If you strike me down...

That classic old line from Star Wars popped into my head as I read this week’s story about how a new unofficial LimeWire client called LimeWire Pirate Edition has been released to the public. The firm behind the official client and P2P network took a battering in court recently from the record labels, and was ordered to withdraw the software and take steps to disable the network as well – basically, kill the whole platform. LimeWire was dead, but a fortnight later some enterprising individuals have brought it back to life. And this time it's going to be a lot harder to kill - just like Obi Wan. Despite the fact that I think artists should get paid something for their works rather than us all ripping their work off for free, I can’t help but smile. This was always going to happen.

Can’t we all be friends?

As Techdirt points out, Limewire actually tried to work with the music industry. Just like Napster and others did before it. Many of the early platforms that tried to work with the music industry to go legitimate are dead. iTunes and Amazon are rare examples of successful operations, but of course they have big names behind them.

Now that we have established legal download services, why has a non-legal platform been resurrected so quickly? The simple and obvious answer is demand. iTunes is starting to look expensive - the record labels pushed through a new pricing scheme recently which was supposed to charge a little more for new songs, but less for older songs. In almost every case I’ve looked at, per song prices have gone up. Regardless of the recent increase, the service already felt too expensive. The average price of an album seems to be 7.99UKP. For what? The right to download some files using our own connection and store them at our cost as well. We now do half of the distribution function ourselves, yet we still end up paying pretty much what a physical CD costs to buy in a shop these days. Given the massively lower overheads of online sales, we’re being ripped off again, just like we were back in the late 90’s paying 14.99 UKP for a CD.

History repeats itself

Another demand generator for non-legal download services is films. Broadband speeds have made it possible to download movies over the Internet, even spectacular high definition versions. And instead of legal download services being there ready to take up that demand, we’re in the same situation as we were in with music in the Napster era. Legal options are few and far between, and inferior to the free options. Torrents have plenty of DRM-free high quality 1080p movies, yet legal movie download services such as iTunes only offers highly compressed 720p files with restrictions on what you can do with them.

In its heyday I was a Napster user, but I now buy music legally through iTunes. Not because of some moral obligation but because the quality is always good and it’s far less hassle than using P2P networks. With the iPhone I can download music at any time - even at work or on the train - which has increased the amount I spend.

Will we ever get to this point with movies? Or will the gatekeepers continue to try and battle non-legal services rather than compete with them? Well one little known fact is that  in some parts of the world they do try to compete. R5 DVD releases are versions of new films that are released early and cheap to combat rampant piracy. The quality of the copy is not quite up to the same levels as the final DVD/BluRay releases we get in the rest of the world, but the fact remains that they exist to compete with pirate copies. Meanwhile the rest of the world has the same old options – wait forever for the DVD/BluRay release and get ripped off (especially BluRay) or get it earlier, for free.

Where we’re headed

People want high quality, low cost, DRM-free, easily available media online - it’s that simple. And they will pay for it as long as the price is fair. There is no alternative, even if corporations and certain lobbied-up governments think there is. It's clear already that people will find ways to make it happen. We live in interesting times where a small group of people can hack together a content distribution platform that can be used by millions. The arrogance of large media corporations in thinking they are owed a living and can gouge prices forever is staggering, as is their refusal to compete with free. How much longer can the situation continue?

Zeitgeist review

Zeitgeist is a 2007 documentary by Peter Joseph, described in the Amazon summary as "extremely controversial". When it was recommended to me by a friend, I had to give it a go. The piece is split into three sections; the first deals with religion and asserts that Christianity is a fabrication rather than being a story of real divinity. The second section deals with 9/11 and puts forward what is essentially a conspiracy theory that the attacks were carefully orchestrated to provide a reason to go to war. The third section broadens the scope to suggest that for the last 100 years or more, critical conflicts and financial events were the result of manipulation by a small elite group.

Religion
Somewhat unprofessionally for a review, I skipped the first section. It starts with an over-long clip of audio with an almost completely dark screen, which tried my patience somewhat. I also had my reservations about this segment given the subject matter. In the interests of disclosure, I should state that I am not religious myself, but I make an effort not to be anti-religious. The argument of religion being fabricated certainly make sense to me, but it's my belief that religion was created was with good intentions - to provide a moral framework for people to live their lives by. Unfortunately the message of various religions gets twisted to serve the agendas of people who should know better.

9/11 Section
The second section of the documentary looks at the 9/11 events and I found this part un-watchable. It has an almost music-video feel to it, and quick cuts of planes hitting the towers timed to audio seemed tacky and insensitive to me. The continual chatter of selective news networks coverage that supports the ideas being presented was something I quickly found irritating - it wasn't backed up by more in-depth sections that actually expanded on the opinions being expressed. More worryingly, certain sections appear to be composed of video taken from the news networks but without their audio track, instead we get voice-overs from unknown commentators. If I'm right this is a cheap trick to add weight to the ideas being put forward by showing presenters from major news networks.

The men behind the curtain
As the third section started my interest was waning in Zeitgesit, but fortunately I stayed with it because the third segment is easily the best of the three. It takes the concept of 9/11 being stage-managed and applies it to the other major conflicts in recent history - the two World Wars and Vietnam. It explains that in all cases, vested interests pushed the case for war because of the opportunities for private enterprise to make huge profits. This certainly ties in with other material I've seen, like footage of the Halliburton seminars showing the new world of opportunities for services and products that the Iraq invasion has made possible.

The theory goes that acts of provocation against the United States are engineered so that the US public approves the decision to go to war when they were previously against it. The First World War provocation scenario presented is the sinking of the Lusitania, which doesn't quite add up to me. At the time, Germany had changed its terms of engagement for submarine warfare and was openly attacking non-military ships. It was only a matter of time before they attacked a ship carrying enough American passengers to cause outrage.

The provocation scenario presented for the Second World War was that FDR had been baiting the Japanese forces into attacking America,  and eventually they did so by bombing Pearl Harbour. It goes without saying that Pearl Harbor changed US public opinion from wanting to stay out of a war which they felt was irrelevent, to national outrage with men signing up to the armed forces in huge numbers. Again I'm slightly sceptical of this, a lot of the examples of baiting are really just actions like financial embargoes which are often used during times of conflict, especially against countries battling US allies (the UK in this case). Of more interest is a fabulous piece of muckraking on a member of the Bush family (none other than Prescott Bush, grandfather of George), who was involved in a Wall Street finance operation that had it's assets seized for the duration of the war because of suspicions that they were trading with the enemy - Nazi Germany!

The Vietnam scenario is described in much starker terms as a deception on the part of the US Navy in reporting an event between North Korean and American ships which never actually took place - the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Evidence on the usual sources such as Wikipedia appears to back up some of the claims made in this section.

Summary
The final section draws to a conclusion that I found very disturbing - like the worst dystopian visions of science fiction, we are heading towards a World Government which will control the entire population. To the ruling elite of the wealthy and intellectual (although I would question whether the two go hand in hand), this model will make it far simpler for them to achieve their objectives compared to the more fragmented democratic models we have now. A second key assertion is that we will be individually tracked and validated into society by the use of RFID tags. Dissent will be suppressed by turning off the tag which then strips the individual of the ability to carry out transactions or prove their identity. Although terrifying, just because we are capable of imagining such a nightmare scenario, it doesn't follow that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. There are far too many obstacles in the way of such a massive change to world order.

For all the posturing in Zeitgeist that the media is simply a drone controlled by 'men behind the curtains', it remains true at least for the present that there are still a few shining examples of news organisations which remain impartial and investigative, and uncover corruption and scandal around the world. The US movie industry is also a powerful liberal voice and regularly creates anti-establishment entertainment that is seen by audiences worldwide.

Zeitgeist is in places a thought-provoking documentary which presents some very big concepts in a clear and concise way. The controversial angle is certainly entertaining and provokes the viewer to really consider the ideas presented and how plausible they are, which is - I would hope - exactly what the authors intended. My only concern is that it could work as a form of brainwashing for people who take everything in without questioning or evaluating what they are being told.