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Sunday, October 15, 2006

Unfairness Of It All: Downloading

Fustration indeed puts a limit to one's store of vocabulary.
Instead of a neutral-sounding, civilised rant, I shall proceed to be extremely bias and uncouth in the following post.

Cause
7 families were caught and charged on flouting copyright laws when they downloaded and distributed music from the Internet. Between them was 18,000 songs.
Effect
1) A rising panic among local "music lovers".
2) The Straits Times recently published an "Download Dos & Don'ts" article relating to the download crackdown.
3) Me being "highly discouraged" [a.k.a "Banned"] from downloading anything at all.

This is an outrage clearly. Those downloaders of mainstream music are to blame!
Here I am, hoping to download this Japanese musical which
CANNOT be found in Singapore,
COST A BOMB to buy online and import from OVERSEAS,
is ONLY AVAILABLE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES via DOWNLOADING, and is
SUSPENDED BY YOUTUBE DESPITE there being MAINSTREAM & EASILY AVAILABLE MOVIES STILL FLOATING AROUND THE SITE.


And now, I cannot.

I am distinctly reminded of a scene in Anita Desai's Village By The Sea. In the scene, a policeman picks on homeless Hari when he sleeps in the public park. An old man steps in to tell the policeman off for picking on Hari when there are in fact other more dangerous characters like the group of gambling men in a corner of the park. The embarrassed policeman then goes off to check on the gamblers.

However, in this case, there will be no "kindly old man" to tell off the law. People who simply download a handful of songs can get caught and charged like the people who download by the thousands and share files as easily as breathing air. And while some of the newbie downloaders get caught red-handed while others who have been downloading for years get off scot-free.
Now it is a race against time to repeatedly watch these endangered shows and commit them to memory before Youtube eliminates them all.

Damm Youtube for picking on obscure Japanese musicals instead of nabbing the mainstream BLOCKBUSTERS that cost a mere $29.90 on the market, but are still being placed so freely on the site.

Damm the cheapskate downloaders who download and distribute mainstream music despite being able to afford over-priced and unnecessary accessories [E.g. Distasteful voodoo keychains] by the dozen.

Damm those who get off scot-free time and again while being the greatest sinners of the whole lot.

DAMM YOU ALL TO HELL!!!!!!!!!

*Takes a deep breath* There. I'm done with my unreasonably biased rant.