Simian Uprising by Jer Clarke

This morning I was given a fine of $205 (two hundred and five dollars), one hundred and fifty for my transgression, fifty-five for processing, by the friendly officers of my local public transit authority, the STM.
Clearly, given the enormous amount of money required by the fine, I must have committed a formidable crime, or, if I did not commit a crime as such I surely in some way caused them a great problem, grievance and financial loss. For them to be willing to charge a student, who’s bi-weekly paycheck rarely totals $300, a two hundred and five dollar fine, he or she would surely have to be the author of some astronomically malevolent transgression against all that is holy, public, and transitory.

To clarify the extent of my crime I’d like to outline some other crimes, and their associated fines. (I assume “costs” is the fifty-five dollar processing fee)

-$75 plus costs- Riding a bicycle in a metro station.
-$75 plus costs- Delaying a train’s departure.
-$75 plus costs- Damaging a vehicle or building or defacing it with graffiti.
(Semi-questionable as a $125 fine, but all are either directly destructive, or dangerous for those around you)

-$100 plus costs- Hanging on to the exterior of an STCUM vehicle.
-$100 plus costs- Walking on the tracks in a tunnel.
(Both highly dangerous for the individual, as well as highly condusive to slowing down movement within the system, and as such causative of financial loss for the transit authority)

Taking all these into consideration a fine of one hundred and fifty dollars plus fifty-five dollars in “costs” would unquestionably require an act like say:

-$150 plus costs- Attacking a transit employee or customer.
-$150 plus costs- Theft in a metro station.
-$150 plus costs- Explicit destruction of transit property.

Right?

…

My crime (as outlined on the STM’s helpful “urban transit myths” page):

-$150 plus costs- Not having the STCUM’s reduced fare ID card when paying a reduced fare.

An eight-dollar bus photo I.D. that proves that you are a student (despite the absolute abundance of student cards from institutions) is the reason that I will have no money for the next two weeks. When approached by the security officers it was not denied that I was in fact a student, nor whether I was an honest to goodness resident of greater Montreal. It was merely ascertained that I not acquired their pass and I was fined accordingly. 150$, in fact, seems to be the maximum fine possible, including straight-out theft of service by not paying fare (jumping the turnstiles). Despite my status as a student, living in Montreal, under the age of 24, who had paid the 31$ for a pass for students, I was clearly in violation of the most sacred code of such institutions: DONT FUCK WITH OUR BUROCRACY. I had skimped on the paper work and am now paying two hundred and five dollars for the privilege.

A few days ago Cory Doctorow decided to give away his second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe on the internet. It is available in all kinds of formats and is the kind of science-fiction that is pretty much guaranteed to rock your world. He combines the wacky evilness of today with the slight advances of tomorrow to create a world that’s both smirkworthy, and apprehensively depressing. It’s also very short. so you do have time to read it.

As well, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is Cory’s first novel that he gave away on the internet; also quirkily rad.

What he’s doing with this represents something totally new on the electronic frontier. I mean, people have been giving their creative content away on the internet since it began, but only now is the trend becomming that even non-internet content (both of Doctorow’s books were and are published in dead-tree format as well) is being given away on the net even as it’s just being released into stores. It’s kind of like a pre-emptive strike against content pirates ; “so you’re going to copy my book and give it away on kazaa? i’ll beat that! i’ll host it on my site, fucker.” ).

And it works.

Authors who double realease their books like this (under a Creative Commons licence, which is a copyright that allows the creator to choose the conditions necessary for copying, manipulating and performing the work) see uniformly greater success than other internet authors. When one author’s book, was released for free on the internet the used copies of it on amazon went up in price by 40%!

Of course, this could easily be attributed to the fact that that particular author only distributed his book in pdf format, which is wholly unworkable except on a desktop, where few people want to sit and read a 300 page book about linux. But even the sales of Doctorow’s books, which are available in (and portable to) all formats, can be attributed to this, as many people, hooked by their internet meanderings with the texts, probably wanted a copy in the one format that they are really used to. This leads back to the core of the question (at least for me), which is not whether the internet is an effective promotional tool (whether the promotion involves the seemingly foolheaded act of giving away thousands and thousands of copies or not) , but if it is an effective distribution tool. Is there money to be made off of those electronic copies? And will be makeable without the help of the bloated traditional publishers?

Of course, that’s just the kind of thing that Cory deals with in Eastern Standard Tribe, so you really should go read it.

today i received e-mail viruses not just for myself, but also for Mary, Adam and Robert (all @simianuprising.com). These people and adresses do not exist.
Whoever’s idea it was to make the virus randomly generate likely adresses for every domain name is just plain mean.

also, if you are interested in my rambling thoughts concerning the commnications theory of digital media you may or may not want to check out my class blog for intro to digital media. WARNING: IT IS DRY AND DISTINCTLY LACKING IN EXCITEMENT.

THEY’RE BACK!
(and without ever even being gone!)
go to the fabulous SIMIAN UPRISING STORE to get yours today!

also, i am aware that i have no right whatsoever to try to pimp any readers i have left at this point. but there is lots of shirts, and the world needs shirts.

Blog (blawgg)
n. blogg-er, blogg-ed, blogg-ing, blog-osphere
contraction of “web” and “log”; weBLOG.

1. (basic) A “log” (journal,diary,written record) residing on the internet.

2. (common) A diary published directly to the internet despite personal nature. Personal thoughts shared with an impersonal network.

3. (technical) Any website created using “push-button” publishing, allowing quick addition of new web-material on a constant basis. “Posts” are generally displayed vertically, with the most recent at the top.

4. (theoretical) An online trend that is democratic in nature due to lack of hypertext (html;code;) knowledge necessary to create dynamic and fresh material; a way for the cyber-everyman to be represented online; a medium for discussion of ideas and opinions, and the dissemination of artistic creation on a regular basis; hope for an internet where the threat of invasion by external media empires is quickly becoming a reality.