Slashdot Mirror
Bootlegging Buffy
Nope.
Censorship is no longer a plausible solution to real or perceived dangers, political issues or social problems. Prominent among its many legacies, the Internet has gravely wounded, if not killed, the very idea of censorship, probably for good.
If you have any doubts, consider "Buffy The Vampire Slayer," who, along with her many fans, has not only taken down a passel of demons but humiliated a craven corporation as well in a much more dramatic finale than the show's writers could have imagined.
The drama over the season finale of "Buffy" demonstrate that there are just too many people out there with too much access to too many computers for censorship to work anymore.
This is horrendous news to religions, governments, corporations, educational institutions, journalists, and moral gatekeepers who for centuries have been telling people what they should see, read and hear.
The "Buffy" debacle also shows us that the people who run these potent institutions still can't quite accept the reality of the new and porous world - and the free flow of information, ideas and imagery -- that is one of the hallmark accomplishments of networked computing.
The bone-headed corporation of the year award (won last year collectively by the music industry for its ostrich-like response to Mp3's) goes to the WB network, in recent weeks paralyzed with uncertainty over what to do about the second half of "Buffy's" final episode, "Graduation 2."
The network was afraid the fantasy violence sequence at Sunnyvale High's commencement ceremonies (in which the town's evil mayor was supposed to ascend to demonhood) was - in the network's words - "inappropriate" after the killings at Columbine High School in Colorado. So they cancelled it.
Shockingly dumb. Unless there are demons from Hell lurking in American high schools, it's hard to imagine how "Buffy" could have any bearing on the horrific but very rare outbursts violence that have broken out in several American high schools in recent years. Are kids who watch the show supposed to ascend from hell and grow scales?
By this logic, every rerun of "Gunsmoke" would provoke saloon shootouts all over the country. The lesson isn't that the WB is worrying about our kids, but that among media corporations, there is no such thing as principle, only greed and cowardice.
The WB might have a keen eye for teen angst and drama, but its corporate masters are sadly ignorant of the Net or the Web. As long as one employee of any company has access to a computer and a phone line -- in TV this means almost all employees -- the cancellation of popular programs like "Buffy" is inane.
George Lucas understands this principle, which is why he adroitly parceled out bits of "Phantom Menace" on the Web for months before the movie came out.
Although the season finale was banned in the United States, at least until mid-summer, "Buffy" aired as scheduled and without controversy in nearby but saner Canada (the country's schoolchildren seemed to survive the broadcast without incident).
Canadian Netizens - perhaps proving that Net citizenship may be growing as powerful as national boundaries - immediately posted digital copies of the episode on the Net. In the last episode, Buffy and her gang go after the town's mayor, who's been plotting all year to use the school's graduation for his "Ascension," whereby he morphs into an evil, giant, heavily armed serpent just as diplomas are being given out.
There is nothing in this episode which in any way evokes or is derivative or reflective of the tragedy at Columbine High School, or encourages or provokes viewers to go kill their classmates or commit other kinds of violence. Most of the movies being shown in theaters this week (and many contemporary TV shows, including the very excellent "Sopranos" "Walker, Texas Ranger," and "Jag") have more graphic yet equally unmenacing violence.
The finale - which I and many thousands of other people have seen -- is typically funny, even droll (skip the next two grafs if you want to learn absolutely nothing about the episode).
"If someone would just wake me up when it's time to go to college," pleads Buffy after one battle scene, "that would be great."
Oz: "Guys'take a moment to deal with this'we survived."
Buffy: "It was a hell of a battle."
Oz: "Not the battle'high school."
The finale is a perfect culmination of the show's wickedly funny premise - high school is a Hellmouth through which much evil enters the world. There's no demon more menacing than life among one's peers, and the real challenge isn't surviving monsters but adolescence and education itself.
Even with Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) around, a fair percentage of Sunnyvale's students get eaten, tortured or nibbled on by vampires and other demons. That this notion is a funny and perhaps even badly-needed reflection of education for millions of American schoolkids seemed lost even on the network that broadcasts "Buffy."
To suddenly declare the premise dangerous in the wake of the noxious post-Littleton hysteria is more of the opportunistic pandering media companies are notorious for. It's the exercise of hypocrisy under the guise of morality. Your viewers are not that gullible, folks. The WB has been airing a great series it doesn't have the guts or the sense to stand behind.
In canceling the finale, the WB did considerable harm. It ratified the notion that TV -- not easy access to lethal weapons, poor parenting, uninspired and oppressive education, or mental illness -- is responsible for the spate of high school murders in recent years.
On the bright side, the WB's bumbling, and the quick and devastating response of Net-savvy fans, is one more example of how power is draining away from fat corporations and towards individuals. Like it or not, fans have to be taken into account. They now have a say.
Many people on the Net are intensely connected to pop culture, and if canceling the finale in the United States was foolish, airing it in Canada and thinking it wouldn't get onto the Web was mind-numbing. On the Net, even regularly scheduled dramas and shows like "The Simpsons," "The X-Files" and "Buffy" never really go off the air - they are intensely discussed and followed and fans write new episodes all year long.
"We are the people. We have the Internet. We have the power. Any questions?" one Buffy fan asked the WB on alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer site, one of the sites where people congregating to offer online taped versions of "Graduation 2."
(If you want what is reputably believed to be the transcript of the final episode, go to: Http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Set/1858/script.html).
The WB is going ballistic over the Net's liberation of its show. "We paid nearly a million dollars for that episode. We bought the rights to it," said a network spokesman, vowing to "aggressively" fight the Net bootlegging of the season finale.
Good luck. Kiss that tape goodbye.
The network has as much chance of keeping the "Buffy" finale off the Web as Kenneth Starr does of getting back his pornographic report on Monica Lewinsky.
The WB ought to lose every penny of its million bucks, and many millions more - a richly deserved and just fine for its stupidity and cowardice.
American politicians and most of the journalists who cover them have no appetite for dealing with complex social and political issues like violence, culture and the young. But these are difficult and expensive to consider or solve. Blaming TV shows and the Internet is easy. That's why 80 per cent of Americans do it.
Clearly, this isn't going to work any more. The collapse of censorship raises lots of complex questions from traditional notions of intellectual property to how to raise children sanely and rationally. It's time to get on with thinking about them.
From hackers to pamphleteers, the long fight for the free movement of ideas and information has some odd and unlikely heroes. "Buffy The Vampire Slayer", now in the pantheon, may be the weirdest yet.
Has the glowing mind control box that is proudly displayed in livingrooms around the country truly gained this much control over us?
John, you've written a long article about how pirating a television show is a huge ringing blow for liberty.
Perhaps we should examine why so many people have their identities wrapped up in a vehicle to sell makeup and anti-pimple ointments instead? Perhaps we should examine why our culture and our minds are so filled with meaningless garbage that we would care enough to pirate a television show to begin with?
The true victory in this situation would have been if they had aired the final episode, and no one had watched it at all.
Has the internet, with all of its potential as a communications medium, been turned nothing but another outlet for television?
I think you are usually pretty close to on target with your writings, but in my opinion you've strayed far from what is important with this one.
Littleton, Colo. wasn't the only place where school shootings occured. Unless we forget, there have been other places (maybe not as public) where lethal school violence has occured. Enough to say this isn't an isolated problem.
I hate to miss a good TV episode, but it actually is a relief to see a large corp. make an attempt to consider the feelings of its viewers (whatever their true motivations are).
Yes, We all know how to use the remote, or the channel button on the TV, but sometimes there is something called decency and consideration. If anyone has noticed, TV has entirely lacked in this for the past decade. Maybe the WB's self-censorship (regardless of its motivation) will be a start towards removing some actual senseless TV. Not out of fear from the public, but out of realizing TV should not sell out for ratings.
As for 'controlling' the Internet. How is the free flow of every little single bit of information going to solve the world's problems? It's almost like telling the absolute tactless truth to everyone all the time. Sure, its cool to grab something rare to 'stick it' to The MANN. But are US netizens decadent enough to proclaim pirating a POSTPONED TV episode a moral victory? There is a time and a place for everything. Including the distribution of information.
Our impatient self gratification has got to take a back seat sometime.
I might be completely out of line with these questions, so feel free to flame me in oblivion.
First off, I agree with you, WB's actions were not censorship. Censorship is when an organization or person with power compels someone with less power not to say or show something. Warner Brothers was not compelled to pull the show, so, whether you think the move was right or wrong, it wasn't censorship.
Secondly, you calling the bootlegger's actions "Grand Theft" is irresponsible and wrong. Theft would be if someone stole Warner Brothers' copy, so they no longer had it. This is copyright infringement, plain and simple. A crime, but nowhere near as dire a crime as Grand Theft. Nor should it be, since WB was not significantly injured by the infringement. WB wasn't showing the episode anyway, and most of the people watching the bootlegs will still tune in if/when they get around to airing it, so WB still will get the same ad revenue as before.
The bulk of your argument boils down to "Warner Brothers owns Buffy, so they can do whatever they want with it." This argument hides two fallacies in it. It equates ownership of information (eg. the episode) to ownership of real goods (eg. the master copy of the episode). It also equates the rights of a corporation to the rights of an individual.
First, on the rights of corporations. The US has gone through great efforts to pretend that corporations and individuals are equal under the law. This despite the fact that corporations are not subject to the same criminal penalties we are (I'd like to see someone put some major polluting company away for 15-25 years for negligent manslaughter). Corporations should be treated differently, morally and legally.
Secondly, information is not property, you can't own it (or steal it). Legally speaking, you can own the copy rights to information, but this is a substatially broken system. By airing the episode in Canada, Canadian viewers gained access to the information. Why shouldn't they be allowed to share it with their less fortunate neighbors?
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Say it with me: They were just trying to avoid bad PR, so they bowed to pop-psychology. Katz is right, fighting demons in a school doesn't equal having two kids go nuts and shoot their innocent classmates, and it certainly won't cause them to do so.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Pretty darn good for an oversized board game; my girlfriend initially thought it was de Toqueville. Anyhow, this discussion reminded me of that very sane little bit from the game -- it seems like the folks writing for video games these days have the people who write TV fluff pretty badly beaten...
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The rough sex, the violence -- I knew it all looked framiliar from someplace... Kuberick must have found a Fox tape that had fallen through a timewarp from 2002 or something.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The postponing of this show is an allegorical reference to our society at large - that these kids were to graduate - from High School - being children, to College, being adults.
Instead of allowing this "graduation" to happen, the show was "postponed", delaying the transition of the audience (intended or not) from childhood to adulthood. In having "them" make the decision for us, whether we can exercise our own judgement as to whether we'd be offended or shocked, or experience Post Littleton Stress Syndrome, anyone with a TV that has the WB pipe to it, has been treated like a child.
I for one, will download this from the net and view it, w/o commercials. Fuck WB.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I don't think US "citizens" (as in majority of people) are overly-sensitive. I think it's the few with the $$$ and Agendas that are trying to convince US that we SHOULD be overly-sensitive.
Why is it that the majority of people that I've talked to all think that what happaned in Littleton is a tragedy, but non of them think that censorship or blaming tv, video games, etc is the answer nor "the right thing" to do. Yet we're still being bombarded by the Politicians and other controling parties (IE: religious groups) that it's all the fault of tv, games.. etc. And they all seem to say that "the people" demand stricter gun laws, that "the people" demand censoring things the politicians deem immoral or offensive.
Hmm... I'm one of "the people" and no one asked me of my opinion, hell no one asked any of my friends, neighbors or coworkers for what they demand either. So who is it that's REALLY "demanding" all this? I really doubt it's "the people".
Ex-Nt-User
I don't think some of you are getting it...
I'm sorry some of you Buffy fans missed out on your final episode, but somebody at WB *must* have thought the episode was in bad taste if they yanked it. I'm sure they lost a ton of money, and that should say a lot.
If you missed out on the episode, I'm sorry. But don't be so quick to step on other people's feelings, you might be on the other side soon enough.
Basically WBros paid a million dollars for a tape that they decided to sit on. It shouldn't be terribly suprising then that it is still valuable. If they don't want to take advantage of that, like they have been all along, then others will likely step in to do so. If WB wants control back, they need only air the episode - I bet that most of the big Buffy fans (I don't care for the show myself) will plonk down in front of the tube and watch it all the same.
I realize that current copyright law does not work this way, but I think it would be much better if copyrights were more like trademarks. Unless they are used (e.g. books always in print, software rewritten or supplied with emulators) they drop into the public domain. This seems to have happened de facto with Buffy here, and that's frequently just as good as de jure.
Of course, a time limit, like five years after the author's death (AND NO LONGER!) would still be a good thing to have in effect. Then we just need trademarks to ultimately expire, and we'll be all set...
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
This has nothing to do with the "pain of littleton". There is no parallel to be drawn between their children being shot to death, and a satirical show about how (essentially), high school is hell. If that was the case, satire and any show dealing with unhappy things and high school would all have to be "censored".
What HAS happened here is a failing of a large number of people's logic. I play quake2.. alot. I am not a psychopatic killer. If there were even a weak correlation here, hundreds would be shot to death every day. Millions of people play quake.. and less than 0.01% ever wind up trying to shoot somebody. If that. I've found stronger correlations between people who eat rye bread and breast cancer!
Second question you brought up was "decency". In short, if this was the case, why didn't they recall all their released movies that depicted violence? I'll let you answer that one.
--
No you are exactly right. WB has every right to do with "Buffy" as they see fit, it's their intellectual property. The freedom of speech includes the right not to speak, for whatever reason you wish.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
After you get down off your soapbox, don't forget that the TV networks, by their nature decide what we can and can't watch. They decide what gets produced, what gets shown, and what gets cancelled, they decide what news stories will generate enough ratings, and therefore are worth showing. Just because a network has made a programming decision based on something besides money, people get upset.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
If I shoot my own cheesy TV show, and send it to WB for airing, and they refuse to show it, is that censorship? No, of course not. In this case neither does the production company have the right to have their show shown.
Implied in WB's "First broadcast rights" is the right not to broadcast. It isn't "First broadcast obligation" after all.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
The real tragedy in all of this is the amount of internet bandwidth being wasted passing copies of this show around.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Actually, my wife makes me watch that show every week with her, I personally don't like the show much, other than for the girl who plays Buffy ;-)
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Real censorship would be WB executives raiding Katz's house, duct-taping his mouth shut, and taking away his keyboard.
Under Katz's definition, he would do it to himself.
Jon, I think you're in love with the Internet. There's no shame in that, but it's still only about communication.
Five years ago, people would have mailed fuzzily copied videotapes to each other. (Two years ago, they did that for Babylon 5.)
There's nothing new under the sun. You'll pardon me if I yawn when you find a new fad that looks just like the old fad.
--
QDMerge -- generate documents automatically.
how to invest, a novice's guide
If WB had decided that Buffy's ratings were too low to justify the air time, would it have been censorship? No. Are they required to air an episode simply because they bought it? No.
/. gods decide to remove this article from their server and ban Katz forever, is it censorship? No. Get your own server. Get your own broadcast network.
If the
WB decides what they air. The word censorship is misused and the accusation is unfounded. If they want to pay Sarah and the gang for hundreds of episodes which are never seen, then that's their business. The fact that people stole their intellectual property and posted it to the web is not a sign of liberation.
How would you feel, Jon, if I stole a draft of a book that you wrote and then published that book to the web before you could have it published in print? It's theft.
Hi all,
First of all, this isn't censorship. This is just
network stupidity. Censorship would be if the WB
had aired the episode and then had the
government pass a law to prevent us from
talking about it somehow.
Secondly, the ironic thing about this is that
when the WB finally does get the balls to air
the show, they'll probably get record high
ratings. The people who've seen a dupe of the
tape or who've watched it streamed across the
Internet or read a transcript will watch it for
the better and bigger and clearer picture.
People who have never watched the show before will
watch it out of curiosity to see what everyone was
talking about.
And WB will get a bunch of new viewers, renew the
show for another season, and get potentially
better ratings.
This whole thing could just be a ploy for
bigger ratings. On the other hand, I'm not
a Machiavellian Cynic. . .
-Augie
What exactly has WB done that is wrong? They created a show with their money--a show they own the rights to--and decided not to publish it (at least for now). Since when is it wrong to censor yourself? I do it all the time (though you can't tell from some of the stupid things I've said on /.), and I'm sure most of us do it too. I know we all have those times when you think, "I could say something really, really inappropriate right now. I'm going to do it, really I am . . . no wait, that would make me look like a jerk." And then you stop yourself. Or when you have an otherwise really funny joke about snipers that you're about to tell, but then you realize, "Oh! Your husband was sniped, wasn't he? You probably didn't think that was very funny, did you? Get a sense of humor!" You can censor youself out of taste, and while external censorship has a tendancy to be ungood (I don't care if that's not a word!), it's often better to have too much self-censorship than not enough. Or maybe we don't think that way.
I don't see why WB should deserve the all the flak its getting. They seem to be trying to be sensitive to the stuff at Littleton. I can see how scenes with high school students running around the school and getting attacked would seem inappropriate.
It seems like there's a double standard operating here. We complain about coporations trying to exploit the event when they release things like this about events that we care about. But if the event in question doesn't resonate much with us, everyone starts shouting censorship, calls for booycotts, and adovocates pirating the show. Would we have done the same if George Lucas decided to delay the release of star wars for a few weeks?
BTW, I think Katz is really reaching when he makes the analogy between the people being persecuted at school and the show having demons running around the high school.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Many posters seem to think this article is about how 'evil' WB is.... I have a different take.
The article is about the 'Net, and the power it gives us. I've seen this for years.. but it's hard to put into words.
You can see it with most software. You can see it with mp3, you can see it with vcd, and anything else that can be broken down to information.
Regardless of any percieved 'morality' issues, regardless of any attempt at cencorship, regardless of what laws governing 'money' or 'intellectual property', there is nothing that will stop people from sharing information easily and quickly.
I don't have to speak out against IP, or against morality, or against *anything* to state that people will copy, pirate, whatever you want to call it anyway, and that they should have the right to.
Our society is run by money.. but shouldn't it be run by people? Money is a means to an end, but it's gotten out of hand. We spend our lives inside, watching TV, even playing on the Internet, and don't pay attention to what's going on around us in the real world. THAT is why our cities suck, are ugly, and dirty.
THAT is why we take a new suburb where there is TONS of space and cram the houses closer and closer together instead of putting up nice yards for people.. because of money.
There is something besides money here... there is the inalienable right for ME to share any information I want with YOU, and I will!
That's it, folks! Stand up for your rights! Fight the greedy network corporations who deny your right to watch your favorite prime-time television show!
Oh sure, some would say there are more important things you could get upset about. Some would say that the U.S Constitution is being slowly eroded while we watch television. None of that matters, though. What matters is being able to watch the season finale of "Buffy". Heck, they can take our rights, they can increase our taxes, JUST DON'T MESS WITH OUR T.V. SHOWS!
Clearly, this is a huge victory for "netizens". It proves that we have the power to make change WHERE IT MATTERS. It proves that we can pat ourselves on the back when we make those changes. It proves that we have writers who can write long articles about T.V. shows. It proves that we can write long posts on slashdot about those articles.
Yes, thanks to "The Buffy Effect", I will sleep better knowing that the rights-takers are now almost certainly cowering in fear.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Pull cosmology (such as presence or absence of demons) out of moral questions, and you have oversimplified the question. The fact that many of us have different cosmologies makes morality a very hairy question, but I think that it is necessary hair.
--The basis of all love is respect
The "Buffy" issue is not about censorship. It is about freedom. WB used their freedom, and made a decision. They decided not to air the show, in the name of good taste. They did not do this for market share; the TV biz thrives on controversy. They probably lost ratings in this decision, but they did the Right Thing.
How dare we call this censorship and decry it as such? Who holds the right to censor WB, to take away their freedom and force them to air an episode they don't want to air?
Yes, force. That is exactly what the bootleggers did; they forced the release of this material. They were the ones who restricted WB's freedom not to release an episode they wanted not to release.
We don't own Buffy. WB does. They have the right to air, to pull, to make their own Buffy channel with 48 episodes per day. If you don't like that, pick up a web cam and write your own TV show.
Katz, you're just wrong.
This isn't about saying that this episode causes real world violence. This is about keeping people from having the very real pain of Littleton thrown in their faces again.
I've seen this done once before. When the Challenger exploded, MTV pulled all their "spaceman" ads. This wasn't censorship. NASA didn't force them to do it. NASA probably didn't even ask. MTV did this by itself. This wasn't some sort of political statement on the US space program. This was simple human decency. Even media companies are capable of this.
If they were forced to pull the ep, that would be a problem. When a company chooses to do the decent thing, they should be applauded. To harass them or complain about them doing the decent thing is to throw decency away entirely. That is the wrong path. To say that the government should not legislate decency is not to say that one should not display it one's self.
The bootleggers performed nothing short of grand theft. This was WB's episode, to show or not as they decided. I doubt even RMS would advocate this sort of activity, and his worldview appears to revolve around the freedom of IP. There is a big difference between activist and guerilla, you know.
--The basis of all love is respect
In Edmonton, the only channel that carries it is YTV, and they didn't show it.. (They claimed that "it was made unavailable to them by their supplier".)
:o) was looking forward to seeing it..
It was a shame, because I (um, I mean my wife
So don't go around thinking that Canada is THAT much less restrictive than the US..
1. Not "cancelled". "Postponed". The finale was POSTPONED. It'll be shown later.
2. The WB felt that graduation violence was inappropriate around the time of graduations. They did what they felt was the responsible thing.
3. THey have the rights to Buffy. THey can do whatever the heck they want with it.
4. You have no inalienable right to watch TV. THe WB is not compelled to ever show this episode.
5. It's a TV show. Chill. I didn't freak out last night when the audio feed of the finale of DS9 cut out. It's still just TV.
6. This is not a breaking sort of spy story to sneak copies of the Buffy finale out of the WB vault. Eveyr copy or transcript I have seen so far is from Canadian viewer who saw it/ taped it when it broadcast there. We are the Internet and have the power? Bull. You are Canadian and have a VCR.
WIth all the stuff in the world to worry about today, let's not get our undies in a bunch over the finale of one fantasy TV show.
PS: I caught a later episode of the DS9 finale. Wow. Now there's some good TV!
Apparently not everyone on the creative side is in opposition to the conduct. Cinescape Online reports Buffy Creator Joss Weedon saying,
"OK, I'm having a Grateful Dead moment here, but I'm saying, 'Bootleg the puppy.'"
Jon seems to overestimate the bootlegger's abilities to distribute copies beyond the Internet's "inner cliques." An average user is not likely to be armed with more than a report, a pointer to recently-killed links and the URLS of some portal search engines.
Those search engines don't reveal very much. Some straightforward queries at Altavista and Googol disclosed at most three relevant sites, each of which had already been "lawyered."
My experience is that the same seems to be true of the supposed "rampant" distribution of bootleg copies of the Phantom Menace.
I admit I didn't try very hard -- perhaps half an hour or so. Perhaps a few die-hard fans might be willing to work harder to find their copies, but few will find it worth the effort. But if it isn't trivial for me to find it, then it won't be easy at all for everyday Joe to get a copy, and then censorship hasn't been effectively combatted at all.
Indeed, there will always be a subculture distributing bootlegs -- the only problem is to contain it so the subculture is commercially unimportant. It is not clear to me that the Internet has made the bootleg culture substantially more of a threat, particularly in view of recent laws.
Indeed, since DMCA provides recourse through the ISP's, who own meat and metal and often have a stream of commercial contacts with the USA, it is actually fairly easy for a lawyer to shut down many or most piracy shops. I suspect real censorship (where it is legal) can operate the same way.
That, together with the fact that the activity is itself illegal, suggests that maybe Jon was too quick to suggest that the Internet is the great equalizer.
And if would have no clue how to get things like this, how would average Joe ever get clueful?
If you want to defeat "censorship," you need to be able to publish widely, not covertly. If you can't do so without fear of criminal responsibility or civil liability -- or if Joe is going to have to look over his shoulder to assure not being arrested for criminal activities of obtaining a copy, you simply aren't playing the "power to the people" game, but are merely entertaining friends and relations.
. . . it just changes its shape.
We in the United States, who are largely protected by the Courts and agressive litigation strategies of groups such as the ACLU, have grown complacent over time about censorship. We have grown to believe that the "bad guys," regardless of who they are and what they stand for will never be able to shield us from the light because of the almighty Bill of Rights.
Not so, Joe. And the liberating power of the Internet is not necessarily all good. It is, indeed, a vast wasteland and small voices can be truly and completely lost in that vastness. Moreover, the attractiveness of private censorship in the form of momma-ware and other filtering technologies invites willful or accidental blindness to content that can be controlled without the benefit of a government. In this sense, censorship is simply moving from use of government to another form, which should probably be the topic of another thread.
Yet another way in which censorship is effected today is by abusing the marketplace of ideas another way -- filling it with counter-content. Spamming is a tremendously effective way to bury opposing content, and when well-executed, is not always easy to counter. Sometimes the marketplace of ideas requires antitrust legislation.
Others have written about this particular circumstance of the Buffy affair not being a censorship issue. I will not pass on the point (though I share this view) but instead will assume that Jon is correct that somehow Warner is "censoring" content from the public. This kind of censorship, keeping secrets, is indeed much more difficult than once it was.
But this isn't the kind of censorship that is most dangerous and troublesome -- the keeping of content from the masses, which content is highly popular and popularized. When the majority wants to hear something, censorship has always been totally ineffective, even before we had the internet. Popular voices don't require first amendment protection, its the unpopular ones that are hard to save.
It is mostly when the majority wants content to be buried that civil liberty is really at risk.
This is why the casebooks are filled with overturning of laws dealing with Nazis marching in Skokie, "F*ck the Draft" jackets and Flag Burning -- It is the unpopular views that require protection.
It is the tiny voices, highly disapproved of by the marjority, who need protection. And without the clamour of a large and powerful activist community, those voices remain tiny, buried in the vast wasteland of the internet. As effectively censored as if government had squashed each publisher with a tank.
In many respects, I think, censorship has far more options on the internet than elsewhere. Even if you disagree with this point, consider at least whether it is dangerously arrogant to complacently presume that censorship has become impractical. Maintaining vigilant awareness to censorship in all forms is, perhaps, is the only way to assure our liberty.
Remember the "New Coke" fiasco years ago? Where a big stupid corporation did one of two things
underestimated the buyer loyalty to a certain taste
or
pulled a great free advertising stunt with the new/old coke uproar which filled the news for months on end
I personally believe it was the first followed quickly by the second, coke did something stupid which upset their fan base, then capitalized on the media attention for free advertising.
I expect WB is in the middle of the same thing. They underestimated the power of their fan base and the internet, but they will capitalize on the media uproar and will air the show later this summer to the best ratings Buffy has ever had. If they are smart, they will make it a directors cut with extra clever dialog and gore filled scenes.
Is Jon on the WB payroll?
the AntiCypher
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
"Some people have gotten so much into the roles, that they actually killed their fellow games. "
No they have not. This is urban legend created by Catholic schools during the late seventies too keep parents of students from allowing their children to play the game after the church realized that simply condeming the game's common use of magic just wasn't enough. The story was then worked into some of those pamphlets that Southern Baptists leave all over the place, and it spread like wildfire. Stop believing everything you hear.
It doesn't matter if the public wants to see the last episode... they don't own the copyright!! You don't like it? Boo-freakin-hoo. It is WB's right to release (or not release) anything they wish. They made a decision, and it's their right to uphold it and not have a bunch of techno-weenies illegally distributing their material.