Free is Better Than Not Free

Image inspired by the UNFORGIVABLE series. Warning Not Safe For Work. Also, racist?


OR IS IT?!
As a poor student, it definitely is. If this recession is good for one thing it's the hot hot sales! But employment is suffering apparently. Whatever, I'm only a part-time bus boy for now and my in-province tuition is relatively cheap. I plan on cashing in big on my slow cooks blog anyways! And those who tried my slow cooker peach crumble probably have lots of faith in me.

Seriously though, I am having difficulty keeping track of what is being made free and what we should be paying for. In the peach crumble recipe link I just posted I mention that I got the directions from Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann's Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. I was pissed when I got the link from amazon because it cost me $10 less than at Chapter's (which I bought with the refund I got on a text book I used all semester, ACE SCAM!, but also because I found out that the same book is available FOR FREE on Google Books. WTF?! Can everyone else read that book for free or is it just my Google account for some reason? If people are just going to post this kind of stuff for free, than I am abandoning my crusade of paying for things. Music, TV, newspapers and movies are one thing, but books? I didn't think I would be able to replace a good hard copy of a respectable cook book, but apparently you can.

I felt pretty good after reading Chris Kelly's article earlier in the semester about the uncopyable generatives, and really made me consider that pirating won't destroy our economy. Now I am not so sure. Are these generatives as reliable as he makes them out to be? I mean, immediacy is dealt with pretty well on the web, and the 100 000 people who downloaded Jackman's movie don't care much for authenticity. The online version of the cook book made me realize that maybe embodiment isn't really that important either, and other generatives are just as flexible. One for me that isn't though, is still PATRONAGE. I honestly feel kind of bad to get this stuff for free, but my wallet doesn't.

So what's gonna happen? I'm not sure, but if there's one thing this class has made me realize is that it needs to happen quickly. I am pretty sure the internet IS THE GREATEST INVENTION EVER and people need to harness and organize it more to their advantage. For me that may still include downloading television (c'mon I have no cable, they want me to watch TV), and downloading news, but I am also going to keep pushing this slow cooker blog as hard as I can/want to while it is enjoyable (or until I start making serious bank.)