Normalization of Thievery in the Internet Age

Anyone who has downloaded a pirated movie or Napstered their favorite music has stolen. It’s plain and simple. You can justify it anyway you like. Call it sharing if that makes you feel better. But I’ve never shared my CDs with someone I’ve never met in some state or country thousands of miles away. It doesn’t really amaze me that people steal in this way, because it’s easy and it seems to be human nature to try and get all you can for as little as you can expend. What does amaze me is how cavalier and unashamedly people do it now. I wonder if stores suddenly went to the honor system and stripped their businesses of employees and cameras and consequences for thievery, would these same people illegally downloading music, books, and movies now justify taking whatever they wanted from the store? Not all of them would, I suspect, but a surprising number of people would somehow justify it. I mean, if you really, really want that new IPhone and funds are a little tight, Apple’s got bigger pockets than you after all.  I get it. It’s your right to have that phone. I’ll tell you what, let’s call it Iphone sharing with Apple. Does that make you feel better?

Whether it’s the amazon fire stick with Kodi or the guy at the end of the street selling bootleg DVDs, everyone seems to be stealing nowadays. And worse, everyone seems to think it’s ok. I’ve yet to hear an excuse as to why it’s ok to download the new Deadpool movie on the day it’s released. In fact, the responses when I ask my friends why it's OK to take that movie are worse than not being able to give me a legitimate reason. Their responses are blow off waves at my sanctimonious questioning. As you read this, you’re either one of two people. You’re either thinking I’m right and stealing is wrong, or that I’m being a virtuosic prude and you deserve the entertainment you didn’t pay for. And that’s the problem. The same people who think I’m a prude because I make it a point to not steal intellectual property are likely people who would never walk into a Barnes and Noble (are they still around?) and walk out with a couple books stuffed into their jackets. Or would they? Once the consequences of stealing are gone . . .

I guess the reason I’m particularly annoyed today is because I woke up this morning and came across an article on Facebook from a larger online site that was remarkably similar to a blog I wrote in December. What made it particularly frustrating was that the author actually says in the article that the basis of the article (his theory) comes from a fan who recently wrote about the same topic. Hm. Here’s a screenshot from the story where the author admits to stealing his theory.

The whole article is based on that statement. And here’s my blog http://epertase.blogspot.com/2017/12/everyone-we-love-dies-my-walking-dead.html where I lay out such a theory.

In December.

Of last year.

Shared on multiple Walking Dead fan sites.

This other article from Ranker.com has had over 272,000 clicks. My blog? A few hundred. Sour grapes? Maybe. Did this article’s author steal my premise and repackage it as his own? I’m not so egotistical to think he saw MY article or that I’m the only one who has thought of the premise behind it, but he did write that his article was a fan’s written theory and gave no credit to that fan. So even if the article wasn’t stolen from my blog (which it probably wasn’t in all reality) my point still stands. He stole it from somewhere, regardless of whether it was from me or not. He is making money via clicks off of someone else’s work. In the internet age, there are no recourses for people who have their intellectual property stolen. And no repercussions for the thief.

I once took a picture of a couple firefighter friends acting silly at the station and wrote a blog about it. It’s here if you wanna take a look. http://epertase.blogspot.com/2012/02/pranks-turning-harmless-pictures-into.html That was in 2012. That picture (with no link to my blog or credit to me) routinely shows up on my FB feed from a site called firefighter funnies. Why do I see it? Not because I created it or that I’m a fan of the site, firefighter funnies, but because I’m friends with a lot of firefighters. When they come across that picture they think it’s funny and share it without ever knowing I took it in the first place. How many clicks has firefighter funnies gotten from my picture? If every couple years it shows up on my feed out of the blue from others who have discovered it, I’d say quite a few.

Coming up with premises, writing a coherent article or blog, or penning a story is long, hard work. Unless you’re a large corporation, there is little recourse you can do when that work is stolen. Hell, even the big, powerful movie studios can’t protect their property.

The most frustrating of these stories, to me, is this next particular one. I think it perfectly and painfully demonstrates my above point that the general public has normalized thievery. The reason this one is so frustrating is because of the personal nature of how it happened. I was recently at the fire house and a guy from another station was filling in. I’d talked to this guy a few times in the past, but it wasn’t like we were best buds or anything. When we had some down time he sought me out and told me how he was writing a book. I assumed he did this because he had heard I had written a few and wanted to pick my brain. He told me it was going to be a werewolf story which piqued my interest for obvious reasons if you know about my book, Tamed. After 20 minutes of listening to his idea (far from original, but I digress), I gave him some publishing advice and mentioned my own writing career. I told him how I, too, had written a werewolf book (which I’m confident he already knew) and asked him if he’d read it. He said he hadn’t. As we stood there talking he pulled out his phone and a minute later said, “I’ve got it.”

Pleasantly surprised I asked, “You just bought my book?” It's always a warm and fuzzy feeling when someone is convinced to buy your book on the spot while talking about it.

Without missing a beat he answered, “No. I never buy books. I downloaded it from a pirate site. I have hundreds of books. Ad movies too.” He held up his phone and there was my book, Tamed, in his library. Instead of being ashamed that he had just stolen my book, he was proud like he had gamed the system. The problem was I was the system. That fact was lost on him. He continued boasting about how he never pays for his media while I stood amazed. Now imagine that. A guy who, no doubt, considers himself a moral individual had no qualms about stealing my book right in front of me and, worse yet, bragging about it to the actual creator of it. There was no thought in his mind that this could be considered a dickhead thing to do. And that’s the problem. I asked him why it wasn’t stealing and he looked at me like I had suddenly grown a second head. I ended the conversation, made note that this guy was a fuckhead who I would avoid in the future, and went on about my day. But I admit I was a bit salty, if you couldn’t tell.

I come from a unique position on this topic. I’ve created art that has actually been stolen to the profit of others. Normalization of online thievery happened years ago and continues to this day. There is no way to fight it. Somehow, if you take a stand against stealing online material in this internet based world, you are now the pariah. You’re now the uptight prude. My friends roll their eyes at me when I call it stealing. I don’t know how we got here, but if you’re a creative person, good luck in the future.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got a friend holding the movie theater exit door open and if I don’t get there soon I’ll actually have to purchase a ticket. Yikes. Gotta go.

Surprise

At 1:30 AM the other night at the fire house, our engine was dispatched on what is called a service run. Basically, that means we have a call that isn't an emergency, but the person who called 911 didn't know how to handle whatever fix he found himself in. This call, we soon learned, was a water problem. And by water problem, I mean water was pouring through the ceiling into this guy's apartment from the apartment above.

Yes, people call 911 for everything.

Anyway, we told the guy to call his landlord and he said his landlord didn't answer. He also said that the upstairs resident didn't answer when he pounded on her door.

Although we aren't plumbers and this was anything but a life-or-death emergency, we figured we'd try and help. We went into the basement and turned off the water to the offending apartment which after a couple of minutes stopped the heavy flow of water into the caller's apartment.

But that wasn't the end of the call. What if the water was from an overflowing bathtub and someone was injured or worse?

We needed to check.

Before we bashed down the door, we tried knocking and yelling with no response. Our last attempt before smashing in the door was to check for an open window. Luckily, one of the windows was cracked open and, since we are the fire department, we happened to have a ladder.

I sent the new guy up the ladder so he could open the door for the rest of us. He shouted into the room before he climbed through the window which was a good thing. We wouldn't want him to have a run-in with a dog, or a gun, or both. He found his way through the dark apartment to the front door and let us in for our search.

The old, weathered hardwood floors were flooded with at least two inches of water. I felt a little on edge walking into her hallway with a flashlight. I have to tell you, I had a little hesitation as I walked through the hallway in anticipation of what I might find in the next room.

That's because a few years ago, I was doing the exact same thing after a woman called and asked us to check on her family member since she hadn't talked to him and was worried that he had been depressed. When I went into this guy's basement, I turned the corner from the stairs and almost walked face-first into his body. hanging from the rafters. It didn't take much experience to realize he had been dead for quite awhile. The only way I can explain walking into something like that is comparing it to seeing a ghost. Not in a spiritual way, but in a surreal, somewhat creepy and unexpected way.

But back to the other night. As three of us sloshed through the apartment and rounded the hall to the bedroom, we found a young lady lying unconscious on the bed. She was as naked as the day she was born, but that didn't seem too out of the ordinary since it was very hot and humid outside and the apartment didn't have air conditioning.

My first reaction was that she was dead, or had OD'd or something of that nature since we had made a ton of noise getting into the apartment. One of the other two firefighters shouted, "Hey," with no reply. I dug through my bunker pants for a pair of gloves so I could check her pulse and sent someone for our EMS kits. The other firefighter shouted, "Hey" again and this time the lady nearly jumped through the ceiling with a screech that startled the hell outta me. She screamed over and over, "What are you doing in here?" like a vinyl on permanent skip.

We turned away as she wrapped herself in a blanket. I tried to explain why we were in her apartment, but her panicked shouting drowned out my voice. Calmly and repeatedly, we told her to relax and that we were the fire department. Slowly, she settled down. With her mood changing from panic to embarrassment and ultimately to understanding, I explained, "You've left water running somewhere and you're flooding your downstairs neighbor." I told her we would step out of the apartment to give her some privacy while she gathered herself and that she could come out and talk to me when she was ready.

When she eventually came out, she was obviously embarrassed, as anyone would be. We talked for a few minutes and I apologized for scaring her.

That wasn't our last call of the night, but definitely the strangest. To make our night even more odd, we were called for another service run where a young lady had taken out her trash and locked herself out of her apartment. Making things worse, she had two young babies still inside. Luckily, she too had a slightly opened upstairs window for us to climb through.

That's the way the fire department works sometimes. In the last year I haven't had a single call where we needed to climb into someone's window (other than if their house was on fire, that is), yet last shift we did it twice during one night. All in all, it was an interesting evening, with no fires and no injuries—just a lot of ladder climbing, a naked lady and 2 babies oblivious of the goings on in their homes.

Working in the Inner City

Regular followers of this blog probably already know that I am a lieutenant for a large central Ohio fire department and I have been working mostly in the inner city for the last year. For firefighters, working in the inner city also means living in the inner city for 24 hours out of every 72. It is almost like a second home. We sleep there, eat there, and take emergency calls there.


On nice days we leave our bay doors open and a lot of times we sit out on the ramp (we call it ramping), but it is basically just a way for us to be a part of the neighborhood. Doing this makes us approachable for people needing help or people simply wanting to chat. With this blog I wanted to give you a little glimpse into working in that kind of an area. Let me preface this by saying there is a lot of good that happens around there, but this blog will mostly focus on the bad. Hey, I'm trying to paint a specific picture here. Here are just a few of the interesting things that you may not have imagined could happen.


Sometimes the neighborhood is very noisy and very violent. If you have ever heard of the gang the Bloods, then you'll understand how violent when I say there is Blood turf only a few blocks away from our station.


Nightly, police helicopters fly overhead so often that we don't even bother looking up at them anymore. They are just there, like airplanes for someone living near an airport. At least once a month I am approached at my vehicle as I am either getting ready to leave work or getting ready to start my shift. The person who approaches me usually asks for money. Typically, the story is that the person is out of gas and needs a few bucks to get to wherever they need to go, but sometimes the story is a little more clever.


On a typical New Year's Eve, the gunfire at midnight sounds literally like a war zone. Celebratory automatic gunfire explodes from around the station and continues for quite some time. If you're quiet enough you can hear some of the bullets land on the roof as they make their way back to earth. You know, gravity and all. The other medics tell me they have responded to calls where bullets have come back down and struck people in the tops of the heads or shoulders, though I haven't been on any of those calls yet.


Our parking lot is surrounded by an 8 or 10 foot chain-link fence topped with barbwire that we lock every night. Even doing that, there has been times where the fence has been cut and firefighters with full tanks of gas on the night before find themselves stopping at the gas station on the way home.


With that said, let's get to last night. I was on the engine. My driver was another medic and is a friend of mine. Here's a quick side note about him: During his first week on company out of the academy (13 or so years ago), he responded to a fire. As he knelt on the front porch to put on the facepiece of his SCBA (Self-contained breathing apparatus or air tank) he heard a loud pop and felt pain in his knee. He knew right away what had happened and he shouted, "I've been shot." Turns out he was right. The fire had heated ammunition within the house to the point that it went off and my friend successfully tried to catch one of the bullets with his knee. Yeah, ouch. Not a great way to start a career.


Anyway, back to last night. As a couple of us walked into the apparatus bay for who knows what reason, we heard multiple distinct, rapid-fire gunshots somewhere right outside the station. We immediately shut the bay doors and waited for the police and what was sure to be a run. Within a minute, our tones went off and we were dispatched to a street one block west of the station on an auto accident. Before we reached the truck, the dispatcher called on the phone and told us not to respond until the police arrived on the scene because the accident was from a shooting. We waited about 30 seconds until the police had everything secured and then we hurried to the scene. Because of the nature of my job and the sensitivity over talking about details, whether those details concern an on-going investigation or HIPPA laws for patients, I'm not going to get into what we found. I will say that we did find a person who had been shot and we did what we do to help him. The last I heard, he was in stable condition at the ER.


Here is the news report if you want to know more along with some video of the aftermath.


So, that was the start of my night. The amazing thing about that call is that it isn't something entirely unusual. I've only been spending most of my shifts at this station for a year now, but the other firefighters tell me this kind of thing happens quite often. The night didn't get much better, although none of the other calls were much worth mentioning here. Let's just say we were busy. In 24 hours, Engine 15 responded to 18 calls. That's busy.