The Draconian Effect Of Copyright Law

‘Copyright’ was a term that first came into being after the Statute Of Anne in 1709 – this was intended to protect the publishers of books against unwanted pirating of their works. That statute allowed authors and publishers to apply for the exclusive right to create copies of books that were their intellectual property – however, instead of creating any automatic or perpetual right, this was originally for 14 years, and then another 14 if the copyright owner was still alive, and only applied if the owner made the application to have said copyright.

Furthermore, it only restricted the creation of absolute copies of the work – all ‘derivative works’ were originally okay, although this was soon changed to exclude works where one or two words of the original had been changed. Despite the protection it afforded to publishers, the London publishing monopolists strongly opposed the law (and even challenged it in Midwinter v Hamilton). Why? Due to a previous common law assumption that any copyright would be perpetual. They felt that this law was placing unfair restrictions on ‘their’ property – which was naturally based on the assumption that intellectual property should come with the same rights as physical property.

These rights are now held in the Berne Convention – which dictates that copyright must be automatic (I’ll explain the problems with this later) and has the provision that any copyright in one country must also be valid in all other signatory countries – and the ‘European directive on harmonizing the terms of copyright protection’. The key changes now from the original copyright system (which was fair enough, in my opinion) are that all intellectual property works are now automatically copyrighted, as said above, no longer have the requirement to be held on a register, or even display the © mark, that the term of copyright is now 70 years after death for individuals and 98 years for corporations, and most importantly, that nearly all derivative works are strictly regulated, except those which fall under ‘fair use’ guidelines.

Consider this. You are a budding computing student, studying at one of the top computing colleges in the world, and create a search engine, which will allow people to find other publicly shared files on the system, for the purposes of exchanging ideas, thoughts and information. You have savings of £12,000. Then, all of a sudden, you get an angry letter from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association Of America), threatening a lawsuit for an obscene amount in damages ($98,000,000,000) for files shared on your search engine. They offer to settle for £12,000.

Knowing that even if you win the case, you will be unlikely to be able to recoup your legal costs, and that legal aid is unavailable for you, thus you would end up spending around £250,000 in legal costs, what would you do? Whatever happens, you’re going to lose a silly amount of money for an action that is morally irreprehensible, hell, it’s a good thing to do, in that it helps others with no direct damage.

This may sound like a silly example, but that is what happened to a student in Michigan called Joe Nievelt. This is just one of many examples of copyright law allowing individuals to be victimised by corporations for actions which they either have not done, or could not foresee the consequences of. Another problem here is that the automatic copyright means that the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) are suing people for sharing, or making derivative works of, art that the author did not give commercial value to in the first place; the responsibility is on the author to directly provide a license for such use.

The problem with the automatic copyright, which I just touched upon, is that it gives silly copyright terms to works which have no commercial value. It also means that works that are out of production will not be redistributed unless the copyright author sees fit to. It is estimated that only roughly 5% of works in copyright are in print; this leads to the conclusion that the wider enjoyment of art and culture is being prevented for technical statutory reasons, rather than actual moral or financial reasons.

The incredibly long copyright term is bordering on the ridiculous to begin with (especially for someone like me who is against inheritance of any property), and already begs the question of whether someone should be liable for millions of pounds in ‘recompense’ for the use of a work, of which the original copyright owner has died. But this is further exacerbated by the rate that Parliament, the European Council and Congress are increasing respective copyright terms, which is currently faster than copyright terms are expiring. I may be slightly off, but I believe that nothing has come into the public domain (free to use) since roughly 1980.

The first animated film with sound, Disney’s ‘Steamboat Willie’, and coincidentally, the character that brought Disney success (Mickey Mouse, in case you’re wondering), would neither be legal under our current copyright law, due to the contraction of the definition of fair use. You see, both derived from a Buster Keaton silent film (Steamboat Bill), and so under current law, Keaton would be able to successfully sue Disney for every penny he had.

And yet, this is the Disney that so strongly opposed ‘free culture’ champion Lawrence Lessig’s proposal that copyright no longer be automatic, yet must be registered – a simple change, with no real downsides. Yet Congress still has not enacted this, several years on, and the European Union is far behind. There is no logic to opposing it, unless one believes in the automatic perpetuity of copyright – in essence, the same status as physical property.

It is also now nearly impossible to find out whether a copyright owner gives permission to use a part of a work, the automatic aspect of copyright now meaning that there is no need to keep a record of who the copyright owner is. As copyrights can be sold, transferred, or indeed different parts of a work owned by different people, this can be a nearly impossible task, the price of which make it entirely unfeasible for non-commercial ventures. Even if the copyright owner can be found, and they would be prepared to allow use of the material, a written statement of permission is normal to obtain to prevent future legal action, and this may dissuade potential donors.

Finally, there is my more opinionated argument that the creation of art should be a pastime, and nothing more – it ultimately contributes nothing necessary to society, unlike the vast majority of occupations. I can understand the need to recoup costs, or indeed to find someone to stump up the money in the first place, but I cannot see the requirement for a profit margin in the creation of art, and with the Tories slashing the government subsidies available for artists (the UK Film Council is no more, for example), there is next to no prospect of artists ever getting a good deal in our current state of affairs.

This post was mainly inspired by Lawrence Lessig’s book ‘Free Culture’ (available, I believe, under a Creative Commons license). It is a great read – I would recommend it highly.

Capitalist Causalities

N.B. I think I said in my last post that posts may not be as frequent any more - this one took two months to write.

So… I have an economics exam tomorrow, and doing all this revision really makes me think – everything around this subject is based on ‘motives’ which are all purely selfish. Obviously, the main one of these in microeconomics is the ‘profit motive’, which it is naturally assumed that all companies have, aside from other similar motives which ultimately will lead to the fulfilment of the profit motive; for instance, the motive to increase the firm’s market share.

It is also taught that government intervention is nearly always a bad thing, and exacerbates the problems of market failure. Maybe this is accurate for small government interventions, however, it seems to me that the more drastic a government’s actions are (aside from the obviously wrong – Zimbabwe, I’m looking at you), the more likely they are to work. For example, the introduction of the Rentenmark in Germany after the Great Depression (which affected Germany, which was already heavily in debt, worse than most countries) by Stresemann largely led to the solution to Germany’s economic problems at the time, albeit when combined with astute foreign policy.

However, there is one common problem for me with both of these being taught as fact – they both assume that our current semi-democratic economic and political system is the correct one to use. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for democracy, but the standard of political education in this country is dire – indeed, I have been unfortunate enough to encounter people who believe that Barack Obama is our Prime Minister – and to expect people who have little or no political awareness other than their parents’ views (or even worse, those of the tabloids!) to use their electoral responsibilities sensibly and appropriately is at best over optimistic and at worst simply naïve. This is why the media has such a strong stranglehold on politics, and why participation rates are so low.

However, I believe I’ve talked in the past about the desperate need for extra political education, so moving swiftly on, or indeed, not so swiftly, as I pick up this train of thought two months after it originally left King’s Cross, despite the general curriculum quite understandably following a middle-of-the-road political agenda, at the expense of coverage of the more extreme sections at either side, I am pleased that the curriculum gives scope for teaching of at least more than one viewpoint; however, although classicist economic schools of thought are taught pretty much mandatorily, the Keynesian school is somewhat overlooked.

Now, this may not appear to be such a harsh reality, but it is one that has particular poignancy whilst in our present situation – i.e. that of recession – as although the two schools agree that whilst a state is in economic wellbeing, a reduction in government spending will not have much effect (although the Keynesians argue that this reduction could endanger the economy’s productive capacity), the classicists believe that a reduction in spending can kickstart an economy out of a recession, whilst the Keynesians, to my mind, see logic and see it the other way around. Surely then, this bias of teaching gives bias to future economists or indeed voters’ minds, and is thus tantamount to indoctrination?

I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds...

Apologies for not musing for a while. I have actually got some written pieces down; however, some of them are (were) very topical, others are of contestable quality (some of which are simply drivel), and I’ve simply not felt the impetus to write for quite a while. It may have seemed that the blog was dead, I assure you, it was merely undergoing a hibernation process.

What I want to talk about is the human thirst for knowledge, and the divide between those who do strive for it and those that do not. Whilst to some, particularly those who make their living through various forms of research, this may seem to be a natural part of people’s internal wiring, it remains that some simply do not care to expand their horizons, or at least in the direction that society expects them to. Indeed, there are still hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people whose idea of branching out into hitherto unexplored areas of knowledge constitutes watching a new Jeremy Clarkson/James May/Fearne Cotton/(insert prolific presenter here, I don’t know many) show, and having done so, feel enlightened.

These people are often alienated from or even vilified by the self-styled ‘intelligent’ society, a reaction which I personally feel is out of order and unjustified. For starters, to treat another human as inferior is an action so despicable that it often, somewhat ironically, makes the treater actually inferior to the person on the other end of the disrespect! I am unable to see (and if there is something glaringly obvious that I have missed throughout my life, please inform me) how anyone can place themselves above another human being, or indeed below.

The justification generally seems to be that they are making no ‘contribution’ to the ‘greater good’ of society, or indeed the world. To me, there appears to be no logic, or very poor logic, behind that statement. Tying in to the point above, how has it been decided what this ‘greater good’ is, and how to achieve it? And given that the above justification appears to have assumed that the one justifying themselves is convinced of the answers to the previous two questions, it can only be that the justifier has placed themselves, and their ‘brilliant’ mind, not only above the person or group that they are condemning, but above the rest of the world, including those that a rational person would view as their intellectual equals!

I would like to point out at this stage that I do not believe myself to be an overall better person than anyone else, including these people who I am discussing at the moment. Naturally, in my eyes, all men are equal (for the purposes of political correctness, when I use the word ‘men’, please assume I meant ‘humans’), indeed, to believe otherwise after what I have just said would make me guilty of hypocrisy of the highest order.

Whilst there is a lot to be said for a democratic approach to answering the previous question about what the greater good actually is, indeed, that is what our whole political system attempts to do, there are naturally problems. Believe it or not, everyone is influenced by the voices of those around them, and a fair representation of the populace’s opinions never occurs when it comes to election time. Furthermore, it is often a great struggle to find out what you actually think about a matter – I have found the answer to be so elusive in the past that to this day I am unaware of my opinions on certain matters; not necessarily because I find them unimportant (anything that is held dear by one person is naturally important to the human race as a whole), but either because all sides of an argument have equal strength to my ears, or because I simply do not know.

Finally, there is the unfortunate fact that participation rates are at their lowest ever, possibly not because people do not care, but because the differences between the choices offered, which is essentially now a three-party system, all straight down the middle, are not sufficient to tempt people into going down to the polling station and casting a vote when they feel that the difference between middle-left, middle-right, and plain middle is negligible anyway.

We also have to consider whether those who pursue knowledge are actually doing a favour to society anyway. It has been the case over the years, that researchers who set out with the best of intentions often open up, in their field, the scope for something inherently evil. Consider this: with the dawn of atomic physics came the scope for the creation of the atom bomb, and essentially the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention unfortunate disasters like Chernobyl; with the advent of new materials, right back from the Stone Ages, there has always been new weapons for men to hurt and kill each other with; with the beginning of industrial processes came not only greater availability of consumer goods, but also the destruction of the land, the sea and the sky; with the modern political system came fascism, nationalism and patriotism, war, conservativism… (okay, the last one was a joke).

Thus, we have to consider whether we have really improved the standard of human life over the years, or whether it is actually the so-called ignoramuses who do a real service to society by learning nothing aside from just how obnoxious Jeremy Clarkson actually is.

I leave you today with words from the mouth (or pen) of Robert Burns that I believe to be particularly apt to my point here:

‘The best laid plans of mice and men
Gang aft agley
And leave us naught but grief and pain
For promised joy’

A Food Post You Ask? Heavens No!

So, after finally getting round to watching "Julie & Julia" a few days ago, coupled with my sudden increase of lactose intolerance (6 hours of indigestion after a mini-muffin? COME ON.), I have rediscovered a passion for cooking that seemed to have been muffled by copious amounts of food coursework that hit me (and Persona 101, presumably) about a third of the way through Year 11.

Tonight, this has started, after a lucky google search, and an amazing whim on my mum's part, with cashew nut brittle. Who knew that melting sugar could be so hard? Why did nobody tell me that in the time it takes to spread the mix out on a baking try to cool, the remaining sugar in the pan will have hardened to a state only comparable to concrete? However, despite the fact it took longer to scrub the solidified sugar out of the pan than it did to make the brittle itself, the finished result looks rather good, if not a little clumpy. But nothing is perfect first time, right? More sugar and better crushed cashews next time I think. Although not making it at 9:30pm again may help somewhat too.

Next, I may dare to venture into the world of cakes, as practically ALL the cookie recipes I've found contain copious amounts of peanut butter or chocolate, the former of which no-one else in my house likes, and the latter I find myself going off of rather quickly.

Wish me luck! I'll be back as soon as I've wiped the cake mix from the kitchen walls.

-Hlctwh93

Landing on Mayfair

I decided to scrap the 'special' 50th post idea, so here's a bog standard one; apologies for not posting for a while

I woke up early this morning for the first time in almost forever, at 7:15. For some people, indeed most my age, this provokes a reaction along the lines of 'WHAT!? Are you INSANE!? 7.15!?', them not dragging their lazy arses out of bed until approximately 4pm unless they absolutely have to (I'm afraid Spanner is somewhat guilty of this). But I haven't been following my own rules recently, I've been sleeping in until the late hour of 9 o clock (unfortunately, this time might also provoke the same reaction).

My one reason for disliking the moment at which, through an odd series of convulsions, I manage to propel my nearly-slumberous body off my mattress, being postponed beyond a time which I deem 'late' (usually about 8.30), is that, particularly during the holidays, I like to feel like I'm making the most of my day. Admittedly, the same has never applied upon returning to school in the past, and it may seem a little back to front, getting tired during the holidays and resting during term time, but that's just how it's always happened for me.

Unfortunately, this morning, my wild flailing succeeded in knocking my phone and iPod off my bedside table and me instantly landing on top of them. Thankfully, nothing was broken - I don't think they do a version of A&E for pocket electronics - and I was okay too, whatever my deluge of groans and grunts may have suggested! I then proceeded to slip over a book that was on the floor, and went downstairs, and opened the kitchen door straight into my mum, scaring us both shitless. Unless I can find a four leaf clover, today's going to be a bad day.

Jamie does... nothing while Persona 101 goes to Portugal and defaces the language?

Ugh, that one took far longer than I expected. Never mind! I always love the chance to hopefully introduce people to new music that I too like. Anyway. I'm going to Portugal in a few weeks - I'm unsure of the exact number, as time seems just to float by in these massive holidays, but I'm the one in the family who's going to be doing the speaking, so I've got to learn Portuguese. Being given a book labelled 'Portuguese In 3 Months' when I had 1 month was slightly disheartening, I have to say, although I've since realised that these '3 months' constituted of doing 3 lessons a month, and I personally only have to get a functional knowledge of the language.

However, I'm still finding it hard. Self-teaching is rarely easy, and this is proving to follow that pattern, the book's pronunciation guide often being profoundly undescriptive. Que sorte! Hopefully those of you who understand that will pick up the sarcasm.

What's more, whilst French and German, the two languages I've had a crack at so far, use their equivalent of 'to have' as a past tense auxiliary verb (avoir and haben respectively), Portuguese uses it as auxiliary for the future tense, which is incredibly confusing and frankly encourages me to learn Esperanto or simply go on holiday to Benidorm every year. Come to think of it, suicide is preferable to either. And I still don't know how to form the past tense.

Furthermore, the language insists on being infuriating by having no less than 13 forms of each verb, as opposed to 9 for French and German and just 6 for English. That's not counting the form that has fallen into lingual disrepair and is now only seen in classical texts. Although, I suppose it could work if I just learnt the 1st person and had a slight knowledge of the second person, short of any complaints along the lines of 'he/she has more x than I do'. And let's face it, complaining whilst abroad is not a good idea, as wary natives will just blather some gibberish that isn't actually part of the language.

Eh, I suppose when I get back I might take the opportunity to actually learn to speak Portuguese. Frankly, the little I plan to learn is enough to get a B at GCSE with comfort (although that just shows what a joke GCSE languages are), but I could further it, as fluency in multiple languages is always a useful asset to have (unless it's Esperanto), and I suppose it's not too much of a struggle.

Hey, enough pondering Portuguese (points for aliteration?). I don't doubt I've bored you with this post, but hey, life gives you shit sometimes. Such as unwanted tubgirl links (don't search it if you don't know, or you'll scratch your eyes out). Sorry for the somewhat downbeat writings, I'm just not in a great mood.

Albums of the year: 2000

I plan to write a few posts tonight, just to partially make up for the lack of a post for over a week now - disgraceful by our standards, but just click the 'Next blog' feature (which is actually essentially a 'random blog' button), and most blogs will either be defunct, or updated once a month at best. Thus our two readers (namely myself and -Spanner, no others apparently) have it fairly nice.

The third of these will be the grand milestone of fifty posts, and I do have something slightly special planned for that, but first, I'd like to introduce a new, musical series I'm starting. 'The 5 club' will be finished, I just cringe every time I read the name, and will probably have two more installments, but this one is going to be going into detail about my absolute favourite albums of the last decade, which has equal chances of seeming incredibly narcissistic as it does of interesting some hovel bound silent reader who won't come forward. At best.

Anyhow, this will be done year by year, and will feature 10 albums in detail, and anything between 0 and 5 honourable mentions that are simply listed as great albums (I should say releases, seeing as I have a fair few splits, demos and EPs across my lists). I should also add that the further one gets towards the culmination of this series in 2009, the better, on average across the 10 or 15, the albums will get, due to my ever-increasing interest in music. And yes, this WHOLE SERIES will sound like I'm fellating the bands in question.

I see no point in hanging around any more, and will duly commence with the year 2000 as soon as my iTunes loads. It helps me to listen to the albums in question as I write about them. Ah yes. We commence!

1. Electric Wizard - Dopethrone














Yes, yes, yes, I've always been a fanboy of Terrorizer magazine; but although this was their album of the decade, it isn't mine, it 'merely' obtains this vaunted position as album of the year. Despite the band themselves detesting the term 'stoner doom', this is essentially what this is - a beautiful cut thereof, slow, haunting, yet somehow angry at the same time, with the downtuned goodness of the standard guitarwork. As I'm describing this, indeed with the word 'standard', it all sounds rather average, but this is far more than that. It has a certain je ne sais quoi, that just elevates it above the level of normal stoner doom, and then further (thus ahead of the rest of the Wizard's catalogue) to a piece worthy of greater heights, and thus worthy to anyone with or without a weed stash. Although I've heard it's better with (unthinkable, really!).

2. Children Of Bodom - Follow The Reaper














At a stark contrast to my number one album of the year, this effort from Children Of Bodom is practically mainstream (although far from the most mainstream thing to come in this series). This album is the perfection of their version of power metal with harsh vocals (thus without the melodramatic histrionics, in my opinion), yet still manages to retain all the good parts of the genre - the guitar wankery, the catchy riffs, the speed, the ballads (check out the song 'Every Time I Die'), and altogether catchy songs (Bodom After Midnight, Mask Of Sanity, Taste Of My Scythe, Hate Me!). Although there is filler to a certain extent, that filler is by no means unlistenable, and doesn't really detract from the album as a whole. No matter what claims people make about 'Something Wild', this will always remain my favourite Bodom album.

3. Abyssic Hate - Suicidal Emotions


















With this album, Abyssic Hate both created the DSBM genre (depressive suicidal black metal, for the non-kvltists of you), and perfected it, in one stroke of the proverbial blackened brush. Despite the album being riddled with blastbeats, the production is sufficiently necro, and the drumming sufficiently plastic-tubby (another made up adjective, here a positive one!) to give it the feeling of being slow, mid-paced at best. This creation of somehow fast-yet-slow means the album's 4 tracks and 50 minutes fly by, in a decidedly downbeat yet somehow uplifting blur. Oh yes, I forgot to mention the misanthropic feelings. We all get them, it's just more fun to let them out by listening to music. This is, all in all, a good piece of fun.

4. Immolation - Close To A World Below














To me, this isn't even Immolation's best album (that honour going to 1999's 'Failures For Gods', so it is doubly impressive that this album gets a place here. Exhibiting their unique take on the New York style of death metal (yes, non-metal fans, cities have their own sounds in metal), 'Close To A World Below' is everything one could possibly want from Immolation - Ross Dolan's incredible deep death growls coupled with the widdly yet brutal guitar work of Bob Vigna and Thomas Wilkinson, and tripled with the nearly unique blasting drumming of Alex Hernandez.

5. Burning Witch - Crippled Lucifer

























Any of you who are members of the elusive 'dronehead' species will a) know this album for sure already, and b) probably know Burning Witch's members better as members of... (deep breath) Khanate, Sunn O))), Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine, Asva, Goatsnake, and Atavist. And many, many more. But anyway. This is simply amazing. I can't even begin to describe this musically - it's both too weird for such descriptions, and transcends them anyway. Just listen to it, why don't you?
N.B. There are two pieces of artwork due to the 2008 reissue (below) having better artwork in my opinion.

6. Decapitated - Winds Of Creation














Decapitated, as most death metal fans will agree, are one of the best things to happen to death metal since Cynic and Atheist revolutionized the genre. This, their debut album, is a prime cut of what they do best - blurry technical death metal that's somehow catchy despite being played at an infinite BPM (seemingly). What's more, it includes the best cover of Slayer's 'Mandatory Suicide' ever. Which is certainly quite a feat.

7. Cannibal Corpse - Live Cannibalism


















Cannibal Corpse are almost a household name, as close as one will come to it in death metal, and this, their best live album, showcases their classics with a somewhat decent production not heard on the albums, along with 'witty' (read: sick yet hilarious) stage banter ('This one's for all the fucking women out there: FUCKED... WITH A KNIFE!). They're one of those bands who don't really need explaining, just good straight death metal.

8. Cradle Of Filth - Midian


















Some metal purists would tell you with vehemence that this was the first bad Cradle album, others would tell you it was the last good one. Black metal purists would put their hands over their ears and say 'blah blah blah I can't hear you, Cradle Of Fags don't exist'. The former and latter are wrong. Cradle Of Filth definitely do exist (although their continued existence is somewhat unfortunate, just like Slayer), and this album, despite being full of songs, rather than an album as a whole, is great fun, whilst retaining the edge that made their symphonic metal have elements of blackness.

9. Lamb Of God - New American Gospel


















Shock! Horror! Me, rating a 'redneck' groove metal album! Yes, despite the negative meathead connotations - pits are meant for 'dancing', not actual violence - I like this album very much. It's very close to death metal in parts, and is very headbangable (more imaginary adjectives), thus making it good fun all the time. It's quite raw, which makes it appeal even more, and future albums would show quite a departure from this, better style. Tracks to youtube are 'Pariah', 'O.D.H.G.A.B.F.E.', and of course, the quintessential 'Black Label'.

10. Origin - Origin

















More tech-death here; the style was very prevalent in the early half of the decade, proliferated by the emergence of Nile. This is another prime cut from this year - although Origin would perfect their style with 'Antithesis' in 2008, this is also worth listening to; the music is great, and it doesn't suffer from the near drowning of the vocals that later releases would suffer from, although the whole record is damaged by a slightly muddy production. Still, amazing musicianship and songwriting on display here.

Other Good Releases:

11. Brujeria - Brujerizmo
12. Impaled - Medical Waste

Dextrous hammering of buttons

Nyegh. So I'm stuck without my trusty old Xbox 360 once more, which really helps to pass these days. I won't get into the reasons, but it's more due to confiscation than the somewhat cliche 'red ring of death/darkness/doom/oh shit no moar CoD lolz'. The fact that the red ring, which simply signifies that you're going to have to be without your console for a couple of weeks, is described so extravagantly, is actually quite worrying.

I said way back in my very first post that I did enjoy video games immensely, however, could see that they were often viewed as sad and a bit of a niche interest, so would not be blogging much about them. However, there is something that has occurred to me over the past couple of days, and I thought I'd look into it - the legitimacy of professional gaming as a career path. This is something that has been going on for about 10 years now, to my knowledge anyway, but has only recently begun to become lucrative for the best players, and has begun to break into the mainstream.

There are two main types of professional gaming, which can be split into competition gaming, and video making, which roughly constitutes someone playing a game, making videos of their gameplay, and posting them online for others to view. This becomes a money-earner when combined with advertisements, or when done as part of a company that makes money this way, Machinima being the most obvious one.

However, whilst I will write briefly later about this side of the scene, I'm more interested in the competetive side of the scene, as this, to me, feels more like an arena that is more likely to guarantee a constant, reasonable - if not better - income. Whilst there are many aspiring professional gamers - one only has to look at the high levels of traffic through the Major League Gaming (MLG) and Gamebattles websites to see that, very few actually put in the time and dedication to get there.

But would you want to? Whilst other sports were initially designed as a primal test of ability, videogaming, right back to Atari and Pong, was designed as a pastime, and only really became competitive with the dawn of the first person shooter (henceforth FPS) that people started playing against one another and teaming up to create giant orgies of people with dextrous fingers and tactical brains.

However, this seems to be to be a pointless exercise. Whilst snooker, which similarly requires dexterity of the arms and use of the brain, has the added aesthetic values, and indeed slight innuendos, of putting round, shiny balls into holes, videogaming, particularly in the FPS genre, seems to be largely a projection of fantasy, and sometimes real life, onto a screen, and it could be argued that in this way, all videogames are role playing, an activity that is generally associated with lots of sad nerds gathering in lifeless dungeons and projecting some fantasy and sexual interaction with mythical beasts (OOH bestiality) onto their sad, lonely lives.

It has no higher meaning, no aesthetic value beyond what is instantly in front of the player, and so investing too much time may seem like a sad and pointless exercise. And I agree, if one was to base one's whole life around it, then it would be pointless. However, most players just use it as a pastime, and believe it or not, obliterating hundreds of pixellated men can be incredibly relaxing. I myself game in this way, and in doing so, have clocked up 11 days of playtime on the popular Call Of Duty series alone, merely by using it as a pastime, albeit my main one.

When it becomes more than that though, we have to look at whether the person is being damaged by the videogames. Some who aspire to play professionally spend all day, every day videogaming; indeed, it is not unheard of for people to have 200 days (4800 hours) playtime on a single game. I'm not including actual professionals in this, as many people do jobs that they get nothing out of, and it pays the bills for them, so they are somewhat exempt. Indeed, certain pros have gone to greater heights, for instance, Tsquared, or Tom Taylor, is known to have several sponsorship deals, in addition to prize money.

Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against videogames; indeed, I spend more time on them than most people I know, it's just that they are designed to be a pastime. People who don't play professionally sometimes spend hours 'working' on new strategies, and I don't see how that can possibly be interpreted as fun, rewarding, fulfilling, or indeed constructive. So, while videogames are awesome, they do have to be taken in relative moderation.

Hippie ecological ranty ravings

I just realised that I've spent most of my day, if not all, on the PC. Whilst that doesn't particularly bother me initially, given some consideration, it does make me wonder if we rely too much on technology. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some sort of anti-technology pagan, or indeed some apocalypse obssessive, but I do worry sometimes. We all saw the Y2K worries, and indeed the worst case scenario sensationalists, but let's face it, we all new that technology can be upgraded fast enough now to avoid anything like that, especially when it didn't do shit in the end. However, with the advancement of technology, our reliance on it also increases, and one has to worry that it will eventually become everything to us, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who fears we won't be able to sustain it, especially with the imminent end of everything due to the drying up of the world's oil supplies and the subsequent invasion of Saudi Arabia that's currently being taught as part of AQA's GCSE Geography syllabus (okay, so the invasion bit isn't taught, but I am sure as hell that when it happens, AQA will be teaching complete subservience to whoever was in office at the time, and managed to negotiate a pittance of oil from America, the inhabitants of which will be too busy saying 'PUHHH-RAYSE THE LAAAWD' to actually alter their syllabuses (syllabi?)).

Wow, time for a breather. Sorry for the almighty paragraph, I just couldn't find a place to move it on to a new one. So, anyway, despite us all being taught these apocalypse scenarios as God-given fact (although I do agree with them, I feel that both sides of the argument need to be taught), and being told that we will all drown next Thursday, or Tuesday in the case of the Netherlands, people continue to use all the energy the please with a complete and utter disregard for the future. I for one have been guilty of leaving lights on in the past, and dismissing the fact when confronted, claiming it to be not worth my time, I do feel that we need to be slightly more careful. After all, the demise of the oil industry soon has become an inevitable truth, especially with BP chucking tonnes of the stuff into the ocean wantonly, and so along with giving us more time of that 'dirty' power, we get a few more years to look into renewable sources of energy (my idea of sticking hamsters in rape racks and getting a ton of hamster wheels still hasn't been looked at).

Still, maybe we should just give up. It gives the misanthropes something to whine about. After all, it's them, the introspective haters of humanity, who will suffer more than anybody from this. Although I've never heard of a misanthropic ecologist - and they're certainly the ones with the most reason to be (now coupled with public sector workers - cheers George)!

I don't want to address the world as a whole on this matter; after all, I'm awful with being green and preserving energy myself, my one saving grace being that I never litter. Also, what's the voice of one teen going to do? It's not even a matter that I'm overly concerned about, in fact, I might try and get my vegan friend to write an article for the blog based around this topic. He'd be welcome. In fact, I'll ask him now...

Too many tracks make an album a bastard to listen to

2010 is being a seriously exciting year for music for me. Maybe that's partially because I'm paying attention to new releases more than ever this year, but there are several gems to have caught my eye already this year - it usually takes me until at least June of the next year to decide upon a top 10, but I have many candidates already. Granted, there have been some disappointments - Burzum's 'Belus' wasn't quite what I expected, but was still a very good album. Similarly, the Triptykon album, the new project from Thomas Gabriel Fischer (ex-Celtic Frost) wasn't quite as good as Celtic Frost's last album 'Monotheist', but then again, that was my album of the decade. 'Eparistera Daimones' will still be up there come the end of the year.

One trend has been bothering me though. It's that albums nowadays seem to be getting so LONG. Maybe it's just my attention span failing, or maybe it's just that I'm in one of my grindcore phases at the moment, but a lot of albums seem to be failing to hold my attention all the way through, yet I find them brilliant if I listen to them over two sessions. Take the aforementioned Triptykon opus, for instance. Coming in at a hefty 72 minutes, if I try and listen to all of it, I often find myself getting an itchy trigger finger over the 'skip' button come 19 minute closer 'The Prolonging', which thus seems an apt title.

Similarly, another, more underground gem I've enjoyed this year (thanks to -Spanner for finding it for me), Erthyrioblastosis Fetalis' 'Process Of Death' is just over an hour long. This isn't too bad normally, except it's a grindcore album. If one is to look at the classics of grindcore, 'Scum' is 31 minutes, 'Horrified' is 29 minutes, and 'World Downfall' absolutely takes the biscuit at 36 minutes. The fact that 'Process Of Death' is about half an hour longer than these is frankly worrying. Admittedly, they are somewhat underground, and my favourite grindcore release for this year, Raw Noise's 'System Never' (admittedly debatably crust punk rather than grind) clocks in at a far more reasonable 26 minutes. The thing is, that's an EP. Other grindcore releases this year that I've heard are Leng Tch'e's 'Hypomanic', 41 minutes (a bit long), and Atomski Rat's self titled debut EP, which aside from being some of the best crust/grind I've heard in a long time, is a perfect length at 18 minutes for a 19 track EP.

The thing is, while hour long plus albums are certainly acceptable for some genres, for instance funeral doom (Esoteric's recent masterpiece 'The Maniacal Vale' was just over 100 minutes long, and gripping throughout), and other slower genres, and exceptions can be made for truly spectacular albums ('Monotheist' was about 70 minutes long), when you get to underproduced goregrind, an hour is too much to ask for nearly all listeners. So really, this is a plea to musicians: don't cut out the step of cutting down all the material you've got by simply including all of it; it makes for a poorer album. Thankyou.