The more governments try to regulate the Internet in their own (or rather, their lobbyists’) views, the more inventive the Internet community will get to circumvent said regulation. It has happened before, and it will happen again. If the people thinking this shit up have learned nothing from Napster and Kazaa and BitTorrent and Usenet, I’m not worried. In the long run, they’re just shooting themselves in their feet.

A few days ago, the White House issued a statement in which they oppose SOPA and PIPA as they stand now, but also call upon the Internet community to “bring enthusiasm and know-how to [the] important challenge” of combatting online piracy. They just don’t get it.

Online piracy isn’t the problem, it’s just a symptom of an industry that outright refuses to acknowledge the fact that a large part of its business is no longer relevant. You see, the Internet has reduced the cost of distribution to the cost of bandwidth. There just isn’t as much dough in that as, say, treating your customers like shit and charging them big money for the privilege. Maybe they ought to start innovating, after all. To quote Nat Torkington:

We gave you the Web. We gave you MP3 and MP4. We gave you e-commerce, micropayments, PayPal, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, the iPad, the iPhone, the laptop, 3G, wifi–hell, you can even get online while you’re on an AIRPLANE. What the hell more do you want from us?

The ball has been in the entertainment industry’s court for years now, and still they refuse to pick it up. It is 2012 for goodness’ sake. If you don’t let people pay for what they want, they’ll get it for free. And yes, you can compete with free, it’s called service. There’s massive value in that, and people are willing to pay. How many more examples is it going to take?

But hey, if these dinosaurs want to have it their way, why not let them? In the end, we’ll just decentralize and encrypt everything. Eventually, they’ll come begging for our money, and they’ll do anything to make us give it to them. We’ll see who has the longest breath…

Email Disclaimer:

This email and any attachments are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, interference with, disclosure or copying of this material is unauthorised and prohibited. This email and any attachments are also subject to copyright. No part of them may be reproduced, adapted or transmitted without the written permission of the copyright owner.

If you have received this email in error please immediately notify the sender by return email and delete the message from your system. Although this email has been checked for viruses and other defects, no responsibility can be accepted for any loss or damage arising from its receipt or use.

Oops, looks like I just disclosed part of it…

I’ve seen this kind of nonsense in e-mails before and generally ignore it, but on this occasion, it really stood out, being twice the font size of the message itself and all. I won’t go into the nature of the e-mail (which has more to do with decency than feeling threatened) but it wasn’t even of the kind that would warrant any disclaimer.

To make my point: I will not take seriously any e-mail containing such bullshit. I also feel in no way obliged to hold myself to those conditions. I never asked to receive the e-mail, nor was I given a chance to refuse agreement. Had I been given the choice, I would never have agreed. To explain why, let’s go over it sentence by sentence.

This email and any attachments are confidential.

Nothing wrong with that, but e-mail isn’t exactly known to be secure. Moreover, the recipient is usually informed of the confidential nature of the information before the information is actually received, not afterwards.

If you are not the intended recipient, any use, interference with, disclosure or copying of this material is unauthorised and prohibited.

An e-mail client must copy “the material” from the server in order for the disclaimer to be read in the first place, whether it’s the intended recipient’s e-mail client or not. And by merely reading the disclaimer, one is already using “the material”.

This email and any attachments are also subject to copyright.

Of course they are. I, too, have copyright on everything I produce. Happens automatically.

No part of them may be reproduced, adapted or transmitted without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Did sending the message constitute a written permission? Because my server transmitted it to my client, which then transmitted it to my screen, which transmitted it to my eyes, which transmitted it to my brain for processing. I’m sure it was adapted somewhere in all those reproductions.

If you have received this email in error please immediately notify the sender by return email and delete the message from your system.

To notify the sender, one would have to use “the material” to extract the sender’s address. Exactly that was prohibited a few sentences ago, remember? And I don’t delete e-mail that’s not spam, it gets archived for possible later reference. Disclaimer or not.

Although this email has been checked for viruses and other defects, no responsibility can be accepted for any loss or damage arising from its receipt or use.

Sure. Whatever you do, never take responsibility, for anything. Way to go!

Now, I happen to be the intended recipient in this case, but still. It most certainly is not the recipient’s responsibility to make sure he/she is in fact the intended recipient. That’s entirely up to the sender, even more so if the message is confidential as claimed.

Last but not least, a tip: When requesting a favour, it helps not to include such draconian bullshit. Kinda takes away any and all incentive to help.

But leave it to these anti-smoke dickheads to find their next thing to wage war on. Now, they want us smokers to stop smoking on sidewalk cafe’s. People, we’re talking about open air here! Where then do we have to go? Where can we finally smoke our damn cigarettes without you fuckers constantly driving us away? It’s not like we’re criminals or something, though we are more and more being treated as such.

Idiots who decide to go driving while totally drunk, those are criminals. Go bug them. But please, let us in peace. You anti-smoke fetishes now have plenty of room to go where there is not a molecule of smoke in the air. And don’t come complaining to us if the air still smells bad. Instead, take the bicycle instead of your car for a change…

I’ll repeat that again: STOP YOUR FUCKING COMPLAINING!!! Don’t you think you’ve won by now?