Anonymous Notes

A good long break (all of 2 days) from the PC did me a lot of good. I had been almost glued to monitors for the last coupla months. too much work load or whatever.
Anyway, it’s amazing how out of sight need not always mean out of mind. Everything pushed out of immediate attention still governs our actions in our sub-conscience. to begin with people have a tendency to have a sub-conscience in the first place. I have noticed that however stony and distant someone might seem. They always harbour a streak of righteousness. How his/her actions manifest to support, ignore or defy this sub-conscience is what gives different appearances to different people. For example: A beggar comes up to your car window begging for alms. The different possible reactions are

• pretend not to see or ignore and justify your action by telling yourself or your companions that the beggar would do a decent days work if he/she did not receive alms from people
• give something to the beggar
• Irritate the beggar (by taking his/her begging bowl or picking a fight: beleive me I have seen this happen)

Now beleive it or not all these actions show similar traits in human beings. I am usually a member of the first group but I know in the back of my mind there is the thought that maye I should have given something to the beggar. (all the so called lectures on those less fortunate may have rubbed off).Their righteousess stems from having done the expected (right) thing. They do not want to be morally held responsible for not having done the right thing.

The person who gave something to the beggar is in a group which clearly reflect their thoughts by their actions. Their righteousness stems from acceptance of their role in society and the upliftment of the masses.

The third groups is the most complex of the lot. Their actions stem from their irritation from the presence of the beggar in the first place. Their Idea of righteousness is directed in a more general fashion. They beleive in righteousness for all humankind and do not see the beggar as having earned his/her position.

now such underlying thoughts may seem varied and distinct but really each is stemmed from righteousness. similarly other distinct emotions expressed to situations are usually motivated by similar driving factors underlying in our psyche.

That is the reason that the overall ideas of the human race has not changed a lot over time. Honour, Sincerity, Love for mankind, etc. are ingrained into our society. And in the end these are the threads which seem to be holding this so called civilisation together.

We have all seen marked amounts of growth in proliferation of MP3’s and DivX’s. But have we ever stopped to think that their growth is an indicator of thriving violations of copyright agreements. A parallel increase in shared software (through p2p) also suggests the same for Intellectual Property rights agreements and licenses.

In the western world the figures are , shall we say, less staggaring. According to RIAA and MPAA roughly around 25% of the copeis of music and movies going around in the US on optical medium were pirated. Similar stats for ‘3rd world’ countries can hardly be fathomed. As an example, take note that the largest recordable optical medium manufactureres have changed in the past 10 years from all over the world to south east asia. This implies a more or less direct increase in pirated copies of copyrighted material.

All that was factual information. The pertinent question here is. Why? I beleive it’s a statement being made by file sharer’s is. Is it really justified that talented (or sometimes just overhyped) artists be payed huge amounts of royalty. Just so that their fans can hear their music. Here I consider the cost of the proeprietary product as against the cost of the medium of distribution.

1. An average CD when cast from a die (as mass produced CD’s are) costs around Rs 3-4 (6-8 cents) to produce.
2. Include into that the cost of packaging and printing lets say totalling around Rs 3-4 more. coming to a total of 6-8 Rs (13-18 cents)
3. Now assume that the wastage factor (peices sold /peices produced) is 0.5 i.e. if 200 CD’s are produced only a 100 are sold
4. The total cost now comes to 12-16 Rs (27-36 cents)
5. Also adding transportation and middle man margins of 100% (crazy but lets allow as much margins as possible)
6. Now the Cost to put this CD on the shelf comes out to 24-32 Rs (53-71 cents).

So you mean to tell me there is a profit above this to the tune of 200 % more. Audio CD’s are Rs 100 (2.2 $) per peice the last time i checked
The shelf cost of a movie on Video CD’s in India stands at a minimum of Rs 200-300 if bought from a legitimate source.

Consider the alternatives.
The local grey market CD dealer provides movies at Rs 100 (2.2$) and Audio CD’s for as little as Rs 30 (66 cents)
The Internet provides active P2P communities from where you can get a much wider variety of music and movie’s than ny stockist or Music store in India can provide. The only cost here is to remain connected.

So for me the end user the difference is only the difference which seems to have crept is is the difference in the cost of putting the finished item on the shelf and the cost at which it is marketted. The assumptions made about the wastage and transport and middle man are clearly prepoterous. Hence an actual record company can sell CD’s at the same price as the pirate and still make a profit.
This would help in many ways
consumer : curb the grey market products which have no quality control
Artist : would sell just as many or maybe more records than they are doing currently ( more of them through the proper channel)
Record company: would sell more peices (larger production should mean lower production cost)
MPAA RIAA : could drop the facade that they actually want to stop piracy. all they want is that more people listen to the music and the more profit they can make out of it.
What do you think?

Why do people at LJ have this tendancy to take net based quizzes. The whole idea behind doing this is beyond me. I know people will turn up saying not everything done by human beings is done for a reason. Sure i agree.

For instance why do I keep this journal. Is there any real answer to that. Coz I haven’t really posted any day to day happenings of mine. I feel all that to be too drab and uninteresting to describe. Although a good freind of mine from 221 B Bakers street would disagree and say

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes”

So maybe I save those for my personal diary. So that nobody with an astute eye for the extraordinary can spot me out. What I put up in my journal is my thoughts and feelings about things in general. I post on topics i feel strongly about or maybe am associated with. A quiz on the other hand fails this logic completely. sitting on the Internet it takes a few clicks to get to and through a quiz which claims to unravel the kind of person you are. What amazes me even more is the strongly reassuring results supplied with taking the quizzes. In short I feel the quizzes tell you what you want to hear.

This person I know from LJ and elsewhere on the Internet is apparently into goth and is deeply satanic in their cravings and by all standards should by now have been a lesbian hippie serial killer if their quizzes are to be trusted. Based out of her parent’s place in mumbai. I’m sure all of those things can’t be true.

So are we seeking reassurance of our self image or are we trying to show the world who we wanna be. Coz these quizzes surely don’t reflect who we really are.

Just joined the delhi LJ community. I’v lived most of my life in Delhi. Granted that I still haven’t seen the world. But I’ve done a fair bit of travelling inside the country. Been to all the major metro’s. Kashmir while it was still relatively safe, The North-East houses my hometown. And hence Calcutta (kolkata) is inevitable. Chennai I didn’t particularly like. Mumbai was kewl. Rajasthan was grand and historic. But Delhi at the end of the day is what I call home.

Here I see an amalgam of sorts of all kinds of people. gone are the olden days of the Raj and the babudom for which Delhi was known. It’s image as the centre for political power in the country somewhat spoils it but then again thats a part of what Delhi is today. Being a radially built city it maybe gets people from all parts much closer than any other metro in the country.

Anyways if you come to India or are in India i implore you to drop by and sample what this city has in store for you…

Human nature by default is to curb the degree of freedom enjoyed by any intellectual entity. This is reflected on most actions taken thereof by most institutions set up by mankind. Marriage, Censorship, various treaties, etc. are basically all control mechanisms of varied kinds serving the same common purpose. The apparent reason for such control are doomsday prophesies illustrated with easy in varoius fictional representations of our times and of times past.

To draw an analogy Howard Roarke the character from an infamous book may seem the perfect underdog with a perfectly heroic end. But he illustrates an even more deep rooted fear than obvious examples as our depiction of alien worlds in various sci-fi extracts has been in the past decades. To quote a few, check out the Hutt’s(Star wars), Klingons and Ferengi(Star trek), or any UFO reports in the past all point to no good coming out of excesses and thus justify the need for moderation.

In Rand’s work the ultimate fear that of complete conviction in whatever is done at an individual level leaves no scope for moderation. The fear stems and branches into varied flavours. In the absence of moderation what is seen is a lack of control which is the point brought out by her.

But then again lets turn away from fiction and move to reality for a change. For fiction might be interesting but will never replace the latter. In the charted course of history which has predominantly been through moderation and control. It can be seen that periods that lacked these qualities were the one’s which brought about changes in society. Beggining from all the wars/revolutions, to all scientific discoveries, to all innovations were all times of excesses in some sense or the other. Moderation it seems may bring control but lacks change and dynamism. So is it always a simple choice of whence to moderate and what to moderate.

No. The point now is to moderate as little as possible. For we may have another hitler but we may have another Einstien. We are always told to look at the bright side of things and I trust my glass is still half full.