Naturally. Because nothing quite says “TEA Party” like sharing a comfy couch with Nancy Pelosi, or throwing your support behind Dede Scozzafava (then criticizing the conservatives who criticized you for doing so [in a blog post since removed), or damning all those unnuanced Hobbits who would deny the good farmers of Iowa their God-given rights to federal ethanol subsidies.
— And of course, if you’re going to have a smaller, less-intrusive government, the way forward is to connect the private sector with the public sector in partnerships, so that the lines between the two become blurred. Though it’s probably best if we avoided calling such an arrangement “TEA Party fascism”. For the purposes of good branding, and all.
Look: if Gingrich wins, and he does so as a conservative, he’ll likely govern that way should he be elected. So I’d hold my nose and vote for him. But the fact that he’s receiving TEA Party backing suggests to me that, like everything else in politics, the TEA Party “leadership” (itself something of an oxymoron) has been coopted, and is engaging in horse-race vote chasing rather than a principled vetting of potential candidates.
And that’s a shame. Because it makes them just like every other special interest group — less a movement, more an interested voter bloc.
(h/t Pablo)
Isn’t this less of an endorsement and more of a repudiation of Willard?
Fuck me.
There are NO guarantees with Gingrich. He is as big or bigger a narcissist than Obama. He just put in a little more shoe time.
That’s true, Richard. He is also much smarter than Obama.
We’re screwed.
What did we, as a nation of not-entirely effed up humans, do to deserve this menu of candidates to choose from? I’m going to wind up holding my nose come November no matter what, it seems.
It’s a repudiation of Willard for certain.
More to the point, 100 leaders suggests not only “not enough indians,” but hardly anything worthy of being called a tribe.
No. Palin’s comment was that. This is outright endorsement and support.
Why wouldn’t they consider Santorum? Is it the electebility jag? Are they trying to distinguish themselves from the evangelicals who recently endorsed Santorum?
Is this the rank and file Tea Partiers speaking or moreso their “leaders”?
Is it as I feared so long ago, that the majority of self-styled Tea Partiers have once again given up and gone back to sitting on their couches bemoaning how their one vote doesn’t count instead of standing up for their beliefs? Is it possible they’re so easily discouraged?
I certainly hope not, for our nation’s sake. Because although temprorarily depressed, the O!-bots will by-and-large be showing up at the polls in November.
What did we, as a nation of not-entirely effed up humans, do to deserve this menu of candidates to choose from?
Off-hand, I’d say: Acquiesce to every attempt by the Left, from the Progressive Era to today, to give the ‘effed up an equal voice to that of the non effed up; from the popular election of U.S. Senators, to the present reliance on primary elections instead of the caucus/convention system.
I trust Newt the least.
So now it’s back to popcorn-worthy debates. If the myth of Obama’s genius is debunked, that’s something. But Newt.com will make Obama.com look like alppuccino.com.
Only Perry really talked about disbanding agencies and reducing the size of government. Newt has ideas. Like “Let’s get rid of union janitors and put kids in there. It will teach them work ethic.”
That’s a great idea, but it’s not a government idea. It’s a free market idea. Here’s an idea Newt, let’s have the lack of food teach work ethic. All you have to do is eliminate welfare. Get it? Get the government out of the feeding business. Get the government out of the teaching business.
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a day, and then he’ll come back to re-learn what he’s been taught.
Let a man figure out how to fish on his own and he’ll eat for the rest of his life, be it 3 days or 3 decades.
It really is time to get off the grid.
Scrolling through the blog this morning actually depressed me a little. This post the most.
Think it’s time to reset my expectations for the future again. 2010 gave me some false hope, it appears.
Off-hand, I’d say: Acquiesce to every attempt by the Left, from the Progressive Era to today, to give the ‘effed up an equal voice to that of the non effed up; from the popular election of U.S. Senators, to the present reliance on primary elections instead of the caucus/convention system.
This…
Of course, throw in the New Deal/Great Society Euro-weenie-ization of the US as well.
I believe the long march would fall under the part about giving the effed up equal voice, etc.
Think it’s time to reset my expectations for the future again. 2010 gave me some false hope, it appears.
That’s you agreeing to be played, bh.
Assume it’s all going to go to hell, bh, and plan the rebuilding project. Then you’ll just be bored instead of despondent.
Trust me on this.
So, how do you get to be a tea-party leader anyway?
At least it’s easy to spot the bullshitters – the Tea Part doesn’t HAVE any leaders, nor does it need any. Genuine grass-roots movements don’t, as a rule. It’s only the astro-turfers that need a “decision-making apparat”.
Rush is making the pragmatic* case for Gingrich’s cross-over appeal to Democrats based on Marianne’s dishing on Newt
*yes, I know it’s satire.
What the hell else is there to do with the pragmatists?
At the same time, mojo, that’s generally why grass-roots movements, “genuine” or not, generally fail.
Hope that wasn’t so general an observation as to be useless.
From the Ewok:
I’m told reliably that Governor Perry will head up a 10th Amendment project for Speaker Gingrich to rally Governors and state legislators toward a plan of devolving power from Washington. This project will include helping shape the Republican platform for the general election, something small government conservatives have been concerned about.
Maybe there is some hope?
“What did we, as a nation of not-entirely effed up humans, do to deserve this menu of candidates to choose from?”
Just to note once more, with feeling!, “we” didn’t choose them. They chose themselves.
Hope springs eternal, Stephanie.
It’s the only thing between us and an overdose of narcotics.
Also the tea party isn’t dead. It’s holding fire t’il the summer. No need to be in perpetual grievance mode. The local folks are doing a great job of infiltrating GOP events and steering course corrections quietly. The GOP is happy with the added boots and isn’t as happy with the new direction but locally the new boots outnumber the old boots and it’s been real interesting to watch them acquiesce to the will of the tea party folks. Just as the Washington squishes are malleable, so are the locals. We’re just bending them in positions that make their muscles ache. Ne exercise regimens are such a bitch!
Maybe. Though he could have done it with Santorum just as easily, and we wouldnt have to concern ourselves with chatty ex-wives, Pelosi-stuffed couches, Fannie and Freddy skids greasing, Dede, ethanol, or, you know, crony corporatism.
Control the mailing list.
New exercise regimens. Geesh
Sure Jeff. But all those kids….
Iron. There is some truth to that. More than you know.
I’m on three different tea party mailers and the interesting thing is there is only about 30% overlap in membership. The mailers are mostly informational and the operational stuff is just getting cranked back up. The numbers on the lists are growing, too.
The holder of the email list on two of my lists is very non leader oriented non orgsnized and the other list is hooked into Anystreet. org which is a 501c3. The non organized groups are much more motivated.
We are not dead just planning a Klingon move. I hope the dish tastes as bitter as planned.
Obama’s minions look like they’re chomping to include “the wives” in this campaign. So maybe we’ll get to hear more about whether someone with a huge ass can tell other people how to eat.
Funny how Paula Dean is taking a beating because she has the dia-beatus, but Michelle is untouchable even though she has, you know, the eating disorder.
Let’s not overlook the fact that the Washington squishes also know how to push back.
Did Boehner, for example, really lose the continuing resolution* fight last month, thanks to those recalcitrant tea-tards pushing him into an untenable position?
Or might it be that the tea-party freshmen lost, and thus the old-guard won in appearing to lose?
I’m taking that as an older brother sort of reproach so that it doesn’t bug me, Ernst.
Allow me to restate this in terms of frugal college life. It’s not that hard to eat rice and beans for a couple weeks. It is hard to eat rice and beans for a couple weeks if you keep expecting tacos and pizza.
That’s why we reset our expectations. Not so that we can quit. We do it so that we can persevere.
Just to push the point home, and with no disrespect for bh intended at all:
If bh is thinking that the mid-terms created an “appearance” of false hope, it’s at least partly because there are people, ostensibly on our side, who have an interest in creating that appearance.
It was meant in a sort of “be of good cheer, stout fellow!” way bh, so thanks for taking it as such. I was focused on the false hope part, as I’ve now stated.
Limbaugh, I heard say a few minutes ago: the US is on a knife edge, can go either way, for good or ill, in great danger and so on, blah blah blah. And what’s the cause he pinned? Barack Obama.
This couldn’t be more wrong. Why oh why would Limbaugh mislead? What? I should expect him to finger his audience? Ha. That’s a laugh.
We are not dead just planning a Klingon move. I hope the dish tastes as bitter as planned.
I’m sure the bitterness is baked in. What I’m curious about is whom it is, ultimately, who’s going to have to eat it.
Okay, yeah, I get the false hope angle.
I just heard a commercial where Bachmann said Newt created 11 million jobs as house speaker.
I’m going to go throw up now…
Don’t the Klingons usually end up getting their asses kicked (I am not a Star Trek fan) by The Federation?
Leigh, that was when the Klingons and the Federation were enemies. They’ve since gone with the strong horse.
It was Inevitable™, I suppose…
Anyway, the Klingons also killed their own gods, which if taken in a political (and metaphorical) sense, might not be bad advice.
Thanks, McGehee.
I don’t know if Santorum has enough oomph. He’s a good guy, and suitably rock-ribbed, but his candidacy has always seemed like a placeholder, a second-best.
After Gingrich’s moment at the last debate, the momentum seems to be shifting in his favor. That could have happened to Santorum, but he doesn’t seem to be a guy who has a lot of moments.
[Santorum] doesn’t seem to be a guy who has a lot of moments.
Is that intentional or “bad luck”?
Is that intentional or “bad luck”?
It’s probably a combination of the two. He’s not an exciting candidate. Granted, we could use a little boring these days. Heck, Eisenhower was boring. Coolidge was boring. So, Santorum has that going for him.
I think it’s entirely intentional.
Just not his necessarily.
Who is the puppeteer?
That Klingon move would be
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Many tea party folks are under no illusions about the collusion of the elites. They plan on sticking it to them hard and deep. Let them think the teapot is empty and then boil em. It’s not for nothing that many tea partiers are well aquianted with Alinsky. Many have also been discussing Sun-Tsu. Some of the email back and forths read more Patton than Emily Post.
Heh, you can’t expect the Klingons to quote Shakespeare accurately.
I certainly hope the discussions are more than just talk, Stephanie. I’m more than a little discouraged with our electorate.
The TEA parties are not nearly so monolithic as they were portrayed by the MSM, nor quite so strict the Constitutionalists as others might surmise. They also contain many people who are not particularly opposed to an over weaning Federal government, just opposed to one so extravagantly over weaning.
The best thing I can say about them is that, being so non-monolithic, they are about as far from faction as one can get. The downside of this being that their impact will often be diffuse and unpredictable.
That many are willing to countenance the more Hamiltonian aspects of Gingrich, either based on principle, or mere tactic, is not surprising. My own suspicion is their choice is based more on a favorable view of Newt – for his plain speaking, and perceived honesty, and based less on a view of him as a bitter pill to ward against a Romney.
So, the good news is that it is not an exercise in horse picking, the bad news is that many people in the TEA parties are still comfortable with more than a touch of progressivism.
This road just ain’t getting any shorter.
I’m still not ready to give up my idea of a possible October surprise where Obama declines to seek a second term.
What makes you think there’s only one puppeteer, or that all the puppeteers have the same intention?
Think about it this way. Mitt doesn’t have many moments either, but that’s because he runs a disciplined campaign; which is good, they say. Unfortunately, the moments he does have all tend to the negative, which isn’t. Newt, on the other hand, has all kinds of moments, fireworks-like moments. Unfortunately, like fireworks, you have the occassional errant shell or short-fused shell.
We’re trying to weigh candidates without taking into account all of the thumbs on the scales.
That isn’t to say that we don’t know that there are folks trying to tip the scales, just that our collective tendency is to try to find candidates that somehow offset at least some of the thumbs. What we should be doing is calling out the balance tippers and demand that they get their thumbs of the scales. That, or we make our own compensations instead of expecting the candidates to do it for us.
Oh, it’s a movement baby, just not the kind you think.
That kind of October surprise has to come in the spring.
Not even the Democrats are that good at manipulating state election law.
Not in 57 states at once, anyways
One possible reason Obama may give for declining: His extreme enlightenment and massive knowledge compels some insanely unpopular decisions that the Proggs pretends to be outraged by.
I’m not sure I agree with your premiss there ThomasD. I think the vast majority of those that self identify as TEA Party are very much Constitutionally limited government types. There may be various levels of understanding of how that actually translates, but i think that basic idea is the glue of the movement.
JD possibly has more information on grassroots glue.
Lee,
Rhetorically speaking? For sure.
Practically speaking? Only time will tell.
Anyway, to get back to my
terroridea, just imagine Romney is stuffed down our throat by virtue of being the best one to beat Obama, then Hilliary swoops in and credibly runs to the right of him.I’m at the point where a Hillary administration would be something of a relief.
I got there about six months ago, Squid.
Jump in the sack with Newt Gingrich, apparently.
Some of my reasonably reasonable lefty friends have been admitting that a Hillary run would allay their own fears of BHO.
Ah, Stephanie, you sell me short. I am a long time veteran (Treasuer & President) of smallish club politics. I’ve been on both sides, with and without access to the membership list. It is much better to control it. In fact, in a microcosm it is essentially the same gate keeper function that that the MBM works very hard to ‘try’ to control at the national level.
I very much recommend that everyone get involved on some community board, or club board or something. Even better is when you can root out the thieving bastards who have been controlling things for the last 10 years. It gives a whole new perspective on what our friends in Washington are up to.
The phrase I loved the most was ‘they’re good people’, used by the
useful idiotsdisbelieving friends of the thieving bastards. Second was ‘the truth is somewhere in between’. Trust me, usually the truth is all the way to one side and it is only the lazy and cowardly who think we should try to find common ground between theleft and rightthieving bastards and the honest volunteers.A good leader finds common ground amongst the folks who are pushing in the same general direction and gets them to stick together to defeat the thieving bastards and useful idiots going the other way.
Local school boards are a great place to start, Iron. Open elections and no overhead to get elected.
My apologies Iron. I see you are a veteran of the trenches.
Locally infiltration continues apace via chamber, school, networking and GOP functions. If all it requires is showing up then we are in numbers that overwhelm the existing group. and as opposed to those that have been there for years we are volunteering for the “jobs elite establixans won’t do”. Which usually puts us in a position for activism and recruitment.
You gotta love the way Newt is hiding under the covers and sending his daughters out to deal with the wicked step-mother.
Is he running for President or Captain of an Italian cruise ship?
Wasn’t Newt fooling around with Marianne when he was still married to wife #1?
The mans a horndog. That’s been known for years.
is newt “hiding under the covers” or giving the media the back of his daughter’s hand?
This is funny, like Newt or not.
I think Obama calls it “leading from the rear”, newrouter.
Yes BT. Kinda funny for her to play the scorned woman when she was also the other woman at one time.
As to why he’s running out the kids, I’d send mine out, too. They are all on record saying this ex had issues unlike say a Reagan where you had I’ll Ronnie griping from the sidelines with nary an agenda to push :rolls eyes:
i thought it was a pretty good way to disarm the media hordes.
so mitt me newt has 3 wives
go get ’em newt
this newt will take the fight to them.
Did you hear the way he said “John”? What a raaaaacist.
mr rick hits newt and mittens
mr rick hits newt hard
and mr. rick hits the right tone on sopa: rule of law
SOPA and “rule of law?” Hardly.
Something is only property to the extent that it’s owner can defend it. Law has allowed for more elegant and less violent ways for people to defend their property.
Intellectual property is artificial–copyright and patent are government distributed monopolies that were intended to allow the inventor or artist exclusive use of their innovation/creation and is little different from protective tariffs on goods.
Technology, since the advent of the printing press, has been pressuring the ability of anyone to hold a monopoly on an idea or concept and as technology has expanded, so has that pressure. Technology has allowed these monopolies to be circumvented with greater and greater ease and attempts to prevent have resulted in new and better technologies to circumvent the new barriers.
Unless the goal is to deny or stifle technology, the only reasonable response is to redefine “intellectual property” to something that can be defended, or to abandon the concept.
“Unless the goal is to deny or stifle technology, the only reasonable response is to redefine “intellectual property” to something that can be defended, or to abandon the concept.”
maybe we should have an open debate on the topic and not ram down 2000 pages of unread legislation. because google/wiki/facebook/silicon stupid ain’t my “friend”.
There is actually a division of law devoted to intellectual property, RTO, but, as you say, it remains murky.
“Something is only property to the extent that it’s owner can defend it.”
good allan that’s proggtoid stupid. no you either own it or you don’t you dope. the effin’ gov’t is there to defend YOUR RIGHTS.
nr have you gone Big Government on us!?
It’s nice to know that the thoughts inside my head are a government monopoly.
Thoughtcrime really is insidious, isn’t it?
On the plus side, I can now make a copy of whatever book currently tops the NYT bestseller list and put my name on it and sell it. Because of the OUTLAW!
That’s the last thing I ever expected to hear out of you, nr.
Progressive? Hardly.
Property is a natural right derived from labor. The apple I pick up from the ground is my property. By my labor, I found it, selected it from other windfall apples and then, picked it up.
That’s John Locke.
I’m not opposed to copyright and patent outright, there is a justification of the grant of monopoly to a creator to allow them to recoup the cost of creation, where a competitor doesn’t have to stand those costs, only to copy and pay costs of production. That’s also in line with the intent of Article 1, Section 8 which states that they should be for limited periods.
But we have to recognize that these are monopolies, and granted by government–there is no natural right at play here, and the nature of monopolies are corrosive of actual property rights and capitalism generally, and so must be tightly controlled, if engaged in at all.
You’ve misread my statements, NoisyAndrew.
I would like to remind people that Newt actually has a record of getting something conservative done in Washington.
He also knows where the bodies are buried and will have no hesitation about hanging them out for all to see. He’s not my first choice by any means, but he’s light years better than Obama and his Clorox-dipped twin ORomney.
Ernst Schreiber posted on 1/19 @ 10:02 am
Some strange woman, lying around in a pond, passing out swords…
“But we have to recognize that these are monopolies, and granted by government”
where does the fed gov’t get the rights to grant such monopoly? Amend 9 + 10?
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…
We have a right to property, and equally a property in our rights. So we constitute government for the express purpose of protecting them.
“But we have to recognize that these are monopolies, and granted by government”
called “regulatory capture” no? disband this bs and be free? actually stay away from “regulating” on a fed gov’t level and be “free”*(nanny bloomberg will get you)
But we have to recognize that these are monopolies, and granted by government–there is no natural right at play here, and the nature of monopolies are corrosive of actual property rights and capitalism generally, and so must be tightly controlled, if engaged in at all.
Amen.
where does the fed gov’t get the rights to grant such monopoly?
In the text of the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, clause 8.
If Newt can stay on task, that would be great. The thing that makes me look around for someone else is that he is a man with Big Ideas. We already have one of those and Newt is a whole lot smarter than Obama.
The problem lies in what we have now:
Santorum: Angry, righteous dude with a chip on his shoulder
Romney: Milquetoast flip-flopper who wants us to love him
Newt: Nuclear Option, unknown quantity
Paul: Crazy Uncle
Acht. This the best we could do?
Art. 1 Sec. 8
This the best we could do?
Yes. Next question.
It was a rhetorical question.
@88. 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; Article 1, Section 8.
“@88. 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; Article 1, Section 8.”
and what should we do to secure those RIGHTS? might make an interesting discussion!!11!!
Where it’s clear that “for limited times” is indistinct — apart from the modifier “limited”, in contradistinction to “eternal”, say — which is to say, left to the judgment of the particular Congress to fix, or alter, nevertheless, early Congresses, containing members who themselves participated in framing the Constitution, undertook to fix those “limited times”, indicating in some manner what they thought the indistinct phrase was intended to mean. I’m no scholar of the history of these determinations, but would be curious to know whether they wouldn’t tell us something clearer with regard to the commercial attainments thought to attach to the copyright than the merely roughed in “for limited times” standing alone can tell us?
I really can’t fathom what you think my position is on this. I stated I was not opposed to copyright and patent.
But these are civil rights–created by government, not natural rights. Note that the Constitution does not require congress to provide for them, only that they may.
Well newrouter, you or your heirs selling that exclusive right to another party and then have that party use it’s resources (i.e. campaign contributions, lobbying, etc.) to get Congress to sort of unlimit the limited Times those rights are exclusive clearly isn’t working so hot these days, is it?
I don’t know the solution. I do know that SOPA isn’t about intellectual property so much as it’s about protecting revenue streams.
I don’t agree with the notion that intellectual property isn’t the result of labor. Thinking is damn hard work. Which is why there’s so little of the good kind. So I’m not comfortable with your civil-natural distinction with regards to copyright and patent RTO.
Ernst, if it were a natural right, or at least one such of the sort enumerated in the Declaration, it would necessarily be unalienable, wouldn’t it? But if that were the case, then how come only “secure for limited times”? Where the supposition, it would seem, is that the limited time would, or might, end, or even, never begin, thereupon alienating the right from the person?
Can I or can I not alienate my property sdferr?
I haven’t put a lot (or even a little) of thought into this, which is why I said “uncomfortable” instead of disagree.
I’m none too steady on this question myself Ernst. I think of it fairly simply though. The property, say a tool, I can put off from myself, so alienate it, so to speak. But the property of possessing property, a property attributed to me as a human being, I can’t alienate. It goes where I go.
The copy right or patent thing is more tricksy, it seem to me.
We human beings (apes, great apes, even) are the best of all apers. We copy shit from our first days on earth, and copy and ape and mimic the whole rest of our lives. We might even say copying is a natural right, if we get right down to it. Which is why, so tricksy, it seems to me. What the civil law wants to do is carve off our copying artistry from us, in a sense, alienating “for a limited time” the copying interests of the aper, the mimic, the by-copy-stealer. But I dunno.
It’s trickier because intellectual property is easier to steal and harder to defend.
I have to leave it at that. I expect to have to get up early in order to push around the 2 to 5 inches of windfall water rights I’m told will accumulate overnight.
Heh — or non-heh — according as the accumulations may befall. B’ware teh back-bones. Adieu.
Went looking for a quote I remembered from Jefferson, saw that it didn’t really apply to the discussion, but still came across a paraphrase of his thoughts that seemed to imply a natural right to monkey see, monkey do:
Not sure where to find a cite for that. Regardless, from reading up on that brief bit I’m struck at his Benthamesque attitude towards granting patent:
Now, we have to give Jefferson credit for knowing the basic arguments here so I can’t believe he’d give much consideration to the consequences or externalities of allowing citizens their natural rights. How could that have any bearing on a natural right?
Oh, link.
(Nothing earth-shattering that demands a read.)
By the way, I appreciate these discussions.
I once had a tutor who viewed thought as the only ground of the sort of simple justice people seem to crave, that is, in an “idea”, we have a thing that everyone can possess simultaneously without doing injury to another’s possession of the same. I aren’t sure that will make sense in my clumsy wording, but he made it make sense to me at the time, or at least enough so that I’m recalling it today, 37 yrs later.
That actually was the line of reasoning that reminded me of the Jefferson argument, sdferr. Here, for what it’s worth:
I decided I don’t like it for this discussion because some forms of intellectual property are competitive. (Making a copy takes away from the original.)
It’s not the thing itself that a man feeds his family with. It’s the value of the thing. And that value is partially determined by scarcity. By copying the thing, you’re stealing that scarcity.
Intellectual property is undeniably the result of labor. Unfortunately, it’s also indefensible without government help as its impossible to prevent someone from copying it foregoing that labor.
Which is why the establishment of monopoly to allow recovery of the costs of that labor is justifiable.
That points in the direction of the question of goods in themselves as ends, as for instance, virtues were once thought to be, as distinguished from goods which lead to or bring other ends along as their sole justification. But that’s a whole nother ball-o’-wax.
Mr. bh!!! I saw elle goulding today!
jetblue had her do an acoustic set at jfk and she was just right there not ten feet away
and cute cute cute she doesn’t just get dolled up for the videos
i
Wow, that’s a lucky treat to come across at an airport, ‘feets. Sweet.
I think I follow your reasoning, RTO. Makes sense to me.
yes it was very exciting she did her cover of “your song” and she was just dazzling
For some it may come down to their apprehension of “natural rights.”
Unfortunately, it’s also indefensible without government help as its impossible to prevent someone from copying it foregoing that labor.
I dunno about impossible. There was a time when you could shoot a thief, and didn’t need any government forms or applications to do it. Sure, there might be some questions after…
The trick with intellectual property is that the Founders were attempting to encourage the dissemination of useful ideas to the greatest extent possible. To do this, they wanted to make invention and creation profitable enough that creative and inventive people would pursue new ideas.
Where things have gone astray is that the IP giants have done everything they can to lock up useful inventions and creative works as tightly and for as long as they possibly can. This goes against the purpose of copyright and patent, in that it keeps these useful things from being disseminated they way they should be.
I don’t begrudge any man making a living from the fruits of his mind. But he is going to have to accept that after a time, what’s novel is no longer novel, and what was his exclusively needs to be shared.
This goes to Squid’s #120.
From geoff’s link:
How despicable was ABC? This much.
Guess there’s lots of people talking copyright this week. Whoda thunkit?
I don’t remember where I first read the idea, but one proposal I thought might have merit as a counterbalance against Disney-fied copyright laws was to introduce the concept of “intellectual property tax.” To the guy in Rahe’s thread who equated his creative works with his dad’s apartment building, this would mean that he’d pay tax on his song in the same way his dad paid tax on his building.
If Disney wanted to claim that Beauty and the Beast was worth a bazillion dollars, then they’d pay an IP tax against that value. Those who wanted to use the work in works of their own could pay a licensing fee based on the claimed value. This way, the profit motive would be balanced by the tax headaches, and content warehouses would have an incentive to price their works at a point where licensing fees could be a viable revenue stream. Disney could slap huge values on the properties they didn’t want anyone touching, for as long as they thought the tax costs were justified. On the other hand, a lot of marginal works would be released from copyright because they just weren’t worth the fees and paperwork any more. And all the Open Source guys could simply not register their works in the first place.
An imperfect state of affairs, to be sure, but it certainly seems an improvement over what we have today.
Disney is a perfect example of abuse of the copyright laws. Mickey Mouse’s image is never in the public domain since they re-up their copyright whenever it is about to expire. How much money is the House that Mouse built worth?
One complaint I’ve had over the years is when copyright law is used not to protect the value of a work but to keep it from ever being seen at all.
Another would be like the Scientologist’s copyrighting their “religious texts” so they are seen only by a select group and not subjected to public scrutiny.
And who owns ABC?
heh