2006-08-18

Pirating for justice

In seventh grade, my geography teacher spent a whole class period telling us about Disney's unethical business practices -- mainly about their use of child labor.

I thought that that was pretty ironic. I mean, the target audience for Disney products is children, but then they've got all of these third world children making the products. The United States is swarming with little kids decked out in Disney shit and a few thousand miles away some 10-year-old named Mgumbwa is working his malnourished little hands to the bone to put the seams in a Pocahontas T-shirt.

Well, I was making a copy of Mulan last night. And it was really difficult. Most DVDs have some sort of encryption on them, but Disney went to pretty great lengths to make that DVD unpiratable. I bet a lot effort went into developing the encryption for that DVD. I bet that it cost Disney a shitload of money. But there really is no such thing as "unpiratable" these days -- and my new-and-improved DVD decrypting program came 100% free of charge.

Looking back at my Mulan endeavor, I have to smile. Think about it: Disney has been screwing over children for years so that they could up their profit, and now some 14-year-old kid is sitting at his computer writing decrypter programs that will take a solid bite out of Disney's sales. I think that thought must be of some solace little Mgumbwa - or it would be, if he knew what a computer is.

zebrasaur at 9:57 a.m.

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