Gary -
IMHO (and I’m sure Steve was not trying to equate them), there is a huge
difference in the importance of what “real” police officers do and whoever is
enforcing arcane laws about copyrighted material.
The only thing in common, IM(NSH)O is that they were both (all) trained
in roughly the same tradition and their badge (and gun and backup) can
yield a similar sense of entitlement to personal power over anyone they
encounter, legitimately or otherwise.
Certainly, it diverges when you look at their job. Mr. Google Glass was
surely NOT to likely by any measure to whip out a weapon to defend his
right to "open carry" Glass (though I'm sure there will be some of
*that* ilk who add Glass to their repertoire of invasive-to-others tech
fetish personal rights are mine toolbelt).
I *do* respect the fact that mr/ms. Average LEO is at more than trivial
risk of a life-threatening confrontation... and therefore am *more*
understanding that she is likely to spontaneously treat me to all of her
practiced skills of establishing and maintaining "command presence" (aka
intimidation?) that she was selected and trained for. Mr. Copyright
Law Enforcement, "not so much". But there *is* a connection between
the the two in the sense of conflating the idea of keeping *everyone*
you encounter *submissive* and doing your job effectively and safely.
I’ve only been out of the USA for a bit over five years now, and I find that
my “new normal” is to see piracy as just a mundane part of life. Here in
Ecuador, and I think through much of the less affluent world, piracy of
software, music, and video is rampant. Though such piracy is technically
illegal (I’m ambivalent about its morality), there appears to be zero
enforcement here. There are hundreds of stores in Quito alone that openly sell
nothing but pirated music CDs and movie DVDs for about a dollar each, and as
long as they pay their 12% to the SRI (Ecuadorian tax agency), they seem to be
left alone. Many titles appear within days of a movie’s initial release in
theaters, well before its official release on DVD (the quality of copies is
notably better after there is an official DVD to copy :-)
You only need one good errant copy to feed the universe... trying to
limit/interfere with illegal copy is more of a gesture... and again,
conflating raising the stakes with *everyone* within reach with actually
solving the problem is rampant here.
Such re-filming must be common somewhere (I don’t know how much takes place
here, or if pirated DVDs are just burned from sources filmed elsewhere). For
those who are still part of the more affluent world, you may have never
encountered pirated CDs and DVDs. It is very common, while watching such a DVD,
to see someone stand up and walk in front of the camera that is filming the
screen. Sometimes, that is more entertaining than the movie itself :-)
Moviegoing has always had an aspect of "performance art" glad to see it
is alive and well in the pirate market. *I* am perfectly willing to pay
my fair share of the first-world's expenses to maintain the expense of
*producing* the stuff we call entertainment, and let the third-world
ride our coat-tails on that. Same with drugs... I don't mind the
sliding scale of paying for the development of advanced drugs that the
third-world then can have access to for something closer to the cost of
production and distribution.
I really appreciate having an "expatriate" such as yourself on this
list... most of the rest of us rarely come close to the kinds of things
you must encounter monthly if not daily.
- Steve
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