A Rogue One Rebuttal: the Imperial Archives on Scarif

NOTE: This post contains spoilers for Star Wars: Rogue One. You have been warned.

Scarif - Photo credit: Lucasfilm/ILM

©2016 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Whether you loved it, found it full of problems, or a bit of both (raises hand) Star Wars: Rogue One has made a big splash and inspired lots of punditry. One of the things that has spurred plenty of discussion is the depiction of the Imperial military archives on Scarif. The moment that scene played out on screen, I smiled inwardly: "Everyone on the internet is going to HATE this."

It's no secret that, with few exceptions, film, television, and fiction at large does an utterly loathsome job at depicting computer science and IT accurately. Beloved cyberpunk classics like The Matrix, Hackers, or Swordfish, are confusing and anachronistic at best. Star Wars as a franchise deserves plenty of ire for its depictions of technology, which can be especially odd (possibly because Star Wars is more "fantasy in space" than traditional sci-fi).

Indeed, in addition to the many other takes on the problems of Rogue One, writers from Vice: Motherboard and archival consulting firm Preservica, in particular have weighed in on the archives scenes. The criticisms are, admittedly, mostly for fun. However, I sensed that a lot of the problems people had with the Scarif scenes could be easily hand-waved away with plausible explanations. And while defending problems with Star Wars movies is pretty much the opposite of my usual MO, I must admit that, in this case, I'm too tempted to weigh in with my own IT perspectives.

Without further ado, let's dive in:

The TPP vs. Municipal Archives

Check back in about 70 years, okay?

Part of my mandate for this blog is helping people in my age demographic and younger to focus on digital issues which affect us, presently or in the near future. Recently, there's been a lot of talk about the titanic treaty known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (or "TPP"). The TPP is utterly overwhelming: covering a myriad of things from dairy farmers to the internet. Like the (former!) Conservative government's omnibus budget bills, the expansive scope of the agreement makes the TPP very difficult to understand, dismantle, and most importantly, to debate.

One of the TPP areas of scope which is critical to discuss is the section on copyright. At this point, several notable bloggers* have covered the TPP's copyright extension provisions in great detail. But what do those provisions mean for you? Let's bring it down to the ground. For example: folks in my demographic seem to love seeing old-timey photos of their city. Here in Vancouver, exploring our retro-downtown through old photographs of various eras is practically an official pastime.