Greetings Tom Tilley,

I was just listing to your Friday show about the issues involved in the online piracy debate.  There are a few points that I feel weren’t brought up and I thought I would send you a message just in case you feel they could be important in the future.  Sorry I couldn’t call in during the show, I’m usually driving home and need to concentrate on the small country road.

Firstly I’m not much of a music buyer, in fact I listen to Triple J and that’s about all the music I need.  All of my media purchases are TV or Movies.

Whilst the iTunes price may be fair according to industry people, there are a large number of people out there that can’t afford or think that it’s too expensive.  I for one am not willing to pay that price for unknown content.  I have been burnt too many times with shows or movies that just aren’t worth the plastic they are printed on and in the age of the Internet a lot of us aren’t willing to take that risk at the prices they are charging.  Back to the people can’t afford it…  Is it not better to make it cheaper, and therefore more accessible to the greater population than put it in a price range that only allows it to be affordable to those who aren’t earning around the average wage?  Surely this would give more value to the product placement they seem to be placing into films these days.  If we all purchased the content we wanted to these days then there would be a lot of people missing out on things that they should be spending their money on.  Like food, rent and other necessities.

Another issue is that I’m not a Mac or Windows user, I use Linux on my computer.  Now whilst I am aware that I am part of a very small percentage of the potential market, there is no real alternative as iTunes does not have a Linux install.  I therefore must either choose to use a commercial OS, or make do with what is available to me.  The world is moving away from expensive products and embracing the free communities out there, it’s no longer easy for big business to make an easy buck, and it seems more and more like these big businesses just don’t know how to deal with that so they are throwing their tantrums and taking their bat and ball as well as the park.  The whole concept isn’t about not paying for stuff, but it’s about having more choice about what we want to pay for.

The content industries seem to have tunnel vision, they see that there’s big money to be made in content and the best way to make everyone pay to see that content.  They fail to see that by making it cheaper  and more accessible not only will they have more sales, but their carefully placed product placements that earn them money will in fact get more views.  There are loads of content creators out there offering cheap stuff and raising the money themselves without the help of big business.  I would much rather these people got my money than big business that tries to dictate terms.

Finally, what about the issue of borrowing content from friends?  We like to know what we are paying for before we purchase it.  Even if they did bring in laws that prevent online piracy, they couldn’t stop legitimate copies being loaned amongst friends.  They don’t seem to be putting GPS trackers in DVD’s these days to track who watches what.  The whole idea that something that is designed to be shown to the public is then regulated with huge legal consequences seems ridiculous when you think about the fact that these issues have been building since the invention of the portable cassette player.  Content is meant to be shared and watched, charging for the right to listen/watch it is not the best way to make money from it.  The content is a means to creating the branding, and it’s the branding that they should be making money from, not the content itself.  The idea that trying to view that content through online means should be illegal is in fact almost offensive to some when they are giving it away for the small price of having ads incorporated.  Most people will only buy DVD of TV shows because they have seen the shows on “Free to Air” TV.   If they provided free legitimate copies on a website, even with small incorporated banner ads, they would get more support.  All these law and lawsuits are doing is disenfranchising the viewing public from the production companies and Movie/TV Execs and giving the public more of a desire to “Steal” their product.  After all, “it’s only the big companies that can afford to loose stuff” isn’t it?

I’m sure the issue arises because the Exec’s say that they are loosing sales because of Internet piracy.  The truth for me is that I will only buy stuff I really like, I won’t spend money on crap, and I won’t spend money on something I don’t think is worth the price they are asking.  A lot of the time that means I miss out on having a shiny well presented package.  It certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t buy things that I think are worth it.  TV and Movie Exec’s are greedy dicks, they prove that time and time again…  Just look at some of Joss Whedon’s work.   I’ll happily spend money on good stuff, and I’ll happily collect DVD’s and Blueray.  But the idea that I’m stealing by downloading their stuff and watching it before I buy a collection I find offensive.  If they don’t want people to watch it, then find another means of making money.

Interesting side note…  Most of the stuff I buy is not the big budget stuff, it’s the small budget stuff where you can tell the people making the production are really into it and aren’t just there to make as much money as possible.  I find the Hollywood big budget films mostly crap and even try and avoid them at the movies, waiting until they are weekly hires at the video shop.

This is no small issue and I’m sure if you wanted to you could almost devote an entire week of shows to the various aspects of the discussion.

Yours in friendly free and open discussion,
Syridian.

When it comes to energy consumption is getting a smaller car necessarily better?  Personally I don’t think it is.  Even in our cities I don’t believe a smaller car is necessarily the answer for the greater portion of the population.  Why?  Because of a simple thing called duty cycle.

Duty Cycle is usually used in digital electronics and defines the amount of ON time of a circuit with reference to the ON + OFF time.  If a circuit is on for 1second and off for 4 seconds it is said to have a Duty Cycle of 20%.  How does this relate to driving a car?  Well, to be honest it’s an over simplification of the amount of work your car is doing.  Though there is a hell of a lot of other factors to take into account to get an accurate figure, simplification can work in this example.  Driving a vehicle has many variables, but if we assume that what goes up, must come down, and that over an extended period of driving the route driven is averaged out, then we can eliminate a large number of factors such as the actual route driven, the weather conditions and even the health of the vehicle if the time used in the average is long enough.  What we are left with is one big variable and one constant*.  The variable is the driver (or how the driver drives), the constant is the fuel efficiency of the vehicle Though this does change from open road to city driving).  The “driver” variable can be thought of as a Duty cycle, and if we multiply that by the fuel efficiency of the vehicle they are driving we get a figure that represents the fuel usage of a particular driver.  The higher the number the more fuel used.

Now, is smaller better?  Smaller cars are thought to be better in city traffic due to the stop/start nature of the driving, however in my experience the stop/start driving a driver more aggressive thereby increasing the duty cycle of their driving.  It is also a fact that a smaller lighter car will slow down quicker due to wind resistance than a larger heavier one, this in turn increases the duty cycle just to maintain speed on the road.  Another factor is that a smaller car has to work so much harder for so much longer to get the vehicle up to speed than a larger car with much more power.  Typically small 4 cylinder cars work so much harder than 6 or 8 cylinder cars, to get similar results.  All of these factors increase the duty cycle of motor usage, which in turn increases the fuel usage.

Basically it comes down to the type of driver you are, and the uses you have for the vehicle.  Personally with the number of cars on the road these days, I think the average 6 cylinder car is a much better choice than any small or even medium 4 cylinder one.  A 6 cylinder car has the power to accelerate without needing to stress the motor, the Duty Cycle is going to be much lower for normal driving and when you need the power, it’s there without you having to stress the motor.

In conclusion, yes, it really depends on what type of driver you are.  I personally love the feel of driving a small car however having spent many years in numerous small cars, I will happily acknowledge that I certainly do not think of them as the best option for a greener future unless you are such a green driver that you forcibly impose your driving on the rest of the driving public (which meh…  may be a good thing for the environment, but is likely to cause other issues).

* Yes, it’s not really a constant, however with the averaging out I think we would find that it does not vary anywhere nearly enough to be too much of a concern and can be thought of in the context of this explanation as a constant.