Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...

You know what really bugs me? When I take the time to write something and no one reads it.

... er...

I don’t want to write a gazillion words on this. But it’s obvious I need to write something, and it took me a couple of days to come up with a stunning defense... a cunning plan for how to address the situation... so brace yourselves for it...

I was wrong.

Yeah, that’s right. I said it. I was wrong. Big fat honkin’ wrong, and there’s no two ways about.

Not about piracy, mind you. I have legitimate problems with the implications of online piracy and the attitude of what seems to be an entire generation of people who are growing up with the entrenched belief that "if it's digital, it's free."

But I was completely wrong in how I wrote about the subject.

First, it's a personal choice. I have no business telling anyone what decision to make regarding the trafficking of stolen materials. And I wouldn't even if my hands were squeaky clean. Which they aren't.

At this moment, with me dealing with the people I deal with all day long and all week long, and with my career developing the way it is, I have a particular perspective on the issue of the duplication and distribution of copywritten material. It's my personal perspective. It's not more right than someone else's. It's not more ethical. It's not more moral. It's simply mine.

When I wrote what I wrote, I spoke down to my readership. And that's absolutely a mistake. The minute you condescend to the person reading your work... whoever they are... you risk alienating them.

When I first met Harry Knowles... the very first time... we hooked up because I was looking for a way to get something onto the Internet for other fans to enjoy.

It was something I wasn't supposed to have.

It came from someone's office who had no idea I had it.

I was told by someone online to try Harry Knowles. I got in touch with him in Texas. He hooked me up with a guy in Australia.

Why?

To circumnavigate US copyright law. That's why.

Hello, kettle? It's the pot. I'm black.

So mea culpa. No other arguments are really needed to convince me that I made a colossal mistake the other day. You don’t have to try to go through every single word on the site looking for just the right phrase with which to hang me.

I know about the process for downloading files from other Internet users because I’ve taken part in that process. Many times. Hell, I remember when the luscious Marla Singer came over one night to introduce me to the wonders of Napster. “It’s like the world’s greatest jukebox,” she said. And at first, it was. “Free” is a powerful notion, and it’s intoxicating the first time you realize just how much material is out there, just waiting to take up space on your hard drive.

My own position on this sort of rampant file-sharing has changed. I’m older now than I was then. I freely admit it... the view’s different from inside the system than it is from outside.

I am not the same person I was back in 1996 when I met Harry. Harry's not the same person, either.

He and I have different ideas about some of the underlying issues that were raised by him, by talk backers, by people here on this thread, and by the hundreds and hundreds of e-mails I've gotten in the last few days about this.

What I understand now, more clearly than ever before, is that this is perhaps one of the key issues currently facing anyone working in a creative commercial endeavor. And it's also one of the key issues currently facing anyone who is a consumer of those commercial creative endeavors. Films, music, books, TV, computer software... really doesn't matter what it is. We are all awash in the implications of all of this, everyone making or watching or listening or reading or writing any of it.

My article was a gross oversimplification of the issues raised. One could produce a weekly column on the subject and just barely scratch the surface. Hell, if I found the right person to write it, I'd publish that column just so I could read it.

More than anything, I regret being insulting to the people who read AICN. It's out of character for me, and I think my recent lack of sleep and work-related stress is not always allowing me to be the person I'd like to be. My already wafer-thin ill-temper seems to be ruling the day recently, and that's never a good thing.

You guys deserve better. The guys who wrote in with those HULK workprint reviews deserved better. They wrote in with the exact same sense of exuberance that any of our reviewers from test screenings write in with, and I pissed on them for it. And that was undeserved.

So... that’s what I’ve got to say for myself. No fancy tapdancing. No digging in to “prove” that I’m right. I’m sorry if you took offense at what I said. I think there are obviously a number of points of view on this issue, and I have no doubt the debate will continue. In the future, maybe I’ll learn how to keep that debate civil.

For now...