Quacked

Grab your torches and pitchforks, Ducks fans. It’s time to start a new witch-hunt. This time, it’s personal.

Not yet 10 years removed from the grand Paul Kariya deception that took place at the then-nexus of the Anaheim franchise’s road to respectability, the wounds born of mistrust still run deep. Enter Justin Schultz.

(PHOTO: Gary A. Vasquez/US Presswire)

Imagine a world in which the Anaheim Ducks no longer have “The Big 3”, a triumvirate of elite power forwards — Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Bobby Ryan — that has been a part of the team for nearly a half-decade.

Now imagine I’m not crazy and let me elaborate.

(PHOTO: Zia Nizami/KRT Photos)

Anaheim Ducks fans: we need to get over ourselves. The Los Angeles Kings are a very good team, and pretty soon we won’t be able to laugh derisively while we point at them with a Cup-ringed finger.

Now, hold your rotten fruit and vitriol before you earnestly launch them in my direction — the Kings becoming hockey’s kings might not be the end of the world.

Consider for a moment the situation as we have watched it unfold on the ice via our television screens. When the Kings backed into the playoffs, few took them seriously. In fact, other than the Washington Capitals, perhaps no other team had so conspicuously failed to live up to lofty predictions this season. And much like the Capitals are now doing, the Kings are surpassing even the wildest pre-playoff expectations that had been beset by more than six months of inconsistent scoring and other sundry underachievement.

(PHOTO: Don Smith/Getty Images)

The following story appeared in the March 4th issue of Puq Magazine.

There was a certain magic about the 2007 Anaheim Ducks championship team, and it had nothing to do with its twin pillars on defense (Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger). It didn’t have anything to do with its two excellent goaltenders, each a possessor of impressive playoff records. It didn’t even concern the youthful infusion of talent brought to the table by the wonder “twins” Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry.

It was the swagger of a team that had the best third line in hockey.

(PHOTO: Victor Decolongon/Getty Images)

Playoffs? Don’t talk about ­— playoffs?! You kidding me?! Playoffs?!

In so many words: yes, with a couple of caveats.

By now, most sports fans are familiar with that particular rant, unleashed by football coach Jim E. Mora when asked about his team’s chances of making the playoffs. We have not to-date  — unfortunately — seen Bruce Boudreau go on a similar tirade, but perhaps that’s for want of the appropriate question. More likely, it’s because we fans have simply refused to acknowledge the thought ever since the Ducks hit rock-bottom around Christmas.

That was just fine by me, by the way. Numbing myself to the idea of the Ducks sliding out of the playoff picture helped deal with the reality and had me looking forward to a lottery pick in what’s expected to be a deep draft this June.

As the owner of a blog dedicated primarily to one particular topic (i.e. Anaheim Ducks hockey), it is incumbent upon me not to editorialize on too many issues beyond the purview of our normal coverage. One reason for that is to avoid diluting our product and see it reduced to just another unfocused site in a sea of billions. The other, more important reason is to avoid alienating readers who may not share those opinions. On matters of professional sport, spirited debate is expected and even welcomed. On issues of politics, however, it can be a real minefield, and sites like ours are wise to leave its navigation to the experts.

Today, I am here to tell you the debate surrounding internet freedom is one issue about which I will not be silent.

Two bills are currently making their way through various levels of the United States government, each with the purported aim of thwarting internet “piracy” (I use quotes because it’s actually copyright infringement — might as well call a spade a spade). SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA, or the PROTECT IP (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property) Act, both promise to protect the work of American rightsholders from the threat of foreign thievery. Far be it from me to question the true motivation behind the bills or the $94 million the entertainment industry paid to have them drafted, but suffice it to say that the ambiguity in the language within them is enough to not only stifle innovation in the technology sector — one of the few growth industries in a still-reeling American economy — but also leave innumerable innocent bystanders upended in its wake. Ironically, they will ultimately fail at the very tasks they have set out to accomplish.

Indeed, it would be a slippery slope if the entertainment industry had the ability to bend the letter and spirit of the law to their liking. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA, as it’s commonly referred to), although itself not a good piece of legislation and still frequently abused by the industry, still contains an invaluable safe-harbor provision that protects sites from liability if its users are engaging in infringing activity, so long as they comply with takedown requests. SOPA, on the other hand, makes no pretensions of allowing for due process and could theoretically allow a plaintiff to effectively remove a defendant’s entire web site from the internet before the latter has a change to even examine the charges that have been levied.

Reddit sysadmin Jason Harvey has posted a technical analysis on the bills and why their provisions are both insufficient and too broad in scope.

SOPA and PROTECT IP contain no provisions to actually remove copyrighted content, but rather focus on the censorship of links to entire domains.

If the Attorney General served reddit with an order to remove links to a domain, we would be required to scrub every post and comment on the site containing the domain and censor the links out, even if the specific link contained no infringing content. We would also need to implement a system to automatically censor the domain from any future posts or comments. This places a measurable burden upon the site’s technical infrastructure. It also damages one of the most important tenets of reddit, and the internet as a whole – free and open discussion about whatever the fuck you want.

Numerous websites across the internet — notably Wikipedia and reddit — have gone dark today in protest. The terrifying reality is that if a bill like SOPA gets passed into law, its ambiguous language could allow malevolent parties to abuse its powers and ultimately force such pages offline and their owners out of business.

I am not an American. I do not profess to be on the frontline should this bill pass and start wreaking havoc as it appears destined to do. It would be naive, however, to suggest that as a Canadian the ripple effect would not reach my country very quickly. Many major players on the web are vulnerable to this legislation. Sites that rely on user-generated content are especially at-risk: Twitter and Facebook come to mind, and both have been very public in their opposition to SOPA, specifically. Google, as a link aggregator, could be held liable if an offending link appears in its search results. What does Lamar Smith (SOPA is his brainchild) propose to do in such a scenario? Take Google offline? Even if it were able to successfully delist offending links immediately, the whack-a-mole principle is always in play on the internet: take one site down and ten more will spring forth to replace it forthwith. An unintended, although not as hotly discussed, consequence could be that these American companies (all of which serve a global market) take their business to another country with less tyrannical laws regarding online content. Such moves could irreparably damage the American economy and send the country back on a downward spiral toward a full-blown recession. Admittedly that’s a little bit of a leap in logic, but if your company was forced to decide between bankrupting itself to abide by the law (or shutting down its business entirely if its model can’t be “fixed”) and moving, the ones with enough money will choose the second option.

Moreover, Quacked is a site that, while based on almost entirely original content, also employs limited, editorial use of copyrighted materials (the pictures you see atop every article). Granted that’s always been right on the line of fair use, but to-date I have not received a single takedown request or cease-and-desist order. SOPA or PROTECT IP would both grant an accuser (e.g. Getty Images) privilege to file a complaint with our web host, who would then be bound to remove our site because it’s easier and quicker than trying to work out the differences if there is a threat of litigation hanging over the situation. One complaint over a single image on this blog could bring the entire domain offline before I would get my day in court, not that it would likely arrive because we do not have a team of lawyers to fight such battles.

Mind you, all of this is being wrapped in the American flag and being presented as a measure of security against “foreigners” who seek only to profit off the hard work of upstanding American citizens — or at least the ones who make enough money to influence federal policy. To say nothing of the fact that the U.S. government is funding the development of tools to help the residents in other countries living under “repressive regimes” circumvent such measures, passing these bills into law would rank among the highest of hypocrisy offenses and obviate any discussion of the United States occupying any sort of moral high ground. After all, why worry about censorship in other countries when your primary focus is on stopping the scourge of copyright infringement through the same types of tactics in your own backyard?

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. This fight, while important, will not be the last. It is imperative that we do not take what we have for granted; if we do, we risk losing the last bastion of truly free speech. Our rights and freedoms will take a back seat to the interests of corporations that have not been able to develop a cogent business model necessary to survive in the digital age.

That simply cannot be allowed to happen.

(PHOTO: Harry How/Getty Images)

A scapegoat is a wonderful thing to have. Portraying yourself as somebody else’s scapegoat is even better. In that regard, the Ducks want to have their cake and eat it too.

There’s a certain romanticism to playing the victim. It avoids the unpleasant reality of owning the ultimate responsibility for your actions and their consequences.

That romantic notion, as it were, has become part of the fabric of the culture that surrounds the team. The current iteration of the Anaheim Ducks (i.e. post-lockout) has built its reputation on toughness — or hooliganism, if you ask the rest of the league. The consequence of rough and tumble hockey is an increased risk for penalties and suspensions, something to which the Ducks are no strangers.

(PHOTO: Martti Kainulainen/AFP/Getty Images)

Let’s cut right to the chase: a price will have to be paid if the Anaheim Ducks want to right their ship. The discussion no longer revolves around a speculative “if”, but an inevitable “when” and “for whom” the bell will toll.

The candidates gallery has a plethora of worthy scapegoats. Randy Carlyle, whose message his players are apparently tuning out, should be at the top of the heap.

(PHOTO: Frederick Breedon/Getty Images)

Day after day, night after night, a creature is stirring, with infinite might

He’ll run the goalie, or lose his jersey over his head, but he’ll keep on battling, even when his legs feel like lead

The garden gnome jokes, the things that are said, he won’t bother listening, but will let the blood shed

He doesn’t complain, with Selanne and Koivu he churns, but now that he’s hurt, it’s time for people to learn

January 31, 2010. News breaks that the Anaheim Ducks have traded Jean-Sebastien Giguere to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Collectively, Ducks fans sigh. The logistics of trading Giguere to clear cap space are obvious — most likely, there’s nothing to be gained. Nevertheless, cue the hopeful speculation of Ducks fans — despite the likelihood that it is a zero sum transaction. Some mention a possible return of Francois Beauchemin. Details start to clear up, and Jeff Finger’s name floats around cyberspace. Certainly no Beauch, but one can at least stomach the thought. Aside from the atrocious contract, Finger doesn’t suck. Certainly something the Ducks could use: a defenseman who does not suck. But then the real deal breaks and everything becomes official.

Giguere, the guy who put the Mighty Ducks on his back for a legendary run in 2003, whose stardom was born in Anaheim, whose number may one day be raised to the rafters of The Pond, whose name was immortalized as a verb by generational talent Will Smith — THAT GUY — is gone. And the slimmest of the aforementioned hopes are shattered as Anaheim announces the acquisition of Vesa Toskala and Jason Blake.

(PHOTO: Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images)

With news coming out today that the plane crash that claimed the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team was a result of pilot error, it seems like a sad denouement to an already tragic event.

Each of the lives lost in the crash meant something to somebody — to Ducks fans, the loss of Ruslan Salei hit home particularly hard.

At this point, there is little to say that hasn’t already been said. Eulogizing Salei is a task better left to those who knew him personally. (Additionally, the Ducks franchise already provided a forum for his ex-teammates to do just that.)

How then does a humble blogger properly pay his respects to a player like Ruslan Salei?