I have CAPITAL LETTERS and I am NOT AFRAID to USE THEM.
Seriously though. The university isn't taking responsibility for the content being distributed or downloaded: it's just blocking all uses of peer-to-peer applications, even those which aren't illegal; what it's saying, in effect, is that using the school's bandwidth for filesharing applications is no longer permitted. That, of course, raises a different set of questions: what about the student musician or filmmaker who wants to distribute his work to an audience larger than that which he can find on campus, but lacks the means -- or the desire -- to go through normal channels? (Or what about the distribution of uncopyrighted works in general, really -- peer-to-peer does have legally and morally legitimate uses. The editorial mentions this.)
I recently ran across twoarticles about the strong links between creativity and insanity, and thought them relevant to any discussion of PKD -- his methamphetamine abuse left him more or less permanently schizophrenic, but the quality of his work did not suffer: quite the contrary.
Not that Blade Runner was a bad movie (it's one of my personal favorites), but it's not really a straightforward adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It certainly borrows some themes -- the androids, the bounty hunters (not called "blade runners" anywhere in the novel), and the artificial animals -- but the characters, the world vision, and the story structure are all quite different. The book, for example, contains no hints that Deckard is an android, and the film leaves out elements that were central to the novel -- Mercerism, Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends, the pervasive radiation that made the world of Do Androids Dreams of Electric Sheep nearly uninhabitable, and probably some others that I'm forgetting.
In short: a faithful adaptation of the book would look nothing like Blade Runner.
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I have CAPITAL LETTERS and I am NOT AFRAID to USE THEM.
Seriously though. The university isn't taking responsibility for the content being distributed or downloaded: it's just blocking all uses of peer-to-peer applications, even those which aren't illegal; what it's saying, in effect, is that using the school's bandwidth for filesharing applications is no longer permitted. That, of course, raises a different set of questions: what about the student musician or filmmaker who wants to distribute his work to an audience larger than that which he can find on campus, but lacks the means -- or the desire -- to go through normal channels? (Or what about the distribution of uncopyrighted works in general, really -- peer-to-peer does have legally and morally legitimate uses. The editorial mentions this.)
I recently ran across two articles about the strong links between creativity and insanity, and thought them relevant to any discussion of PKD -- his methamphetamine abuse left him more or less permanently schizophrenic, but the quality of his work did not suffer: quite the contrary.
Not that Blade Runner was a bad movie (it's one of my personal favorites), but it's not really a straightforward adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It certainly borrows some themes -- the androids, the bounty hunters (not called "blade runners" anywhere in the novel), and the artificial animals -- but the characters, the world vision, and the story structure are all quite different. The book, for example, contains no hints that Deckard is an android, and the film leaves out elements that were central to the novel -- Mercerism, Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends, the pervasive radiation that made the world of Do Androids Dreams of Electric Sheep nearly uninhabitable, and probably some others that I'm forgetting.
In short: a faithful adaptation of the book would look nothing like Blade Runner.