Changing Seasons and Charging Stampedes

its getting darker earlier... you know what that means!

right, i forgot to white balance!

anyhow, just figured i would fill folks in,

my movie, that i put on youtube is experiencing some difficulty, especially with the onset of that SOPA bill, since, as it was a student film, i was not required to compose my own score. but yes, i am working on re-loading it at some point.

this might be an interesting time to express an opinion on the matter of SOPA, which i learned about only last night, by a friend who was fairly volatile about the shortsightedness of this maneuver by its supporters; ie big industry hollywood and other media mongrels. since i am an artist of media, this bill limiting the content of the internet could protect many for-profit items from sly techie fingers. however, i do not believe that this is a motion that should exist, or at least not in this form for two reasons.

a) the way the pushers are going about this bill means that search engines will become outlawed or extinct, which while edgy sounding and therefore cool, does not bode well for anyone looking for information. not only will we be persecuted for linking people to other information, but the entire student population will lose their greatest resource (since too few people make use of the libraries these days, myself included)

and b) because it hammers another nail in the rickshaw coffin of downloading, which the government has been working to bury for years. downloading movies, books and music is the price of digitization, as the media industry has overextended itself to compensate for their increasingly sheltered consumers, making it easier and easier to hide behind a computer screen than interact with real people in order to get what we want. this is the compromise that the companies make, with itunes and netflix and those damn kindle pads. i mentioned that the library was seeing less use these days, and this is why; the internet has become a digital library that anyone can access from the comfort of their toilet. crying sour grapes because people innovated someone else's innovations is a poor sport's move, and yes i approve of taking an action, but burning libraries is an archaic expression of frustration.

a solution to this might be...

• leaving search engines alone, because they are a valuable resource that provides large corporations with free or inexpensive advertising.
• finding a way to instead of ban downloading, accept that its become the new library, and treat them like any other library system, by having them pay before they distribute.
• remember that the hard copy is still a valuable product. people still support things that they enjoy, so that they can see more of it produced.
• eat a shoe, just because i am a fan of shoe eating.

thank you

- ben