I love the Internet, I love Google, I love Torrentz and most importantly, I love the fact that I can know everything I want.
I once read about Paulo Coelho‘s inclination towards pirating his own books at The Pirate Bay. I’d say that he is a writer in true sense. Sure, earning a comfortable living must be the foremost things for anyone, but for anyone with higher intellect, spreading knowledge should be almost close to the above-mentioned foremost thing. Why else would renowned Scientist in developed nations decide to publish their researches online for free? (It is good to see how scientists realize that this will narrow the gap between developed and developing nations. Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/15/free-access-british-scientific-research). Why else do we have free art exhibitions? (Owning a piece of art is & must be expensive but commoners can still appreciate it for free)
I came across a cliche discussion about what kind of movies we watch and what it says about us. Cinema for Indians isn’t art; Cinema isn’t a medium to share knowledge. For what it is worth, Cinema is just a mode of entertainment. Reality Check: myriad options are available for people is so-called metro cities, but change the scenario to one of the many normal cities of India and only options you have are eat, shop or go to the movies. People go there to relax and have fun, not to spark up an interesting debate. Personally I like watching documentaries and the so-called Parallel Cinema. Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi is one of my favourites in Indian movies. I loved watching Les Miserables and Mississippi Burning, which can not be really called conventional commercial cinema. But I download it from Torrentz and watch it at home, not at a multiplex with a gang of friends. Interestingly, I recently found out that some of the movies like Good Boy Bad Boy (commercial Indian cinema) are also available on YouTube for free.
One of my favourite books that I read in my school time was a typical girl’s book, ‘How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild And Had A Life’. Now the book is not available in the market for some issue of plagiarism. I wonder what was achieved by recalling and destroying the shelf copies. The inspiration for this book was published ages ago. So if those books were to do good, they would have done that by the time this particular book was published. The authors could have settled was an agreement in terms of levying certain percentage etc., why destroy books?
I like how Paulo Coelho negotiated with his publisher. A new book must be published online for free at a certain time. Something like publishing a book for free on the internet after 5 years of its publishing sounds reasonably fair to me. It’s high time these artists came to an arrangement in a way such that every piece of art is brought about along with spreading the information for free, even the literature. After all, the reason for the success of the internet is free knowledge, right?
Opinionated Domain 