by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

The suits are at it again. This bill, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act (PDEA), is primarily for the benefit of the suits who have never had a creative idea in their pathetic little lives. Seems that said suits have engaged in a hugely expensive lobbying campaign that has resulted in "House panel approves copyright bill |". It is yet another attempt to put the genie back into the bottle and go back to how things were even 25 years ago. Unfortunately, it won't work.

As I have noted before, the advent of copyright as a way of protecting "intellectual property" was something that did not come into being until the invention of the printing press. Prior to that, books were copied by hand, usually by monks in some monastary or by scribes employed by one of the ruling class. In any event, once a person sold the fruits of his mind as set down on parchment (or whatever), it was pretty much gone. The income stream wasn't a stream at all; it was an income lump. The printing press began to change this by making it much easier to reproduce the written word. After the advent of the printing press, the author of a work could sell multiple copies of his work...at least in his home town/province/country. Later, as transportation and international trade developed, this income stream expanded still further. However, even in these early days, others began to feed off the creators. At first it was the owners of the printing presses, but, at the first whiff of actual money, the syncophants and parasites oozed out of the woodwork to begin to feed off the fruits of the creative...

I can't do this. This subject deserves a book tracing the history and the way copyright has become legalized form of highway robbery. Let me say that a two month boycott of all copyrighted material such as CDs, DVDs, movie tickets, Pay-per-view and premium cable/satellite video channels, books, magazines and live performances would scare the crap out of the suits who suck at those particular troughs. Such an action would also send a wake up message to politicians to encourage them to do the People's business and not that of the special interests who are busily trying to rip off the People to the greatest extent possible. Hell, if only 25% of the American public participated in such an action, the effects would be dramatic.

*sigh*...Ah well, one can dream...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005