The Real Blood Spilled in the “Digital Revolution” (part 1)
Monday, January 3th, 2011 at 21:20
{ zeros, ones, and true blood in the hood }
On Christmas Eve, a truck and some hooded bureaucrats arrived to our friends’ shop, and said they would be taking all their DVDs with them, until the proprietors provided the records of everything they have sold over X# years. The shop called Pigasus in Torstr. 62 sells eclectic cultural artifacts from eastern Europe, mostly Poland, found nowhere else in the city, nor just about anywhere else in the world.
One day some weeks ago they received an email, that Philips has a (file/codex) patent on certain? dvds, and that the small shop would need to inform them of how many DVDs with this codex they had sold. An impossible task, especially since no one has ever heard of this patent, except maybe for a few of Philips own, fishing expeditioners.
{ codes of the Beasty }
Another couple weeks later after some astounding and comical internet communications a giant booklet arrived in the post filled with imagery like the ones above – the codes of the Beast that have been apparently violated – with a demand to cough up a few thousand euros.
And then on Xmas F&**8king Eve – an opportune moment when lawyers would be impossible to reach – the truck, automatons and more paperwork show up… And indy culture was loaded up and sent to the equivalent of Bagram for cultural stock / merchandise.
No one will hear the small shop owners’ screams.
PLEASE if you are reading this, support the Shop + Galerie ONline, but also when you’re in Berlin Mitte. Your visit will cheer them up, and they may survive yet w/ our patronage. And they still carry an incredible selection of Polish posters and the finest RARE eastern european music, and perhaps in the distant future they might even have some DVDs again.
…
…
The Patent Info:
If anyone knows anyone w/ information on these matters, please be in touch. Will post more on this story, but for now in
brief:
European Patent EP 0 745 254 B1
Application # : 959057464
Grant date: 04.11.1998
Method of converting a series of M-Bit information words to a modulated signal, method of producing a record carrier, coding device, decoding device, recording device, reading device, signal, as well as a record carrier.
uh huh.