Today is another cloudy day, but I think somehow, my bout of being down has subsided. I feel better today. I still don’t have the energy to save the World, but I promise you that it’s not due to laziness. I have worked very hard to get the house looking really nice, and feeling fresh if I have family come for the holidays. I still have about 9 huge tubs of stuff I haven’t unpacked since moving in here. On the one side, I feel that if they are still packed up, it must be useless junk that I don’t need. On the contrary, it’s my sentimental items, like my journal I wrote all through high school. Which I have to admit, I am so scared to even open anymore. I havent looked inside of it since senior year, and I don’t plan to either. But yea, getting the house organized and looking good has been my goal for the time being. Even if no company comes, I will still have a clean house.

My older brother called me today and gave me some shit. He told me that if I am not coming to any Christmas gatherings this year, than he is boycotting them as well. Which he then went on to explain when he called my younger brother before me, my younger brother said he didn’t want to go to any gatherings either. Keep in mind my younger brothers is just saying that, and will most likely go anyway. It just adds courage to my ‘never make himself look bad’ brother to not go. He also said that he didn’t want anyone to buy him anything this year because he doesn’t want to buy anyone else anything either. He is just so bah-hum-bug. I explained to him that if he missed the family Thanksgiving thing, as did I, that we are both obligated to celebrate the holidays with the family. So that is that I guess.

I think I have now mailed out most of my Christmas items for the people I could afford to buy for this year. My family will either have to come get theirs themselves, or I might be conned from my older brother to make an appearance. It sucks having divorced parents. It makes it so there is like 23-million different events your expected to go to, when in reality, it would be nice to just stay at home on the holiday. What’s that even like?

Last night I was watching the Congressional debate on the SOPA amendments. If I remember right, there were 50 presented, all in hopes to delay the vote even longer. It seems both sides have a lot of really good points, but in reality, it’s all screwed up. They said that the debate will be delayed until 2012, but then there was news that broke later saying that wasn’t true, and that they are going to re-debate it on the 21st I think it is.

Let me explain this to you as someone who has used the internet since I was basically old enough to talk.

When I was about 10 years old, I didn’t have an income, and couldn’t even legally make one. Music was, well still is, my passion. I LOVE music. Not in the way of listening to Pink Floyd or Bon Jovi over and over, I’m talking about staying up with the hottest Indie, Alternative, Rock, Metal, Dance, Dub-Step, Experimental, New Age (the list goes on). At 10, I found Napster. Yes, this is probably a blast from the past for a lot of you. I was in heaven. I would hear a song on the radio (free broadcast) and like it. Then I would listen for days if I had to, to find out who sang that song. This was before searching ‘Google’ for lyrics would find a song so easily. So I would find the name of a song after listening to it, and I would look it up on Napster, and download it for free. As a 10-year-old, this is what the internet became to me. So many of my friends were doing it as well. We would all make mixes for each other of cool or weird new music. We would laugh at parody songs, and listen to songs our parents would probably not approve of as well. When birthdays or holidays arrived I had the perfect gift!! I realized I could make a mix for each of my family members, with songs that I either knew for a fact they loved, or songs that I thought they either SHOULD know, or they might not EVER listen to otherwise. At 10 years old, I didn’t have to ask mom and dad for money to get gifts, and I was able to get personal, from the heart presents. How could I have ever done that if it wasnt for the radio broadcasting the song for free over the airwaves to spark my interest? Even more, what if I liked a single song by an artist, but being 10 years old with broke parents, I could never buy the artist’s CD, therefore my like of that artist would end at one of their singles. There would be no want to go see them in concert, no telling my friends about other cool songs a certain artist sings. No singing along in concert with out idols.

Now jump to being 15 years old. I have a minimum wage job, and I spend every single dollar on the newest cool artist, and not save for college, or a new car. It might just buy a couple of CD’s a week that I could afford working my weekend job, but it was so worth it because I was so passionate for music. But what about when I wanted to buy 50 of the newest CDs in a month, but could only afford about 8. Not only was I giving all of my hard-earned money to the record industry, but I was getting more and more behind with the newest music every week. So I downloaded more music online. There was a cool tool, where if you found a cool song to download for free you could search that users other music. So lets say you search for your favorite song and find it. You can find someone who also has that song, and see what other, most likely similar, music they listen to. On so many occasions, I found hundreds of artists that were never even played on the radio, that had awesome music. Which in turn would lead me to buy CDs from artists that the radio couldn’t even keep up with.

Now with film. This very same concept holds true. When I was a kid. I wasnt allowed, and couldn’t afford to go out to the cinema. I was lucky to watch rented movies, and in most cases, I had to wait for the TV version of movies which always sucked ass big time. Then I found there were websites that streamed movies for free online. Free? You mean instead of just hearing about cool movies from my rich school-mates, I could actually watch them myself? Mind you, we aren’t talking HD quality, nor are we even talking regular tube TV quality. But it was close enough. Almost like listening to a movie through the radio with just the slightest video to go along with it. Being able to watch movies like this expanded my love for film so much. I then got a job at Hollywood Video movie rentals. Working there I could watch the movies for free, and between working there, and seeing movies online, I was able to up sell so many movies to people based on their movie choices. People would come to me for a good movie.Pirating in this case helped Hollywood Video, and it helped people find new movies and directors they enjoyed.

My point in all of this, isn’t that the film industries deserve being ripped off, nor do musical artists. My point is, pirating movies and music is for the poor, or people who would otherwise never see, or hear it. I don’t know of very many millionaires that would go stream a crappy version of a movie on the internet, when they could buy the Blu-Ray version and watch it on a big TV. I also think that a lot more movies and music is sold when people have freedom to see/hear them even at free sources. There are hundreds of people who would never have had the want to see an artist in concert if it didnt somehow connect with pirating the content. If an artist is good enough, or a movie is good enough, there should be no doubt that someone that enjoys what that artist is doing, will go and support them. So that is what needs to be pushed. Not censorship. Let’s worry about giving more credit to copyright owners, not stop the World from sharing beautiful content.

The only thing I see wrong with online piracy, is that there are people making money from sharing these free files, which that, which then, would be stealing from the artist. But let’s find a better way to combat this, than to take away people’s freedom of sight and sound to the human-being’s most beautiful artistic expressions.

SOPA and similar acts are not something that should be rushed into law.