Around Alderaan: The Tiniest Jedi Master

Why Master Jedi Shan, you seem quite small today… I was playing my Jedi Knight in Star Wars: The Old Republic today and this is what happened when I went to converse with the leader of the Jedi Council.

Needless to say, she’s become somewhat pint sized. She may be the daughter of Bastila Shan, but I don’t recall her mother being that tiny and her father certainly wasn’t a small man. So I’m not sure why Satele is the size of a gerbil.

“You see, Padewan, I was meditating on the immensity of the universe.”

“Thrust deep within my mediation I realized how insignificant we are in light of the Force. Struggling with our emotions between the Light Side and the Dark Side.”

“Do you think you could give me a ride to the bathroom? …I need to use the little Jedi’s room.”

#

If I were going to guess, I think that what happened is that the game uses the same model when in the cinematic and when she calls me on the holo. It shrank her model down to the gerbil-size and overlayed it with the blue-coruscating lines a mere minute before when we spoke over the holo—but when it came time to put her back to her proper “human” size, it failed to do so.

The result? I’m an immense towering behemoth of a zebrak standing over a Master Jedi.

Of course, the game is kind enough to also have me incline my head down to her and she looks way up at me as well. That’s either a curious effect or my pattern-seeking brain is adding it to the scene because it fits.

Nintendo, EA, and Sony Electronics Pull Support for SOPA…Sortof?

Right now, with GoDaddy staring down the barrel of a boycott over their initial support for the Internet-censorship bill SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) other companies are beginning to follow suit and renege support for the bill.

World’s largest video game producers Nintendo, EA, and Sony Electronics have yanked their direct support of the bill and this is a good thing.

However, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)—an alliance among whom EA, Nintendo, and Sony happen to claim membership—still supports SOPA. Unless the big three listed above remove themselves from that alliance they are still supporting SOPA by proxy (and with their money.)

Pulling their name from the list is a nice gesture; but in my eyes it’s a futile one if they remain in collusion with an organization putting its name and funds towards this censorship bill.

I will wait to hear that either the ESA has changed it stance; or Nintendo, EA, and/or Sony Electronics has withdrawn their membership in the association.

Trying to Head Off the PR Deathstar, GoDaddy Denounces SOPA with Announcement

And I’ll believe it when I see it, GoDaddy.

After discovering that not only did GoDaddy, giant domain registrar, support the Internet-censorship bill SOPA, but they’re also explicitly excluded from its provisions in the text of the bill, Reddit and the Internet reacted violently to their support of this legislation.

Hacktivist collective Anonymous, Reddit, and many others have pledged that they would move their domains off of the registrar pending a great-walk-out today, November 29th 2011. Dubbed “Dump GoDaddy Day” already they’ve been bleeding out thousands of domains since the discovery of their attachment to the bill—unfortunately thousands more have transferred in over the past week so they have had an apparent net gain.

Today will only get worse.

Of course, they’ve turned around entirely and now have been e-mailing news outlets to let them no that not only does GoDaddy no longer support SOPA, but they actively oppose it.

Today GoDaddy’s CEO sent a contrite press release via e-mail to a multitude of news outlets begging for mercy and quarter:

We have observed a spike in domain name transfers, which are running above normal rates and which we attribute to GoDaddy's prior support for SOPA, which was reversed. GoDaddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and Internet communities. Our company regrets the loss of any of our customers, who remain our highest priority, and we hope to repair those relationships and win back their business over time.

In their way, Anonymous has urged people to remain steadfast in the boycott even if GoDaddy is now opposing the bill this late in the game.

They have been working hard to make it look like they’ve actually opposed the current bill’s form from the beginning going so far to explain their position originally had to do with expecting it to be a job making bill (instead of the obvious censorship, Internet-breaking bill that it is?) It’s hard to believe that GoDaddy’s shareholders and executives weren’t aware of its Internet-breaking potential when they worked “tirelessly with lawmakers” to get themselves a personal exclusion from its authority.

Contrite as he may be, CEO Adelman is too-little too-late and the company should feel the sting of its bad choices. Dirtbags who would work with legislators to craft horrible community-crushing legislation should be strung up as an example.

Before I’m fully convinced that GoDaddy is willing to do the right thing, I want to see them putting full page ads in newspapers in opposition to the bill…

Note: They need not display a fully nude Danica Patrick to get this message across, but may not hurt.

Around Alderaan: SWTOR and Troopers as a newbie

As you might have guessed, I’ve gotten into Star Wars: The Old Republic, a new MMO released by EA and Bioware, and I’m running around a bit. It’s been something of an odd experience with a strongly narrative-based system that tells you a story as you play. In fact, the Flashpoints (instances in the game) are really Star Wars episodes.

Republic Trooper armor is something to look at—and it’s absolutely reminiscent of the eventual stormtrooper armor that will make its debut 300 years later when the Sith Empire manages to take over the galaxy. It just hasn’t happened yet.

Of course, like any game, you’ll notice that I have an almost-clown suit of mismatched, yet colorful armor pieces that I’ve collected going about my missions.

This shot was taken on the desert-planet of Tantooine, the erstwhile home of Like Skywalker.

The dune-held countryside of this region is like my own home to an extent. Tall mesas of reddened-rock thrusting out of ever-changing dunes. Although the presence of the Imperial soldiers leaves something to disdain.

I suppose I’ll sally forth and blast a few for old time’s sake.

This is a shot from Alderaan—a lush landscape with snowcapped mountains, conifer trees, and a cloudy sky all day. Through green fields I walked while supporting House Organa against an incursion by the Empire. Alderaan, and House Organa, of course are Princess Leia’s erstwhile home planet and adoptive family respectively.

It’s a beautiful and majestic world with wonderful people. It’s sad to know that in 3,000 years time it will be vaporized into so much space rubble by the Death Star, killing the entire population in a show of force by the Sith Empire.

 

Oh yeah, did I mention: you get a spaceship.

My trooper has a lopsided winged craft with a bunch of guns on it called a Thunderclap. Although, you’ll probably like my Smuggler’s ship better—it’s a Corellian light freighter (think the little sister of the Millennium Falcon) with extra-heavy engines retrofitted into the chassis for perfectly legitimate and legal purposes, of course.

Merry Christmas from the World of Warcraft

Christmas time is coming and the MMOs are getting fat! Enjoy this video about the winter holiday celebration in World of Warcraft the Feast of Winter’s Veil.

Have a sprightly Yule all!

Link, via MMO Anthropology.

Interesting Food-for-Thought About the Female Interest Juxtaposition of Animé and Comic Book Culture

Guest post by Arienne Keith, a prolific Facebook auteur, metal smith, jewelry maker, and also a dyed-in-the-film animé fangirl. Here she responds to an article in Kotaku entitled “Nerds and Male Privilege.”

My comments on the thing: I think it leaves out the differences between different sects of geekdom. I think this article speaks to comic book geekdom and some to video game geekdom, but it ignores anime geekdom. Not quite sure how to say this, but... my thought is that the sexualization of certain characters both is and isn't a problem in attracting female fans. I didn't read all the comments below the article but I skimmed some, and one said that both the male and female characters are sexualized, pointing at Batman's abs as an example. I think that they're not sexualizing them the right way, and this is why comic-book fandom is male-dominated and anime fandom is female-dominated. Somehow, with all the otherworldly DDD-cups bouncing around in anime, anime draws a noticeably greater female audience than American comicbooks. Also, anime is produced by a country where the feminist revolution is much further behind, and one could argue that anime is more sexist than comic books -- yet it still draws the larger female audience. So, sexist elements and overly-sexualized female characters don't necessarily deter female fans. I posit that anime has hot guys, and comic books don't.

I think my point is best exemplified by this: in Google, type in "top ten hottest anime guys" and the first page will all be related results; they spill over past the next page and you don't see hot anime babes until page three of results. And there are videos and images galore. Now type in "top ten hottest superhero guys" and only the first two results are related. Result four already starts with hot superhero babes. And, personally, I agree with the Google results -- there aren't any Marvel/DC Comics characters I find attractive... except maybe Spiderman. Just a little bit. In fact, I find comic book girls to be more attractive than comic book guys, and that's a bad sign because I'm a heterosexual. ANIME guys, on the other hand -- well let's just say the 1GB of pictures on my computer is mostly anime guy screencaps and fanart.

However, I haven't been able to pinpoint what it is that makes anime guys hot and superheroes not. My husband suggests it's the story mechanics and such: as an example, Spiderman is a college student who gets stuck in awkward social situations with his best friend and the girl he's crushing on, much like in anime. And maybe that similarity to anime is why Spiderman is kinda attractive. He was ranked #1 on the only hot superheroes list in Google.

Thoughts? Why are anime guys so much hotter than superheroes? And can any of you think of other reasons why comicbook geekdom is male-dominated and anime geekdom is female-dominated? Please discuss.

Link, via Facebook

I Have Evolved as a Technology Journalist

Recently, I had the chance to interview the amazing Dr. Amr Awadallah, Chief Technology Officer of Cloudera, about his thoughts on video games and Big Data. The interview will likely become an article over the winter holidays, but people who follow the social and cultural impact of video game and MMO culture will probably be interested in some of his insights.

Better yet, and totally selfish of me, I was introduced to him as a “reporter” and by someone who didn’t mean it ironically.

In the words of my good friend, RyAnne, I have had my pokémon evolution, “A Jolteon with ink in the blood, huh?”

Expect big things coming your way this Yule from me on both anthropology and the cultural effects of technology in articles written for SiliconANGLE.

I’ve been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic

I am looking for a good server to play with my fans and people of like minds. So if you’re playing, hit me up.

I will be publishing screenshots from in game and a discussion of what it’s been like playing. If you’re interested in Star Wars: The Old Republic let me know what you think of it and what you’d like better ideas on how it works.

So far, it’s been a fairly good experience.

Dragon Tamers by Kyt Dotson a █████ █████ Censored in Protest of SOPA and PROTECT-IP

I've censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet--a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit: http://americancensorship.org/posts/5609/uncensor

Dragon Tamers
By Kyt Dotson © 2002
Dedicated to Corrin Ingold

The ██████████ was ████ and █████; a █████ ██████ ████ of █████ █████████. The ███████ █████ ████████ ████ the █████ of the ████ ██████ █████ ██████ ████ a ██████ ████████████. The ████ of the ███████████ █████ ██████ in ███████’s ████, as she █████ ███████ ████ one of the ████ ███████ of ████████ █████ ███████ at the █████ in the ██████. In the ██████ of the ██████████ an █████████ █████ had ████ ███████, it ████████ to be ████ ████ a ████ of █████ █████. In its ████ ███████ the ██████ ███████████ the ██████████ █████████ and ████████ ████ the █████ in the █████ sky. In the ████ ██████ of the █████ was ████ ████████ █████ be ███████ for: a █████ █████. The █████ was a ████████ █████; it ████████ ████ ██████ ████ it was ████ its lid ████ so ████ the █████ █████ ████ ████ its ████ █████ and ████ the ██████████. The ████████ █████ █████ and █████ ████ ████ ██████ its ████████ ████████ ███████ of the █████ of a ██████. 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The ██████ ██████ the ████████ ████ ███████’s ████, ████████, ███████, by her ████ ██████████ in the █████. The █████ and the ██████ █████ ███████ at its ██████. The █████ ████████ a ████████ █████-█████ ████ ████ ███████ ████ the ████ of the ████ ███████ ██████ █████. A ████ ████ ██████ the █████ and the ███████ ██████. The █████████ of the █████ who ██████ ████ one of the ████ █████████—████ ███████ ████ █████ the ██████████ ████ █████ ████████ ████████—██████ █████████ █████████ in the █████. The █████ ███████ ████ the ██████ ██████ the ██████████ ████ ███████, ████████ her a ███████ ████. The ██████-█████’s ████ █████ to █████ ████, ██████████ in the ███████ ███████ ████ ██████, and ████ ██████ to █████ on the ███████████ █████. ███████ ███████. ███████. All █████ ████████ ██████████ ████ ███████’s ████ as she ███████—the ███████ was █████ to █████. The █████ ████ a ██████, ██████████ ████████, ████ a ████ of ██████████ ███████ ████████. Her ████ was ████ █████ and ████████ ████ her ████ in a ████ of ████████ █████. All ████ ████████ her as she ██████████ the ███████ of her █████: the ██████ in the ██████ of the ██████████. The ██████ ██████ up, its █████ ███████ ████ an ████████████ ██████████ in the █████████ of ████ and █████. The █████ ██████ up ████ her ████████, ████████, ███████ ████████ her ████ ████ the █████ as she ████ ███████ it ████ a ████████ and █████. The ██████████ ██████ ████ ████████████ █████ the ██████ ███████ her ████ █████████ ████. As she sat ████, her ███████ █████ █████ ██████ █████ the ██████’s █████; it ███████, █████████ to █████ to her ██████. ████ █████ ███████, she █████ to ████, and █████ ████ ████ the █████ of the █████, a ██████ ██████ out as if ████ ████ ██████ ███████ ████ its ██████████ █████ and ████ ████ the air. Her ███████ ██████ at the ██████’s █████ and ███████ the ██████ ████ its █████ maw in a ██████ ████████ of █████. The ████ air ██████ a ███████ ██████████ for the ███████████ ██████ ████ ██████ out ████ a ██████ ██████, ████████ ██████ and ████. It ██████████ ████ the ███████ ██████ of the ██████ █████ ████ ███████ the █████████ of █████████ █████████ and ████ ██████ █████ the ████████ and ███████ ████ █████ in ██████. The █████ ██████ ██████ up and █████ to ████ a █████ of a █████ far ████: █████ is a ████, ████ on a ████-██████ ████████, █████ █████ ██████ ████ the ██████████ of the █████ at █████. The █████ in its ██████████ ████ ████████ in a █████ ██████ ████, ██████ ████████ and all ████████████. A █████ ██████ of █████ who ████ ████████ at █████, █████ ████ ███████ ███████ the ███████—a ██████ ██████ the ██████ █████; the ██████ █████ a ██████ in—and █████████ ████ ████ ████████, █████ █████ ███████ to █████ to ████ ████ the ████ ████ ████ ████████ █████ ██████. ████████ ████ ████ of ███████. ███████ ████ in a █████████ far ████ █████—the ██████ ████████ out ██████; the █████████ of the ██████ ████████ ████ a ███████ ████████ █████████ █████████—███████ in ████████████ for the ████ to ████ ████ ████ and ██████ it ████ ████ ██████ the ██████. A █████████ ████ to █████ ████ ██████ █████████ █████ ██████ the █████ ██████. A ███████ ████ to ████ ████ ████ ███████ of █████ ████ to the ████ of the ████████ to ████ its █████ ████ █████ in the ████ of ██████████ and ████ the ██████ ████ ████. The ██████████ is ████████; the ██████ ██████████ ██████████ to its █████; the ████ ████ █████ █████ ████ ████ ██████, all the █████ ███████ ████ ████ the ████████ ██████: the █████ of █████ ████—the ██████ ████ of the ██████. The █████ █████ ████ her ████ and the ██████ ███████ ████ her ████. ███████ █████ ███████ ███████ at the █████ in the ██████ of the ██████████; ████ █████ had ██████ ██████████ ████ her ██████. ████ ██████ the █████ █████ to bow to the ████ ████████, the ████ in the ████ ████ █████ to ███████: “████ was █████████—I bet ████ her ██████ is ██████ █████ of her.” ███████ ███████ up to ████ a ████ ████ █████ one of her ████ ████ as ████ ███████ ████ her ██████. “Yes,” she ████, “her ████████ is ████ █████ of her.”

A Talisman Online Review

My friend, and writer on Vox Ex Machina, Nelson Williams has reviewed the free-to-play MMORPG Talisman Online. It's 3D antics muse a bit with Chinese mythology and as you'll see, provide a different sort of approach from MMOs that play in the Western mythos sandbox.

Link, via YouTube and GameOgre

LAPD, SFPD Act Like Shameful Troglodytes

If there’s anything that civil rights movements have shown us, it’s that the police forces involved in suppressing protests and demonstrations (even peaceful demonstrations) behave with violence and inhuman lack of compassion.

With all this in mind, this week the LAPD and SFPD have displayed shamefaced bad behavior that reflects poorly on their departments and casts them and theirs into a very poor light.

The LAPD

Patrick Meighan, a writer for Family Guy, described his arrest and subsequent shamefully bad treatment at the hands of LAPD. Although it makes sense that the police may need to apply force to separate protesters who have linked arms in order to stay together to make arrest difficult, the level of sadism necessary to produce the sort of assault described is beyond the pale.

It was horrible to watch, and apparently designed to terrorize the rest of us. At least I was sufficiently terrorized. I unlinked my arms voluntarily and informed the LAPD officers that I would go peacefully and cooperatively. I stood as instructed, and then I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyperextended my wrists into my inner arms. It was super violent, it hurt really really bad, and he was doing it on purpose. When I involuntarily recoiled from the pain, the LAPD officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement. It really, really hurt and my face started bleeding and I was very scared. I begged for mercy and I promised that I was honestly not resisting and would not resist.

My hands were then zipcuffed very tightly behind my back, where they turned blue. I am now suffering nerve damage in my right thumb and palm.

I was put on a paddywagon with other nonviolent protestors and taken to a parking garage in Parker Center. They forced us to kneel on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The LAPD officers watched and did nothing.

Shame on you, LAPD officers who brutally assault people who recoil from your careless use of zipcuffs. Shame on you, LAPD officers who fail to act like compassionate, proper human beings by leaving protestors to sit in squalor, vomiting, falling unconscious without seeking medial attention for them.

Your callous, inhuman behavior not only sets you apart as bad protectors of the public trust, but also makes me sad to think that you’re people worth believing serve that trust.

The SFPD

In another instance of police failing to stand up to their actual duties, SFPD sergeant Peter Thoshinsky has been caught on camera giving an illegal order to officers to commit what is essentially criminal battery.

“If they do not do what you tell them, strike them,” he ordered his officers at the line of a kettling of protestors demonstrating at Occupy San Francisco.

Assault is not necessary to affect the arrest of a nonviolent offender and assault is illegal when there is no case of arrest. This sergeant’s order may have been illegal, and in fact his officers may have been to intimidate the protestors, but both cases make Peter Thoshinsky an irresponsible, failure as a commanding officer.

Threatening protestors with violence won’t deescalate a tense situation, but it will make it scarier. This sort of intimidation endangers not just the protestors but the police officers that he commands. His action in saying that in front of protestors shows a vast failure of judgment and extremely poor leadership.

Both links LAPD, SFPD via Boing Boing.

Around Azeroth: Blume is level 85!

Well, that’s the news: Blume of Thunderhorn is officially level 85!

To celebrate this event, I have a few screen captures from the game across other leveling zones; but since the Hour of Twilight expansion—patch 4.3—just came out, I figured I’d hold off on that and reveal some screenshots from the newly released Darkmoon Faire.

Right now in Mulgore, the Dark Moon Faire has a portal entrance into the deep, dark designs of the Faire. This gateway leads to a dim, dire forest with goblin-lit signs pointing down a winding path. At the end of which the sounds of revelry and carnival barkers can be heard.

Also, if you’re so inclined, you can partake of a menagerie of animals.

The Faire zoo is open to the public, although as one careless carnie discovered, the animals aren’t all perfectly safe. (An exotic crystalline basilisk might be snacking on a menagerie keeper tonight.) So keep your distance.

Also, you’ll see from the image that there’s fireworks being shot into the sky. This one is a time-lapse rendering with multiple fireworks melted into the frame. They’re not all shot up like that at the same time; but I wanted to capture the mood so I put my camera with a repeated shutter.

It looks like the Level 90 Elite Tauren Cheiftans are also at the Faire and I was lucky enough to get an image of them playing! Although this close to the stage you can actually hear them playing one of their famous songs. In the past, I’ve complained that their appearance in Shattrah had no music the first time I saw them.

No such problem here.

Although it is much quieter than any concert I have ever been to.

The Hour of Twilight – Patch 4.3

For anyone hankering for the trailer for the 4.3 patch. Above and enjoy.

False Flagger Burdens VenomFangX with Streisand Effect

As we should all know by now, infamous Christian YouTuber VenomFangX, fraud and charlatan, has himself an ever increasing set of bigoted views that he’s hanging on the nail of his religious convictions.

For this we can set aside his anti-gay attitude and his belabored bigotry and ignorance that he hides behind his holy book to protect himself from criticism over. What happened to him in this round of drama is probably not his own doing, but it’s going to come down on him anyway.

The current saga unfolds as follows:

Well-known atheist YouTuber BionicDance posted a video addressing VenomFangX with grudging respect over how he appeared to approach the still-proceeding failure of multiple culture to recognize human rights to homosexual individuals. He seemed to present that while he’s still a bigot with regards to homosexual individuals; he wouldn’t seek to repress their human rights by petitioning the government or other people. This, BionicDance found to be a respectable position.

This is all in a video not currently on her channel because almost a week ago she accidentally deleted a swath of her stock. Of course, it’s irrelevant now because of what happened next.

BionicDance posted this video as rebuttal to one of VenomFangX’s videos on the subject of homosexuality—during which she basically loses all the respect she had build up for VFX previously.

Then someone flagged down her video and it was removed by YouTube. In effect, someone has stifled her speech. Note: This is more of an issue about the polity and policy of YouTube that involves flagging; but it’s obvious to the community this is a false flag and her video should be restored.

There’s no good reason to believe that VenomFangX flagged her video down, nor do we believe that he egged his followers to do this. In fact, its in his best interest to have left her video alone—it gives him attention from his fawning supplicants.

The false-flag, however, makes his followers look very bad; and by association it only tends to draw our eyes back to his previous bad acts and why VFX is a bad neighbor, a piss-poor member of, and parasite upon the YouTube community.

Previous VenomFangX coverage:

Jan 2010 Venomgate Redux: The VenomFangX Scandal Revisited

Aug 2009 YouTube Series: The History of VenomFangX

Jul 2009 VenomFangX and His Triumphant Not-Return to YouTube

May 2009 The VenomFangX Scandal: Venomgate

Exploitatively Dishonest Anti-Piracy Propaganda Makes Me Laugh

Perhaps it’s just that I’m an expert in propaganda released by interest groups, tyrannical governments, religions, and corporations; or maybe it’s just that I’m a student of the English language and the linguistics of war; or perhaps I just get a good laugh out of the way that marketing works when a niche interest couples itself with a powerful media distribution organ.

Still, the newest bilge that has sloshed out of the hold of the copyright enforcement MAFIAA pumped with our tax dollars needs a moment of contemplation.

This sort of atmospheric marketing is the sort of thing I’d expect to raise up the specter of Noam Chomsky to reach through the screen to throttle the people who made this ridiculous tripe. Of course, he’s wisely warned us all about this sort of loaded language and carefully embellished Big Lies.

At least the assertions the commercial makes aren’t as caustically stupid as the previous claims we’ve seen about piracy.

Thinking of other propaganda campaigns that fell over cliffs:

I still recall in the early 2000’s when I was a computer science major, I walked past the TV room in the dorm once and heard a propaganda commercial spitting out measured talking points: “I helped pay for bombs dropped on helpless women and children,” a young man said. I believe the commercial happened to be about marijuana sales. I stopped for a moment and opined, “You’re old enough to pay taxes?”

I didn’t get to watch the movie Reefer Madness for the first time until last year. I don’t even smoke marijuana; but I have enough of a medical background to know it was smoking its own imaginary dope. By the same turn, as a copyright holder, a producer of digital content, and a computer scientist, I know pixelated gastric emissions when I smell them.

The sort of emotion-grabbing demonstration we’re seeing in this poorly tuned propaganda commercial is nothing short of intellectually dishonest and it requires the viewer to make all the connections for them. We’re pretty sure that no DVD markets are made by children; they certainly aren’t profitable enough to fuel drug markets—which can fuel themselves; the movie industry isn’t losing jobs at a rate that much higher than the rest of the US did in the downturn; and while gangs and organized crime might look into counterfeit DVDs, they’re certainly not doing so in the United States.

Nate Anderson of Ars Technica does a brilliant job of vivisecting the vague not-claims made in this commercial on Wired, but some of this needs a bit of retelling to make the points clear:

He quotes a lengthy portion from a 400+ page academic report put together by 35 researchers over 3 years on the subject of piracy entitled, Media Piracy in Emerging Economies:

We found no evidence of systematic links between media piracy and more serious forms of organized crime, much less terrorism, in any of our country studies.

What explains this result? Invariably, the rationale offered for criminal-syndicate and terrorist involvement is that piracy is a highly profitable business. The RAND report, for example, states (without explanation) that “DVD piracy… has a higher profit margin than narcotics”—an implausible claim that has circulated in industry literature since at least 2004.

We think the record is clear that piracy was a highly profitable business through the early 2000s, when optical disc production facilities were expensive, industrial in scale, and relatively scarce… We see no evidence that piracy, outside a few niche markets, is still a high-margin business.

Increasingly, commercial pirates face the same dilemma as the legal industry: how to compete with free. This decline in costs is, in our view, the primary factor shaping pirate markets and a growing disincentive for traditional organized-criminal involvement. Yet, to the best of our knowledge, no industry or law enforcement statements about alleged criminal connections have thought this worth mention. As in other contexts, the issue is avoided by conflating piracy and counterfeiting under the rubric of what Interpol calls “IP crimes.”

That really doesn’t leave much left for the propaganda to hold onto except for rotting canards about piracy causing the loss of jobs in the movie, music, and book industry.

This entire campaign is being run by the same people who brought us McGruff, the Crime Dog: the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC). I think this is a shameful low for what used to be a useful educational tool. The White House, the Department of Justice, and Immigrations & Customs Enforcement also have a hand in this—and, of course, it’s coming out of the taxpayers pockets.

Overall, I’m not impressed by this poorly thought out work. The money that went into producing this intellectually dishonest mélange of nascent fallacies and errors could have been spent on an educational campaign on why people should support the arts, or indie developers, or be part of their ever-growing community on places like YouTube and Reddit, or produce content themselves…

…or take part in our Great Democracy!

Like I am right now.

Via Wired, Boing Boing.