In spite of all the opposition and through political shenanigans that would do credit to the Iranian President Ahmadinejad, the French government managed to have the “HADOPI” (no, I don’t know what the acronym stands for, and I really don’t care) law passed through both chambers, and it will become effective on January 1st, 2010.
If you didn’t follow the recent French law-making antics, that law is supposed to protect the so-called “mind products” (books, music, movies, pictures) from unlawful downloading. A very laudable purpose, but the worst possible implementation.
Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, Denmark, the countries of the world are meeting for a couple of weeks in order to try and stave off the end of the world – of our world, that is.
What is the relationship between the HADOPI law and the Copenhagen meeting? Both are attempting to prevent an irresistible force from destroying something of value to us. The irresistible force is greed. The “something of value” is artistic creation in one case, and the survival of the Human species in the other.
As actor Jack Palance said, “the only two things we can depend on are gravitation and greed”. Because the motor force behind HADOPI is also greed (the greed of the media majors), it stands a better chance of ultimately succeeding than the environment conference. Unfortunately, the importance of HADOPI to our lives is negligible: if we don’t survive, what will it matter that a few movie makers or painters or writers or singers didn’t earn as much money as they could have? Especially as, in reality, most of the money isn’t going to the creators anyway, but to the producers and agents…
The time to prevent global warming is past. The effects of the warming of the atmosphere are snowballing (pun intended), and as King Canute found out a long time ago, you can’t order the tide back.
Illegal downloading will go on, and so will the accumulation of carbon dioxide and methane in our atmosphere. We should try and slow down the inevitable, at least where global warming is concerned, but we should also try and prepare for the changed conditions. We have the technology to survive as a species, but only if we apply it to that purpose and don’t waste our resources fighting the chicken thieves with big guns.
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