It is a melancholy object to all lovers of Musick who listen with enchantment via the air, on the Net, or through commodified atomic packages, to find so many of the loveliest creations of the human heart shackled uselessly by the base instincts of human greed, pettifogging myopia, and ruinous conflicting models of Intellectual Property ownership.
Instead of receiving fair return for their honest livelihood, Musicians under contract (''THE PROPERTY'') are forced to employ all their time in live performances to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Washington, or sell themselves to the Saudis.
I am moved nearly to tears to find that unthinking Musick executives in the past have focused almost exclusively on the limited market potential of mere sound vibration assets, ignoring to the detriment of their God-Given cash flow the offspring and sundry other eminently commodifiable extrusions of PROPERTIES they control.
I think it is agreed that whosoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.
It is my humble belief that Congress, the industry and the Musick makers themselves have overlooked one simple, obvious, humane solution, and thus propose (at great personal sacrifice and with no ulterior motive) the following utterly disinterested
Scheme
for the Metastasization of UnIntellEctUal PropErty
in a Fair and Equitable Manner According to the Approved Principles
of Commodity Imperialism
in a
Free and Open Society
(endorsements of Messers Valenti and Berman may be forthcoming)
To Wit:
We the undersigned declare it entirely in keeping with the underlying tenets of the love of Musick that…
I. …the recording industry owns invincibly, outright and beyond challenge all imaginable rights to everything Intellectual extruded by musickal artistes (''THE PROPERTY'');
II. … it is not incompatible with the RIAA's views of Digital Rights Management to understand that such rights indeed extend to Unintellectual Property – a Fact for which we have the unimpeachable word of an unidentified sub-assistant intern to Mr. Howard Berman;
III. …upon consultation with the finest legal minds that limitless funding can employ, we find it consistent with the law to assert that such rights encompass each and every Unintellectual Manifestation of THE PROPERTY for the entire time that its Intellect is undergoing extraction for the purposes of mass commodification and consumption. Such unintellectual entities would include, but are by no means limited to clothing, cigarette fumes, lint, carbon dioxide, body odors, false teeth, children (legitimate or bastard), fingernail filings, lipstick smears, traces of pharmaceuticals, used chinese food, gases, used tissues, fallen hair, dead skin, earwax, boogers and all equivalent excrementa.
IV. ...with plaster casts of celebrity penises proving profitable, the marketability of live children in particular is a safe and sane investment opportunity. We are advised there will be sufficient revenue to engineer the survival of any legal challenges.
V. ...with human cloning around the corner, the possibilities brighten even further - what musick lover wouldn't want a little living action figure of their favorite PROPERTY for their very own?
In view of the foregoing, We call upon the RIAA to draft - and upon Congress to approve – vigorous new legislation ensuring in perpetuity the industry’s inalienable right to copyright and trademark the Unintellectual ontological and scatological residue of its PROPERTY for purposes of sale, rent, lease or other mercantile arrangement as may yet be devised.
Signed, etc.
[Note: It is your public servant's unswerving opinion that the proceeds from the sale or rent of such items – in particular healthy celebrity infants - will handily supplement Cash Flow and redound to the everlasting creditworthiness of the Industry. If the magnates and mavens do not think it impertinent, I will merely suggest that in a show of compassion, and in consideration of the new revenue enhancements deriving from said enterprise, the industry give thought to dedicating a small portion of the surplus revenue derived to the establishment of orphanages for the unmarketable children acquired through Unintellectual Property Rights Management (UPRM). Surely government contracts may be had for the contruction, operation and maintenance of such things at taxpayers’ expense?]
Your Humble Projector Under God,
Martinus Scriblerus Secundus
