Bootwhistle
Hockey... wow, after last year's strike my appreciation of the game had reached an all time low. Yet for some reason as soon as the Edmonton Oilers (hometown team) started winning in the playoffs, I have to... NEED to... watch or at least listen to their games. Actually just finished watching game 5, which the Oil managed to win on a short handed overtime goal... what a great game.

This got me thinking about the weird euphoria that takes over people whenever their team is winning, while sometimes I think it's just an excuse to get drunk and party (like people need an excuse) but being a bit optimistic I think it's a way of bringing people together who have nothing else in common but cheering for the same team. Sure there may be some people who take it to excess, for example the Whyte avenue riots, but overall it's just a way of celebrating one's city.

That said, I have a bit of a problem with the 'bandwagon' thing... where people who just start liking a team and buying official merchandise because it's the fashionable thing to do. It really annoyed me when I was in Calgary for the Flames playoff run, not just people jumping on the bandwagon, but the belief that rapid consumerism was required to prove ones team loyalty. People were selling (and buying) tons of Flame crap, knockoff Flame crap and just plain stupid Flame crap. There is just a fine line between ardent fandom and for lack of a better term - fucking nuts. I guess what really bugs me is how spending money is just tied into everything... to support your team you have to buy loads of crap, to lead a good life you have to buy loads of crap, ect. ect. Oh well, can't do much about it I suppose, meh, as long as the team is doing well and everyone is happy, guess it doesn't really matter that much in the grand scheme of things. Still it would be nice to see a good ol hunger strike to support a team, or maybe playoff penances... where people would give up alcohol for duration of teams playoff run - that would be true fandom.

I feel a migrane coming on... that's pretty much how I felt when a few days ago it was announced that the Ontario police along with CSIS (Canada's own intelligence agency - yes it's true Canada has its own clandestine government agency... although)


FUCK SHIT DAMN and other expletives... I had just finished editing and fact checking a nice lengthy editorial style rant regarding the terrorist arrests when this site ate my work and just left the above paragraph... needless to say I'm more pissed than ever and currently and 2 am too tired to care about finishing this rant... so in a shortened form of my once inspired work:

Terrorist arrests may become a rallying point for the PC government to push forth their agenda. Plus watch for more similarities in talking points in Canada and US, and some other stuff but I'm sick of typing so in conclusion... terrorist suspects bad, but government and media will take advantage and blow things out of proportion to serve own needs. Good night and watch out for terrorists under the bed.

This is a topic I've wanted to really explore for a while but always lacked time to properly research. So I've decided to present a relatively unresearched and probably inaccurate opinionated rant instead, hurrah for laziness! Getting back to the main topic of ... The Telus Strike errr lockout. Although it is officially over it would be interesting to see if one can untangle the Gordian knot of events that led up to it (if you want to sound smart just throw in a few Greek references)

The employee discontent was brewing for a long time, most likely starting when Alberta Government Telephone (AGT) was privatized into the TELUS incarnation. As usual with privitazation there were massive layoffs and restructuring, it may have been necessary but certainly layoffs don't ever endear employees to the management. The newest Telus merger saw them joining forces with the privatized BCTel, well the next major event was the Telus merger with the mobile phone company Clearnet... one may recall that Clearnet ads were the one featuring animals (I think it was Geckos... or something) as well as the now recongizable white background - well for Canadians at least. Now Clearnet inspite of its creative and well received advertising was a company that never made any money... really, so of course during the merger Clearnet managers where given promotions to make use of their wonderful talent (is there a sarcastic emoticon?). Now armed with catchy commercials and 'superior' management... err, wait wait, have to back up to the merger with BCTel:

BCTel and Telus each had different unions, BCTel had the Telephone Workers Union (TWU) and Telus was represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).

Of course one company can't have two unions... otherwise there'd be massive carnage and fighting, think white collar gang turf war. Concluding that organized deathmatches were a bad idea, they turned to the wimp's way out and held a vote to decide on a union - so workers had to choose between TWU and IBEW. Unfortunately the vote was pretty much stacked to begin with as BCTel had the greater number of workers and thus TWU was pretty much guaranteed to win - which they did. Now TWU is pretty much a BC union, consisting mostly of BCTel employees, whereas the IBEW is an international union with a greater resources and experience. It should also be noted that BC itself is a fairly union friendly province, compared to Alberta... so TWU may not have been used to dealing with a harder line against them.

With the TWU in place, the workers needed a new contract... which ended up being negotiated for over four years. Was either side to blame? Who can really say, it basically comes down to a he said, she said type of argument. Personally both sides were responsible for making the whole strike last so long. The Telus management for adopting a hardline against their employees and the union that really screwed up. Telus's original deal before the lockout was rejected by the union, which led to the lockout. Then after months of picketing and increasing hostilities another deal was worked out which was basically the same as the original, but everyone was tired of the whole affair so it was endorsed. However when it was voted on many union members didn't vote or decided to cast protest 'no' votes... probably figured it would pass anyway. As with many optimistic ideas, it turned sour when the proposal was rejected, leaving workers enduring a lockout they didn't want and TWU scrambling. TWU organized another vote and creatively selected people for the mail out votes, ensuring it would pass.

So basically a really big noisy battle to get back to the place they originally started... add to that the Telus strikers who decided to resort to vandalism (those caught were of course fired) as if that somehow made Telus more willing to negotiate - I mean seriously terrorist tactics isn't just flying planes into buildings, using violence and destruction as a negotiation tool is terrorism plain and simple. This whole mess brought a lot of the worst in people, which to me is the real tragedy of the whole thing.

Bootwhistle
//UPDATE..
The Pirate bay is already back up and seemingly as good as new. Whether the MPAA/RIAA endorsed raid had any long term effects only time will tell (though somehow I doubt it)

Greetings all... or one, as the case may be.

This is the start of a new initiative to blog at least once a week by Friday, honestly haven't really been looking forward to blogging, not for lack of things to rant about but rather the incredulous number of irritating/stupid/intriguing events around the world and under the door mat. So it was pretty hard to keep focused and decide on any one thing to rant about, fortunately recent events have provided the necessary combination of anger/amusement/stupidity/(I love slashes). Therefore I present the latest rant regarding:

Internet Piracy, and the jolly fellows at the RIAA

Firstly, I should confess to being an internet pirate - movies, music, books, programs, they all have a special place on my hard drive. Whether or not I'm pure evil because of that is a topic for another rant, today I'm just going to take a look at recent events in the file sharing community. Recently a cornerstone of the bittorrent community The Pirate bay (TPB) was raided by Swedish police, who proceeded to seize servers and computers although according to the people at TPB the police weren't really sure if there was a crime or not - one of those pre-emptive strike dealies I suppose.

To give a bit of a back story, the pirate bay is a site that archives torrent files, it isn't the real file but it allows users to download various files through a third party program like bitcomet, Azerus, bittornado ect. They are kind of like a blueprint of a file, the site also served as a 'tracker' which following the previous analogy tells one where to get the parts for the blueprint by directing traffic to people who already have parts that others need. So the actual copyrighted material is on peoples hard drives, torrents sites just provide the maps on how to get them. That's where the Swedish copyright law (and North American law for that matter) is a bit vague, so the fellows at TPB could operate with relative impunity... though not without friction from the Recording Industry Artists of America(RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) who sent a few cease and desist letters of varying threat levels. In response TPB replied with insulting, sarcastic and hilarious letters which where even posted on their site. The arrogance showed by TPB probably incensed the RIAA which has a history of using scare tactics to combat internet piracy.

After shutting down the grand daddy of file sharing Napster, the RIAA went after Kazaa by targeting users of the service (Kazaa itself is another interesting story, but no time for that now). The highly publicised lawsuits against a wide variety of people for storing copyrighted music was interesting not so much that a company decided to sue people but that they were able to get access to private information without a warrant. They tried the same thing in Canada but by law the service providers contacted the people who were targeted first before they gave any information to the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) so of course the scare tactic failed and got little if any media coverage (though that may be just because it was in Canada).

The RIAA/MPAA's current tactic to stop piracy is to instill a fear of lawsuits (not necessarily the law) into as many people as possible. For example, the RIAA may claim victory in shutting down other torrent sites such as suprnova, but it wasn't because of legal superiority - they just harassed the site creators until they got fed up and quit (a bit of an oversimplification, but essentially how it 'went down').
The fear of lawsuits has become more important than the actual laws themselves, especially when companies have teams of lawyers that can easily confuse and intimidate the average person.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) the scare tactics are aimed at people who really don't know much about computers and the internet, so if a group such as TPB were to flagrantly flaunt their piracy it really doesn't look too good. So of course the RIAA and MPAA (in a press release no less)claimed victory (.pdf file) with the police raid, though already TPB site has a message promising to be back up in a one or two days.

*sigh*

So that's basically how it stands, though it should be noted that TPB is also a political group called the Piratbyrån which may have been as much of a reason for the raid. Overall I found the whole thing more funny than anything, as a file sharing pirate the seemingly temporary 'sinking' of TPB doesn't really mean too much. There are tons of other torrent sites, and other methods of file sharing, the only thing that the RIAA is doing seems to be weeding out the computer illiterates, or forcing people to learn more about computers/internet to get files.
Either way their current tactics are not only ineffective but creating a lot of animosity towards them, the RIAA is acting exactly the way they should try to avoid - like an evil money grubbing corporation. It honestly seems like this whole argument is being carried on by a bunch of junior high kids (the most sarcastic and evil children of them all). While TPB was a bit too antagonistic in it's response to the RIAA, the defenders of copyrighted material seem to have the heads well up their asses as well. The mistake they continue to make is seriously underestimating file sharers and the power of the internet, as well as trying to attack privacy and freedom of speech in their attempts and curbing piracy.
I don't mean to say that piracy is protected by freedom of speech and information, but that the only way to ensure internet piracy is elimated is to have complete and totalitarian control of it, and I don't think any organization should have the power to limit, censure and capitalize the information on the net.
That's about it for today, in conclusion the RIAA is within it's rights to fight piracy... just as long as they don't step on the rights of others.