or another. What I need and want is to be with her again and for us to be, if not necessarily truly happy, at least completely content with the relationship and with each other, as in not have any significant reasons to be unhappy with how things are going. All of these other things, even the causes I’m really struggling to fight for, they’re all meaningless without that…
It’s been six and a half years! I’ve already been suffering for more than twice as long as the relationship lasted, did all I could think of, or at least what little I was capable of doing, all this time, but all that happened is that now it’s even worse. Not just obviously not considering ever giving me another chance or even talking to me, but also putting me on ignore wherever she could as of a few months ago, hiding or even deleting some of the things I found after her behavior made me start searching far more often and more thoroughly than I had been until then…
I don’t know… Spent the last few minutes holding my head in my hands and going through several other things that I felt like adding here, but there’s no point and they either don’t make all that much sense when put into words or the sense they do make is quite different from what I’d actually be trying to express by writing them. Then again, there should be no need to add anything more, should it? The issue’s the same it’s been for all of these six and a half years and I keep getting worse in every way with each day that passes.
I guess I’d better stop while I still can make some sort of sense at least on personal issues. I mean, this post is already the sort that’s as much a magnet for trolls as it is for people who may mean well but unfortunately find themselves saying things despite clearly lacking the capacity to even understand what it’s all about. So I guess I’d better go and see whether I can fix myself something to eat, since I’m alone again today, though eating, and especially fixing something to eat, constantly made me feel even worse ever since she left. It’s not as bad as getting in bed, when the loneliness is even more overwhelming, if I may use the term, but… Yes, I’d better stop here. Tried to explain and couldn’t find the way to put something that should be perfectly obvious into words.
While the final goal is obviously a resource-based economic model, at which point digital copies will be treated as what they actually are, namely an inexhaustible resource, and therefore made freely available to every single person in the world, there’s a lot of work to do before we can get there, so we need to think of the intermediate steps as well. For the entertainment industry, or at least for the part of it that produces content that can be distributed digitally, the Content Creators’ Association would be such a step, but it’d be too difficult for it to be the first one, so what we need is an intermediate step before the intermediate step, if you will.
While I also have a rough idea about what we should demand from the other components of the digital entertainment industry, this post will focus on the short-term demands from the software industry. This is because, unlike music or movies, software can usually only bring revenue through direct sales and donations, which restricts me from demanding an entirely new business model right away. As such, the list I’m working on is an attempt to make the process fairer for both customers and developers while at the same time giving the industry as a whole time to prepare for the next step, which would be, as I said, the Content Creators’ Association.
Since these demands must take the current situation into account much more, the details must also be much more specific. As a result, the full list is, to some extent, still a work in progress, but the first part, which you’ll find below, deals with availability and pricing, which are the problems that must be tackled first in order to fix the relationship between customers and distributors. The issue of DRM and various other issues having to do with the relationship between developer and customer, and between developer and distributor, will be detailed in the next post in this series.
1) Digital versions of all software that’s not intended to be released for free must be readily available and very easy to purchase in fair conditions worldwide. With the possible exception of the countries and sovereign territories where the products or practices in question are specifically banned:
1.1) There may be no geographical restrictions when purchasing digital versions of software. If such restrictions exist, the products are considered to have been released for free in the countries or territories in question.
1.2) The digital release date for any software product must be the same worldwide. A variation of at most one day may sometimes be allowed, but only if fully justified by time zone differences.
1.3) Any company that sells digital versions of software and accepts payments from more than one country or sovereign territory needs to offer the exact same prices before taxes regardless of the customer’s location. The only allowable exception to this rule is for countries and territories justifiably seen as poor, which may benefit from discounts.
1.4) Customers must be able to pay for software through the method of their choice. To this end, in each country or sovereign territory, the digital version of each software product must be sold by at least one store that accepts:
1.4.1) Direct payments and charging a store account from any type of debit card, credit card and digital wallet known to be in use in the area, as well as through payment order and wire transfer from any bank officially operating in the area.
1.4.2) Payments made by SMS, through any mobile operator officially operating in the area. It is not a requirement to allow direct payments by SMS, but charging a store account must be possible through this method as well. If a minimum amount that may be paid through SMS is specified, it may not be greater than 10 EUR before taxes.
1.4.3) The use of at least one type of prepaid card, whether issued by the store itself or by a third party, which can easily be purchased with cash anywhere in the country or territory in question. If the card may only be used to make purchases from a single store, it is permitted to only accept charging a store account from it, but if it may be used at other stores as well then it must be treated as a debit card, allowing customers to also use it for direct payments. The cheapest such prepaid card available may not cost more than 10 EUR before taxes.
1.5) Any additional fees associated with using any of the payment methods listed at points 1.4.1), 1.4.2) and 1.4.3) must be specified clearly before the payment is finalized and may not exceed 1 EUR for payments of at most 20 EUR and 5% of the value of the payment for those that exceed that amount. If the fees charged by third party operators exceed this limit, the difference must be paid by the shop or the software industry as a whole, not by the customer.
1.6) To fairly reflect the reduced costs of digital distribution, if hard copies of a software product are also being sold, the digital version of that same product must be sold for no more than half the price of the hard copy if the latter costs no more than 20 EUR and for at least 10 EUR less than the hard copy otherwise. This applies to the regular prices for both versions, so clearly labeled sales and promotions are excluded.
1.7) All productivity software products priced at more than 50 EUR must offer separate licenses for non-commercial use without any loss of functionality. Such a license must cost no more than 50 EUR if the license for commercial use costs no more than 100 EUR and no more than half the price of the commercial use license otherwise.
As I said, this is only the first part of the list and I’m quite aware that even it has quite a few loopholes, usually doesn’t list penalties and likely also misses a few other issues related to availability and pricing that need to be covered, so do not hesitate to leave comments if you have anything to add or change. I’m hoping to add the second part next week, but may edit this at a later time as well.
Went to the third protest against ACTA yesterday, but was disappointed by what I found there and eventually left, frozen, a little more than an hour and a half after the start of the protest. Still, it is something for me that I managed to go, not to mention that I also did my best to keep up with the few who were trying to shout and sing, so I did my part and do plan to go again next time, on March 31. Whether I’ll stay or not will depend on how many others show up and what happens, but I’m quite sure that I’ll at least go and have a look.
If you want any details about yesterday, I’ll say that I left just past 4 PM and therefore rushed all the way there, since I thought that I might normally need more than one hour to make it, if I’ll have puddles to go around due to the melting snow. However, I perhaps rushed a little too much, arriving at 4:50, so ten minutes before the announced start time, and finding only three or four others there. As a result, I wandered around for a few more minutes, then sat on a bench and waited until, almost exactly at 5 PM, a few familiar faces arrived, one of them very loudly asking where were all the others and then calling one of the organizers to ask what’s going on.
Things did get somewhat better a bit later, but we peaked at slightly more than 50 people, perhaps 60 at most, around 6 PM, after which the number started dropping, only a little more than 40 being left when I also walked away, slightly past 6:30. Still, while well below the 2000 that attended the first protest and even the 150 that attended the second, 50 or 60 people are still more than the roughly 20 that tended to show up at protests around here before this year, so the worse problem was the lack of involvement, most splitting off in groups of five or so each and simply chatting with each other, few shouting or singing anything. That made it even more awkward for me to be among said few, feeling increasingly out of place as time passed, since saying or doing anything made me stand out so clearly even among what already was a very small group.
In the end, though I was originally thinking of staying until 7 PM, when another protest was supposed to merge with this one, I made my way out almost 30 minutes earlier, as I said, partly because I was too cold and largely because of this lack of involvement. The fact that someone asked me to pick up a sign and stand where I’ll be seen better certainly didn’t help either, and might have been enough to make me leave even without the other issues, but by then I was already getting ready to go and it actually made me stay for a couple of minutes more, so it won’t look like I’m running away immediately after refusing.
If you want some pictures, you have some from the ground and some from above, though I have to specify that there was some mixing of issues even while I was there and, as I already said, another protest was supposed to start in the same place at 7 PM, not to mention the one that’s scheduled to take place there each day after 8 PM, plus that some people from the ongoing protest that takes place across the street from that location were also coming for a “visit” just as I was leaving. As a result, while the pictures taken later may show somewhat more people, they don’t reveal how many people attended this particular protest, but only those of them who stayed among the others.
Yes, I’ve been playing Morrowind again recently. The last save was from May 19, 2008, but I still knew exactly what I was on my way to doing, recalling very clearly that a part of why I gave up on the game at that moment was that I didn’t feel like crossing the map for that particular thing. The other part was that I was fed up with the constant respawns and the fact that, after figuring out exactly what I had to do to level up with full efficiency, I realized that I basically had to choose between that and actually playing the game and I didn’t feel like mindlessly performing repetitive actions for who knows how long.
Well, while I couldn’t tell you exactly why I picked it back up now, especially since I’m currently stuck in five other games and Morrowind was the one I thought I’ll be least likely to pick back up this year, those repetitive actions were, oddly enough, why I kept playing it. They kept me busy while requiring no thinking, allowing me to just use them to sort of suspend any processes inside my mind and therefore delay what clearly seems like another major breakdown until after tomorrow’s protest against ACTA. And now I’m so close to managing that while at the same time almost done with improving my character’s attributes and therefore able to actually restart playing, so it all worked out quite well.
Now I couldn’t tell you what will happen after the protest and the breakdown that is clearly coming and only getting worse because I delayed it for so long, but I’ll probably continue playing it at least for a while. I’m also hoping to get back to writing somewhat more as well, because you see that I haven’t posted anything here in over a week and my story suffered as well, as looking for ways to delay said breakdown meant that I even gave up on the idea of a daily word quota and therefore added even less to it than what little I was pushing myself to add so far.
Yes, this is basically just written because I want to stick to two posts per week and therefore had to post something today, seeing as I certainly won’t be doing anything of the sort tomorrow, considering that I’ll have to put every shred of energy left into attending that protest. I just hope that I’ll somehow manage to stick around there at least for a couple of hours, though the recent negative developments, including one that could be said to be directly related to this, certainly make it even more difficult than it would normally be.
One way or another, you’ll be getting another post on Sunday. If I’ll still be able to, I’ll tell you how the protest went and perhaps go into more detail about my week, but at this point is seems quite likely to simply be a brief note mentioning that I’m having this breakdown that I’m trying to delay until then. Either way, it almost certainly will be a personal post, so I’ll once again need to make up for it by writing two non-personal ones, most preferably next week.
February is over and it’s time for Black March to begin! Let’s show these international corporations that try to spy on and control our behavior in order to preserve a rotten and outdated copyright system that we can live without them, but they can’t continue to exist without us! Let’s show them that the more they try to force their will upon us, the more we will fight back and the worse off they’ll be! Let’s show them that the more money they try to make, the more they’ll actually lose!
Remember: The protest’s aim is to prove to these corporations that we can survive without them, so this is not a simple call not to legally purchase any content that such an international corporation holds the rights to, but one to completely avoid obtaining any such content for the entire month of March. Yes, this means that “pirating” any such content needs to be equally avoided, because this is the only way to show them that we don’t actually need them, so don’t start any file-sharing application unless you’re certain that all the content that will be transferred will be legitimate, don’t visit any “pirate” sites, don’t even watch any copyrighted content on YouTube! Stick to what you already have and wait at least until April to get anything else.
On the other hand, keep in mind that this is not a movement against content creators, and perhaps not even against all distributors, but strictly against those international corporations that try to push through laws like ACTA, SOPA and others like them. So if you have any money to spare this month, if you can afford to do so, you could donate to those who create quality content, be it software, music, books, movies or anything else of the sort, and make it available for free. You could look for and make purchases from authors who make a living by selling their works but at the same time accept that those who can’t afford them or are simply not yet certain enough for a purchase should also be allowed to enjoy them freely. And you could also look for independent content creators who have clearly expressed their opposition to such laws and purchase something from them, perhaps discovering a hidden gem or two while you’re at it.
There is no point in making all pay for the crimes of a few, so keep in mind both parts of this movement. Hurt those who want to hurt us for their own petty interests, but at the same time try to support those who provide enjoyment and entertainment, those who create and share, and still manage to be reasonable about it. See content creators and small, local distributors as being in between us and the large international corporations that are bent on being our enemies, look carefully to figure out which side they support and return the favor, if you are able to do so, to those who are on ours. The only way to win this is if we work together with them, promoting, supporting and defending each other, as an army of Davids against a squad of Goliaths.
