6N13: Rnd 3

…aaaand it’s back, after two week’s hiatus; the Six Nations has come among us once again. This weekend promised a wealth of interesting matchups and set the analysts’ mouths watering, and we ended up with games of rugby as varied as one could desire. Once again, I present my alternative awards ceremony:

We begin with ITALY who, having come into the weekend hamstrung by the loss of inspirational captain Sergio Parisse to a five-week ban, hardly did themselves any favours in winning the The Analysts Didn’t Spot This One Award for Biggest Repurcussions from Tiny Tactical Error. A lot was made during the week at coach Jacques Brunel’s descision to drop the half-back pairing of Tobias Botes and Luciano Orquera, so influential in the victory over France, and replace them with Eduardo Gori and Kris Burton. Burton’s inclusion was a particular surprise; during the first two games, Orquera had been injecting some much-needed vigour into the Italian back division, and plumping for Burton’s more conservative kicking approach was rightly considered a dangerous choice. During the game itself, the commentators had endless fun laying into Burton, particularly after two failed drop-goal attempts, but I felt that Gori brought a fair share of problems with him as well; or one problem in particular. If one watched Gori’s deliveries throughout the match, they were invariably aimed directly at Burton’s shoulder, meaning that to catch the ball he had to be standing still. This cost him crucial seconds and forward momentum, both of which enabled onrushing defenders to get right up in his face, severely limiting his options. At least three times Burton was unable to pass and forced to make awkward runs to try and get around several burly Welshmen, and as a result Italy lost all attacking momentum. It was a tiny thing, not mentioned by any commentators, and arguably Burton wouldn’t have been able to do much with ball put in front of him, where it should be, but I thought that it nonetheless had a huge impact.

On to WALES, to whom I was seriously tempted to re-award the Boredom award after a game which almost put me to sleep (seriously; the sofa was really comfortable), but who instead take home the Where Did That Come From? Award for Most Sudden Tries. The weather in Italy on Saturday did not lend itself to particularly flowing rugby, and with kicking fly halves on both sides tries were unlikely to ever come from building attacking momentum and phase play. Indeed, after a decidedly barren first half some observers (myself included) might have been surprised to learn that there were any tries coming at all. But come they did, albeit in the most abrupt fashion. Firstly, a shot-to-nothing chip kick from Mike Phillips bounced awkwardly, wrong-footing both Gori and Burton as they ran into one another attempting to gather and left the try line open for the onrushing Jonathan Davies to leap over. Then, 15 minutes later, Wales executed a set-move, Davies drawing Gonzalo Canale out of position to leave a hole open for Alex Cuthbert to rush through, again totally unopposed. On both occasions the try’s execution was, all buildup and preparation included, less than five seconds from start to finish, and I hardly noticed either of them happening until about 10 seconds later.

Saturday’s next match proved far more interesting, and FRANCE certainly acquitted themselves far better against England than  in their previous two matches. However, the award they collect concerns scrum half Morgan Parra, who takes the dubious honour of the Leave That To The Footballers Award for Worst Diving. Throughout the game, England’s fly half Owen Farrell was making a nuisance of himself among the French ranks, and appeared to have a particular problem with French fullback Yoann Huget. However, after around 18 minutes he decided to get in the way of Parra as the Frenchman tried to get to a ruck. Having seen a replay of the event, I am firmly of the opinion that Parra may have brushed his face against Farrell’s back, which makes it all the more ridiculous that his immediate response was to fall to the floor clutching his face as if Farrell had punched him. I have a particular intolerance towards cowardly foul play such as that, and my ire was particularly irked when, after referee Craig Joubert had rightly ignored his plea for a penalty (or simply not noticed, which would be just as excusable given the innocuous nature of the offence), Parra immediately got up and joined onto the back of the next maul. I can only hope this doesn’t become a habit; I do not like divers.

ENGLAND also take an individual award, with Manu Tuilagi taking the Fired Clay Toilet Award for Dominating The Physical Battle. After being left out of the starting XV for the Ireland match having been injured during the Scotland game, Tuilagi was recalled to his favoured outside centre position at the expense of Billy Twelvetrees. The reason for dropping a player of Twelvetrees’ undoubted skill came in the form of a 6ft, 17 stone Frenchman called Mathieu Bastareaud (voted man most thankful for the existence of three vowels), who lined up to form a potent centre lineup alongside Clermont’s quick and incisive Wesley Fofana, returned to his natural position at 12 after two games stuck out on the wing with nothing to do. Fofana proved his worth with a fantastic bit of individual skill, beating no less than five defenders, to go over for France’s only try, but Tuilagi, the same height and weight of Bastareaud, had been brought in to nullify the Frenchman’s physical presence and did so with aplomb. Not once did Bastareaud make a meaningful run at his opposite number, and on the three occasions (that I counted) that Tuilagi ran at him, he made good ground every time and positively bounced him off on at least one occasion. Put it this way; tries for Tuilagi: 1, tries for Bastareaud: 0. (although admittedly, Tuilagi’s try was more luck than anything else).

Sunday’s game was perhaps the most interesting of the three, and in it IRELAND took the Lighting Cigars With Twenties Award for Lease Efficient Use of Resources. After the game, all pundits were justifiably asking how the hell the Irish had managed to lose the game, and rightly so; the Irish controlled three-quarters of the game’s possession and had over 70% territory, but spent most of it running somewhat unimaginatively straight at the Scottish defence; who, despite 16 missed tackles, somehow managed to hold firm. The Scots also conceded more penalties than their opponents (9 in the first 20 minutes alone), but somehow nearly all were conceded in Irish territory, out of range of Paddy Jackson’s boot. It didn’t help that, of the four kicks Jackson did get on goal, he only managed to execute one of them, which may make him something of a scapegoat for the Irish’s general failure to transform control into points. The one exception to this rule was new cap at inside centre Luke Marshall, who made three fantastic breaks; but here, once again, Ireland’s inability to finish the job came to the fore. Once, Marshall somewhat muddied his performance by throwing a bad pass out to Craig Gilroy, who was unable to hold onto it, and the other two times Keith Earls, in near-identical fashion, attempted a run for the corner alone rather than offering a pass to the unmarked Brian O’Driscoll- and was bundled into touch. A try did eventually come from Gilroy, but after 44 minutes of laboured effort, and it proved their last score. It was like watching the England side of two years ago.

Finally come SCOTLAND, who take home not only their first back-to-back victories in the same season of a Six Nations ever, but also the Laissez-Faire Award for Most Laid-Back Performance. Much like the French side during the first two weeks of the tournament, Scotland spent Sunday’s match quite content to sit back and let Ireland do all the work, deciding that to actually create opportunities for themselves would be far too imaginative. However, unlike France, this was backed up by a solid defensive effort and well-executed kicking game, allowing Ireland to be kept at bay and for the Scots to luck the occasional scoring opportunity; and, after Greg Laidlaw’s first two penalties put them within a sniff of Ireland, they casually flicked up a gear and began tentatively looking for more. Perhaps surprised by this sudden activity, Ireland duly infringed at the breakdown twice within Laidlaw’s range, giving Scotland a four-point lead that proved especially crucial when it later forced Ireland to turn down a kickable opportunity (which would have still left them a point behind), and instead mount another assault on the Scottish line. But the Scots’ defence held, and a valuable victory was theirs. Their next fixture against Wales will be…interesting.

Final Scores:
Italy 9-26 Wales
England 23-13 France
Scotland 12-8 Ireland

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A Brief History of Copyright

Yeah, sorry to be returning to this topic yet again, I am perfectly aware that I am probably going to be repeating an awful lot of stuff that either a) I’ve said already or b) you already know. Nonetheless, having spent a frustrating amount of time in recent weeks getting very annoyed at clever people saying stupid things, I feel the need to inform the world if only to satisfy my own simmering anger at something really not worth getting angry about. So:

Over the past year or so, the rise of a whole host of FLLAs (Four Letter Legal Acronyms) from SOPA to ACTA has, as I have previously documented, sent the internet and the world at large in to paroxysms of mayhem at the very idea that Google might break and/or they would have to pay to watch the latest Marvel film. Naturally, they also provoked a lot of debate, ranging in intelligence from intellectual to average denizen of the web, on the subject of copyright and copyright law. I personally think that the best way to understand anything is to try and understand exactly why and how stuff came to exist in the first place, so today I present a historical analysis of copyright law and how it came into being.

Let us travel back in time, back to our stereotypical club-wielding tribe of stone age human. Back then, the leader not only controlled and lead the tribe, but ensured that every facet of it worked to increase his and everyone else’s chance of survival, and chance of ensuring that the next meal would be coming along. In short, what was good for the tribe was good for the people in it. If anyone came up with a new idea or technological innovation, such as a shield for example, this design would also be appropriated and used for the good of the tribe. You worked for the tribe, and in return the tribe gave you protection, help gathering food and such and, through your collective efforts, you stayed alive. Everybody wins.

However, over time the tribes began to get bigger. One tribe would conquer their neighbours, gaining more power and thus enabling them to take on bigger, larger, more powerful tribes and absorb them too. Gradually, territories, nations and empires form, and what was once a small group in which everyone knew everyone else became a far larger organisation. The problem as things get bigger is that what’s good for a country starts to not necessarily become as good for the individual. As a tribe gets larger, the individual becomes more independent of the motions of his leader, to the point at which the knowledge that you have helped the security of your tribe does not bear a direct connection to the availability of your next meal- especially if the tribe adopts a capitalist model of ‘get yer own food’ (as opposed to a more communist one of ‘hunters pool your resources and share between everyone’ as is common in a very small-scale situation when it is easy to organise). In this scenario, sharing an innovation for ‘the good of the tribe’ has far less of a tangible benefit for the individual.

Historically, this rarely proved to be much of a problem- the only people with the time and resources to invest in discovering or producing something new were the church, who generally shared between themselves knowledge that would have been useless to the illiterate majority anyway, and those working for the monarchy or nobility, who were the bosses anyway. However, with the invention of the printing press around the start of the 16th century, this all changed. Public literacy was on the up and the press now meant that anyone (well, anyone rich enough to afford the printers’ fees)  could publish books and information on a grand scale. Whilst previously the copying of a book required many man-hours of labour from a skilled scribe, who were rare, expensive and carefully controlled, now the process was quick, easy and available. The impact of the printing press was made all the greater by the social change of the few hundred years between the Renaissance and today, as the establishment of a less feudal and more merit-based social system, with proper professions springing up as opposed to general peasantry, meaning that more people had the money to afford such publishing, preventing the use of the press being restricted solely to the nobility.

What all this meant was that more and more normal (at least, relatively normal) people could begin contributing ideas to society- but they weren’t about to give them up to their ruler ‘for the good of the tribe’. They wanted payment, compensation for their work, a financial acknowledgement of the hours they’d put in to try and make the world a better place and an encouragement for others to follow in their footsteps. So they sold their work, as was their due. However, selling a book, which basically only contains information, is not like selling something physical, like food. All the value is contained in the words, not the paper, meaning that somebody else with access to a printing press could also make money from the work you put in by running of copies of your book on their machine, meaning they were profiting from your work. This can significantly cut or even (if the other salesman is rich and can afford to undercut your prices) nullify any profits you stand to make from the publication of your work, discouraging you from putting the work in in the first place.

Now, even the most draconian of governments can recognise that your citizens producing material that could not only benefit your nation’s happiness but also potentially have great material use is a valuable potential resource, and that they should be doing what they can to promote the production of that material, if only to save having to put in the large investment of time and resources themselves. So, it makes sense to encourage the production of this material, by ensuring that people have a financial incentive to do it. This must involve protecting them from touts attempting to copy their work, and hence we arrive at the principle of copyright: that a person responsible for the creation of a work of art, literature, film or music, or who is responsible for some form of technological innovation, should have legal control over the release & sale of that work for at least a set period of time. And here, as I will explain next time, things start to get complicated…