-Memphis, TN: “Kiley,” a young stallion famous for his domination of the local race circuit, was found dead today in a local college student’s backyard. Autopsy revealed hemorrhaging of the cranial cavity, as well as severe internal bleeding, thought to be caused by repeated bludgeoning with a blunt object. Zachary Hill, the individual charged with the unlawful death of the animal, was found wailing on the carcass with a brick at 4:02 PM today when neighbors reported strange noises coming from out behind Mr. Hill’s house. Police arrived at the scene shortly thereafter. The suspect was pried off the animal when police managed to seize his 3-Iron golf club, which he had previously been using to shatter the beast’s ribcage. Other items littered the scene of the crime, including an aluminum baseball bat, a snow shovel, a gazelle leg-bone, and (of particular note) a bobble-head statue of President Richard Nixon. Mr. Hill pled not guilty to the crime.
The following article has been proposed State’s Exhibit A, offered as character evidence of Mr. Hill’s action in conformity with the charge: namely, a habit and routine practice of Beating A Dead Horse.
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The Rancored Elf Suit Yadda Yadda.
Seeing as how it is the height of fashion to offer up one’s two cents on this rather sensitive issue, and I am known for my militant, temperamental insensitiveness to all forms of public opinion, how could I shut my mouth? Parties on both sides clamor to message boards across the interweb, shouting out threats of a boycott here, proclaiming the lamentable extent of corporate idiocy there; extolling the importance of Intellectual Property rights on one board, and lambasting Rancored Elf’s irresponsibility on another. I don’t claim to offer anything new on this matter, nor do I expect my words to make a lasting impact. I merely want to make my opinion known while it’s on my mind.
From a legal perspective, Wizards has every right to be doing what they are doing. Even though the Supreme Court has been lenient in allowing access to information via the internet (which it sees as a unique medium unlike broadcast and cable communications — see Reno v. ACLU (1997)), it has also ruled in favor of record labels when it allowed them to file lawsuits against corporations actively encouraging copyright infringement. The justification is that it is illegal to distribute software with the knowledge that it will predominantly be used for illegal activity.
I find some legal analogies with the current R_E situation. The courts’ problem with file sharing is that music, video, etc. constitutes intellectual property, and a party’s IP rights are protected under laws governing trade secrets and copyright. Wizards asserts that these playtest scans also fall under their own intellectual property, and thus are protected.
All of you probably know all of this. The point is that Wizards/Hasbro has a legal justification for their actions, and it would probably hold up in a court of law. That said, I don’t believe this lawsuit is anything but ridiculous. I respect Wizards’ intellectual property rights, but I don’t think Rancored Elf is the culprit.
The reason is that I believe an individual has a right to express and communicate any and all information accessible to him, regardless of content. Anything less would be censorship of an individual’s right to express an idea in the first place, which would violate even the most conservative free-speech activists from Blackstone on. Note the use of the word “idea,” which I believe to be independent of concrete entities such as songs, pictures, videos, films, etc.
In the case of file sharing, I find it difficult to describe a four-minute song as a “piece of information.” It seems very obvious to me that it represents more than that — a work of art, a body of sounds, a cohesive unit deserving of some status as an independent identity. Call it what you will; I will simply use the term “object.” The point is that a song is made up of more than the whole of its composite parts, and an accurate understanding of the import of the piece cannot be arrived at by mere description. That is, I can write a riveting description of Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy, or chart down note-by-note the swells and lifts of Beethoven’s Fifth, but you cannot possibly garner any real sense of the song’s actual identity as a cohesive unit. In order to possess some cohesive understanding of the song, you’d have to actually listen to it. By contrast, I can write these words:
Flametongue Kavu
3R
Creature-Beast
4/2
When Flametongue Kavu comes into play, it deals four damage to target creature
There you have the essence of a card’s content. You don’t know what it looks like, but you know exactly how it can be put to use. I have not shown you any physical Magic card, nor have I done anything but describe its component parts. Yet, even if Planeshift had not come out yet, you’d have some idea of what I was talking about, because the structure and composition of the piece is not uniquely integral to its understanding.
If an individual has access to the above block of information, except that its text is printed on a white card-face stuck onto a basic land, I find it very difficult to argue that the layout of the text on the card-face and a concrete image of the unit as a playtest card somehow crosses the line from “information” to “unique object.” The argument asserts the following: because these Snap playtest cards were scanned, and because they were actual pieces of Wizards’ intellectual property, Rancored Elf is making public information about Wizards’ trade secrets. That would be why they’ve struck now, as opposed to previously when we just had rumors and speculation (though I do wonder why nobody took legal action when the entire Invasion set was found in foil over two months before the set’s release). Even so, people have the responsibility of taking the playtest scans for what they are — no more, no less.
This changes completely when you get to actual images of completed cards. There is a difference between a card itself and mere information about what a card does. Yet in this specific case I fail once again to find any evidence of moral wrongdoing. The suit over the playtest cards can be justified, I believe, because they had to be taken from Wizards property — and, moreover, were in unfinished form. Thus, the cards could have changed significantly from the playtest stages, and suddenly the supplier of the images would be misrepresenting the content of a set. I understand how Wizards could be angry at this. With the Italian scans, though, the product had already been shipped from the factory and was presented in its final form. Nobody could get false impressions in their heads from genuine images!
Furthermore, suppose all of those things are really immoral, illicit, illegal, etc. Why is Rancored Elf — the messenger — the one taking the blame? Shouldn’t the individuals who violated their NDAs be the ones staring down the barrel of the gun? Unless Rancored Elf has violated repeated requests to take down information, directly from Wizards, I see no reason to get him involved at all. He is simply a convenient middleman for those wishing to spread particular content. Nobody needs him to post their own information on the internet; he simply legitimizes content by his authority and makes the flow of information clearer.
I will be the first to admit that I fall into the Brandeis, Black, O. Douglas, and Stevens school that proclaims an individual’s right to absolute free speech under any circumstances. Thus many of my arguments above become moot, because I think that you should be able to spread any content that you please, by however means you please, assuming that you’re not propagating falsehoods. You are not responsible for the conclusions people draw from your acts of speech. People make their own deliberate choices.
I have tried to argue from a more moderate perspective, though, and perhaps I have done so unsuccessfully. I am mainly concerned that I have not adequately described why this particular case is, in my mind, completely different from any kind of internet file sharing. If you also perceive this, or any other kind of weakness, tell me so in the forums, and I would be more than happy to elaborate.
The rest of my dailies, by the way, will be more of the usual. Suffice to say that I wanted to try something different.
Oh, and slash namedrop Tim Galbiati. Grats on the Q, chief. Heh. “Chief.”