On Piracy and Theft

Lets get this straight. Piracy is not theft and theft is not piracy.

Sure enough the two are related concepts but it's wholly inaccurate to classify one as the other. While in the eyes of the law they are both crimes, piracy is one that average people are more ready to commit. Why is that? Namely it's because they don't see the harm in it. If you steal an old ladies purse then that old lady no longer has her purse. Where is she going to put her knitting now? Reasonable people feel guilt over performing such actions and often go crazy from the clickaty-clack of the knitting needles echoing throughout their conscience.

However, if you were to take an exact copy of her purse then she still has somewhere to put her knitting and you'd have half a scarf. Everybody wins. Except of course now you'll never buy her scarves at the weekly jumble sale and she won't be able to afford that trip to Florida any more. Of course most people don't think that far ahead so they'll live quite happily with their ill-gotten gains free from guilt and those pesky haunting knitting needles.

Theft basically boils down to the removal of value. You take something valuable and someone else no longer has that value. It has been irrecoverably (unless they arrest your thieving ass) removed from the system. With piracy though the original value is never removed. What changes is the potential levels of value. And unlike theft piracy can actually result in a gain of value for the victim of the piracy. This I believe is the biggest factor that differentiates piracy from theft, it can actually have a positive effect on value.

Lets revisit our old friend the old knitting lady for some scarf themed examples of the three potential effects of piracy:

1. Negative potential value

This sadly is likely the most common form of piracy and is generally why it's considered theft as well as an all round bad thing. Take Mr Bastard now. Mr Bastard would normally purchase a scarf from the dear old lady but upon finding out he can receive a magical scarf duplicate ends up not doing so. In this case a potential sale existed but then was lost due to piracy. The old lady has lost potential value. And she is sad.

2. Neutral potential value

Probably the second most common form. Take Mr Apathetic. Mr Apathetic would never consider purchasing a scarf from the dear old lady. However he will take a copied one for free. If he couldn't get it for free though he wouldn't purchase one. Here no potential sale existed in the first place so there is nothing lost, nothing gained. It's still not morally correct but the victim has technically lost nothing. The old lady has lost nothing, gained nothing. She is knitting.

3. Positive potential value

What's this? Positive piracy? Surely not! Piracy is a bad dirty crime for thieving bastards I hear you cry. But consider the case of Mr Unconvinced. Like Mr Apathetic he never considered a scarf purchase. However upon trying a free copy of it he comes to the realisation that he really likes it and pays the old lady her due. Here this is a sale that previously didn't exist in potentia but was created through piracy. The old lady has actually gained value from this. She is off to Florida.

This isn't an endorsement of piracy nor is it showing that it's morally acceptable. It's merely an illustration that it's more complicated than simple theft and how the two actions should be considered independently of each other. It's not such a black and white concept.

Unlike this Jolly Roger I'm knitting.

Weekend (Part 3): C is for Curry and D is for Dénouement

Sunday morning, I'm not having water poured over me. This is definitely an improvement over yesterday.

I don't get to lie in bed long though because soon there's a knock on the door, Louis goes to see who it is and I scrabble to make myself relatively presentable. Turns out it's the forensics investigator, a short woman with a bottle full of silvery dust and a brush. I stay out of the way by sitting on the bed using my netbook to browse while she works. I don't pay too much attention but I hear snatches of conversation. They were wearing gloves so there were naturally no finger prints, there was a footprint on the desk as well as the window sill. She took the footprint anyway in case they could match the boot treads to anyone.

Soon the topic of their dialogue moves to small talk, like what course Louis is studying. He's studying computer engineering. The next phrase uttered by the investigator makes my ears prick up.

"So you're a whiz with computers then?"

Wait a second. I KNOW that line. I proceed to listen intently for what I know is coming.

"So if I deleted my iTunes library, is there any way to get it back?"

Yes, it's a technical support question. The first line of the exchange has to be among the top ten of classic tech support question lead ins. It's an oft repeated tale:

1) Person meets person.

2) Person discovers other person knows something about computers.

3) Person asks computer person how to fix their shit.

I digress at any rate. Louis probes the subject a bit more to find out exactly what the problem is. Turns out that the library is no longer on her computer but she still has the stuff on her iPod. However she can't sync the iPod to retrieve the data from there because iTunes being the control freak software that it is will instead wipe it. I chime in from time to time, I feel sympathy for her in this case due to my own harrowing experience with iTunes. Still without access to the device or computer we both give up on troubleshooting it and defer the issue by suggesting she take it into the Apple store.

She leaves and I follow not too long after having made plans to meet my former room mate Nathan in the city for lunch. Louis stays behind to do University work so I make my goodbyes and set off towards the station. In the course of getting to the city center I have to make several calls to Nathan to let him know I will be late, even more late and "I'll just call you when I get there". Sadly while the trains are useful they couldn't be any more unreliable than they already are. I was stuck waiting at the station as the train was delayed for about 10 minutes, spent about 10 minutes at a complete standstill in a tunnel and about 5 minutes actually on the platform waiting for the train doors to open. This on a journey that should normally take 10-15 minutes total.

Nathan is understandably annoyed at me but I dismiss his ire by foisting the blame on the rail delays. We set off to go get something to eat. Turns out we both want to go to different Japanese restaurants for lunch. I want to go to the bentou (lunchbox) restaurant and Nathan wants to go to a place that does ramen (noodles), he wins annoyingly and we head off to the ramen place. He has beef ramen and I have a vegetable tempura Japanese curry, the food is quite nice as usual but I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't get more tempura. I try to eat my meal with chopsticks but give up fairly quickly and ask for a spoon. It's not that I'm bad with chopsticks, quite good in fact, but even the Japanese eat their curry with a spoon. We pay the bill and then go down the road to Starbucks for coffee and a dessert.

It's in the Starbucks I marvel at the modern convenience of technology and how we abuse it for the most stupid things. There's a youtube video I want to show Nathan so I pull out my netbook and set it up on a chair. Starbucks has WiFi but I'm not sure if it's free and if it is how I gain access to it. Being too lazy to find out I then tether my phone to my netbook to get internet access. All to watch the following video:

Technology gives us the amazing ability to access the internet nearly anywhere these days and people like me use it for stuff like this. It's at this point I decide to head home, I say farewell to Nath and head off to the station. The rest of my day is fairly uneventful.

Until I wake up around 2am of course.

My right toe is in an agonising amount of pain and is throbbing horribly. I think I must have caught my toenail on something in my sleep, it's the only explanation I can come up with right now. I try dozens of different things to try and relieve the pain: running it under ice cold water, putting an ice pack on it, massaging it in various ways. No luck it still really hurts. I manage to find some painkillers at some point and by about 5am the pain has subsided enough to sleep.

Work was fun the next day.

As an update of sorts I found out on Tuesday that stuff was in fact stolen from Louis's house. Apparently one of his house mates is now missing a significant portion of his Xbox 360 games. Suspicion is that it was a couple of kids or teens, otherwise they might have been smart enough to steal the more valuable goods.

Weekend (Part 2): Wild, Wet, Wonderland

It's saturday morning.

I can just feel myself beginning to rouse from a deep sleep. Something feels odd though, like a calm before the storm I get the immediate sense that something bad is about to happen. My eyes snap open and I see Louis standing over me with a kettle. Pouring ice cold water over me. I jolt upwards, quite panicked from this rude and sudden awakening. After regaining my composure and stripping off my sodden t-shirt I make my annoyance with Louis clear to him. He wasn't going to get away with that.

Well I'd be staying again that night so there would be plenty of oppurtunity to seek vengance. Oddly enough the police come calling sometime around half ten in the morning despite there being no further developments. I listen tiredly from Louis's room as he talks to them in the hallway. They seem surprised that someone had already come to the scene the previous night, it sounds like there was a lack of communication down at the station. At any rate with the final housemate still an unknown they soon leave again without really doing anything.

It's been decided that we were going to go see Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland today. I wasn't especially thrilled, I've never been a big fan of Burtons stuff and the trailer for Alice didn't exactly fill me with confidence. Still I was outvoted so rather than being antisocial I followed Louis down to the train station to head back into the city center. We meet up with the rest of the group at the station, the topic of conversation quickly moves to the mysterious break in last night.

That thread of discussion doesn't last long unfortunately and soon it's laughs at my expense as Louis whips out his camera to show that he's shot a video of the mornings events. At this point I learn that the mastermind is my prison guard friend Matt, he and Louis had been exchanging text messages when he suggested it. I'm not overly annoyed at him though, suggesting stupid things like that is mostly harmless. Louis is still the target of my ire for actually carrying such an act out. As I point this out it only takes a few moments before my friends are dishing out ideas for revenge.

After a short trip we're in the city and following a rushed lunch we're in the cinema watching pretty CGI. We'd opted out of paying for the extra dimension and were seeing the regular 2D release. I'd heard the 3D wasn't anything great so I wasn't fussy. The film is a visual masterpiece filled with incredible designs and precision execution, I really dug the look of the card soldiers. But once you move past its good looks the film is a terrible exercise in mediocrity and struggled to hold my interest.

Depp is rather sadly the lowpoint in all of this, his wierd and wacky character act growing ever tiring and dull with each Burton film he lends it to. Thankfully this is alleviated by some stellar voice acting from Alan Rickman (Absalom), Stephen Fry (Cheshire Cat) and Helena Bonham Carter (the Red Queen). But a rather dull story coupled with far too much of Depps increasingly hammy acting turns what could have been enjoyable into something quite average. My friends express similar opinions as we leave, overall it wasn't a great experience.

We part our seperate ways soon after the film and return to the burbs. I believe it's sunk into Louis's head at this point that I'm rather annoyed at him so rather than risking my wrath we go to a restarant where he appeases me with cake. Cake truly solves all problems, cake and ice cream. After we have had our cake and eaten it we mosey down the street to the local supermarket to pick up snacks for later. My waning concentration caused by a belly full of cake and a strained bladder made it hard to decide on what to buy. My indifference and Louis nagging me to tell him what I wanted led to an odd exchange that culminates with the purchase of 250g of goats cheese.

L: "What do you want?"

M: (Having seen some on the shelf I jokingly reply with) "Goats milk."

L: "Why?"

M: "To make goats cheese of course."

L: "Why don't we just get some goats cheese then?"

M: "But then we'd need some figs."

L: "Why?"

M: "Because figs and goats cheese is delicious."

L: "I have fig jam at home."

I soon realise Louis is taking me seriously about getting goats cheese. Sure I like goats cheese and I do like it with figs but I was sort of joking. Before long though we're at the cheese counter and Louis is picking out a nice goats cheese. It's at this point I should probably mention that Louis is rather french. Not actually a french national but rather french all the same, likely due to the fact his home country was under french control for a while. So as he's quite fluent in French, we often tease him by repeating broken french using horrid pronunciation. Mostly because it's funny to see how uppity he gets when you say "petit pois" as "petite poise".

At any rate the name of the cheese is "Chevre Blanc" so Louis asks for 200g (we end up with 250 due to the counter staff messing up) of "Chev", presumably the correct french pronunciation of the word. The cheese lady, being British, has no idea what he's talking about. Louis is forced to point out and specify the one he wants. Realisation dawns on her face and she says "Oh, the Chev-reh blonk?"

I can see Louis visibly wince at this.

We're soon out of the supermarket and back at his place. We waste a bit of time watching various TV shows on his computer before the unquestioned house mate shows up. Turns out it wasn't him and we're back to the confusing situation of someone breaking in and taking nothing. Louis phones the police again and they're soon round to formally record it as a crime, a lot of paperwork is filled out while I quietly sit in the corner playing around on my netbook. They eventually leave and let Louis know that a forensics investigator will be around tomorrow to search for clues.

We whittle away the rest of the night eating our snack food and watching a film before eventually tiring and going to bed. I make it clear this time that I don't want a repeat of that morning before I finally doze off.

Next up: CSIpod, Curry, Coffee, Convenience and the Conclusion.

Weekend (Part 1): Broken glass in the moonlit hall

It's odd that the week I decide to start a blog I'm given an abundance of material to work from. A trip out of town, a mystery crime and the (sometimes irritating) antics of friends. Without further ado let me present my weekend.

I came to the end of an uneventful day of work on the friday. My plans for the weekend were to head down to Birmingham to meet up with friends, one of whom was celebrating a birthday. While I normally pop home to shower and change before catching the train an odd set of circumstances forced me to catch an earlier service. This necessitated heading straight from work to the station, naturally I brought the stuff I was taking with me to work and changed clothes before leaving.

Unfortunately I'd forgotten one rather key item. My phone.

I'm normally good at remembering it but for some reason I'd left it charging on my desk that morning, the one day I actually needed to take it into work with me. Suffice to say I was a bit panicked, being without a phone in this day and age makes a weekend with friends difficult to manage. It's at this point my Dad (who is driving me to the station) chimes in with how in his day they did just fine without such things as mobile phones. Naturally I quip back with the logical counterpoint that if we didn't have phones we wouldn't be so reliant on them. It's not that we need them but because we're used to having them it's difficult to do without. Anyway I digress, thankfully my mum is a saint and came to drop my phone off at the station before the train set off.

I whittled away the dull train journey by watching One Piece on my iPod Touch. I only got it late last year but I already don't know how I managed before without such a handy PMP. The fact I can just waste time by watching TV anywhere is pretty astounding. It only takes a few episodes before I arrive in Birmingham, once there I buzz my friends to figure out where everyone is. As they're still on their way I decide to head down to the restaurant to get a table ahead of time. They say they're only about 20 minutes away. Rather typically I'm sat in the place for about half an hour before they show up. I've ordered by this point because the dish I normally have (chicken livers) takes them a while to prepare. A good thing too, even though my friends ordered about 5-10 minutes after I did I still was about the 3rd or 4th person served.

Like with the aftermath of most good meals we quickly transition to a drinking establishment afterwards. I should mention at this point that a situation with my friends girlfriend was what forced me to rush to the station from work. Thanks to this I managed to guilt trip a drink out of him before he rushed off to pick her up from the coach station. We don't stay long where we are before we head back to the train station to catch a train to the suburb where all my friends live. We continue the night out in a local pub for a while, the night growing old as the birthday boy recounts stories from his work as a prison guard as well as tales about a friends bizarre sexual escapades (the same friend who bought my drink earlier incidentally).

Eventually we call it and head to our respective accommodation. I was staying with a friend by the name of Louis so I trail behind him to his place. We were talking amicably until we reach the door upon which he becomes deathly silent. It takes me a few moments to cotton on to the fact that something is amiss and the focus of my gaze soon matches his. A pane of glass in the door has been smashed through. More specifically the glass directly adjacent to the door latch. After an unsettling examination of the door from the outside Louis is soon fumbling with his keys and the door is open. Glass is strewn across the hallway, the scatter makes it clear it was bust through pretty vigorously with only a few jagged shards remaining in the frame.

My friend is now frantically unlocking his room on the ground floor, anxious to check on his belongings. I squeeze past him to look at the living room, being a nest of consoles as well as a TV it seemed like the place that'd likely be hit hardest. I expected to see a barren wasteland, stripped of all value. I was pretty surprised when it looked like nothing had even been moved. The house had obviously been compromised so why was one of the prime targets completely ignored?

Confused as to this turn of events I follow Louis into his room, he's flitting about in a panic saying that someone has been in his room. Oddly enough his room is in a similar state to the living room, obvious valuables like laptops, computers etc. all remain in their usual positions. He's pointing out how his drawers have been rifled through and stuff has been knocked off his shelf. I try to make sure he's not just looking for ghosts and point out that the stuff could have just fallen off. While the front door was broken his room had been locked. It's at this point he grabs me and points to what is unmistakably a dirty black footprint on the window sill.

Ah.

I remember at this point that to prevent his room getting too hot Louis leaves the window open a crack. I've told him a billion times it's a bad idea to leave a ground floor window unlocked and open (especially when it's easily big enough for an adult to clamber through) but he just dismisses it with the reasoning that it's not visible from the road. Still it's pretty clear that someone has come through it and into the room.

By this point one of Louis's room mates has materialised. It turns out he's been asleep in his room the whole time and is only now learning of the break in. All of us are scratching our heads trying to figure out why someone would go to so much trouble to gain entry and leave everything of value in the house intact. It didn't make sense in the slightest. As the police are summoned I come up with the following theory:

1. One of the residents returned in a drunken stupor and was unable to gain access to the house.

2. Knowing that Louis leaves his window open they entered through there.

3. Upon realising that the door to the room is locked they begin to search the room for a spare key, stumbling around and bumping into stuff as they do so.

4. Once they figure out there's no way out they go once more through the window and break the glass on the front door to get inside.

It seemed pretty plausible at the time and was a lot more logical explanation than a burglar breaking in and taking nothing. The only problem was that the only house mate whose whereabouts were unknown was unlikely to have done such a think. Despite this the police were hesitant to record it as a crime until the last resident was questioned, especially since nothing was taken. The case was getting curiouser and curiouser so we gave up on thinking about it and went to bed.

Next up: Rude awakenings, wonderland and more police action.