copyright -- to obey or not to obey, that is the question [sic]

[Kurt Cockrum]

>From a posting by Steve:
>[...]
>The 20-year extension (now named the Sonny Bono Copyright Term
>Extension Act) has passed the House and is awaiting action in the
>Senate.

Somebody should nominate the tree that got Bono for the Nobel Peace Prize.
I recall a legal paper a number of years back entitled "Do Trees Have
Standing?" (damn! can't remember the author!), so it ought to be possible :) .
Be a nice political statement, anyway :) .

>        When the bill was first proposed in Congress in early 1997,
>sponsors described it as a win-win situation, and proponents wondered
>who, if anyone, could oppose it. 
>
>Who? The public, in the broadest sense. We the people. 
>[...]

Oh, yeah, right.  The power of the pee-pul.  The pee-pul, be-nighted,
will never be de-feeted.

Frankly, the public is a bunch of cowardly, pusillanimous wusses.
If anything I care about is dependent on the ability of the American
public to defend it, I might as well kiss it off.  The most effectual
thing Americans are capable of is "writing their congressman", and it's
likely to be about the wrong thing, anyway.

If Americans had it within them to actually rebel against, or resist bad
laws, none of this would be a problem, because bad laws just wouldn't
get obeyed.  Those that do, can't expect much in the way of support
from the majority of their fellows; trouble is, hardly any American is
capable of thinking for themselves.  They prefer to leave the driving
to their congresscritter, being seduced by the concept of "law-abiding"
citizen, no matter how crazy or against their interests the law is.
Their support is something I wouldn't bet the farm on at all.

No wonder Paul Schell can get away with stepped-up enforcement of
the jaywalking ordinance!

The last time there was any rebellious currents was in the `60's, and
it got pretty well defused, partly because of co-optation and partly
because it ran out of steam.  And nobody learned from that how to keep
a rebellion going, either.  All it did was spawn a generation of Boomers
whose chief worry now is that their kid will call bullshit on them when
they try to tell the kid how harmful marijuana is.  The Boomers had a
fun time back then, but have been worthless in the fight to decriminalize
that harmless substance and eliminate the Draconian penalities for its
use, possession, and/or cultivation.

So you'll pardon me if I'm skeptical about the oppositional capabilities
of the American people.  If anything, they are more like the Eastern
Europeans, who seem to have an astounding capacity for oppression before
opposition surfaces.  The latter had it a *lot* worse than we *ever* did,
and it still took from 40 to 70 years for the pot to boil over.  And all
they got out of the deal was the beginning of another 40-70-year cycle,
this time from the opposite end of the political spectrum, and a crummy
T-shirt with holes in it.

But posting the NY Times stuff on this list is a step in the right
direction, and I support it for that reason (go, Steve!).  I don't like
much of anything about the RCP, so I'll end this by ripping off *their*
intellectual property: "It's Right To Rebel".
--kurt
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