Copyright is killing the future.

Flickr User - Thomas Hawk

Back in the 80’s and 90’s (yes, we’re now allowed to say back in the 90’s), TV shows and movies offered a very integrated vision of the future: your music, movies, calendar, notes and email all available from anywhere through the house without an optical disc in sight. And that’s not a very farfetched future, all our data is mostly available in digital format, we have insane storage capabilities, faster local networks, fast enough cell phone networks to stream most textual data… and yet, I can’t keep all my movies on a dedicated server, waiting to be played without inserting the DVD and I have no legitimate way of transfering that movie to my portable media player which is a natural fit for watching movies on the run. Why is that?

Copyright.

Or, rather, the security measures and usage restrictions put in place to protect said copyright. What it basically amounts to is that the various organizations holding the rights to the media you “own” just want to make sure you don’t use the data in ways they can’t profit from anymore. That includes the obvious “I’ll make you a copy of the CD I bought” and the now classic “I love this song, let me borrow the CD I’ll just rip it to mp3″. But it also includes – and this is where it becomes a problem – ripping songs and movies from the CD or DVD to your hard drive. Yes, even if you can natively import songs from within most media players it seems that the powers that be don’t agree it constitutes fair use. Some CDs even include countermeasures to prevent you from ever ripping them – but that’s another topic entirely. And movies, well, it’s even more complex.

This is the core of the problem, everything else pretty much flows from there. On the movies (on DVD) front, protection prevent the ripping AND the READING of discs on unauthorized software. So even if adding content to your media server wasn’t the point, you still can’t read it just the way you want, you need to use the software they want, and thus, limit innovation and integration of DVD in media playback suites. The only thing that’s not too affected is the legally ambiguous TV recording. Features in most software seem well fleshed out, allowing scheduled recordings, TV Guides, real-time rewinding… basically, it’s what it should be. Too bad the rest our media experience is nowhere as slick.

Of course, a lot of developers try to approach the market and ignore the legal issues – it’s not illegal to provide you a way to sort your media, stream it across the network, fetch info online about a movie (to provide box art and such) and reencode movies for transfer to portable devices. And that’s where money becomes an issue. All these greatly integrated media experience solutions are unable to grow as they should because there’s no money involved. So you end up with buggy, unstable software that you want to work.

So there you have it, a dying copyright system prevents advances that are already in place to be used to their full potential – and it’s not piracy that’s hurting, it’s fear of piracy. And at this point, using pirated material allows for a better implementation of most of theses advances, but it’s far from perfect…

Feel free to comment, I will probably follow up with a second article if it sparks any interest.

The thing(s) about Anime.

Oddly reflective glasses, weird haircuts and near upskirt shots - Welcome to the world of Anime.

Back when I started college, I didn’t know much about Japanese Animation, but I was always interested in it. I got to watch quite a few Anime series during my time there and very few after that. But lately, there’s been this new graphic artist at work who happens to love that stuff. And, well, she asked me if I watched any.

“yes, I suppose”

And then she suggested I watch one called Claymore. Took me a while to find time to watch it, but today I just sat through the first 6 (progressively more mind-numbing) episodes, and I’ve come to this conclusion:

I don’t like Anime.

Well, that’s not entirely true, but it’s true too often for me to claim otherwise. I’m not generally a fan of lists, but I think one is in order for me to structure my bitching. Please note that this list doesn’t take into account things that are part of the media: you won’t hear me complain about fanboys, bad fansubs, effeminate male characters and absurdly large weapons.

1. Compulsive explanation syndrome

Why does every character needs to go in detail about whatever it is he’s doing. I know it’s mostly because there’s no other way of understanding what’s going on (“You can’t see me because my skin was yadda-yadda…”) but honestly, doesn’t that just show there is some bad plot structure going on? You’re not supposed to introduce anything AS IT HAPPENS because, first, it slows the action, and second, it keeps the viewer from being able of foresee any events and even prevents the writers from doing any proper foreshadowing.

2. Teens. teens teens teens. teeeeens.

Anime is mostly watched by teenagers and as such, most protagonists tend to be (exactly) fourteen. Even if the Anime in question is R-rated. I get that, I can deal with that. It’s how they bring it up that gets on my nerves. Main offender: Evangelion.

For SOME REASON, only kids age fourteen are able to pilot the robots (angels). Seriously, what the fuck. I can accept more awkward stuff, like the angels would choose their pilots, or he’s linked to someone who’s in charge and blah blah blah… but no. Fourteen.

3. Overly powerful protagonists

This is by far the main offender. No other type of storytelling (well, except anime-style video games, and perhaps some bad fantasy novels) gives their protagonists so much power. You’re never wondering if “they’ll make it”, you’re supposed to be interested by how they will totally annihilate their opponents. I guess someone might enjoy that, not really doing it for me – always thought storytelling was supposed to be about the struggles one had to suffer to reach whatever conclusion. And the whole “enemies are powerful too” thing never really works – the protagonist goes on training and comes back more powerful than ever. The problem of overpowered characters can be tracked all the way back to Dragon Ball and extends to… well it’s still going strong, but a notable case would be Hellsing and its bullshit vampire logic (nice pleonasm).

That was a shorter list than I expected, but hell, it’s enough to piss me off.

Oh, by the way, don’t bother writing me to say that the protagonist in Evangelion is linked to someone in charge, I know he is, and the fact that this adds up to the age bullshit only makes the storytelling more pathetic and forced.