Solonor's Inkwell

Record Labels Sue Internet Providers over Listen4Ever site

This is cool. I’m making my list (and checking it twice). If the morons at the RIAA win this one, here’s my list of people I am going to get to sue:

• The Phone Company – for allowing crooked telemarketers to use their system to try to rip me off
• The Postal Service – for allowing anthrax to be mailed to people (I might have gotten some of that! Best to sue for stuff I might have gotten, but didn’t, than to let those bastards at the Post Office get off scott free!)
• The State Highway Commission – for letting morons drive and almost kill me…not to mention the fact that there must be a bunch of getaway cars from some illegal activity out there (maybe even copyright violators!)
• The Electric Company – for letting crooks plug in the toaster at their hideouts (If they didn’t have their toast in the morning, they’d learn their lesson right quick!)

I can’t wait for the checks to roll in. Wait a second…how come the lights just went out?

Umberto Eco, an Italian writer and professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, wrote in the New York Review of Books, June 1995, an essay titled “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt.” The article is an excellent reminder to watch out for the real threats to liberty. They don’t come from the overt racism of skinheads or Neo-Nazi’s (too obvious), but from the subtle chipping away of basic freedoms in the name of “security.”

He breaks down the ways of the fascist into fourteen characteristics:

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E. Gary Gygax! I didn’t have to wait long for the next example of what Lessig is talking about. Apparently, the owners of the Godzilla copyright have delivered a “cease and desist” order to Davezilla–not because he improperly used the character of the 40-foot Tokyo-bashing reptile, but for having the audacity to use “Zilla” as part of his pen name!

[ Note to self: Stop using Mr. Gygax’s name as a mock expletive, before he sues your ass. ]