Its been a while since my last blog. Its hard to keep up sometimes, after I have cleared my brain somewhat with my previous posts. I read today that Google is starting its digital libary, which means any books become searchable on the net, unless the publisher objects to it, if they even knew which books they have published and want to protect the content. To wonder how long it actually takes Google employees to scan every page of every book in the world (even if its just the ones in English), and then turn them into HTML, or any searchable format. Really, it may not be fun doing that. Anyway, thats besides the point, of course it raises issues, copyright issues, of course some publishers are objecting to it, because it can cut into their profit if a book can be read online for free. But really, what does stolen intelligent property really means to the artist, which is the sole creator and rightful owner of that intelligent property? Which comes to the title, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy. You probably have to be an artist to know this, it is a far worse nightmare, that your work is unkown, than everyone in the world enjoying it for free. Those of us with creative talents, we want people to enjoy our works, and we dont care about the profit, and the only ones suffering from priracy are the publishers, but aren’t they legitimate thieves themselves, whos stealing a big chunk of our profit anyways, and they did nothing to begin with, except to contain our content, and claims to distribute it only because they have the means to. During the years, video game developers find it hard to publish their work because they are limited by what publishers will pay for, and writers suffer from the same phenomenon, and many talented works go unpublished because publishers lack the foresight to find a market for the particular piece of work. I remember a heated discussion at GameFaq, weather playing an emulated rom without paying for the game is right or wrong, and what it is doing to the game developers. Its not that I’m condoning priracy, but the creative people never suffers from priracy, because people are downloading and playing their game, while they might not have bought it at the inflated price publishers set it at. The truest joy to an artist, is the sharing of his work, and how people remember and talk about his work, not the royalties he gets from the publisher, sure it helps to pay the bills and feed the children, but if nobody knows about you, nobody would buy it, and you wouldn’t earn your bread anyway. Is that what Google digital library is accomplishing, or is it some kinda of diabolic scheme to take over the world, or simply raise their stock price (hay one step at a time). I don’t have an answer to everything, but next time you download an MP3 for free, illegally, think about the true consequences of your action, is the movie industry suffering because people are downloading instead of buying DVDs, or is it because they are making crappy movies? There’s always a balance to everything, priracy will help spread something and then there will be people to support the things they love, that is how Manga started to be selling in the local bookstores, and how anime become popular, because of fansubs on the net. Fansubs of a licensed anime show hurt the artists in japan? No, not really, I suspect they are overjoyed that thier creative work is reaching a much bigger audience. It hurts the US distributers, who themselves are doing a crappy job dubbing the shows. It doesn’t excuse them to charge you for something that’s inferior to what you get for free. The lesson is, it never hurts to pay for things thats worth paying for, it just isn’t worth it to pay for crap.