l'esprit de l'escalier

I was hoping to write a post for May Day, which is synonymous in many countries as International Worker’s Day as a day to celebrate the gains of international labor movement.

There were the annual Immigrants Rights protests across the US, which were much smaller in southern LA this year (down to thousands from millions) after the brutal police crackdown last year.

Dockworkers on the west coast took the day off to protest the Iraq war by shutting down much of the port traffic coming from Asia.

When the day was done I was left with a very odd feeling, it seemed that while many countries in the world were celebrating their gains as workers, the US was protesting the tyranny of it’s government. It’s a sad state of affairs that we are so far off from celebrating any gains, as very few have been made. I don’t know that there is any amount of protesting or striking that would sway the mind of the current crop in Washington. Not to sound to defeatist, this certainly isn’t a criticism of those that protested, and I certainly am not trying to imply that it should stop; I am merely observing what seems to be a sad reality.

Since I didn’t get this post up on May Day as I was hoping (and since I don’t really post here often anyway) I thought I would touch on a few other topics.

The Senate Judiciary Committee recently unanomisly approved a revised Pro-IP act, a very disgusting bloated piece of legislation. The original bill called for enormous penalties for copyright infringement (copying a 50 song album would have increased the penalty from $150,000 to $7.5 Million). The revised bill that was passed by the Judiciary Committee stripped the massive penalties, but still includes the creation of a new federal Copyright Police Force. While I certainly don’t advocate (most) copyright violation, I think that this is taking this ridiculous “war” way too far, copyright is a law very few people understand (which I think is intentional) and creating harsher laws surrounding it seems to be a way to turn everyone into criminals (a recent study found that 95% of 18-24 year olds illegally copy music).

Copyright law in the US has become very far departed from its original intentions (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US constitution; To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.) and has become a warped tool to ensure profits for very large business entities. The Copyright Act of 1790 established a 14 year term on Copyrightable material, which a chance to extend for another 14 years provided the original author is still alive. It is now (as of 1998) 70 years after the death of the Author, or 120 years after creation for Corporately owned Copyright for all works created after 1978, also extending the copyright on materials published after 1923 (with a copyright still held in 1998) another 20 years, making the copyright term 95 years for those works. This means that we wouldn’t see works made after 1923 (that were still copyrighted in 1998) entering the public domain until at least 2019, when we should have seen them entering the public domain in 1999.

Also passed in 1998 was the Digital Millennia Copyright Act which criminalized devices or software that may help circumvent copyright violations. This may seem innocent, but if you have ever ripped a DVD you have used software that circumvents a protection method, and that piece of software is criminal. This is nothing but an attempt by large business interests to circumvent “pesky” concept of Fair Use (which is an intrinsic American value that has largely been forgotten).

Copyright laws in the use are nothing short of Anti-American that is the very definition of “hating freedom.” Since this is an issue that few Americans (and even fewer vocal Americans) know much about it is a perfect arena to strip the rights we are owed as Americans.

In no way do these copyright related bills “ promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” and they most certainly do not help anyone besides a very select few rich people.

I am not one to espouse free market principles and am typically in favor of government regulation of markets, but when it is regulated out of citizens favor and into the favor of large entrenched business interests we have been betrayed by their government (I hesitate to refer to it as our government, as it’s hard to believe Americans would be so interested in screwing themselves out of their rights). Part of the cost of doing business in the US (which is more of a privilege of the one doing business than it is for the one who uses that business) is that your copyrighted works will enter the public domain. Don’t want to lose your revenue stream? Then you’re going to have to do something besides milk your grandpa’s creation for all it is worth, when money is allowed to be concentrated in so few hands spanning generations you no longer are living in a free society and are flirting dangerously close to a system that resembled feudalism (though this problem goes much further than copyright law) that replaces a noble families with “noble” corporate-persons (though as a person I don’t remember being afforded the right of guaranteed income).

I do not view this issue as a bipartisan one, as it does not clearly lend itself to either a conservative or liberal ideology, but rather in issue of Anti-American elements working directly against the general welfare of American citizens. Why is it that we can make sure assurances for enormous entities (with enormous lobbies) but we can’t provide anything but the absolute most basic services (such as corrupt inept police forces) for the people that actually make up this country? Enough with the rambling, I will leave with two quotes from two great American artists whose work should have entered the public domain many years ago.

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.

I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

—Woody Guthrie

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.

—Robert Heinlein (1939)