It's all finally over...
Just handed in the largest wad of paper every written by me ever, bound by laminated covers and stapled with a massive massive stapler. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to be sitting in the Humanities suite researching my next essay CAUSE AT LEAST ITS NOT THAT ONE ANY MORE!!!
That perfect week we all just experienced sent shivers down my spine, its been nice reading all the blogs this week one day after the other just like the internet gods intended.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlIYkt2wrIE
So now my day turns to caffiene rushes over research, a bike ride home, toad in the hole and a big ol' knees up at the local to celebrate everyone's hard work. This day rules.
For once, I actually have something to talk about: Online TV and Movie streaming/downloading. Has anybody noticed since there was this massive storm in the media over SOPA that streaming things has become incredibly difficult? Even from some reliable websites, their links all lead to pages of deleted videos. Sites are moving, changing their domain names, wiping masses of videos. To get a taste of what they're afraid of, try accessing Ninja Video, a long ago fallen site and you're faced with the scary golden eagle of American democratic International law. Now the same thing has happened to Megaupload, its no wonder all these sites are trying to cover themselves, who wants to be faced with a $250,000 fine?
The thing I wonder is, once Congress does manage to pass something similar to SOPA, once all the bases have been covered and the amnesia from SOPA is fully formed, what will happen to everyone like us? There must be some alternative - downloading codes in word doccuments to create the film somehow? I don't know, to be honest that suggestion sounded ridiculous and I'm not even sure how coding really works. But my point stands: will we all be back to buying DVDs in ten years time (or heaven forbid blu-ray) or is there some way of continuing with this pretty sweet deal everyone has going on with the internet? I'm not just talking about movies and music downloads here (where there is a little bit of a moral grety area), I mean open forums, learning resources like Wikipedia, media and charity pages; anything which potentially has taken a base of knowledge or intellectual property from somebody else (and referencing IS NOT theft) will be threatened by future legislation. Where do we go from here?
I don't know, I think it's exciting, I think it's scary. But really, its funny isn't it? Heaven forbid somebody might ban me from being able to sit in my room all day watching How I Met Your Mother episodes back to back, not doing work, not going outside and not really developing any skills other than the perfection of my Barney quotes. How dare they? Don't they know there are thousands of students who live just like this and their incredibly boring, reclusive and fine-free way of life is being threatened?! Shame on them, its like they've forgotten what it was like to need some things for free, what it was like to have to scrape your money together for a CD.
That's my rant over. But seriously, do you guys think there will ever be a bill passed? Would you take head of it? Is there any alternative to torrents, downloads and streaming or are we doomed to pay for our entertainment? Do you even think there is a moral problem with streaming films? I wanna know, really.
I bought a guide to Croatia yesterday online, should be here in a couple of days, so I'm pretty pumped about that. Has anybody we're going with actually been to Croatia before, I forgot. I know there was a lot of talk about going somewhere that somebody knew, but I forget if that's how we ended up going to Croatia. Also, is this railway tour of uni towns still happening, cause that was also very exiting?
Not an awful lot interesting happened this week, Lily's still in Barcelona and everyone else I know's been dead busy. But I think next week I'll have more to talk about besides the internet, I plan to take it incredibly easy and do some fun stuff this week.
There you go, little teaser for you all.
Love to your mothers.
Ah, EDIT.
Does anybody want to come visit me in Falmouth soon? If so, you totally should. It gets lonely down here, and there's plenty of nice seaside to look at.
