This post is going to be a bunch of jumbled thoughts, disorganized, just to get the posts flowing again. The central even through which all these thoughts related is the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) stating that law enforcement ought to spend less time worrying about mugging, raping, etc., and spend more time worrying about copyright right infringement. And I won't bother getting into the is-ought problem. Here's the exact wording:

Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned. If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions a year.

Rick Cotton

I think most (i.e. non-millionaires) people's reaction to this is astonishment. Without doing the math, it somehow "feels" wrong at the gut level to think that copyright infringement is an order of magnitude worse than "physical" robbery, for lack of a better term. Then, I suspect, the astonishment quickly fades, to be replaced by cynicism as one recalls all the other stupid things the MPAA has done (such as trying to copyright the number 1497989095545517501594852031564777664 and then trying to sue the internet to prevent anyone from posting it on their webpage).

Then, as the mind has time to process the message, it concludes "Well, of course they'd say that." The guy probably doesn't care about bank robberies, 'cause it's not going to be his money that gets stolen (rather, it'd be a loss for the bank). The guy probably isn't even worried about the risk of getting shot at a bank robbery gone wrong, 'cause he probably never actually goes to the bank (he'll have an employee run the errand for him). He doesn't have to worry about theft, because he can afford his own security system. He doesn't even have to worry about the public image damage of making statements like that, as he probably has a team of yes-people to reassure him that he's only doing his job, and that he's speaking the truth, and that he's really a good person on the inside.

America is supposedly a democracy, though, and if you gathered everybody in a city and told them "We're kind of short on staff here at the police department, so we're trying to set of priorities. Would you rather we watch the streets and arrest bank robbers, muggers, rapists, etc, or that we check your computers, and arrest downloaders and pirates?" there'd be a vast majority in favor for the former.

Almost everybody pirates. Microsoft does. Bush probably does. An RIAA executive's daughter does. The MPAA themselves do. It seems kind of silly to have a law that everybody breaks.

I think, in a democracy, this should never happen. If more than 50% of the population pirate, then why don't they use the democratic process to make pirating legal? "We, the people, think copyright law is bullshit, and that all information should be in the public domain." Sure, some people will suffer (e.g. the MPAA/RIAA and other middle men), but if you had to choose, better to have the minority suffer (from less income) than the majority (from ruined lives from lawsuits they cannot possibly afford).

As an aside, business should not have an a priori right to exist and be profitable. If I sell horses for carriages and then this new fangled invention called the automobile comes along, it seems a tad shady for me to whine about how automobiles are killing the carriages and putting horse breeders out of business, and to bribe politicians so that it becomes illegal to own an automobile without also owning a horse, etc. Instead, one would expect me to say "Oh well, it was good while it lasted" and shut down my horse selling business as soon as stops being profitable. And you probably wouldn't feel sorry for me if I had made hundreds of billions of dollars when the business was still running. Yet the RIAA and others are allowed to impose restrictions on what mp3 players, Tivo, DVD drives, computers, televisions and camcorders are allowed to do (via those political bribes), and are continue to whine about how they can no longer be as profitable as before due to this newfangled invention called the Internet.

Democracy doesn't always work, though, because people are not qualified to make many decisions. Let's say there's a recession. Should we force banks to raise their interest rates? Lower them? Encourage foreigners to invest in us? Encourage us to invest in foreign markets? Decrease taxes? Raise them? I have no fucking clue. And I suspect that the majority of people who think they know don't actually know (in the sense that they haven't done the simulation and modeling and analysis themselves) but rather are just repeating something they've heard someone else say is the right thing to do.

Getting rid of IP law might destroy the US economy (or so I've been told). The argument goes like this: The US is importing a lot of stuff (cars, electronics and toys from Asia; luxury items from Europe; water, electricity and lumber from Canada). What are they exporting? Movies, software and music. In other words, intellectual property. The only way America can survive in the global market place is that if it can somehow convince the other countries that information can actually be owned by someone. Although it seems natural for most of the western hemisphere because the norm has been that you're not supposed to make copies of music, movies or software, it's actually a very difficult idea to defend. It's generally agreed upon that you can't copyright numbers (how crazy would the world be if someone owned the concept of one, or of zero?) and yet all information that can be stored on computers (such as movies, software and music) is entirely represented by numbers, and apparently you can copyright them. So can you copyright numbers or not? The laws are not self-consistent.

It's a funny situation. Money is only worth something to you if it's worth something to someone else. If you give me a scrap of paper on it with the text "One Dollar" written on it, that paper is worth practically nothing to me, unless I can convince the next guy down the road to give me a can of coke in exchange for that paper. If I can't convince that next guy to do this trade, then the paper is worthless to me. And if it's worthless to me, I'm not gonna trade you my stuff for it. Which makes it worthless for you.

So right now, America is giving away American money to other countries in exchange for things like lumber, cars, video games, fine wine, leather couches, and so on. Why do these countries accept this American money? Because they figure they can trade it with other countries for stuff. Asia can take the American money they just got, and trade it with Europe for wine. But if America keeps giving away American money buying stuff from other people, and never selling stuff to them, then they're going to have a lot of stuff, and eventually run out of money. At smaller scales, you could sell the stuff you just got (acting as a middle man), but I don't think this works at an international scale. America can't take the Italian couches they just bought and sell them to the Japanese for a profit; The Japanese, if they wanted Italian couches, would just buy them direct from Italy.

So America can either make something and sell it, or they can print more money. Printing money is problematic because it decreases the value of all existing American money in the international markets. If America keeps printing money and spending it, soon all the other countries will have trillions and trillions of American dollars, and each of those dollars will become worthless, as it is no longer a rare commodity. American money will stop having value, and then the Americans are once again stuck with having nothing of value to import video games from Asia with.

So the Americans have to make something. But what can they possibly make? Europe has established itself as the expert at making luxury items like couches, wines, purses, etc. Asia is a master at vehicles and electronics. The Americans were lucky in that by sheer chance, Software was developed in America (mainly due to financing from World War II; software was used for artillery trajectory calculations). Americans developed all sorts of defacto standards (such as ASCII, "American Standard Character for Information Interchange"), that all the other nations adopted. IBM is an American company. Microsoft is an American company. Sun is an American company. The Internet started in American university and military sites, and grew out to other countries from there.

That's the history for software. I don't know what the history is behind movies and music, but for whatever reasons, the place to be if you want to get into the movie business was Hollywood, and the the place to be if you wanted to get into music was Los Angeles, just like the place to be if you wanted to get into software was California. It looked like there was some propaganda during the Wars that American life was great. Chew Bubblegum, wear tight fitting jeans, and soviets could have a small taste of what it was like to be an American. Someone came up with the slogan "The American Dream", and people all over the world wanted to move to America, because where ever they lived was a shit hole, and you could get an education (again, information) in America, and get rich. It'd be too late for you, but your children, maybe, could lead a life far happier than you could ever imagine.

That's what the propaganda said, anyway. Foreigners began to have an obsession with the idealized American Lifestyle. If you're an North American Otaku, the analogy of an idealized Japan in which every girl in Japan is hot and promiscuous and bisexual might appeal to you. Plus they've got all the best videogames, shit you couldn't even begin to imagine here. Some of your friends will go to Japan, and then come back, with stories of crazy arcade games where you place RFID-tagged collectible trading cards on a surface to deal damage to on-screen enemies, or of how you've seen 30, 40, and 50 year old salary men and house wives conquer the highscore boards at Dance Dance Revolution. The bathrooms are clean, and you can buy anything, from used panties to beer to hot coffee to live lobsters from vending machines. Doesn't Japan sound like every young geek's dream destination? That's probably how the US sounded to those immigrants.

It's all halftruths, exaggerations and illusions, though. I mean, yeah, there's probably a vending machine somewhere in Japan which sells panties, 'cause I saw a picture of it on the Internet, but I didn't manage to actually find such a machine when I went. And yeah, there were the occasional adults in the arcades, but it was still dominated by the late-teens demographics. Just like, yeah, Americans do occasionally chew bubblegum and wear tight jeans, but I wouldn't exactly consider America the epitome of a democratic and free country these days.

Still sites like Japundit, OtakuNews, GaijinInJapan, etc. are popular because we North Americans want to believe that a place such as our idealized Japan exists, because life would be too dreary an existence without it. We share photos of HelloKitty cellphones and LCD screens thinner than a credit card and girls cosplaying as videogames, and we imagine all girls in Japan are like that, and are into video games, and if they'd dig us when we tell them about how we beat the last level in Gears of War, and they'd be so into us and invite us to meet their equally hot girlfriends. We watch Anime which re-confirms our pre-existing notions: "Yes, Japan is exactly how you imagine it. There are 6 girls for every guy, and they're all subservient to your male desires. That's just how Japanese culture is!" They're telling us exactly what we want to hear, which is why we can't help but listen, and consume more and more of that media.

So it is with Hollywood. In America, life is fair and life is simple. The good guy gets rich and gets the girl, and lives happily ever after. The bad guy loses and dies. There are no greys. In America, you can stand up to the man and you'll win. The corrupt will be exposed and outed. Justice will prevail. People with humble beginnings can rise to become heroes. Everybody is beautiful and healthy. Nothing bad ever happens. Life is a continuous, unending party. Nobody works or, heaven forbids, does manual labor in America. I'm guessing that's what the foreigners want to imagine America is like, and they seek out movies and other media which reaffirm their beliefs. I think a lot of the fascination with celebrity has to do with this. Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, the Olsen twins, (I don't know who else is "popular" these days, but you get the idea): If you move to America, you can live lives like these.

When the Caucasians first arrived on America, they probably asked the Indians which parts of the land were free. The Indians, not having this concept of ownership of land, must have said "well... it's all free. All of it." To which the Caucasians reply, with an evil grin "That's all I needed to hear..." Since then, they've been indoctrinating this idea of ownership of land. "The American dream is to own your own piece of land, have a house with a small white fence, a family with 2 children, a dog, and a car. And have barbecues on weekends. And a TV. And go golfing, sometimes. That's what being American is all about." The Americans start to think of America as their land, their soil, their home. This is so ingrained into the American mentality that to suggests otherwise invites ridicule. "What do you mean, Americans aren't from America? Duh? Why do you think we're called 'American'?" The fact that they truly believe that they own this place is reflected in protests against illegal immigrants. "What right have they got to come here and steal our natural resources? Go back to China, you chink! Go back to Africa, you nigger! Go back to... uh... India, you Indians!"

Somehow, someone came up with the idea that it's possible to claim ownership of a location, and all the other countries went along with it, and now it's just an accepted fact of life. Now, Americans are trying to, in the same way, indoctrinate that it's possible to claim ownership of information, and trying to get all the other countries to go along with it.

Does America, as a nation, have an a priori right to continued profitability? If the other nations declare "this intellectual property concept is bullshit. The rest of us are doing actual, real work producing food, clothing and all the other shit people actually need, and you're just sitting around telling stories all day. I mean, hell, I recognize the concept of a bard or a minstrel, and I'm willing to pay you some money to hear your story... but you're like the fucking richest nation in the world... and you don't do shit! What the fuck gives here?" could America go whine to the UN (or whoever the authority is) that if IP laws are revoked, America will go bankrupt?

Do the same etho-economic rules apply here as they did with the horse salesman mentioned earlier? That America should just close up shop and find another business to start in? Would the horse salesman be justified in saying "I've got 3 hundred million mouths to feed. If you don't buy my horses, they're all gonna starve and die. I'll become desperate, and I'll fucking nuke you all. I swear to God"? 3 hundred million is a good number of people, after all. From a utilitarian point of view, which does more harm: Having IP laws, or not having IP laws? Is it possible to create an enforceable law to forbid certain specific businesses (e.g. the RIAA or MPAA) from existing (what's to stop the executives from simply starting a new business with the same business plan and a different acronym)? Does this imply that the underlying rules of the game are broken and need to be re-evaluated? I mean, in a democratic (or even capitalistic) country, how can a corporation continue to exist even when so many people hate them?

At this point, I suspect that the reader (you) and the author (I) are in agreement that this blog post is simply too long, that the questions being raised are simply too difficult to solve. They say that the only thing evil needs to prevail is for good men to do nothing. Well, fuck the world then. Let evil prevail. Why should I even bother thinking up a solution, since I can't make a difference anyway? Seriously, I have no clue how to fix this mess. I'm doing nothing 'cause I don't know what to do. Plus, I've got my own shit to worry about. I can't spend all day thinking about this shit, let alone reading/writing about it on blogs. I gotta earn a living too. I gotta pay rent and food and shit.