Cav's Place

A week ago, I was saying that I had another post about “piracy” planned. Once again, had to struggle to get myself to write it, but here it is. Don’t expect anything I haven’t said before, as my views on this are obviously not going to change, but there are a few news pieces that have caught my attention in the last month or so and I had to give my two cents on the issue once again, for what it’s worth. I’m also thinking of putting these posts into their own category, though that may be a little difficult as I didn’t quite intend them to be a separate category so far and therefore some of them don’t focus solely on this issue, but I’ll probably need to write one or two more before there’ll be any point in doing that anyway.
To give you a starting point, here is a news piece which shouldn’t have surprised anyone: Call of Duty: Black Ops was the most “pirated” game of 2010. Still, equally unsurprising, that didn’t stop it from selling copies worth more than one billion dollars! Yes, you read that right: One billion dollars. And it certainly went well over that mark since then, seeing as that article is over a month old.

Electronic goods are bought legally by those who have enough money and the proper means to pay, think the price is, if not necessarily fair, at least acceptable and are interested enough. Everyone else, which includes those who don’t have the money or, even if they would have the money, don’t have the means to pay, those who think the price is unacceptably high, those who don’t particularly care to make use of any of the services that a legal purchase would make available, such as being able to play on official servers, and those who simply aren’t sure if they really are interested and want to try everything out first, rely on “piracy”.
That said, it makes perfect sense for something that sells well to also get “pirated” a lot, because both reveal a high degree of public interest. However, it’s also possible for something to get “pirated” a lot while having poor sales, which means that it’s either too expensive, too difficult to purchase legally or simply not interesting enough to justify buying. This is most noticeable when it comes to games that are rushed to release, ending up on the market in a pretty poor state, as it’s obviously a bad idea to pay money when you’ll end up basically being a beta tester, not even certain that the problems will be fixed through official patches in the near future. And the only ones to blame for such situations are the publishers, who simply shouldn’t allow anything to be released in such a state.

You probably noticed that I keep writing “piracy”. That’s because actual piracy implies stealing something that’s not yours and then using it for your own material gain, mainly by selling it for profit. But anyone who thinks about it for even one moment will realize that none of this can really be considered stealing. Stealing is when someone takes your car: They now have another car and you no longer have one. But when it comes to intellectual property we’re only talking about copies, so nobody takes anything away from the copyright owner, who still retains the original content and the right to keep selling it no matter how many copies others make.
However, something really is wrong when people actually sell illegal copies of software, music, movies or any other such things: While not exactly stealing it, they do make use of others’ work for their own personal gain, which is not acceptable. And it’s equally unacceptable to use “pirated” content in a production environment or in any other way which will earn you money without the copyright owner’s knowledge and consent. These things aren’t exactly what I’d call piracy either, but they’re close enough and shouldn’t be allowed, though people should obviously be allowed to sell software cracks or to charge for modifying hardware in order to accept “pirated” software, as that really is their own work.
Interestingly, file-sharing actually hits just those “pirates” who are selling others’ work for their own personal gain, pretty much throwing them off the market. This means that any efforts to combat file-sharing only result in renewed interest in the services those people offer. As a result, besides harming the end users and not particularly helping the content creators, such efforts actually benefit what could perhaps be called a criminal element. Not that the publishers couldn’t be called a criminal element as well, as they also make money off others’ work and usually only act as a roadblock between the content creators and the end users, but that’s another issue…

Despite all that, the thickheads keep being set in their ways. Or, in fact, some quite smart but extraordinarily selfish individuals keep pressing the issue and the thickheads keep being swayed by their rhetoric. That’s the only possible explanation, since there’s no way that a reasonably intelligent individual who has no direct personal interest in preserving the current copyright laws could possibly support this state of affairs.
But the current situation is still pretty much unchanged, because just those quite smart but extraordinarily selfish individuals are the ones pulling the strings. So you see time and money wasted on official studies about the number of visitors attracted by “piracy” sites, the same old and completely fallacious rants about the losses caused by “piracy”, including the expected pathetic cries of the music industry, and, worst of all, file-sharing sites shut down after being lumped together with those selling counterfeit goods!

While I still plan to someday write a pretty detailed draft for a new copyright law, especially when it comes to electronic goods, that day is probably still far away and I won’t repeat the parts that I have already mentioned before. All I mean to say now is that major changes are in order and they’ll only happen if we, the end users, keep on fighting and pressuring the powers that be, never backing down regardless of what else they’ll throw at us. If we do this, we can hope that, as time passes, more and more content creators will break their alliance with the publishers and join us in creating a new system, one that’ll be better and fairer for both them and us, perhaps culminating with the creation of the Content Creators’ Association, along with the system outlined in that post of mine…

Since cables have once again started being published on the site, it’s certainly time for yet another WikiLeaks update. Admittedly, you can’t say that any shocking things have happened lately that are strictly related to WikiLeaks, but a lot of things did happen, though many flew under the traditional media’s radar. Still, even that media is starting to regain interest in the issue these days, due to the latest developments, some of them not even related to Cablegate anymore, which is one more reason to get this update out of the way now, before I’ll start being flooded with more and more news. Even so, there’s a huge number of issues I need to cover, so once again expect me to jump from one to the other very quickly. Click the links for further details.

While what’s happening on the ground in those countries is beyond the scope of this post, I would like to start by pointing out Anonymous‘ attacks against sites belonging to the governments of Zimbabwe and, more notably, Tunisia, where the campaign was sustained for quite some time.
The WikiLeaks releases were the spark that ignited these fires and some things still happen as a direct result of the cables, but what’s going on now is about so much more than that and, if I may use the term, it fills me with hope to see people from all over the world help each other and fight for such causes together, especially since even more help should be on the way towards those areas. As a result of the leaks, people know more. Or, more exactly, people have the evidence they need in support of theories they were probably already aware of, but couldn’t fully verify until now. That makes them more willing and better prepared to fight, as we can all see. And, while in Europe you usually only see a few minor effects here and there, the impact has obviously been massive in the Arab world and, most encouragingly, it has made some governments actually start working for their people for a change.
Sure, everyone knows that this war is still in its early stages and any who think they have already won are only turning their backs on their very cunning enemies and setting themselves up for a resounding defeat, but there are good signs. There are finally some good signs somewhere… And, perhaps oddly enough, although they have little direct influence in “real life” affairs and pretty much never start or finish anything, only reacting to what is already happening and then relying on others to escalate the situation to the point where things may actually change, the Anonymous legion can be seen as being “responsible” for a significant portion of what’s going on, in the best sense of the term. (As a side note, I wonder if them focusing their resources on these issues has anything to do with the recent drop in spam levels.)

But now it’s time to get back to matters that are strictly related to WikiLeaks. For that purpose, we move on to the United States and see that, while Miss America recently offered one more piece of evidence regarding the intelligence of such contestants by speaking out against WikiLeaks with phrases apparently taken straight out of a brainwashing manual, the White House is trying to come up with strategies to prevent further leaks. As expected, instead of making public as much as they possibly could and ensuring that what needs to stay secret deals with operations that people would be proud of, said strategies involve figuring out who may be unhappy enough with the situation and getting rid of them before they get a chance to act. And, of course, the Republicans prioritize the WikiLeaks investigation and one of them even wants to prohibit people and companies within the US from doing business with WikiLeaks, which spells even more trouble, considering the recent election results over there. Thankfully, there is no basis for that latter demand, but who knows what they’ll come up with next…
However, the most important new development on that front is the demand for personal details from Twitter regarding people connected to WikiLeaks, which has sparked a lot of controversy and has resulted in statements from ACLU, Icelandic politicians and, of course, Anonymous, among others. But this campaign certainly doesn’t stop there, instead being a concerted effort to subdue any such “undesirables” by whatever means are available, as Jacob Appelbaum points out when describing his experience upon returning to the US. Therefore, while it’s obvious that such statements are also carefully planned in order to gain the most support, I really do believe that Julian Assange fears being sentenced to death, and I assume that the flood of murder incitement domain names directed at him does nothing to alleviate such fears.

That should be enough bad news for the moment, so let me now mention that supporters of WikiLeaks and Assange have once again made their voices heard on the streets as well, some rallies taking place on January 8th and a significantly larger number, many of them organized by Anonymous, on January 15th. While some of these rallies were obviously small affairs, some were really successful, proving that the support truly exists down there on the streets as well, despite most of the noticeable activism usually taking place on-line. And this support is very much needed, so if you think you’d want to take part in such a rally, take a look at the list and see if there are any near you. If not, you could always try to organize one yourself, if you have any skills in this area or know someone who does.

Just to prove that this concept is still spreading like wildfire, an updated list of whistleblowing sites may be required, though you are advised to use your own judgment and exercise caution when dealing with them, as some may not be what they appear. On the other hand, for those who want to make the most out of the current releases, there’s also a potentially invaluable list of advanced Cablegate resources.
As for more traditional media, Die Welt has recently also obtained access to the cables through their own means and will likely publish what and how they see fit, as they are under no agreement with WikiLeaks. That will certainly help spread the word even more, but the end result may be either good or bad, depending on how they’ll handle a task of this magnitude and what their true goals actually are. Still, considering the traditional media’s obvious issues, I’m somewhat worried when I see such developments…

Last but not least, I can’t finish this without mentioning something about the man who, if truly the one who sent all these cables to WikiLeaks, is the real hero behind it all and should be regarded as such instead of left to rot in maximum security confinement! I am, of course, talking about Bradley Manning and the kind of treatment he’s being subjected to, which has recently resulted in an open letter from Psychologists for Social Responsibility, adding yet another set of voices to those demanding at the very least fair treatment for him while he’s being detained.
Thankfully, WikiLeaks was also able to partially fulfill the pledge made to support a part of his defense costs, probably quelling certain voices claiming that they just used him and will now let him rot in prison. Sure, $15100 isn’t much and I seem to remember, from other messages released by Cryptome in the past, that their original pledge was for at least $50000, but that was made when they could still easily receive donations and, also according to certain messages I seem to remember reading on that site, as soon as the account specifically opened for donations meant to cover defense costs was frozen, Bradley’s defenders said that they couldn’t blame them in any way for not fulfilling any part of said pledge, as it simply was no longer possible under those circumstances. As I seem to remember them saying at the time that said account contained “about $31000” when it was frozen, I would be inclined to say that it was a slight exaggeration and now Bradley’s defenders were sent exactly half of the $30200 that had actually accumulated in that account by the time it was frozen, which is their fair share, as that account was meant to cover both Bradley Manning’s and Julian Assange’s legal expenses. But that’s just my opinion…

As it keeps happening lately, I once again find myself needing to throw something on here Sunday to stick to my goal of having two posts each week. This time I won’t even try to write a non-personal post, or at least a very serious and lengthy personal one, as I did in the past. It’s quite simply something written because I have to write something and no more than that.
I won’t even mention what happened Thursday night, because there will probably be some more things somehow related to that going on next week and it should all be in a single post. I’ll just say that I still feel like crap in pretty much every way and don’t see how that could change since, although physical matters are currently a significant part of the reason why I feel like this, the real reason is something quite different, which isn’t going to change, as pretty much everyone who could be reading this knows all too well.
So I’m just sitting here, not doing much of anything… Do you know that I didn’t even play anything since the start of the year? Didn’t continue Hordes of the Underdark, didn’t get back to Baldur’s Gate or Gothic II Gold and didn’t start anything new… Should really get to fixing that, but I doubt it’s going to happen while I’m in such a mood.
Anyway, blogging plans for next week really call for another WikiLeaks update, especially since they finally resumed publishing cables, and perhaps also for another post about “piracy”, which I’ve been planning for the past few weeks but, as expected, never got around to writing. Otherwise, I really need to start thinking very seriously about what I’m going to write next month as part of Global Population Speak Out.

It probably is time to say how the first few days of 2011 have been for me. And if it isn’t I’ll do it anyway, since I can’t think of much else right now. Don’t expect a long post in any way because I’m not up for it. Just throwing some things out here… The problem being that my brain is barely functional anymore due to being too frightened…

The brain issue was very obvious a couple of hours ago when dad called me over to ask me how to properly phrase a very simple question in English and I simply couldn’t answer. And my vision kept getting cloudy as well. Was too afraid that he was going to mention what he eventually did mention after seeing just the kind of state I was in, at which point I ran away. And since then I’ve mostly been sitting here staring through the screen, even more at a loss for any words whatsoever than I usually am.
That’s because, due to being more and more aware that it’s imperative to have quite a lot of aspects of my health checked out, I did cry out for help in a few e-mails I sent him lately, including twice during the past week or so. But, as always, too frightened of both doing and not doing anything about it to even say what it’s about, which is why I got to this point in the first place. I mean, some things are relatively new developments, but the issues that most obviously need immediate attention have very slowly but steadily been getting worse for years. But, on top of being absolutely terrified by anything involving doctors or medical institutions or equipment, there’s the fact that there’s nobody I trust nearly enough to go through this with. Or, more exactly, I don’t know anyone I’d feel even marginally at ease going to a doctor with, even if they’d be willing to take me. And dad is certainly nowhere near the top of the “trust” list under any circumstances. Not to mention that I’m obviously afraid of what may be discovered, which would also be quite pointless since I’m really not going to accept ending up in a hospital, if it’ll be needed, nor any long-term treatment. In fact, even short-term treatments would be next to impossible, considering how I live. Of course, my lifestyle is the first thing that would need to be changed, but that’s completely impossible until I’ll live with someone I’d actually want to live with and feel at ease around, which is also utterly impossible in itself. On the other hand, I’m also afraid of looking like a fool once again by getting so worked up over things that’d prove to not be so serious after all. So, as always when it comes to health issues, there’s nothing but sheer terror on all sides and no way out under any circumstances.
Otherwise, I also fear him because he finally decided to make a site for his little firm, bought the domain and a hosting package and wants me to make it, which obviously resulted in a lot of panic because I don’t know anywhere near enough to make anything fitting for a company, and especially for one from the media sector. I even gave up trying after a couple of days and he hasn’t mentioned it since, so I don’t know what is going to happen with that… What I do know is that I’ll feel like crap either way, whether I’ll somehow end up making it and unavoidably produce a stinking pile of worthless shit or even he’ll see that any effort of mine will result in exactly that and have someone else do it.

On top of that and not connected to any of it, the unavoidable finally happened and Ami really stopped talking to me for good. I can’t say that I didn’t fully expect this ever since the end of 2009, when she really started to reflect her own image of herself and demand that everyone else shares it at all costs, seeing that I don’t and won’t, but that doesn’t make it feel any better now that it happened. Especially since this makes it five out of five people who I’ve ever seen as really important to me and who I’ve felt really close to at least at some point who have stopped talking to me. Also, second one of them who does it clearly because we disagree on an issue, despite the fact that the disagreement had been there ever since we started talking, years before.
At least it did make me finally put my thoughts on sex, gender and gender roles in a post, though I later noticed that I had forgotten a couple of things. Good enough though, especially since I even had to write it twice and spent a good ten hours on it. And perhaps even better that she also offered the perfect opportunity for me put a link to it on a rare public entry posted on her blog the next day, which not only somehow didn’t get deleted (yet), but even resulted in a little discussion on the topic. Not with her, as she didn’t deign to reply anything, but with a few of her friends. It obviously didn’t go anywhere, with them basically saying that my general arguments are completely irrelevant when it comes to them and me basically saying that their personal arguments are completely irrelevant when it comes to anyone who doesn’t already share that view, which includes me, but nobody was expecting to convince anyone of anything anyway…
I just find the whole thing really sad for their cause as well, not to mention any others that are connected to it in any way. Such an “if you don’t agree with me 100%, go fuck yourself” attitude drives away a whole lot of potential support and I’d think that a cause, especially an unpopular one, needs any shred of support it can get, even if only partial. When you basically label someone who otherwise fully supports your right to think, act, look and even alter your body as you see fit as an “enemy” simply because of the third person pronoun chosen to refer to you, especially since that choice is backed by plenty of arguments, I somehow doubt you’re likely to get too far anytime soon…

(So much for this not being a long post…)

Since it would appear that Ami decided yesterday (or two days ago, considering the time) to stop talking to me for good over our disagreement on this matter, as opposed to just ignoring me for weeks or even more than a month whenever the issue came up and I expressed said disagreement in any way, I thought it’d be a good time to post my take on it here. She’s the reason why I even have a detailed opinion about this, after all, since all I had to say about it before we started talking was that gender roles should not exist.

Let’s start from there, shall we? There are, of course, physical differences between the males and females of pretty much all animal species that reproduce sexually, and when those result in different hormone levels and brain makeup there will be mental differences as well. If those differences are noticeable, it may indeed mean that one sex is better suited for certain activities and the other is better suited for others. However, while the males and females of a pretty large number of species differ significantly, there are few true physical differences between the average human male and the average human female, at least when it comes to the things that could influence the ability to perform any activity that is not purely sexual in nature. What’s more, that only applies on average, as there are individuals whose bodies bridge that gap without their sex being questioned in any way.
Sure, some differences do exist and, on average, can make certain activities that rely very strongly on purely physical attributes slightly more difficult for individuals of one sex than for those of the other sex. However, such small differences tend to only be relevant for professional athletes, as even a slight variation in perceived difficulty can result in a noticeable difference in peak performance. In other words, while true that they are not quite equals in every aspect, the tremendous majority of perceived differences between men and women are in fact created solely by society. The way boys and girls are raised, taught, even fed, the environment they’re brought up in, the way they’re told they should look like… All these things conspire to, on the one hand, greatly exaggerate the few existing differences and, on the other, create a whole slew of others that have no basis in physiology. Bottom line is that there’s not a damn thing that a person could be unable to do well simply because of their sex. Not one damn thing!
Quite frankly, a person’s sex is only truly relevant when it comes to two things: Personal relationships and medical matters. I don’t think I need to point out that the sex of those involved is crucial when it comes to sexual and romantic relationships, but it can also be a very important aspect when it comes to friendships for those who tend to rely on physical contact to express affection, especially if they’re either heterosexual or homosexual. As for medical matters, it is well known that every little detail can be important, so in some situations taking note of these slight variations generated by a person’s sex may even mean the difference between life and death. Other than that, a person’s sex is also used in order to determine how to refer to said person, but that is strictly a matter of linguistics and has no other relevance whatsoever. Or at least it shouldn’t…

So far so good, right? But what do you do when some people take the fact that there is no real connection between a person’s physical sex and their personality, turn it on its head and pretty much shoot any efforts to abolish gender roles in the foot with their attitude, while at the same time making languages far more complicated than they need to be? Yes, I’m talking about those who came up with and are enforcing the idea that there is such a thing as a person’s gender, which may well be different from their sex, that there may be a very large number of such genders and even that people should be referred to according to the gender they feel they are as opposed to their sex.
The first problem with that is that it’s an incorrect use of the term. Gender is in fact a linguistic concept that refers to a method of separating words into groups that are seen as being somehow related to each other for the purpose of creating grammatically correct sentences. Now there are languages that have well over a dozen genders and languages that basically have no concept of gender whatsoever, just like there are languages that use genders for very many words and others that only use this concept for a few, but something that a significant number of the languages spoken by a large number of people have in common is that they use the masculine gender to refer to, among other things, male humans and the feminine gender to refer to, among other things, female humans. As a result, the term gained another meaning when people whose societies were going through a puritanical phase decided to make use of this fact, taking the term out of its usual context and starting to use it as a synonym for a certain meaning of sex, cloaking this word that they were so afraid of uttering. (And I got this last part from Ami, mind you.)
Now we could have solved that little issue by reinstating sex as the only proper term to use when referring to a person’s sex and kicking gender back into grammar where it belongs, so we could then quickly get back to the truly important matter, which is that of abolishing gender roles. (Notice the word gender in that term as well…) Yet the people I mentioned above decided to go the other way, having a stance that could perhaps be summarized as: “Gender roles seem to be here to stay, so let’s accept the fact that a gender implies a gender role, but let’s make that work for us by dissociating it completely from physical sex, basically ignoring sex altogether, coming up with enough genders to suit everyone’s chosen gender role and demanding to be seen as defined by said gender role.”
Such a view clearly goes against any fight to abolish gender roles, instead fully supporting the idea that there need to be boxes and labels for people according to social behavior patterns, appearance, preferences, interests and other hard to define and subjective criteria. That, of course, actually enforces the argument of those who support traditional gender roles, allowing them to, for example, tell a woman who has no problem being and looking like a woman but does not desire to take on the gender role that society says should be associated with her sex something like: “Now listen here! Those people who don’t act like proper women should say they’re not women, so you make up your mind and either act like you damn well should or pick something else to be and look like and stop messing with us!” Therefore, this stance actually risks forcing a large number of people, many more than those who could in some weird way be aided by this, to choose between the body and appearance they desire and the behavior and thought patterns they’re comfortable with. Which I thought was just what these people claimed to want to avoid… But maybe it was just me thinking that.
This attitude would appear to prove that such people only care for their own interests, demanding their individual rights to be recognized and throwing aside any larger goals and any larger groups they could be fighting with and for. That would seem to imply that they’re either misguided or selfish, but in many cases this behavior is actually a result of being desperate for an escape from the torment society heaps upon them. While it’s true that some truly are selfish and don’t care about anyone else and some others simply don’t know any better, a large part of the people that take this path are actually very intelligent, rather caring and, no matter what they think of themselves, strong individuals. They’re simply forgetting the bigger picture at times due to being desperate, frightened and insecure, which is under no circumstances their fault, but simply how society usually makes those who dare to be different feel. Saying that, all I ask of them is to stop for a moment every so often, take a deep breath and remember that, for example, the suffragettes didn’t earn the right to vote by saying “we want to vote and women aren’t allowed to vote, so we demand to be recognized as something other than women”, nor did Blacks earn the right to ride in the front of the bus by saying “we want to ride in front and Blacks aren’t allowed to ride in front, so we demand to be recognized as something other than Black”! We either fight together or die alone people. Remember that…

To clarify some matters, a person’s sex is very easy to determine through the kind of science that uses clear definitions and specific methods to reach exact conclusions that leave little room for error. The only thing that could perhaps confuse some people is that, even though so far I tried to keep things simple and only refer to males and females, there are in fact four possible sexes. Defining male organs as penis and testicles and female organs as vagina and ovaries, an individual with at least one male organ and no female organs is male, one with at least one female organ and no male organs is female, one with at least one organ of each kind is a hermaphrodite and one with no organs of either kind is neuter. Transsexuals who have made the switch completely, by going through with the operation and being on the full hormonal treatment, obviously need to be seen as being the sex they currently are and not the one they used to be.
That’s all there is to it when it comes to personal relationships and medical matters, and the linguistic issue is also settled very clearly for males and females through those same definitions. The only issue left is that of referring to hermaphrodites and neuters, as that can be a little tricky in languages that don’t have a clear neutral gender that can apply to humans as well without making things confusing or complicated. That can usually be solved by referring to neuters who weren’t born that way according to the sex they had before losing their sexual organs and to hermaphrodites either according to which type of sexual organs are more developed or simply as either male or female, according to what the person referring to them thinks is more appropriate. However, if something more scientific is desired, it is possible to choose how to refer to them according, in order, to which secondary sex characteristics, such as breasts, facial hair, to some extent tone of voice and so on, are more developed, which sex hormones are present in higher concentrations in their bodies, either naturally or as a result of hormonal treatments, and finally according to their sex chromosomes, where XY or XYY means male and XX or XXX female.
That’s quite simply all there is to it and all the meaning it has. Having a certain sex isn’t supposed to feel a certain way any more than being a certain race or nationality is supposed to feel a certain way. While this information may tell you something about the average person, it tells you nothing about any specific individual. Having a certain sex doesn’t mean that you need to think, act or look a certain way, just like it doesn’t mean you need to have certain skills or interests. It’s simply an easily proven fact about you that, except in the couple of situations presented above, has no meaning other than the one people choose to give it. And from this point of view those who support traditional gender roles and those who push for this newer concept of gender are equally wrong and equally harmful. Keep in mind that the more you struggle to deny something, the more important and meaningful it becomes, and usually not in the way you want…

(PS: I had to write this twice, because it somehow vanished when I was just about finished and I found out that the autosave hadn’t worked ever since I finished the first paragraph…)