Bootlegging at PPXXXV
A short satyrical essay on an inevitable reality.
Person A: "Dude, progpower was fantabulous this weekend."
Person B: "I know it, man! Can you believe they freakin' cloned Ronnie James Dio just to headline the show? That was well worth breaking the international anti-cloning laws! They could have gotten a better sponsor than Carson Daly's Fountain-o-Youth nipple cream, though."
Person A: "I agree, it only gave me hives."
Person B: "That's why they have the 'not to be taken internally' warning on it."
Person A: "Oh. Whoops. Anyway, I totally recorded the entire show!"
Person B: "No freakin' way! Grampa Glenn had Spy Sentinels everywhere filtering out all full motion streams all digital handhelds. How did you do that?"
Person A: "Well I finally got that upgrade I was telling you about. Full 256 Petabyte quantum ocular neural receptor storage with Dolby(tm) 4.0 Sensory Surround. That's right, Sight, Sound, Touch and Taste! I didn't have enough for the 5.0 with Smell, but dang, some of the geriatric ointment the original progpower fans use was just rank as hell, so that's ok!"
Person B: "Sweet jeebus! So it recorded it directly to your brain without the hand held digi's, huh? Now that's thinkin'!"
Person A: "Yeah, just go ahead and IM me on my secure mental channel and I'll start the transfer."
Person B: "Um, it's not working."
Person A: "You have to open your firewall, allow forward port allocation, invert the interferometry setting, access the central mainframe, and pop the zits around your cerebral connection jack. Sheesh, it's not that hard."
Person B: "Got it. SWEET! That's so awesome man, I can't believe you got all this! Though I have no clue why you licked that ashtray you found on the floor, nasty!"
Person A: "Had to make sure all the Sensory Surround was working! Anyway, I'm off to eBay to sell this, I should be able to make a killing off it!"
Person B: "Maybe cut out that part where you forgot to turn off in the bathroom, nobody likes a crappy bootleg..."
--------------------
As we look forward into our future, we can be fairly certain that technology will advance exponentially. Perhaps even more so as our understanding of the human brain and body increases. This should be regarded as a wonderful thing! For it is my firm belief that the duty of every person is to help each other as a communal whole, be it the scientists that create medicines to cure disease, the physicists that bring enlightenment to the understanding of how the universe operates, or the fantastic musicians that create gorgeous melodies to satiate an otherwise mechanical existence.
And really, the definition of technological advance is to create a contemporary new way of accomplishing a task that can overcome obstacles of or refine the processes of existing, traditional tasks. An example might be global communication: a century or two (or more) ago, to communicate globally one had to traverse the land, then came readable print that could be distributed, then the telegraph, then telephony, and now we have virtual instant communication via the internet and cell phones... all this overcame the time and space obstacle, and refined the quality/quantity of information sent and received. (though I believe marketing abuse is a BAD thing!)
Another way of thinking of "technological advance" is to simply do something thought to be very hard or impossible. Such as cracking a cryptographic code, accurately forecasting weather, or bypassing copy protection. And almost always, this is the most motivated of the advancements, since it not only requires knowledge on the subject, but has the potential for greater "fame" since many people are exposed to things like weather and copy protection, as opposed to more obscure things. (Think about it, how many of you would rather see an accurate forecast for a week's weather instead of finding ways to observe the as-of-yet undiscovered Graviton particles that carry the gravitational force?
)
And by this notion, the "hacker" type is usually ahead of the game and will think of ingenious ways to stay there. No matter what is actually banned for people to take to the progpower show, or what security technological advances come about, there is only the dimension of time until a new form of "hacking" introduces itself as the new "threat."
I am an engineer and I love working on things that are highly advanced and am very proud to be able to do what I do (albeit avionics, and not consumer electronics ). And I love to hack! The term was coined over half a century ago by MIT students, and it basically meant "to do a new something to an existing something that nobody would expect, or thought could be done" ... like using the room lights on a high rise building to create a game of Tetris! A real hacker does it for the sake of learning/understanding or to make things funner, easier, or better for him/herself. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and basically any famous inventor or scientist could be considered a hacker! But in today's society, a hacker's creations can quickly become common knowledge, and people who have no idea of the skill needed to make the technology OR to hack a given technology can reap undeserving benefits from it; such as cracking copy protection on movies or sneaking in high tech surveillance equipment to get a bootleg of a concert.
Whether you condone "hacking" or not, it may or may not be illegal to do such things, but law and morals are far from the same! LEARNING IS NEVER IMMORAL if noone gets damaged! And even though "reverse engineering" and cracking cryptographic processes are 'illegal' in almost any case, the skills of people that are proficient with it are HIGHLY sought after. But in no way is using someone elses hard work for personal benefit (be it copying mass quantities of movies, plagiarising someone elses scripts, or selling bootlegged concert vids!) considered moral or respectable.
Every year Glenn is going to struggle to keep up with such things, and certainly at the risk of lowering the morale of many fest-goers. But, to me, it always has been that ProgPower was such an amazing fest not only because of the great music and beer, but because it is such an unfathomably intimate and respectful atmosphere. Never is anybody so obnoxious that they have to be forcefully tossed out by security (that I've ever seen). Never do fights break out (well, I get into shove and slap fights with friends when they don't let me buy them beer, but it's all in good nature). And despite there being a rather wide range of metal lovers there, everybody tends to respect everybody (at least to their face).
So then, is it illegal to record video? Depending on what you plan on doing with it, that might be a sticky subject; but it is certainly AGAINST THE RULES of ProgPower. Would it be immoral to "hack" such an event, if only just for learning purposes? In this case, ABSOLUTELY! While even though it won't physically harm anyone, it damages the magnificent hospitality, pragmantic respect, and intimate loyalty of Glenn and the vast majority of patrons. As well as the Gold Badge issue; it might be entertaining to try and bypass security at a large facility that lacks the respect of real metalheads, if only for self-serving purposes. But there is no point to doing it at a fest that is so light on security only because people are mature enough to abide by extremely reasonable and priveliged guidelines.
I don't dare pledge my own innocence throughout my life, as everyone will make bad decisions... willingly or not. But I would like to think I am capable of showing the bands, the patrons and the prime instigator the respect they deserve by observing their rules!
Hopefully you enjoyed my rant, or at least the hypothetical dialogue preceding the rant, because I bet most of you got bored after that.
A short satyrical essay on an inevitable reality.
Person A: "Dude, progpower was fantabulous this weekend."
Person B: "I know it, man! Can you believe they freakin' cloned Ronnie James Dio just to headline the show? That was well worth breaking the international anti-cloning laws! They could have gotten a better sponsor than Carson Daly's Fountain-o-Youth nipple cream, though."
Person A: "I agree, it only gave me hives."
Person B: "That's why they have the 'not to be taken internally' warning on it."
Person A: "Oh. Whoops. Anyway, I totally recorded the entire show!"
Person B: "No freakin' way! Grampa Glenn had Spy Sentinels everywhere filtering out all full motion streams all digital handhelds. How did you do that?"
Person A: "Well I finally got that upgrade I was telling you about. Full 256 Petabyte quantum ocular neural receptor storage with Dolby(tm) 4.0 Sensory Surround. That's right, Sight, Sound, Touch and Taste! I didn't have enough for the 5.0 with Smell, but dang, some of the geriatric ointment the original progpower fans use was just rank as hell, so that's ok!"
Person B: "Sweet jeebus! So it recorded it directly to your brain without the hand held digi's, huh? Now that's thinkin'!"
Person A: "Yeah, just go ahead and IM me on my secure mental channel and I'll start the transfer."
Person B: "Um, it's not working."
Person A: "You have to open your firewall, allow forward port allocation, invert the interferometry setting, access the central mainframe, and pop the zits around your cerebral connection jack. Sheesh, it's not that hard."
Person B: "Got it. SWEET! That's so awesome man, I can't believe you got all this! Though I have no clue why you licked that ashtray you found on the floor, nasty!"
Person A: "Had to make sure all the Sensory Surround was working! Anyway, I'm off to eBay to sell this, I should be able to make a killing off it!"
Person B: "Maybe cut out that part where you forgot to turn off in the bathroom, nobody likes a crappy bootleg..."
--------------------
As we look forward into our future, we can be fairly certain that technology will advance exponentially. Perhaps even more so as our understanding of the human brain and body increases. This should be regarded as a wonderful thing! For it is my firm belief that the duty of every person is to help each other as a communal whole, be it the scientists that create medicines to cure disease, the physicists that bring enlightenment to the understanding of how the universe operates, or the fantastic musicians that create gorgeous melodies to satiate an otherwise mechanical existence.
And really, the definition of technological advance is to create a contemporary new way of accomplishing a task that can overcome obstacles of or refine the processes of existing, traditional tasks. An example might be global communication: a century or two (or more) ago, to communicate globally one had to traverse the land, then came readable print that could be distributed, then the telegraph, then telephony, and now we have virtual instant communication via the internet and cell phones... all this overcame the time and space obstacle, and refined the quality/quantity of information sent and received. (though I believe marketing abuse is a BAD thing!)
Another way of thinking of "technological advance" is to simply do something thought to be very hard or impossible. Such as cracking a cryptographic code, accurately forecasting weather, or bypassing copy protection. And almost always, this is the most motivated of the advancements, since it not only requires knowledge on the subject, but has the potential for greater "fame" since many people are exposed to things like weather and copy protection, as opposed to more obscure things. (Think about it, how many of you would rather see an accurate forecast for a week's weather instead of finding ways to observe the as-of-yet undiscovered Graviton particles that carry the gravitational force?
)And by this notion, the "hacker" type is usually ahead of the game and will think of ingenious ways to stay there. No matter what is actually banned for people to take to the progpower show, or what security technological advances come about, there is only the dimension of time until a new form of "hacking" introduces itself as the new "threat."
I am an engineer and I love working on things that are highly advanced and am very proud to be able to do what I do (albeit avionics, and not consumer electronics
). And I love to hack! The term was coined over half a century ago by MIT students, and it basically meant "to do a new something to an existing something that nobody would expect, or thought could be done" ... like using the room lights on a high rise building to create a game of Tetris! A real hacker does it for the sake of learning/understanding or to make things funner, easier, or better for him/herself. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and basically any famous inventor or scientist could be considered a hacker! But in today's society, a hacker's creations can quickly become common knowledge, and people who have no idea of the skill needed to make the technology OR to hack a given technology can reap undeserving benefits from it; such as cracking copy protection on movies or sneaking in high tech surveillance equipment to get a bootleg of a concert.Whether you condone "hacking" or not, it may or may not be illegal to do such things, but law and morals are far from the same! LEARNING IS NEVER IMMORAL if noone gets damaged! And even though "reverse engineering" and cracking cryptographic processes are 'illegal' in almost any case, the skills of people that are proficient with it are HIGHLY sought after. But in no way is using someone elses hard work for personal benefit (be it copying mass quantities of movies, plagiarising someone elses scripts, or selling bootlegged concert vids!) considered moral or respectable.
Every year Glenn is going to struggle to keep up with such things, and certainly at the risk of lowering the morale of many fest-goers. But, to me, it always has been that ProgPower was such an amazing fest not only because of the great music and beer, but because it is such an unfathomably intimate and respectful atmosphere. Never is anybody so obnoxious that they have to be forcefully tossed out by security (that I've ever seen). Never do fights break out (well, I get into shove and slap fights with friends when they don't let me buy them beer, but it's all in good nature). And despite there being a rather wide range of metal lovers there, everybody tends to respect everybody (at least to their face).
So then, is it illegal to record video? Depending on what you plan on doing with it, that might be a sticky subject; but it is certainly AGAINST THE RULES of ProgPower. Would it be immoral to "hack" such an event, if only just for learning purposes? In this case, ABSOLUTELY! While even though it won't physically harm anyone, it damages the magnificent hospitality, pragmantic respect, and intimate loyalty of Glenn and the vast majority of patrons. As well as the Gold Badge issue; it might be entertaining to try and bypass security at a large facility that lacks the respect of real metalheads, if only for self-serving purposes. But there is no point to doing it at a fest that is so light on security only because people are mature enough to abide by extremely reasonable and priveliged guidelines.
I don't dare pledge my own innocence throughout my life, as everyone will make bad decisions... willingly or not. But I would like to think I am capable of showing the bands, the patrons and the prime instigator the respect they deserve by observing their rules!
Hopefully you enjoyed my rant, or at least the hypothetical dialogue preceding the rant, because I bet most of you got bored after that.
Best reply, Pellaz!! 
