It inspired me to write a country western, in-your-face, patriotic love song called "You're Standing At Ground Zero of My Heart and Soul". I'm going to put a couple of the verses here.

Jenn made me promise that I wouldn't spend the entire day on this so I'm just going to quickly write down a few choppy verses.

If you're interested in seeing all of this (and maybe hearing it) let me know. If there is enough interest I'll release it no earlier than Sept 11, 2003

Why?

Because this is a labor of love and I don't want this to see it commercialized. If the song is particularly meaningful to you let me know. I'd love to hear from you if this piece has touched you in some significant way.

I think this has all of the required elements: bad grammar; awkward aggression in a song that is supposed to be about love and outrage at violence; mixed metaphors; lack of focus; I play to the crowd in a couple of places; lowest common denominator lyrics and sentiment; It rhymes (sort of); it sounds forced and contrived.

Am I missing something?

So here goes... This is an original copyrighted work.

You're Standing At Ground Zero of My Heart and Soul
by robreed

- - cut - - This isn't the opening verse - -

You're standing at ground zero of my heart...
note: trail off
(repeat) you're standing at ground zero of my heart...
If a terrorist could explode a bomb in my soul,
you'd be killed on the spot...
...because you're standing at ground zero of my heart.

- - cut - -

Our love is a monument to true American pride,
and it's light shines bright and bold.
You're standing at ground zero of my soul.

- - cut to the closing verse - -

You listening Osama?
You can't touch this love.
Take all of your hate and you know where you can shove it.
We've been here for a long time,
we've weathered so many storms...
If you want to try to mess with us again
the American Military will show you to the door.
note: (speak this quietly and look up at the audience with a crooked smile)
*the hard way*.
Americans
note: (speak this part and pump fists in the air)
*this Sept 11*
we'll all be standing right there and
that's where we'll make our new start.
We'll never forget... no we ain't ever gonna forget...
as Americans...
we carry ground zero with us in our hearts.
God Bless America!

10:26:35 AM  

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My girlfriend Jenn has started acting up and so I've had to put her on a point rating system to try to rein in her out of control behavior. Here's how it works...

She starts off at 100 points a day and loses a point for every crazy, out of control or dumb thing she does.

I'll post the daily results here.

1:21:36 AM  

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I've been dreading this but unfortunately I feel like I have to respond to this post on slashdot.org.

Actually I could care less about the post itself. There are studpid people in the world, that isn't a surprise. I'm resposnding to the post because Jenn's brother linked to it from his site and had this to say about the post, " I enjoyed this guy's post on slashdot about copy-right abuse..." and seeing this rediculous post start to spread is just too much for me to take so here I go...

To start I want to recommend that you go and read the actual post. I will be making references to it and I don't want to be accussed of being inaccurate, so please do read the original and if my restatement differs significantly from the original itself then certainly prefer the original over my interpretation.

The post is a very biased attempt at a discussion of copyright law specifically in the United States. I guess this is as good a place as any to start attacking the author's arguments. It's a great big world and there are more countries in the world than the United States and copyright law is a universal. From western democractic governments to communist China copyright law is a universal and in every case the intention of copyright is clear and clearly necessary...

- - - - - - - - - -

Chinese constitution, article 1

... for the purposes of protecting the copyright of authors in their literary, artistic and scientific works and the rights related to copyright, of encouraging the creation and dissemination of works which contributes to the construction of socialist spiritual and material civilisation, and of promoting the development and flourishing of socialist culture and science.

- - - - - - - - - -

and for the United States Constitution Section 8 Clause 8

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;

- - - - - - - - - -

The intention of copyright law is to promote progress in arts and sciences and everything else that can be thought of as useful intellectual property. I'm just as cynical as the next guy, I'm not suggesting and I don't believe that anyone particularly cares about authors and inventors but of course government certainly does care about progress... and not because they care about improving the human condition or artistic expression or any other such silly sentiment (in actual fact, of course government cares about all of this too but to appeal to you juvenile socialists out there I'll pretend that governments aren't collections of people and instead are some isolated other-species of some sort out to ruin all of our lives as part of some incredibly convoluted plan to control our souls through globalization. Maybe they're robots. ) Progress means money in the forms of taxes and tariffs and in an ever smaller world progress means strategic positioning, power and influence on the global stage, which not coincidentally means money in the form of taxes and tariffs, and also security and political determinism. Also, progress helps government with the difficult task of governing which can imply greater levels of control and censorship unless the leaders are fair and just, and granted, they rarely are.

Copyright is a concession. Governments, even communist governments need to encourage creative thought because for all that money can buy and for everything that can be monopolized creativity can't.

Creativity and intellectual pursuit leads to intellectual property and necessitates the creation of laws addressing intellectual property issues.

The author attempts to strengthen his position by attacking the history of copyright. I'll refer to two passages

- - - - - - - - - -

Copyright was originally instituted as a means for the British Crown to censor the printing press, a new technology (at that time) which they felt threatened by.

- - - - - - - - - -

Copyright was later "reformed" in the Statute of Anne to give authors rights theoretically equal to those of the (by then) entrenched publishing cartel. This is the point in history that copyright advocates will try to pass off as the "beginning" of copyright, ignoring its much darker, earlier past, and the original reason for its inception: censorship.

- - - - - - - - - -

This may or may not be true. I don't really care to look it up and debate it, as the only point I want to make is that it is irrelevant either way. It doesn't much matter to the legitimacy of current copyright law if it was originally enacted as a justification for having sex with farm animals. There are many many perfectly just practices, institutions and inventions that have less than squeaky clean histories. The first airplanes were used by the US military to help them kill people.

The first flight lasting more than 5 minutes took place on November 9, 1904 . The US government bought it's first plane in 1909 and in 1912 the first airplane armed with a machine gun was flown at an airport that had existed since 1909 when the Wright Brothers took their government-purchased airplane there to teach the Army officers to fly. We've since found other uses for them including travel, scientific and artistic pursuits, airmail and all of the good that can come from these types of services. Think about all of the humanitarian efforts and all of the advancements in science, technology and the arts that would not be possible or would not be practical without airplanes. The first passenger airlines used converted military planes. I hardly see how any of that is relevant.

- - cut - -

I'm cutting out a pretty good sized chunk of this to move it along. If you're interested in hearing more from me about copyright, feel free to send me an email.

I have a few other points I'd like to make.

1. What rights do you think are due you?

Exactly what obligation do you think creators of intellectual property have to share their work? Any relationship starts at the point of entering into some sort of an agreement. The fact that a particular piece of work may exist, that you may be aware of it and that it may meet some need that you have, is irrelevant.

I want a house because I'm sick of renting and there are many houses for sale in my immediate area that would suite my needs nicely. I don't think I can assume from that scenario that one of the owners is obligated to give me a house. Of course if the property is for sale and if I can meet the terms set by the owner to purchase the property then I am certainly due fair consideration and I cannot be descriminated against (openly) on the basis of blah blah blah, but that is the owner's only obligation to me. The owner also has the right not to sell; not to invite me in; not to show me the floor plan; he can knock the thing down assuming he does it right way. I have no rights and also no responsibilities. I'm uninvolved entirely. Welcome to a free market economy. What did you expect.

Why shouldn't these same rights apply to intellectual property? I own my thoughts and I'll be damned before I concede that I don't in any way. For some of us intellectual property is all we got. Big media conglomerates tend to be purveyors of intellectual property not producers of it. People are IP factories. The fact that people are sometimes shortsighted and sell out to larger entities, who recognize the value of intellectual property and in turn hold on to it, can hardly be blamed on copyright laws.

Don't sell out.

If you are an inventor, a scientist, a student, a musician or anyone else in legal possession of some piece of IP that has some value, don't sign an agreement that transfers ownership of your intellectual property. Next, convince everyone else to do the same and 'media cartels' will whither and die. It may take a little while, but in the grand scheme of things I hardly see how that is relevant. Sure you may not be able to watch that DVD that you had your heart set on watching but without copyright laws it would never have been made in the first place. Don't believe me? Then just ask someone making real money in the movie industry. Go ask George Lucas if he would have made the Star Wars prequels if there was no way to guarantee that he would be compensated for his time and efforts and no guarantee that he could retain ownership and creative control over the work.

2. You are due the rights to things you do. Without copyright no individual would stand a fighting chance. Creation is one aspect of the process and it's also inherently the most fair. Then there's distribution and marketing, packaging, commerce, management, the legal system etc. Without copyright there is no doubt in my mind that if I were ever to create anything with any commercial potential it would be taken from me. These same media conglomerates would pick up on it, remove my name, repackage, market, distribute and sell it before I finished tinkering with it.

3. Open Source do because copyright do too.

Open Source is copyright, stupid. It's just a relaxed form of copyright made possible by the more restrictive blanket copyright protections. As the rightful owner of a work you're allowed to give it away if you want and you're allowed to specify the terms under which you'll give it away (open source comes with strings attached). Without copyright laws on what basis do you think open source would be allowed to place demands on those who choose to participate in open source efforts? Do you really think open source works because you ask nicely and because people are basically goodness and light? No, open source works because it purports to have legal teeth, something that is just beginning to be tested now. If there are found to be flaws, do you think the open source licenses will be rewritten or simply be left open to abuse and legally unenforceable? Of course they'll be rewritten.

Correct me if I'm wrong and I really do need to read the books that Linus Torvalds has written about the development and growth of Linux (which I will do now though I don't think they will refute what I'm about to say. I will post a correction if I feel fundamentally different about what I'm saying after I read more about this). Even if the intention was the free exchange of ideas and to grow the community and quality and all of the rest of what I've heard from Open Source about Open Source, I want to know if there was really any other option. I think that the motivations behind the development of Linux are not out of line with a 'greedy-mother-fucker-view' of humanity, which can be summed up as, people don't do anything that is not in their own best interest. Even the motivation to be kind is driven by a selfish desire to make one feel good about oneself. You may think this an invalid, silly kind of cyclical logic but I would ask that you think about all of the other crazy stuff people do for no other reason than to make themselves feel a little better. They risk death by undergoing surgical procedures that aren't required to fix some handicap, deformity or medical condition and otherwise do unhealthy things to change their physical appearance or to enhance their abilities in a particular sport of other activity. There are of course other examples including unsafe sexual behaviors, fanatical obsessions of all sorts and the patterns of behavior that follow, and any number of others. The perfect example of this might be drugs and alcohol, which are examples of people doing things that are widely known to be destructive for no other reason than to feel good about themselves for a short amount of time.

By the way, these are all generally considered to be selfish behaviors.

Back to my point... were there any other options for Linux? Linus Torvalds couldn't possibly have done all of the work himself. Freely distributing the source code meant help with the project, the opportunity to grow the project and extend it's reach. I know that Linus has said that his initial motivation for the OS was his own personal use, and not to develop an operating system for the betterment of the world... this is something he got in exchange for distributing the source to Linux. I want to point out that the development of Linux has significant value (what is the current estimation of the amount of money tied to Linux by now?) Freely distributing the source was hardly a magnanimous gesture, it was a barter or a trade. At a time when there were no other options (he couldn't have paid for the talent he would have needed to grow the effort if he wanted to). He took the only route available to him (I'd never make the argument that people aren't lazy). And beyond the help in coding there would have been no other way to capitalize on Linux. I would argue that if Linus had tried to sell it he would not have been successful. There were then and continue to be just too many other competing solutions. Not only would it not have been feasible to build, package, distribute and sell the project, but if all of this happened magically somehow there would have been any number of larger entities around to smell the money and position themselves to syphon off the profit and the growth.

Now at various other times I'm sure there has been the opportunity to cash in by selling out. If that had happened then Linux would probably not be an Open Source project at this point and Linus may have been a wealthier guy right now. That having been said people do make choices and there are things of value beyond money... or rather, there are more ways than one to make money. Linus is still doing very well for himself of course. I haven't seen him turning down all money resulting from his work with Linux and why would he? He's gotten work as a result of Linux and has been paid very well I'm sure. He is a historically significant figure; ask a billionaire how much something like that would be worth to them and I'm sure you could set a pretty high figure if you were selling that type of importance at auction. People have certainly done more for less and if you believe pro athletes, a little piece of that kind of fame is worth more than all of the money in the world. People kiss his ass, which is a perk, and he gets to feel good about himself and his contributions - I can tell you personally that I would pay a lot to get a piece of that. I've done everything I can do to try to be a competent, useful sort of a guy and I can't get a job much less respect for a decade worth of struggle and as a result I feel like shit about myself. Not coincidentally, I'm poor, so I can say definitively that there is some value in all of this. Linux is hardly the story of a guy who sacrificed everything for the betterment of humanity. It's the story of a doofy kind of a smart guy who fell into something and rolled with it to fame and wealth the only way he could.

People are greedy mother fuckers. It would be nice if people weren't greedy mother fuckers but that just isn't how it is. We're in 'life is unfair terroity here' and the only answer I've ever gotten to cries that life is unfair are the equivalent of, 'No shit... now get back to work or go die'.

It's important to keep in mind that copyright law doesn't prevent the original author or creator from doing anything with original works, including give them away. There is nothing about copyright that says that people aren't allowed to freely distribute work that they own or to set reasonable terms for it's distribution, even arbitrary terms, assuming that the terms really are arbitrary and not some sort of discrimination. So what do we expect?

Do we really expect the government to follow citizens around asking them to play nice and share their toys? Is this the role of government? I've seen it written that the government isn't doing enough to encourage this behavior in people. What exactly should be done? It should require no more encouragement than the motivation that should be within all of us to be fair and kind to others in our personal and professional lives and to temper the drive for personal ambition and profit with a desire to contribute and benefit humanity, to do what's in the best interest of progress and innovation and to always push our work forward even if at our own expense.

Of course the truth is that there is no such motivation. We've crushed it somehow. We're all too busy, too self involved and there are too many competing priorities in our own lives. We've all grown callused and cold. It's a catch 22... if people aren't benevolent enough to be fair in their business dealings, to share their work on reseaonable terms on their on accord, then how can these same people be expected to pass laws that would require them to do precisely that? Are you suggesting that the type of people who innovate are greedy bastards but somehow bureaucrats and big business are a beneficent group of magical little caring elves? How did you come to that conclusion?

So corporations are greedy and the government is greedy and if we're going to condemn them for being greedy, for wanting to hold on to intellectual property then why not the people responsible for the creating the work in the first place for not just giving the stuff away or for cashing out and signing away the rights to their original works in exchange for what they agreed to be fair compensation. And then what about the engineer, the architect or the student who willing takes a job and signs an agreement that transfers ownership of all work to the institution in exchange for a pay check. Isn't this the worst kind of greed (the dumb kind)? Of course, this happens all the time in exchange for no more than a pay check or a a letter of acceptance. And it's all about greed. People sign their work away to study at prestigious universities because, out of greed, they want a piece of it and they're too f'ing dumb to honestly evaluate the value of their own intellectual property.

I have news for all of you hopeless idealists out there. Being dumb is the worst crime in the world today and it carries a very stiff penalty... a lifetime of living with yourself and that same stupid brain making mistake after mistake and never learning anything useful. It's still greed all the same. The same greed that necessitates copyright in the first place. Because if it wasn't protected whatever it is, it would get taken and packaged, distributed and sold and the original owner would never see an dime of the money if the only law protecting the author was the governance of human kindness.

And so here we have copyright come full circle. We're all our own worst enemy. We pass overly restrictive laws to protect us from ourselves, we leave loopholes because of our fallibility and then we exploit them to our own derision and finally we rail against the abuses that we heap upon ourselves.

1:15:22 AM  

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