Technologicology: Comcast, Let’s Get To Know Each Other
After the jump, Brian James Kirk gives his old buddy Comcast a brief history of piracy.
BitGate®: That’s What Friends Are For
In light of recent press revealing Comcast’s dirty little torrent secrets (see Philebrity’s editorial on the issue), I feel kinda bad for the guys. I know how much it sucks to be the kid on the block that no one likes. And right about now, no one likes you, Comcast. You have not only alienated a large portion of your customer base, your backhanded efforts have also made fellow telecoms look mad shady in the process. You’ve even stooped low enough to keep your employees in the dark about your practices (and then threatening to fire them for telling the truth).
I’m going to take the high road and extend a very cautious hand to you, Comcast. I’d like to prove that our intentions as consumers of pirated material are innocent and inevitable. Piracy helped build the economic foundations of this country and forces us to negotiate moralistic and financial terms concerning media that we choose to purchase or not purchase. We aren’t trying to hurt anyone in the process, and we are just as worried as you are of what the future holds.
Although you and I were raised with entirely different orientations, that’s often how the best friendships begin. We just need to take the time to get to know each other’s past. And since you’ve been a pretty shitty friend lately, I’m going to be doing the talking.
1813: Like All Things Good, It Began With The Textile Industry
We pirate because this is Am-urrr-ica.
In its infancy, the United States looked to private industry to help fuel its industrial revolution. And while it wasn’t as sexy as American Apparel is today, the textile industry was a major player in the burgeoning economy. Leave it to America’s first patent pirate, Francis Cabott Lowell, to light that fire. Before flash drives, facsimile or carbon copy, Lowell traveled to Britain to hack the designs of advanced looms, staying up late nights sans Red Bull to examine and note the intricacies of the machines. He ignored British patents and was supported by a seemingly vigilante United States government when he returned and designed them bigger and better. Ignored in the original blueprints was a way to screen print vintage logos on t-shirts, something that the OG Fashionista also agreed was way faux pas.
1985: A-Ha and Eddie Murphy Sequentially Define How I Feel About You
We pirate to get laid.
It’s sad but true that the next major milestone in piracy history came on the A-side of a magnetically recorded cassette tape. For the first time, consumers were able to record what they were hearing on the radio in an accessible, embarrassing way. We shared with one another our abilities as Producers, merging Fleetwood Mac with Foreigner and making some of the most impressive Jazzercise mixes we could devise. It wasn’t that we wanted to rip off artists. We just wanted to prove to each other that while we could never be as creative as Aerosmith, we could at least try by assembling a myriad of terrible 80’s songs. Not to mention that in this case, piracy helped get more teenagers laid than Ferris Bueller could ever dream.
1987: Ever Since Blockbuster Stopped Giving Away Free Popcorn At The Cash Register, I’d Been Looking For A Way To Rip Those Bastards Off
We pirate because we love our mommies.
We hate it when business try to take advantage of us. We hate it so much that we are completely willing to spend $1600 on two brand new space-age VCRs and splice, solder and fry the cables into a technological behemoth, so that for some reason, we can reproduce as many copies of Doogie Houser, M.D. as possible. At first, we were totally psyched about movie renting. But there’s something we hate even more than being taken advantage of: We hate being yelled at by our mom. There is no way we’d ever be able to turn a tape in on time — it’s our natural response to deadlines with little or no consequence. It’s branded in our teenage psyches. Every time we turned in that copy of The Breakfast Club late and paid the full price of another rental, you were eating away at the very core of our maternal souls.
1990: I Know Oregon Trail Is Dope, But Don’t Copy That Floppy
We pirate because you don’t understand us.
Frankly, Comcast, you’re a lot like that boss we have who thinks he’s real tough, real smart, and real hip. And as The Office has been trying to teach for years, you aren’t any of those things. We laugh at you behind your back — constantly. Every time you try to give away free music of bands that suck in an attempt to distract us from our torrents, we laugh. When you offer hi-resolution downloads of content we don’t care about when we can download DVD quality pre-releases, we laugh. When you try to turn Net Neutrality supporters on their heads by lying about what it really is, we laugh. But really, we cry. We cry because you’re so out of touch with us that we doubt we’ll ever be able to trust you. The only reason we’re even talking is because we have no choice but to work together.
1995: Behold The Biggest Dick On Earth In Exchange For Your Credit Card Number
We pirate because we’re curious.
I didn’t get a chance to check any statistics, but I’m willing to bet a beer that the number of Internet service subscriptions sky-rocketed when Pam & Tommy’s sex tape was released on the Internet. There were people who hadn’t even heard about the ‘Net before they heard that Tommy ‘They Don’t Call Me The Captain For Nothing’ Lee’s dick was the size of a Carnival yacht and all over Webcrawler.com. And you know what most of those new subscribers found out? That dick, set in low-resolution, choppy Handicam footage, was a total letdown. If you can’t relate to this, just think about the new Wilco album, because I have a feeling one of you suits bought it to impress some hip young girl you’re trying to seduce. Would you really have paid for it if you didn’t have to?
2001: Other Than That Funny Fat Dude, High Fidelity Totally Defines How I Feel About You
We pirate because it’s easy.
The enormous increase in pirating during the late ’90s and early ’00s is in thanks to two distinct and isolated events. The release of High Fidelity and the release of Napster. Yeah, John Cusack is cute, but that movie would have never done as well as it did if it hadn’t completely revitalized the mix tape craze. And for every one kid that was trying to be traditional with 60 minute SP Maxells, two were embracing those new fangled compact disc image burners on their ‘puters. Napster might have had a little more hand in the equation than I’m giving them credit for, but the fundamental difference Napster created was that it forced its users to ask a simple question:
What the fuck is a Cable Modem, why is it so much faster than my 56k connection, and how do I get it?
Take A Guess Who Was There To Answer That Question
Comcast, Comcast, Comcast. Can I just call you Commie? I feel like we’ve really got to know each other over the course of this timeline. But you still don’t have a guess? It’s you, silly! You were there on day one, promising us speeds light years ahead of AOL. When Verizon started bringing around FiOS, you were asking us not to hang out with the bad crowd. And while we occasionally talked shit on you when times were rocky, we stayed true blue.
But you really fucked up last week, Comcast. It’s like we don’t really know each other anymore. You’ll have to do more than just say that you’re going to change. You need to prove it, and fast. I hear that Wireless Philadelphia is throwing parties this weekend all over town. And uhm, my car is full, man. My car is full.
Brian James Kirk is a writer living in Fishtown, USA. His affinity for RSS feeds is equally as strong as his affinity for ladies- a subject he often covers in a sex column he writes for the Temple News.
Previously: Technologicology: Looking Outside Tierney’s 4×3 Box
