Moral Rights And Moral Wrongs

The profit motive drives economic growth, encouraging innovation and producing a cornucopia of goods and services for consumers. However, coupled with a statutory monopoly it draws out niggardly nastiness in those retarded bullies who enjoy nothing more than screwing people.

Performing rights associations specialise in bullying stand over tactics, as these two cases show.

Here we have an attempt to extort money from a shop because a girl stacking shelves was singing out loud. Ultimately the copyright cretins backed off after a public outcry.

The second case involves an attempt by Warner Bros. to shut down a Harry Potter themed party. The party morphed into an ' Anonymous Wizard' party.

Copywriting The Law

In an interesting development some governments are starting to use copyright law to make money out of their laws and the guidance they publish regarding those laws.

This is bizarre. People are expected to obey the law, but must pay for the privilege of finding out what the law is and how it is administered. There must be better ways of raising revenue than this.

Copyright Madness

Copyright is a restriction on free speech. Some say it is a necessary evil. Intellectual property rights are artificial rules created by society for its own benefit. The reasoning is that better work will be produced since the creators can invest more time in them in the hope of a substantial reward.

Some copyright owners insist on pushing the envelope in the quest for larger profits:

ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by "publicly performing" it without a license.

This unabashed greed will ultimately be counter-productive. It will demonstrate the unreasonableness of current copyright law and lead more people to flout it.