Rule
Posts: 10479
Joined: 12/5/2005
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: provfivetine
This issue is being misconstrued by the opponents of this bill.
The contention is simple: should intellectual property rights be protected or not?
The only rational position to take here is one the following two positions:
(1) I do believe in intellectual property rights and I support this bill.
(2) I do NOT believe in intellectual property rights and I oppose this bill.
If you say: "I believe in intellectual property rights, but I oppose this bill," then you are contradicting yourself.
The real issue is that it is a scam, a con. Con men succeed in their evil schemes because the marks are more stupid than the con men.
Ever since Hermes introduced trade, people have traded physical substances and labor. The introduction of currency made such trade easier - and made crime more profitable for the criminals.
Musicians and acting groups were hired by theaters and kings to perform labor. There were no copyright trolls hiding behind the bushes intending to sue any farmer or smith they heard sing a copyrighted song in those days.
The theaters in turn earned their money by renting out seats in their theater. Not by selling music, I reiterate, but by renting out a physical product.
A coffee house owner would hire a teller of stories to perform labor. In turn the coffee house owner would earn his money by selling coffee to the people who entered his coffee house. Again: the story teller performs labor and his boss sells a physical product. There were no copyright trolls hiding below the windows intend on suing a father who retold the story to his wife and children.
An author performed labor for the boss, his publisher, and his boss earned his money by selling paper. Again: the author performs labor and his boss sells a physical product. There were no copyright trolls hiding below the school desks intend on suing the teacher who read from such a book to her class.
A book could be bought, read, given to a friend, read, given to a second friend, ad infinitum without copyright trolls extorting money for each person who read the book. Why not? Because information is intangible and cannot be sold. The only thing that can be sold is a physical product and that can be sold only once.
Of course there are always people who try to scam people out of their money. A perfect way to get more for a product than it is worth, is to monopolize it. A farmer who can monopolize the owning of cows corners both the dairy and the meat market. He can ask far higher prices for his product than he could if he had competition.
Some centuries ago one or more scam artists had the truly brilliant idea to corner the book market by monopolizing books, which are a physical product. In order to do this the principle of copyright was introduced and publishers bought the exclusive right to publish a book from authors who thereby unwittingly sold their soul as well. If anyone now wanted to buy the book Robinson Crusoe, he would have to pay the prize the one publisher extorted for he could not go to another publisher and buy it more cheaply. This scam was later extended to auditory and visual products (gramophone disks and film, both physical things).
There were no copyright trolls peeping through the letter slot in the door intend on suing someone who copied such a book and gave the copy to a relative or friend. In fact, I rather think that anyone could copy such a book tens of thousands of times and give them away - as long as he did not sell them.
So what we see throughout the ages is that it are always physical products and labor that are sold or rented out.
Enter the twentieth century. Scam artists are of all times and all scam artists that are any good believe their own lies. One of them scam artists got the idea to sell not the physical product but information. The marks, being as required more stupid than the scam artist, bought the scam and extended copyright to information, an intangible thing.
Now anybody who takes out an advertisement in a paper, or an advertisement spot on radio and television has got to pay for it, not so? And as a result he hopes to sell more of his physical products or labor, not so? And it is well established that songs that do not appear on the radio do not sell well, whereas those that do appear on the radio often do. One of the biggest scams in history is that these scam artists convinced the proprietors of radio or television companies that instead of them being paid for advertisements in the form of songs in order to persuade the listener to buy a gramophone disk (a physical product), that instead they had to pay the advertiser. Of course the marks, being stupid by definition, fell for the scam. Ever since they have been paying through the nose.
Selling information is like a scam artist baker not selling bread, but selling baked air. And the bigger scam is selling that baked air not only once, like a bread, but many times. (Incidentally, I used to have a neighbor who sub-rented her room out not to a single party but to two different people at the same time. There was some disgruntlement, I tell you.)
As it so happens, there is legal precedent to the issue of selling baked air. Not in western legal history, but in Arabic legal history, to wit: in the "One thousand and one nights".
The scam artist baker was happily scamming people, but his illegal profits did not satisfy him; he wanted to have more money. Pondering means to obtain more money, he noticed someone passing by his bakery every morning, stopping briefly and inhaling deeply the baked air coming from his bakery before moving on. So he addressed the fellow and demanded money from him. This fellow, however, was no mark and refused to pay for baked air. So the scam artist baker, as any good scam artist believing in his own scam, went to the cadi (i.e. a judge). However, he was too miserly to bribe the cadi. So the cadi, having no motive to be partial, was impartial and rejected the claim of the scam artist baker. But the cadi went even a bit further than that. He sent his men to collect the weights used by the baker to weigh his bread. And the scam artist baker, who had scraped away lead from the weights in order to scam his customers, was caught at the fraud and sentenced accordingly.
Now, I too am a scam artist and - however much CM may deny it - all the information contained in this post is copyrighted, including the fact that today I ate a pizza and a liter of yoghurt, and anyone - yes, I said ANYONE, including wastebins - who quotes or copies or transmits any part of this information in whatever form, infringes on my copyright and therefore owes me three billion dollars for each such infringement.
< Message edited by Rule -- 1/18/2012 3:02:34 PM >
|
RE: SOPA and PIPA info - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread