StarWorld

I've seen "Star Wars: The Last Jedi".  And I enjoyed it.  Which must mean that I'm not a 'real' Star Wars fan.

Maybe.  Maybe not.  What I find is that I'm a fan of things that  I enjoy and I'm willing to let certain things slide from a canonical stand point if it makes the story interesting.  Did Rian Johnson, the director and writer, make the right choices for Luke's character?  I enjoyed the journey that the character of Luke took through this one movie, so from that perspective, he did.  Is it consistent with the character of Luke Skywalker from episodes 4-6?  I suppose that I would argue that it is not, but then that was 35 years earlier in that character's life.  Who among us has stayed the same over even five years of our lives, much less seven times that long?  Certainly not me.

But that is not really what I want to write about this week.  Merely the setup.  I want to talk about another of the fan backlash issues: starship automation.  And this one involves spoilers.  So read on only if you've seen the movie or don't care.   But see the movie: it's worth seeing on a big screen.

Mouse-opoly

Last week, the biggest news about the internet and inter-connectivity was the FCC's vote to repeal the Obama-era Net Neutrality regulations.  But that's been covered and covered and covered.  Don't get me wrong, I think that this party-line vote is a big blow against free speech in general and open access to information more particularly.  Furthermore, Ajit Pai is the puppet leader of a captured agency and should be relieved of his post.  Beyond that, I don't have anything original to say about it.

Instead, I'll jump to what I feel is the second biggest piece of Internet news: Disney Corp buying the creative assets of 20th Century Fox for $52M.  I know that at first glance, this does not look like a connectivity issue, but it is.  On a large scale.  An international scale.  Read on.

Avast Your Content

This last week, a couple of news items knocked me out of the stratosphere of the post-work society and back to reality.  That is because both items hit me where it hurts: in the content I love.

First up, there is the news that HBO has been hacked and someone is trying to blackmail them by threatening to release Game of Thrones episodes ahead of official release.  Plus allegedly damning emails.  After the Sony "The Interview" hack of 2014 which is rumored to have cost Sony around $100 Million, companies have taken threats like this seriously.  Unless the hackers don't actually have what they say they have or think that what they have is more critical than it is (see "Burn After Reading"), as appears to be the case here.  HBO is not reported to be negotiating in any serious manner with the cyber thieves.

Secondly, Disney has announced that they are severing ties with Netflix and will be pulling their content from that service in 2019.  They intend to set up their own streaming service for their content which may include content from ABC and ESPN, both owned by Disney.  Netflix responded by buying a comic book publisher, Millarworld, which is most known for the "Kick-Ass" series.

What do these two news items have in common?  Well, they are both about money.  They are both about control.  And they are both about content piracy.  And content piracy is about breaking free of money and control.