This Is A Black Out

Wankipedia blacked out its pages this week in protest against some proposed bill that had something to do with film and music piracy.

Quite why the six poindexters who write the stuff on Wankipedia thought that their actions would save the world of free and illegal downloads I don’t know, their site offers neither, but hey, each to their own I guess.

The bill probably proposes the same thing that all the other ones that get put forward by governments around the world do; let’s shut down the means of getting copyrighted shit for free. Naturally, all those that do pinch the stuff suddenly get up in arms about potentially not being able to. What a fucken surprise.

‘Imagine a world without free knowledge’ is the heading on the black out Wankped page. ‘For over a decade we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopaedia in human history’ it goes on to read. ‘US Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet’. Stirring stuff, I hope someone doesn’t have to use this chair after me…

Only I don’t really see the correlation between say, downloading a movie / song illegally and writing anything on a wiki. Oh sure, if you plan to write the synopsis of the movie you just pinched for free then you’re affected. But hey, if a fat kid falls in the woods and no one is there to see it is it still funny? You know it is.

Ironically the wiki black out page has links to Facebook, Google and Twitter, none of which decided to do the same to theirs.

I’ve gone on record about this stuff before but I shall repeat it because I love the sound of my own voice. I believe you should pay for something that someone with far more creativity than you and I have created. Now I don’t agree with paying an extra two hundred percent on top of what the artist gets, just so that every bastard in the manufacturer-to-consumer chain gets his pound of flesh, but you should pay something.

For instance, I won’t pay $35 for a CD because very little of that goes to the cardigan and scarf wearing writer of the song, but I will buy the song I want off iTunes for $1.50. Nor will I pay $20 to see a movie just to cover the wages of the waster at the candy counter that have their pubes, but not their heart, in filling my box of pop corn.

If you’re one of those geezers that doesn’t even believe that they should pay that then you can fuck off. Black out your page if you want but I’m not buying your argument or your desperate cries for solidarity when you’re faced with the prospect of losing something that was never yours to have for free in the first place.

You can stick that on your blacked out wank page too.

This was a pic of the most beautiful girl you've ever seen, naked. But as I copied it illegally from a porn site I didn't pay for I felt it only appropriate that I black it out...