:: Life on Planet Dan-E ::

:: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 ::

This is a summary of actual article in a local newspaper:

Disneyland officials released a statement today saying that in the interests of political correctness further revisions will be made to their popular "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction. This comes on the heels of changes made to the ride a few years ago where one particular section of the ride showed pirates aggressively pursuing women. In an attempt to appease women's groups, the women are now seeing carrying plates of food so as to give the impression of pirates being extremely hungry, which is more "family oriented" than lasciviousness of the previous display.

The most recent round of changes involve a complete overhaul in the later sections of the ride where the more "traditional" pirates will give way to exhibits of post-modern piracy. Included will be mock-ups college students in libraries using programs such as Napster and Kazaa to illegally download, or "pirate," music and software, as well as a scene of a Chinese street market where some vendors are shown selling bootlegged copies of movies on videotape and VCD formats. "Piracy has progressed from pillaging and plundering to electronic thievery," said one Disney official, who wished to remain anonymous. "As dreary as this chapter of humanity is, we at Disney felt it was important to include this as a pertinent part of the history of piracy."

Responses from various Kazaa users have varied from amusement to indignation. One Kazaa user who would only identify himself as "ShareMaster" reacted via e-mail, "to call what we do piracy is an insult to pirates. We earn [sic] right to music and the greedy corporate bastards who run the music companys [sic] wouldn't be complaining if they didn't charge $20 for a CD where all but one song is [crap]." A former Napster user who goes by the handle "SweetPimp" took a more bemused stance. "There was nothing wrong with the ride before. I think they're going a bit overboard with the whole [political correctness] stuff."

Bootleg vendors could not be tracked down for comment.

:: Miscellaneous Ramblings by Dan-E at 11:08 PM [+] :: | 0 comments
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