“Crazy” is now protected intellectual property.
Posted By Sgt_Jake on December 10, 2007
When a bill is introduced, and the title includes the word “PRO” in it, my claxons start wailing. When it claims to have “bi-partisan” support, my air raid sirens go off. When the rhetoric includes dire warnings that this ‘new threat’ “undermines the creative spirit that drives our economy”, constitutes “a threat to consumer health and safety”, costs us billions of dollars and puts hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk… well, I just put my tin-foil helmet on and crawl into my bunker.
But when it calls for the creation of a new federal agency with law enforcement powers and the ability to ruin you on suspicion of COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT… honestly, I get a little scared.
f you don’t know about this yet, you need to educate yourself, and fast. Copyrights and the ill-defined realm of “intellectual property” has become a class war unlike anything we’ve had to deal with since the creation of the printing press. It pits those who can afford to BUY creativity and defend it with lawyers against, literally, everyone else. Laws like these can (and will) be used to control what information you are allowed to have, how long you are allowed to have it, and how you are allowed to USE it.
I’m not making this up – this latest attempt is moderate compared to some of the other bills that failed (and a few, like the DMCA, that were successful). We know that the pen is mightier than the sword. Laws like these turn pens into self-activating handcuffs.
Just thinking about the current state of IP law makes me want to stab people in the face. Why oh why were we dumb enough not to pick Pete Ashdown over Orrin “Blow up pirate’s computers” Hatch?
That just ruined my year. Makes me want to lay down and cry, and fuck this working to make a better government bullshit. This isn’t the America I learned about growing up.
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