Comedy and copyright violation

Copyright violation has been linked to terrorism before and it was a stupid then as it is now. Can you imagine terrorists sitting in caves in Afghanistan downloading stuff from the Pirate Bay to destroy western civilization? This is such far fetched propaganda that it should just be seen as excellent comedy – if it wasn’t being proposed by “serious” people and will eventually believed by people in power. Scary.

From Infocult:

Linking copyright violation and terrorism is back.   “Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism” (pdf) starts by linking pirates and gangsters, claiming to have found:

compelling evidence of a broad, geographically dispersed, and continuing connection between film piracy and organized crime.

The Rand study goes on to leap onto terrorism:

Moreover, three of the documented cases provide clear evidence that terrorist groups have used the proceeds of film piracy to finance their activities.

Torrentfreak does a good job of taking this apart.  One key piece: the study explicitly conflates counterfeiting and copyright infringement.  Also important is the loose linkage between different people, functions, and crimes.

The real Monty on YouTube

This is last weeks news but what seemed to me to be an international piece of news seems to have been vaguely missed or ignored by most. So here it is again: Monty Python has decided to create a Monty Python Channel on YouTube filled with high quality material?

Why?

For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It’s time for us to take matters into our own hands.

We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we’ve figured a better way to get our own back: We’ve launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.

What’s more, we’re taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ versions. And what’s even more, we’re letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there!

But we want something in return.

None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.

All I can say is Parrot Sketch, The machine that goes Ping and  Something completely different…

Goodbye George Carlin

I missed that George Carlin died in June. He was a great stand-up with a wicked sense of humor. He had some great observations about the arrogance and stupidity of human beings. Among his great lines was this:

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.