Glen More

A trial starts on Monday for Swedish tracking site The Pirate Bay. For those that are unfamiliar it is the #2 website for downloading illegal copies of High School Musical and socially relevant progressive music, such as Nickleback’s “Something In Her Mouth“. I should say that I use Pirate Bay to make my “stealing” that much easier. I do not delude myself into believing it is anything but stealing, but I am chronically cheap, under-entertained and morally flexible which is a dangerous combination.

To prepare myself for the trial I watched the 2006 documentary “Steal This Film” staring the seemingly simian-groomed Swedish masterminds behind Pirate Bay. They laid out the legal and moral arguement in much the same manner that Kenny Rogers defends his plastic surgeon. The crux of their arguement was that it is legal in Sweden, so the Americans can suck their big fat Ikeas’. They damn the ‘Americans’ for using trade laws to affect their Swedish policy. Indeed: how dare the American government use its power to aid American needs! Wait…what? That is what governments are supposed to do? Oh well, if karma doesn’t get the Pirate Bay guys, then the hallucinated talking spiders eventually will.

I followed this up with “Steal This Film II” which was what version one should have been. Drawing on historians, notable legal minds and noticably light on Swedes, the documentary doesn’t defend the morality of Pirate Bay but addresses the inevitable cultural swing that we cannot change. Essentially a “genie out of the bottle” scenario that is leading to a new online media. It is given many blanket titles but is essentially content for the masses by the masses. There are plenty of communications experts out there, pausing from their navel contemplation and poised to prove to their parents that the years in University were not wasted in vain on an ‘imaginary’ degree, that are currently pontificating on this subject (in between frothing people’s frappachinos). I will leave it to them to tell you the catchphrase for the next decade will be (“…no no, the medium is the message!!!“), but here is my contribution to the discussion:

‘Experience’ is the new commodity. The music industry has adjusted by making us believe that live music shows are worth $100+ per ticket for the colective experience. I think the movie industry is also, with IMAX, the reemergence of 3D and, of course, mega-theaters. All this telling us that the premium is worth the price. The future of commerce is to successfully ‘brand’ your online experience. Make everyone believe that ‘community’ is the future…then sell it to them. Social Media experts are already laying the groundwork for you, by alerting everyone that if you haven’t found your cohort online, then your cohort is likely already on there making fun of you. You are now some cohorts ‘fat kid’.  Sad for you, really.

In summation:

• Swedes – not well represented in both documentaries or by culinary challenged felt hand puppets
• File Sharing – Unstoppable…but if the Hindus are right you are totally coming back as one of Paris Hilton’s dogs
• Music Industry – Will survive providing they can keep The Rolling Stones alive through EPCOT-like animatronics so that they can continue to tour
• Global Commerce – Not destroyed, merely owned by those who brand ‘cool’ online. And that is where my super-sexy LARPing community will begin its domination: the future is mine.

Unemployment sucks. Though I am not unemployed (knock wood), I have been thinking recently about the effects that the employment crisis is going to have. You can blame the global banking crisis if you want but the fact is that North America was getting fat and the time has come for us to pay the price. Companies are clear-cutting their workforces. It may be cold comfort to those currently unemployed but here are three optimistic points to focus on:

…massive amounts of talented people out onto the streets.

Companies are cutting jobs so fast they are not letting go based on ‘knowledge’ or ‘ability’. They are sending massive amounts of talented people out onto the streets. The good thing about talented people is that most of them have ‘a big idea‘; one of those plans to change the world or build a better mousetrap. Before this crisis these ideas were trapped in corporate complacency but now tens of thousand of great ideas can be released by the truly optimistic and entrepreneurial. The next Larry Page and Sergey Brin (of Google) are currently standing in an unemployment line and thinking how they can ensure this is never going to happen again to them. Believe it.

…unemp-trepreneurs need money for extravagant things like food and shelter.

That leads to the next upside: hunger. If you are running a company who’s business model is “we’ll figure the business model out later” GOOD LUCK. There are alot of touchy-feely companies out there that are about to get some investor smackdowns if they don’t figure out how to monetize in ridiculously swift fashion. They will be standing next to the unwashed masses, their unserviced iPhones and empty fair trade latte cups in hand. The new group of unemp-trepreneurs need money for extravagant things like food and shelter. You can bet every good idea that comes out of this crisis has a business model attached that doesn’t pay off in 10 years, it pays off this month. Investors in shaky markets like these people…alot.

Take that hippie!

Finally, we have the technology, we can rebuild him. Social Networking, collaboration, open source, GNU: before this crisis they were embraced by the granola tree hugging population of the world as a ‘buy the world a Coke‘ style love-in for how super great humanity is. Well they can self love all they want, but they are about to see these tools turned into one of the most unexpectedly efficient ways for business to opperate. I bet that given a laptop and wireless I can get a factory in Taiwan manufacturing my super widget in less than two months and can find enough micro-investors to do it and have online sales before it even arrives stateside. Take that hippie!

I hope I haven’t offended anyone or oversimplified the crisis. I am truly sensitive to those who are out of work, having gone through the tech bust in 2000 and become a surprisingly terrible and depressed manual labourer for a few years. I honestly believe what I write above and likely in 6 years I will be having a Nerf gun fight in the halls of your corporate headquarters while you hunt pandas for sport on a remote Chinese island, because you earned it.