Day: December 9, 2009

Out in the cold on December 17

An entry on Monica Helms’ blog
remembers and laments two fine human beings who perished in part
due to cruel and thoughtless homeless shelter management. The
anniversary of the deaths of both is rapidly approaching: December
17.

On 2008 December 17, it was Jennifer Gale, the frequent political
candidate of Austin, Texas. She was found on the streets and
presumed to have died while sleeping on a bench. Why was Jennifer
sleeping on a bench when there was a women’s shelter run by the
Salvation Army in Austin? Therein lies the problem: that shelter
refused to admit her because she was a transsexual; to gain entry
to a shelter, Jennifer would have to use her old male name and
dress like a man, a complete and total assault on her dignity.
This, despite the fact Austin’s laws prohibit housing and public
accomodation discrimination based on many criteria including
“gender identity.”

On 2002 December 17, a passer-by in Atlanta, Georgia, found Alice
Johnston dead. Unlike Jennifer, Alice didn’t wait to quietly die in
the cold; she shot herself in the head. Her final e-mail from her
Yahoo account read simply: “I will soon be homeless. Since women’s
shelters in Atlanta don’t take transsexuals, I’m a goner.” Like
Austin, Atlanta’s laws also included the same anti-discrimination
ordinance, yet Alice’s inquiry to every women’s shelter in Atlanta
all met with immediate rejection once Alice, being as honest and
transparent as one could reasonably expect, told them about her
transgender situation.

When an issue such as transgender status is used to treat someone
as less than human, it is a tragedy. It is the same misguided logic
used by Hitler at the Nazi concentration camps, and it is just as
wrong today as it was then. I can only imagine how many other
senseless deaths, either self-inflicted or at the hands of the
elements, go unpublicized or under-publicized.

Regardless of the misunderstandings due to lack of awareness
regarding transgender status, it is a failure of our society when
any human being is treated as less than human. Those indirectly
responsible for the deaths of Jennifer and Alice should be ashamed
of themselves for the blood on their hands.

#best09: Growth and challenge

(Part of the #best09 series)

There were quite a few things that got me to grow this year. I would say
above all else, it was moving out of my great-grandmother’s house this spring.
My time living with her started off fine, but eventually her refusal to
respect my privacy and asking the same questions, again and again, got tiring
and finally it came to a head. It didn’t help that I had to scream half of
what I said due to her poor hearing. At least I know if I live past 90,
my vocal cords will outlast the rest of my body…

One can argue living with her through all of 2008 was in itself the challenge
I needed. I could go on and on.

Anyway, as much as I hated moving back with my mom for a while, the time had come
and I was at peace again for a while.

Who does the MPAA think they are, really?

Okay, I’m finally catching up. This should be one of the last “old news” posts for a while. I may have one or two more and then the focus will return to more current items.

As blogged on Lockergnome and BoingBoing, the MPAA has disgracefully acted to shut down an entire city’s public Wi-Fi network due to one user downloading a copyrighted movie. The latter article references the Coshocton Tribune’s original story.

The town of Coshocton, OH, maintained an open public Wi-Fi connection hosted at the courthouse at 318 Main Street. (As you can see from the map, the Tribune’s offices aren’t far from it.) Sometime during the days prior to 2009 November 09, when this story was printed, a complaint came in from Sony Pictures Entertainment to the county’s ISP, OneCommunity, which in turn notified the county.

So now, there is no free Wi-Fi by the courthouse, at least for the moment. The county is looking at installing a filtering program in an attempt to squash those who want to use government resources to get their illicit movie fix, but that does not come cheaply: $2,000 for equipment, then $900 annually for the filtering software license.

The BoingBoing article has choice words for the MPAA, which I am a bit inclined to agree with. They refer to “the MPAA’s spokeslizard” who is identified as Elizabeth Kaltman in the Tribune’s article, who not surprisingly uses the loaded term “piracy” to refer to copyright infringement.

It would be much more reasonable to expect respect for the MPAA’s copyrights if its member studios charged reasonable prices for its movies. When DVD displaced VHS, not only did the studios pocket the lowered expense in producing the former versus the latter, but often upped the price. $20 or more for a DVD movie is still not unheard of; note that the titles that cost $5 to $10 at a discount store are rarely the same ones that one would ever find on a BitTorrent tracker or similar peer-to-peer network. (The RIAA did something similar during the transition from vinyl records and cassette tapes to CDs, charging more for the same music even though production costs went down.)

There is plenty of money to be had by charging a reasonable ($15 maximum, $12 average) price for a DVD. Yet Hollywood (the MPAA) sees nothing but dollar signs, even during the recession, and keeps the price tag arbitrarily high. And then, they wonder why more people get it from BitTorrent or Limewire than Amazon, Wal-Mart, or Target.

If the MPAA’s member organizations don’t like the return on investment they get when setting a reasonable price, maybe they should consider producing higher quality product (movies). Jacking the price up is a no-win for everyone.