Perhaps the economy would fare better if all boardrooms actually operated like this :) This clip is from the 1967 Robert Morse film version of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
The anti-SOPA/PIPA blitz yesterday got me to thinking…
…And in less time than it will probably take me to type out and publish this blog post, I cooked up an electronic solution, all in my head, to the piracy problem that media corporations are trying to use as an excuse to take over content control of the Internet in the USA…
…And I am not even a programmer.
I’m a poet and filmmaker, albeit one whose day job involves a huge level of digital marketing, and sometimes brain-melting levels of creating customized solutions to managing massive amounts of information (are you tired, yet?).
That boasted, I couldn’t type out a working string of javascript or phtml if my life depended on it.
So here’s my point, if somebody like me can dream up an electronic solution to solving the piracy problem, imagine what a programming genius could dream up…
If banks can protect my money online, if libraries can discreetly find the book I want online, if universities can securely accept my kids’ applications online, if the government can securely process tax returns online, if Amazon can sell me almost anything in the universe online, including fresh episodes of my favorite TV shows, if we can get to the moon in a machine, and send rovers to Mars, I think media companies are probably capable of finding an electronic way to solve their piracy problems.
Of course, such an effort would require money - oh dear: serious IT investment, programmers and database designers, brainy worker bees to help out, generous salaries and benefits that are fair, and most of all, collaboration and cooperation and probably some financial exchange with the biggies, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Wikipedia, Tumblr:), Wordpress, etc, etal.
And, of course, any developer worth his or her IQ should not only demand at least one episode’s worth of Charlie Sheen’s old salary on Two and Half Men to create an electronic anti-piracy solution, but lifetime royalties on the outcomes, if his/her solution works.
Should I share my own solution here?
Heck no! I’d be ripped-off faster than you could pronounce the “r” in ripped. Besides, you may have already figured it out yourself, by now.
Don’t get me wrong, I despise plagiarism, and am all-for artists, musicians, actors, writers, photographers and filmmakers making money and protecting their intellectual properties; but I am also all-against any idea, including SOPA and PIPA, that could inhibit free expression by the rest of us, and I mean “free” in every sense of the word.
Congress should ignore the media corporations’ whining, thus forcing them to PAY to find their own flipping solution to the piracy problem, rather than trying to foist another unworkable law into the US lawbooks on the taxpayer’s dime.
Click the link above to read Joshua Kopstein’s article.
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Imagine life without the Internet folks! Seeya later Facebook! So long online shopping and bill-pay!
LaurasTheory does not understand how SOPA and its compadre in the US Senate even made it to their respective committees. Lobby money? What?
I don’t think the entertainment industry even remotely comprehends the massive amount of free publicity their artists and products are going to lose if either bill goes into law.
Online shopping and banking will also be compromised by these bills, if the security issues raised in this article are valid.
If so, any hopes that the entertainment industry has of actually capitalizing on these bills by selling more product online will fall by the wayside quickly as Internet shoppers drop away like leaves on a windy fall day as concerns about online theft take hold.
So with Tower Records and Blockbuster off the blocks, so to speak, and more paper catalogs, magazines and newspapers cancelled than in the history of paper publishing, what’s the plan for the future of CD and DVD sales?
LaurasTheory offers a few new tips to help reduce our over-use of petro-plastics at a fairly low cost:
1) My most recent favorite discovery: if a food storage scenario REQUIRES a bag instead of a bowl, pan or box, wrap the food in an unused (thus obviously still clean), bio-degradeable doggie bag. When you use the food, you can then repurpose the bag to the needs of doggie cleanup :). Biodegradeable doggie bags are commonly available at most pet stores, and online at reasonable cost.
2) Most moms already know that much money can be saved by packing children’s lunches in re-usable food storage containers. This practice also is more eco-friendly (and cheaper) for food storage in general. Instead of buying box after box, year after year, of plastic bags for food storage, invest in a set of re-usable containers for primary use.
Though plastic is better for child-use for safety reasons, glass is the most preferable for home-use, since it doesn’t absorb mold and only requires petro-plastics for the lids (and one day that will change, too).
3) Instead of using those small, plastic trash-basket liners, or re-using plastic grocery bags for the same, line the bottom of non-kitchen trash-baskets with a paper towel, made of post-consumer content (recycled paper, in other words), or simply with a newspaper or magazine page, if you still take newspapers and magazines.
Some of the above may seem expensive upfront when compared to disposable petro-plastic products you can buy everywhere, but they are a bargain when you consider long term re-usability, and the impact of over-use of disposable plastic products on all our gasoline prices.
Though electric cars are entering the marketplace, AT LAST, many years are going to pass before the transition off gasoline is complete.
The snail’s pace of manufacturing and distribution of plant based (rather than petroleum based) household products into the general marketplace is very frustrating, and the ridiculous prices attached to some of the products, especially trash bags, (which should be 100% biodegrable by now) is, frankly, angering.
LaurasTheory’s view is that the game can be forced by we the people, so to speak, by simply engaging in methodologies that limit our use of plastics, thus creating an impact on the market.
This strategy will, at the very least, help boost the renewable resources sector of the economy, while hopefully, at the same time, take us one step further towards ending the destructive practices that the past three decades of extremely anti-environment (thus anti-life) economic practices have wrought.
We may as well do what we can to discourage the petro industry from mis-using the little bit of petroleum left in the world while we wait for bio-plastics and sustainable vehicles to reach mass-market levels of production.
…Of Real Protection for Artists, Musicians and Writers
Don’t get me wrong in my personal hue and cry over SOPA, the pending act of the US Congress that threatens to lock up electronic free speech and throw away the key. I don’t condone plagiarism and yes, I do believe that plagiarism and piracy for profit are criminal acts that should be punished accordingly.
I also happen to believe that despite all the blogging and reposting and sharing across the wild west of cyberspace, the free and open Internet we know and love today has done more to protect original artists from theft of their work than any lawyer or agent or media conglomerate could ever do.
Why? Because at some point along the great graffiti-ed sidewalk called the Internet superhighway, the name of an original writer or artist who created any original work that went viral is electronically tied to that work, and, if not obviously credited, will most likely resurface in tandem now and again.
Back in the days before computers and the Internet, any unknown and unrepresented writer or artist who got ripped off had little beyond an original manuscript, painting or film negative of proving the case without risking great personal effort, expense, general ridicule, permanent blacklisting and possibly even a counter-suit.
I know this because I was plagiarized myself a couple of times, and know how rotten it feels to see somebody famous saying lines I wrote on TV, knowing that because I trusted the wrong person and failed to establish a legal paper trail, I would never get credit, payment or future work for my original efforts. My story is as old as the Hollywood Hills, ‘nuff said on that point.
My own entry into the blogosphere is fairly recent. I welcome the idea of being able to freely publish, as well as permanently tag, my own stuff. Like many artists, I love sharing ideas more than I love money. I learned the importance of having a day job a long time ago, and that suits me fine, for now. I’ve discovered happily that I personally do not need to repost the work of others to fill up my tiny smidgeon of cyberspace. I’ve got enough junk floating around in my own head at all times to take care of that problem.
However, I also love the idea of helping others be seen. My convictions about according credit where credit is due are quite strong for reasons already expressed. I believe that reposts of anyone else’s work should not only display a published provenance when possible, but that the original creator should be credited, and that the work should be directly linked back to the artist. With that said, I also do not fault anyone who neglects to do the above, especially teenagers, as long as the repeater is not overtly plagiarizing for personal credit or profit.
To be sure, bonafide plagiarism occurs plenty via the Internet and TV media today, but the difference is that electronic link I mentioned. Copyright law should suffice for anyone who wants to make an issue of some vulture claiming credit for an original creator’s line or work of art.
My trouble with the idea of SOPA, beyond the obvious damage it will do to media commerce and its threat to criminalize almost everybody in the world who has internet access and whoever shared anything, is that the bill may actually do more harm than good to original artists, and as a result, severely impede free speech and the free sharing of ideas and knowledge.
SOPA appears to be geared towards punishing the mechanisms of new media, working as a kind of massive electronic book burning, so to speak, tipping the balance in favor of content that has been filtered and processed by the arrogant self-chosen few, tossing the rest of us back into the the lurch to be freely ripped off, and worse: brainwashed, that wicked mechanism of communism so deplored back in the day.
In my world, the name of the bill, “Stop Online Piracy Act,” is a flagrant misnomer. I personally suggest that a law be passed to require that SOPA change it’s name to APTSQ - “Always Protect the Status Quo.” The acronym is as hard to say as the real purpose of SOPA is easy to fathom.
With all this said, I guess one upside to SOPA is that media companies will now be forced to buy advertising to promote their own products; and that may help put some people back to work in the advertising world. In other words, there will be no more free lunch in the free-advertising, word-of-mouth department, either! Ha!
This piece was 100% originally written and copyrighted by Laura M. Mauney :). Thanks for reading. I love the attention.
So far in the POY “yes” voting, the 6 members of the ultra right in the list of 32 all rank in the BOTTOM 30%. These are the people whom the TV news media promote relentlessly every single day and especially on Sunday during the political talk shows. Collectively the 6 ultra-rights’ votes add up to 59.5% of President Obama’s total (giving him the 60:40 advantage), and a mere 5.6% of the winners’ total.
Yes, WE, “The 99%,” are the big winners for POY so far, and have a 94:6 advantage over the ultra right; HA!
In addition to the President, in the TOP 30% are several other champions of WE, including Gabrielle Giffords and Warren Buffet. Two other champions of WE, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, rank in the top 40%.
Though the ~80,000 POY votes as of this hour are a mere capsule of the final totals, LaurasTheory thinks they give a pretty fair snapshot of the REAL sentiments of the majority in our country.
LaurasTheory also thinks the media and the capitalists, though now quite famous for their foolishness, would be wise to pay better attention to the REAL trends, if for no other reason than to capitalize upon them more effectively!
(If you happen to disagree with LaurasTheory, by the way, or vote differently, that’s your right; just don’t trouble yourself to tell LaurasTheory all about it :)
The recession is over. Is your business picking up again? If not, well, the recession may not be the problem.
Your business might be suffering from a boycott.
Below are five simple signs that can indicate whether or not your business is being boycotted.
1) Do you routinely overinflate prices on products that can be purchased a few miles away for less? If so, your business is probably being boycotted.
2) Does your purchasing policy include obstinate prohibitions against buying foods, paper products, and cleaning fluids that are kosher, organic, made from post-consumer content, or otherise deemed eco-friendly or green? If so, your business is probably being boycotted.
3) Do your employees proactively create schemes to cheat your customers out of every last penny we have ever earned? If so, your business is probably being boycotted.
4) Do you employ one or more receptionists or clerks who are unspeakably rude, condescending and bossy to everyone who enters your establishment? If so, your business is probably being boycotted.
5) Have you made a name for your business by routinely violating consumer and environmental protection laws, and additionally donating hundreds, thousands, or millions of the dollars you’ve earned off of your customers’ and employees’ backs to overturning legislation designed to protect consumers and the environment from harm at the hands of your industry? If so, your business is probably being boycotted.
If any one of these signs applies to your business, the chances of a boycott are pretty much 100%.
However, fixing the problem is pretty easy: Don’t overcharge; don’t sell toxic products; don’t cheat; be polite; stop defying the will of the people; and remember the number one rule of success: the people are the market and the market controls everything; it’s never the other way around.
