SOPA

I’ve had several people ask me what I think about this and how they’ve been surprised that I haven’t had a post about it, mostly because I always have an opinion on political nonsense, and second, because as a fiction writer I get pirated a lot, so I have skin in the game.  I haven’t posted much because I’ve been running behind. Correia 2.4 should be here anytime now, but is taking his sweet time. (Mrs. Correia has started calling this pregnancy Occupy Womb Street)

As for SOPA, piracy sucks, but I’d much rather have some loser rip me off than give an already out of control government one more Orwellian power. Screw Sopa.

All of my state’s congressmen and sentators are now against it, including Hatch (who was one of the original sponsors). Good. Kill this piece of garbage.

As for all of the people out there on the internet having a massive freak out about the government potentially damaging something they love… WELCOME TO THE PARTY.

You think this is something new or unusual? Nope. This is just about a topic that you happen to be familiar with. If you fall into that camp, I want you to take a deep breath, step back, and examine all of the other issues in the past that you didn’t know jack squat about, but your knee jerk reaction was to say “there’s a problem, the governement has to do something!” Well guess what? The crap the federal government usually comes up with to fix these problems is similar to SOPA. In other words, the legislation addresses a perceived problem by instituting a bunch of stupid overregulation and taking away someone’s freedom. 

You think people need access to affordable medical care and shouldn’t be denied coverage? Well, you got used and we got the bloated ridiculous mess that is Obamacare. You saw a news report about how big business defrauded people and said congress should do something? Well, everyone in the business world got screwed because of Enron by completely useless new arbitrary crap laws, and a few years later we got into an even bigger financial crisis which the arbitrary crap laws we spent billions conforming to did nothing to prevent. No, because that financial crisis was caused by people saying that there was this huge problem that needed to be fixed, so more people who couldn’t afford to pay mortgages could still buy houses, and the government simply had to do something to fix this problem!

Any crisis… Any problem… You ask the feds to fix it, you get this kind of answer.  Almost never do the laws fix the actual problem. Instead the government gets bigger and gains a few more powers and it doesn’t fix the issue. When the problem gets bigger, then the government gets bigger and gains a few more powers that actually make the problem worse. Oh look! Despite all of these laws the problem has gotten even bigger? Whatever should we do? Why, I know! Let’s pass an even bigger law that takes away more individual freedom and gives the government more control!

Repeat, repeat, repeat. Any topic, any situation, any problem.  They address it, you lose freedom and they gain more control. Some of you are only offended today because this particular law hurts something you enjoy. The rest of the time? Screw it. You can’t be bothered to pay attention. Or worse, people like me who are up in arms over an issue are just cranks or anti-government crackpots.

I was going to close this blog post with a quote I read about freedom versus control, but Wikipedia was down protesting SOPA. 🙂

EDIT:  Right after I posted this, friend and co-author Mike Kupari posted this. So I stole it from him. (surely a SOPA violation!)  He’s on the same wavelength: 

You didn’t care when the government decided it could spy on you without a warrant. You didn’t care when they started telling you what you could eat. You didn’t care when your kids’ education was turned into indoctrination. You didn’t care when they were more worried about military veterans than Islamic terrorists. You didn’t care when they spent so much money that our entire economic system may co…llapse. You didn’t care when they gave billions of your money to unions and corporations that were their political contributors. You didn’t care when inert cosmetic features on guns were felonies. You didn’t care when they made it a fucking crime to not have government approved health insurance.

All of these things were done in your name. On your behalf. To help you, protect you, take care of you. Each time you gave them more power and gave away more of your freedom. Each time you believed them when they said they were protecting you, or helping the less fortunate, or sticking it to “the rich” who “aren’t paying their fair share”.

Each time you applauded their efforts. Mocked those that were concerned. Called them uncaring or racist or alarmist or stupid. Each time you asked for more. You begged them to take care of you, protect you, right wrongs, enforce equality.

But now that your Internet porn and bit torrents are threatened, NOW you care?

It’s too late for all that, kids. Turning off Wikipedia for a couple days isn’t going to win back the freedoms we’ve pissed away. It isn’t going to undo decades of expanding government power. They’ve already decided there’s nothing they can’t do, no law they can’t pass.

We watched it happen. We let it happen. We have the country we deserve.

So go ahead, post a rant about SOPA on your blog. Link to Ron Paul’s web page. Pretend you’re doing something. It’ll make you feel better. Then you will go back to business as usual and so will they.

Democracy in action. Isn’t it beautiful?

The Burning Throne, Episode 12: Kuni Magatsu

49 thoughts on “SOPA”

  1. It would have been nice if there had been nearly this much outrage about Congress giving the president the power to imprision anyone forever without due process.

  2. I’ve read your post leading to this post on your blog. I would like to ask you something, copied and pasted from my Facebook comment: What could we, the people, do about our government? Vote them out, perhaps?

    1. Also, the reason why we start caring is no just because, like you said, it will affecting us, it’s the fact that the majority of us (the Internet users included) are selfish. Once pushed, we can become stubborn as all hell. Selfish, and yet decent.

      1. So I ask both of you this: Why would you call us out for this? It’s rather harsh of you to say that, and I had a feeling I would be called out for being soft. I could be, so what?

    2. Besides, this is the Internet. People are becoming more aware of our government. It’ll be hard for them to cover their tracks.

  3. As an old fart I’ve watched this going on since the 60s.
    “Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn’t “. — Ben Franklin

  4. What was that old quota about “The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots occaionally”? of course i am paraphrasing but you get the idea. maybe its time for a second revolutionary war to clean out the trash we have allowed to creep into office…………..just a thought………:)

    1. I fear that a second Americian Revolution would trend more to the classic road of “blood in the streets, lots of purges, and pretty much the same kind of bastards in charge” that most violent revolutions in the past few hundred years have traveled. That the first Revolution was mostly free of this is a very, very unique situation. Just look how freaking nasty and bloody the Civil war was for a good example.

      A revolution tends to be a bit like stirring a septic tank- it lets the really, really nasty bits float to the top.

      1. Our revolution was helped by the fact that the military leader, George Washington, didn’t set himself up as a dictator, didn’t run for office under the Articles of Confederation, and when elected under the Constitution, only ran for two terms before retiring (setting a tradition that continued until FDR broke it, after which it was made into a law).

        And don’t forget that the American Revolution was pretty bloody and nasty – just not in the same bloody and nasty league that the Civil War was in.
        The Civil War involved a much larger number of troops (millions of soldiers and sailors in the Civil war (both sides) versus hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sailors in the Revolutionary War (both sides and including other parts of the conflict overseas)).

        And don’t forget the tarring and feathering of tax collectors and the anti-Tory mobs. Just because the Revolution was justified and made the world a better place doesn’t mean that there wasn’t blood in the streets.Revolutions are always bloody, nasty affairs, Its what the leaders of the Revolution do afterwards that makes the difference.

      2. Our fore fathers meant for the American Revolution to continue, and not just stop with them. The Revolutionary War was meant to stop with them. The quote “Occasionally the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants.” We, the Patriots in this case, need to continually work, sweat and bleed for our liberties and if, God forbid – but needed, to take down Tyrants. The more we bleed for our Liberties, the less chance we will need to bleed Tyrants to water the tree of Liberty the Tyrants won’t have that much power.

    2. How do I want to fix the problem..well..lets start with a quote from Babylon 5. “I’d like to live just long enough to see them cut off your head and mount it on a pike as a warning to the next 10 generations; that some favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave just like this. *waves* Can you and your associates arrange that for me Mr Morden?” Now multiply it by…543…for starters…

  5. I think the SOPA protest is great and all but where were all these protestors when Obama gave the middle finger to due process? I guess due process is only convenient when you’re the one being locked up without the key? One by one this president is taking all the things that are great about this country and dropping a deuce on them.

  6. Larry and Mike,

    Brilliant! A lot of my friends are all freaked out, and I am sitting back watching, while sending the occasional email to my state reps reinforcing the fact that I am one of the masses that hates this idea, and their bill. As an aspiring writer, yes, I’m not thrilled to be ripped off, but even if they don’t do it here, they will do it in other venues.

  7. Habeas Corpus anyone? Secret military tribunals? Indefinite custody? No attorney-client privilege? “Patriot” Act, my ass. My form of patriotism requires upholding the Constitution, not eroding it at every session of Congress.

  8. One of the chief functions of the US government is to protect an individual’s right to property–physical or intellectual.

    According to Wikipedia: “Congress says it’s trying to protect the rights of copyright owners, but the “cure” that SOPA and PIPA represent is worse than the disease. SOPA and PIPA are not the answer: they would fatally damage the free and open Internet.”

    Okay, fine.

    But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an issue that needs to be addressed.

    Larry Correia would not be making oodles of money on his books if the US government wasn’t ready to prosecute copyright infringement on behalf of him and those he’s licensed his books to.

    Otherwise, it would be a fairly easy to set up a site like Amazon’s (none of that goofy, complicated, STD virus-laded torrent crap) and sell pirated electronic and hardcopy books that look exactly like the originals without having to pay Correia, Patterson, King, Collins, et al a dime. The only thing that prevents someone from brazenly doing this is the fear of Amazon and publishers bringing suit and getting that nasty old government involved.

    So SOPA is a piece of crap. What’s the solution?

    The only argument I’ve seen so far for addressing copyright infringement is to make sure that it’s more convenient to get legal product than it is to get illegal product from a pirate. And to make sure the price isn’t “too high.”

    Um, that’s like saying the best way to prevent piracy of physical property is to let the thieves steal all the apples they want out of your orchard, set up shop next to you, and hope you do okay.

    That’s not protecting property at all. It’s the exact opposite.

    There isn’t something about that rubs you the wrong way?

    Something needs to be done.

    This whole the digital property must be free because I want it business is a bunch of hippie crap. Sounds like Occupy Wall Street tent people to me.

    The fact is that the internet was never designed for security or for copyright protection. In fact, until the early 90’s it was ILLEGAL to use it to make money. And so it’s been a police free zone without and real structures to protect property. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t protect an individual’s property.

    Or that it’s not government’s job. That’s one of the reasons why we set up government–to adjudicate disputes over property.

    If SOPA is so bad, I’d like to hear a real solution.

    1. The solution, as it’s always been, is for parents to teach their children correct principles. A functioning society lives or dies by the virtue of its citizens. Even a police state can’t catch every criminal, nor stop every crime–and who wants to live in a police state?

      Piracy is already illegal. The solution is not more draconian laws that are not any easier to enforce than the laws that are already in place. As we’ve seen with laws like the DMCA, such laws are often abused to remove legitimate content that someone does not like. The result is not decreased crime, but rather decreased freedom.

      The solution is not DRM. After well over a decade of trying to protect content with encryption, most believe that it cannot be done. See http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html , which you can read tomorrow when BoingBoing comes back from its SOPA blackout. The result of DRM is not decreased piracy; it is decreased freedom (no format shifting, no fair use, dubious long-term playability).

      The only proven solution, which you have rejected, is to adapt your business model to the changing face of technology. Look at the music industry: they launched a long, costly, PR disaster of a legal campaign of suing copyright infringers, which has done nothing to curb piracy. They tried DRM, which does not work. Now you can pay for unfettered digital downloads of any music from a number of digital shops, and legal digital downloads outstrip physical sales, and hey, the music industry is still around.

      That is not to say you accept theft. You have to enforce what you can, to educate and decry. Parents need to teach their children. But should the day ever come when the cry of “something must be done” is raised and the only answer is to limit civil liberties, on that day our existence as a free nation will be on shaky ground, soon to crumble and fall.

      Of course, that’s what Larry is arguing has been going on for decades.

      1. I agree the culture needs to support honesty. At the same time, that only goes so far. Especially when the internet connects everyone, including those who do not espouse such values.

        At my kid’s middle school nobody locks their locker. They leave their backbacks hanging on pegs. My wife, a teacher, doesn’t have to keep her wallet on her person at all times. She can leave it in her bag. Things just don’t get stolen out of those places here. However, in the place I grew up we needed locks. There were enough folks there who would have stolen that they were needed.

        Teach people to be honest, but in high crime areas, you still lock your car, maybe use the Club, and don’t leave $1,000 sitting on the seat.

        Yeah, people can still steal the car. You can’t ever eradicate crime 100%. But total elimination is not the goal. The goal is reduction to an acceptable level of damange. And you reduce your risk by taking thwarting measures.

        The internet is a high crime area.

        The question is what are the measures we can take to thwart the crime and punish those we catch. Because while piracy is illegal, if nobody enforces the law, then it’s effectively made legal.

        DRM doesn’t work very well at all. True. But there are other measures that surely can be taken.

        The internet was not designed for security or attribution. This is part of the reason why we are so vulnerable to corporate espionage, the stealing of military secrets, identity theft, etc. Right now our electrical grid is bascially open to attack from anyone who wants to break in becasue all of the various electrical companies have connected the systems that control their plants etc. to the internet. Attackers can break generators by giving them commands that speed up and slow their rotations.

        You can teach people not to break into the grid and plant logic bombs, but China etc. are going to do it. Have done it.

        To me, the internet has some fundamental flaws built into its protocols that have not been addressed. And there should be some simple measures that can be taken to thwart theft, ID thieves, and shut them down. After all, I can google and come up with tons of sites that illegally sell Larry’s books. It seems to me to be quite easy to find these folks.

        So why not shut them down? Why can’t the ISPs come up with some protocols to police themselves?

        Right now accountants use FASB to set standards. That’s a non-government group. The SEC, a government group, demands audits of public company’s statements and is willing to let FASB set the standards. Auditing doesn’t reduce all corporate fraud (Enron anyone?), but it does reduce fraud.

        I don’t see why the ISPs cannot do the same. And why the government, the people, cannot demand they do. Certainliy the tier 1 ISPs, of which there are only something like six (Verizon, AT&T, etc.), and across whose lines about 90% of internet traffic flows, should be able to come up with something.

        I’ve been reading CYBER WAR by Richard Clarke (who has a definite axe he wants to grind on Bush) and AMERICA THE VULNERABLE by Joel Brenner, and if we can take steps to secure ourselves from hackers, it seems we should be able to come up with something for intellectual thieves as well.

      2. Sorry John, but unless you’re willing to mandate dumb terminals locked down tighter than Fort Knox as the only acceptable viewing/computing device, any DRM will be broken faster than you can say Jimmy cracked corn.

        The only reason consoles get away with it is the userbase is placid and percentage wise doesn’t care. Also, multiplayer is a primary motivation on the systems. See the PS3 as an example which was piracy free until they decided to remove open source functionality, and was then cracked in less than a year by interested parties with the technical know-how.

        Institute tougher laws and instead of knowing who did it you’ll just see the cracks suddenly pop up on the internet with only a pseudonym. Not to mention it’s much, much easier to crack a text file than a game system. For that matter, scanning programs have advanced more than far enough within the past 6-7 years that the physical copies would be simple to digitize only by holding the video camera over the book and flipping through the pages at a relatively quick speed, especially if you could keep a steady pace.

        That leaves destroying how the internet currently works, instituting digital borders on a system that makes the great firewall of china look free and open in comparison, run entirely by the various governments.

      3. I should revise my earlier statement. It is much much easier to crack a text file which you know even three paragraphs of than a game system. A completely unknown text file would be quite a bit harder, but since this is not a secret communique such conditions are not present.

      4. Ravenshrike, I’m not talking about DRM. DRM doesn’t work very well.

        I’m talking about doing something to target the sites. Allowing pirates to operate in the open emboldens them and effectively says pirating is not illegal.

        I don’t see that as a solution.

        You don’t need dumb terminals. And we don’t need the great wall of China. And while new sites can pop up quickly, Google can find them just as quickly and catalog what they’re selling; it’s doing it now.

        How hard would it be for law enforcement to build an app that utilizes Google to ID these sites? And then revoke their ability to do business in the US? We do that with all sorts of companies now. You can’t sell a thing in the US without a business license. If we find you’re breaking the law, we shut your business down. As we should.

        I don’t see the problem with doing something similar on the streets of the internet.

      5. Given the current structure of the internet, virtually impossible. I personally use OpenDNS because Comcast’s DNS system has crapped out on me multiple times, but the fact that the internet structure allows me to use any DNS repository I want means that ISPs could never stop it. For that matter, since I use OpenDNS MegaUpload(Which while kinda silly that they only seized the domain name instead of stopping the servers,or at least the code running MU sites on the servers, is the right way to go about doing it) is still up for me using the domain name instead of the direct IP address.

        In order to change that you would effectively have to mandate the use of a not invented yet(and pretty damn nasty to implement effectively when all’s said and done) government controlled internet protocol system and force the ISPs to block all other traffic. It would be damned ugly, to say the least, and I’m still not sure you could set it up to not be spoofed.

        There’s deep packet inspection, which could be looked at akin to customs spot checking freighters, but unless you were to outlaw the use of non government(and by extension your ISP) accessible encryption that’s a nonstarter.

      6. The biggest problem you’re going to have with internet piracy is that any solution that respects due process is never going to be fast enough to stem the tide given how fast the internet routes around anything it perceives as damage. If the solution takes more than a month or two, which it most certainly will if it respects due process unless you double the FBI’s budget, and allocate that increase in budget simply to copyright enforcement, the internet and the people using it will adapt and move on. This is especially true given that TPB is going to switch strictly to magnet links.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme

        What this effectively means is that the entire directory of TPB will be able to be to be carried around on a 32GB thumb drive, making the site itself superfluous really. Without mandating the types of computers people use or completely changing how the internet works, any solution is utterly ineffective. The internet equivalent of an assault weapons ban if you will.

        Not only that, but at that point if you target the site you’re criminalizing pointing out that you can get drugs on a certain road in town from anyone on that street, and giving people including any law enforcement that comes by the special passphrase to get the drugs, while wearing a T-Shirt that says Coca Cola and getting paid to wear it. Which given free speech and press is a bit of an iffy proposition.

        All that leaves is going after individual file sharers, which as the RIAA has found out is a losing proposition when due process is involved. You think the courts are packed now? Wait until you try to move even a million additional cases through them. Cases which will have less priority than pretty much any other type of crime. Unless you are going to prosecute in that volume, a dent in the flow of copyright violation will never be made.

    2. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but if I may, I’d like to take a crack at this:

      First, defining the problem:

      1) People taking copyrighted work and selling it/giving it away for free (in total) without any benefit going to the creator (author, musician, actor, etc.). As I understand it, this falls into three legal subcategories:
      a) within the US
      b) outside the US
      c) outside the US for sale/download within the US

      2) People taking copyrighted work and selling/giving away for free portions of the work. (examples would be posting a segment of a video or song online, or a chapter of a book, but not the whole thing).

      3) People taking copyrighted work and making derivative works from it (AMVs, fan fiction, etc.)

      The SOPA solution (from what I understand) was an attempt to address problem 1c, but as the language is phrased, if I were to (as happens often on a site I admin at) post a paragraph from a book as part of a book club-style discussion in a forum (more of a problem 2 issue), that site could be taken offline, pre-emptively without due process of law. If I were to post a paragraph from, say, a Jim Butcher novel on Larry’s blog here, WordPress would be considered both at fault, and forcibly removed from the internet, while I would hold no blame.

      A more appropriate solution for problem 1c would be a variation on the ‘cease and desist’ notices sites get currently for copyright violations. Since the US doesn’t have jurisdiction in foreign countries, the copyright holder, instead of sending said notice to the site owner, could send it to ISPs (like Comcast) for removal of that site from DNS.

      And here’s where we drift into the grey areas–

      I think most people you talk to will agree that problem 1 is a real problem and needs addressing. Most people who use the internet probably don’t see a lot of harm in problems 2 or 3. There’s a lot of murk and grey areas, though, and there aren’t easy solutions to a lot of that– in some cases, even to problem 1 scenarios.

      For instance, how would you handle sales/downloads of The Star Wars Holiday Special? It’s sort of a geek-bad-movie holy grail. A lot of geeks want it (to the point that Weird Al references getting a bootleg of it in the ‘White and Nerdy’ music video), but Lucas has been quoted saying that he would like to take a hammer to every copy of it in existence– in essence, it will never be released in non-bootleg format, at least while Lucas is alive. Should that be handled in the same fashion as bootleg copies of Revenge of the Sith? What about The Phantom Edit (the bootleg of The Phantom Menace where Jar-Jar was removed)?

      Or what about downloads of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves? If Disney hadn’t filed a lawsuit and lobbied heavily several years ago to keep their intellectual property copyrighted into perpetuity, it would have entered the public domain by now, along with Steamboat Willie and a number of the other early Disney cartoons.

      Sadly, I have more questions than answers in this post– I know you were looking for solutions. But my point (or one of them at least) is, that the people who drafted the bills in question didn’t put any thought into some of the sticky issues involved. And the solution they put into play is going to cause far more harm than good if it does pass into law.

  9. Oh, heck… I was gonna steal part of it, and part of Mad Mike’s rant, and maybe even Kupari’s well-thought out stuff…

    But I’ll just link to it. And hope that some of the folks out there pay attention…

    Wired magazine is “blacked out,” but is running an article that says that the government should REQUIRE car makers to add a more user friendly idiot light to vehicles… Looks like a lot of folks just don’t get it…

  10. Larry and Mike,

    Your comments hit home for me but i will say this the people who might call of you crazy has no really idea on what the government has done to us over the years. With ever problem the people want fixed we the people just create new ones that need to be fixed because we look for ways to get around the laws that are passed. Know I am not saying the the laws that are passed to stop the issues that they were passed for worked because as you can see they have not and will not.

  11. The problem is never “too much” regulation. The problem always has been, and always will be, the wrong regulation. True justice demands some concession to reality instead of dogmatic insistence on some warped definition of “freedom”. Equality of outcome is a stupid idea and won’t ever work, but neither can your mythical equality of opportunity exist in a world where everyone’s ability to compete depends on circumstance, birth, and other factors outside their own control. Rawl’s “A Theory of Justice” is a worthwhile read. The key is not a leveling of the playing field, but a constant effort to work as best we can to everyone’s advantage.

    I agree with you that government should be much more limited than it currently is, but the absolute minimum goverment isn’t the best idea either. Instead, regulation and laws must be subject to much more stringent review and especially domain expert review instead of simply the richest lobbyist’s.

    1. I would agree with you on that one, MBrant. In fact, I think that’s what libertarians kept on missing.

      Eh…no offense, Larry. 😛

  12. Y’all might want to pick up Spider Robinson’s “Melancholy Elephants” and give it a read. Baen has it in a compendium of his other stories.

    MIght find it informative and enlightening on this subject.

  13. From listening to the media companies you’d think that piracy alone is killing their business. The numbers they use to prove their point are inflated and come from the industry.

    I have not bought a music cd in years because there haven’t been any released that I thougth were worth it. I also haven’t downloaded any, legally or illegally, for the exact same reason.

    I rarely go to movies because most of the current crop of movies are not worth ticket price. Some of them are worth the $1.20 it costs for a night from redbox but even that has been iffy.

    My not buying music cd’s or not going to movies is not going to be solved by creating draconian laws that further restrict my freedom.

    Much like the TSA has not solved any problems with terrorism. (If you don’t believe me go look at the TSA blog and their top 10 stops for 2011, not a SINGLE one of their confiscated items is related to terrorism or was even confiscated from a terrorist). Going into its 11th year the TSA has yet to stop one terrorist attack.

  14. I appreciate all the comments here, but I’m afraid the reality of the end game will be vastly different than many of you imagine. The sheer number of sheeple in this country – those who could give a crap about liberty or freedom – outnumber those who care. Of the remaining who do care, those who would risk their lives and the lives of their family are outnumber by those who would not. Of those who would risk their lives, those who are equipped, physically, mentally, and spiritually to fight a new American Revolution are far outnumbered by who would not. And so on. When you get down to it, there are very few Americans left who would or could fight the ginormous establishment. I know we tend to romanticize the American Revolution patriots who won this country from the superior British forces. But this battle would be infinitely harsher on those who will not comply.

  15. The term piracy itself is a misnomer its used because of its connotation. Copying a digital item is not THEFT. Theft implies depriving another of its use.

    When you can not FIND physical copy of an album in the store or digitaly in the format you want (at an affordable price nearly instantly) What choice is there? The music industry ONLY wants us to listen to the best and newest which unfortunately at the moment leads to listening to a lot of really bad pop music or (pardon me I have to vomit) Rap music.

    If you want to go buy a copy of for instance, The Velvet Underground & Nico.(only 20,000 copies were made when it was released but is a fantastic album with the Andy Warhol cover) You sure as HECK (I will not swear in Larrys forum) Can’t find it at the store. Call around Pick any 5 reccord stores (if you can find them) within reasonable driving distance. Even USED record stores. Good Luck it doesnt exist as far as record lables are concerned. You might possibly find it used on Amazon Wait 3 weeks for it to ship and pay 5 bucks for it on a remasterd MONO CD from 1996 (meaning its brittle because old polycarbonate gets that way) (you can buy it for 50 bucks USED in 180 gram vinyl ) If it is a Newer CD I might not be able to play it in my Computer OR worse it will break the CD player in my PC OR it will break the Carputer I have that i use for an entertainment system in my car. You can do all of that and have all of that happen the alternative is you can look online torrent the thing get it in stereo all the bonus track in .flac format that you can easily convert to any format you want with no DRM. For the cost of inconviniencing a few electrons.

    With a MOVIE you can do the same thing and get a better experience, PIrate copy of any movie and you will find that you can avoid all the warnings all the promotions for other movies that you cant skip on the DVD (seriously 5 promotions for other movies that came out 10 years ago on the shreck 2 DVD and I CANT SKIP THEM WTF?) Some DVD movies I cant play in my computer (I just bought a DVD player for just this reason) Some will break my PC. SOME (SCREW YOU SONY) will come with a nice little rootkit that lets folks monitor my system and potentialy do nasty things to it.

    If you make it as convinient as possible and FAST and the experience PLEASANT people will buy (If you can’t do that then it better be REALLY GOOD like Larry’s Novels Cause visiting the bookstore anymore IS NOT PLEASANT due to stupid teenagers that I Never had the opportunity to be.) Bettween Mrs Corriea, Niven, Pournell, Ringo, Kratman, Elizabeth Moon, among others I know Baen has gotten in the last 5 years a full 2 weeks of my pay. And I make 20 bucks an hour off the inability of people to use a compuer.

    As an experiment if you are older than 35 years old Pick 5 of your favorite albums from your Teenage rebelion years. Make sure they are Not the greatest hits albums. Call or go to 5 record stores or places where they sell music in your area. Look for those albums 9/10 You wont find em unless you happen to have a REALLY GOOD used record store around. Go look online on Amazon See if you can find them you might find them but you may only find them used. You probably will find them available for download as individual songs and it will cost you the same for the good songs as the really bad ones. but you are going to spend the same for those 8-16 or more songs as you would for the entire album NEW on CD (in some cases a lot more for those triple and quadruple album sets that came out in the 60s and 70s and into the 80s with really productive bands like the Clash (36 songs on Sandinista REALLY?? that had to be like 4 LP’s
    )

  16. Other effects of Sopa/Pipa that are not quite as well understood.

    With the law as written RIGHT NOW,

    If I were to quote a part of a movie OR lyrics to a song OR post a link that links to a Cover band doing a performance of a song on Youtube OR a Music video that the Original band has done or released OR even just a clip of (in the case of classic songs) a record player playing a 45 of a single, This whole blog and infact the entire WordPress.com domain COULD be shut down. At the request of a copy holder. So in theory, With 1 link to say Fats Domino’s Blueberry Hill. His estate (because it didnt pass into public domain due to Copyright extensions as pushed by the Disney co) could shut down Larry’s blog and theoreticaly All of Word Press. They could also shut down Youtube if youtube hosted it. Larry would have NO recourse and there is no appeal.

    OR here is a fun one

    If Larry were to be particularly peevish towards one of his more vocal critics (this could be fun actually ) on the Huffington post website for instance that quoted a few sections of a novel that he hasnt submited to a Publisher (and thus keeping his copyright) he could shut down the entire Huffington post website. Much as I hate the Huffingglue post I would be agast at such behavior from ANYBODY ( I would be agast but I would laugh A LOT)

  17. The only thing certain is when you feed .gov after a panic attack by the MSM, it gets bigger and bigger and eventually turns into the monster we know it can become.
    Remember this. There is nothing you can do for yourself that a politician cannot do less efficiently, using more time, greater inconvenience, and greater expense to everyone but themselves.

    Ray

  18. Democracy; the theory that the Common Man knows what he wants, and deserves to get it, good and hard.

    H. L. Mencken

    P.S. Mencken was active during the time frame of your 1930’s books. Any chance of hear what the old boy might have been up to?

  19. Excellent, excellent, and right on the money!! Yeah, used to be one of those people always waving my fist in the air, and demanding that Big Brother get off his butt and DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!! Then I began to take a closer and harder look at what the response tom my calls and others’ calls to action were leading to…and was nearly as appalled as Trip when he met the Elf Queen. (The horror…the horror…) This nation is reaching a fork in the road, where we get to decide whether we keep our Republic, in some form, or go on surrendering our rights in the sake of “equality” and “fraternity” until we no longer have “liberty”.

    “Freedom of choice/Is what you’ve got. Freedom from choice/Is what you want.” – Devo, “Freedom of Choice’

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