imomus

It is true copyright itself originated from within a hereditary monarchy, ordained by God. I would imagine the same authority that granted the King sovereignty over all property rights in the kingdom would also have extended to the heathen "folk religions" and their appropriation of registered trademarks.

Here is a new binary: intellectual property vs atheism. Is the belief in (the diminishing plausibility of) copyright the same as the belief in gods?

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http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/archives/2004/11/mickey-and-minn.html

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Momus, I have a vague memory of you mentioning a site where one could save and store videos from Youtube. Did you? If so, could you tell me what it's called?

Thanks, E. Plimsoll.

P.S. Glad you're having a lovely time in Japanory!

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ifotismeni

I use a tool called "Video Ook" (a Firefox extension). Not sure if this is what Momus referred to but Ook does allow you to download and save Youtube videos. Hope this helps.

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mandyrose.livejournal.com

Wow-- aren't these causing a scintillating sensation in my nerve endings. At least these dwarves are really gnomes. Earth spirits? To watch over one's earthly remains? They also remind me of-- what's that Japanese folk figure that's always made into vases and jugs and statues and such--- the name escapes me. But the looks on their faces. And it's funny that they have such beatific, no-mind looks on their faces--- they must be really wise!
I love the cadre of gnomes next to the water bottles-- pick up a 7-pack! Snow White looks very Marianne as she rails against her oppression in ropes. And those chipmunks had better watch their nuts around Donald Duck/Fidel Castro.

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Snow White in bondage is kind of creeping me out.

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mongoltrophies.livejournal.com

Headstones.
I do.
Happens when the raccoons and foxes are displaced, to fill the void.
The attorneys have learned their lesson about entering the spirit world, but some of them are still into all that Crowleyian stuff, and they try to keep a lid on as best they can.
Yes.

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reflejos.livejournal.com

Here is someone who has had some copyright issues, not only with the copyright "owner" but also with the "manufacturers".
http://www.artnet.com/artist/27087/nadin-ospina.html

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lame-no-antenna.livejournal.com

jizou?

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pay-option07.livejournal.com

I think the Celts and the Nihonjin have similar spiritual hearts. Those figures are artifacts from the past reincarnated by the media industry
as symbols.
Do you think flamingo ornaments would sell well there?

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Here is a new binary: intellectual property vs atheism. Is the belief in (the diminishing plausibility of) copyright the same as the [diminishing] belief in gods?

Yes.

Religion imposes rules/laws that must be followed. Some of those laws are common sense like - don't kill anyone. But many are absurd rituals like mutilating genitals.

Atheism does away with the nonsense religious laws and so the atheist is free to enjoy all that life offers. There is a certain lawlessness to atheiism.

Copyright law crushes creativity.

Here's a good interview with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee (http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/public_enemy.html).

It shows how copyright law killed an art form before it started.

¢ (http://members.aol.com/joeyknow/jk7.html)

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fishwithissues.livejournal.com

Thick-browed Donald pointing to the bridge of his bill is a commanding presence!

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All of those characters would be in public domain if it wasn't for Sunny Bono and Disney.

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Copyright was created to protect creators. In the past, people like Mark Twain and Dickens would get their shit ripped off all the time by companies or thieves who would simply erase the author's name and sell it as their own.

Copyright in the U.S. was only suppossed to last 14 years, but Mark Twain (among others) helped push Congress to extend it. It's only now (in the last 50 years) that copyright has ceased to protect the little guy and started to protect the multinationals and upper corporations.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with copyright and little that connects it with atheism OR religion. Copyright is a limited monopoly that is given to creators of all stripes. That has little similarity to any religion OR to atheism.

From: (Anonymous)

A site easy to remember is kissyoutube.com. You just put a "kiss" in front of youtube in the address and voilá, you can save it.

http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4

But, of course, there are at least one million more sites like this.

Robert

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It's only now (in the last 50 years) that copyright has ceased to protect the little guy and started to protect the multinationals and upper corporations.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with copyright...

Your first paragraph clearly states what is fundamentally wrong with copyright.

From: (Anonymous)

"what's that Japanese folk figure that's always made into vases and jugs and statues and such--- the name escapes me."

Daruma-san? He's usually a small, red figurine that people have around the house. It's actually a version of the first Zen "patriarch" Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who brought meditation out of India to China, etc. etc (as the story goes, at least).

Or, as someone else suggested, you may be talking about Jizo-san--the Bodhisattva usually associated with children, passed away, aborted, etc. and are everywhere around Japan. He's also
based on another originally Indian figure, Ksitigarbha.

Jizo is also who I instantly thought of when i saw the above "funeral figures."

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lame-no-antenna.livejournal.com

protecting creators of intellectual property? or am i not reading the correct first paragraph?

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Sorry. The first paragragh in my quote:

It's only now (in the last 50 years)...

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Copyright was created to provide an incentive for creators to share their work in the marketplace. I don't know if that is precisely the same thing as "protecting creators." In the United States the motivation was similar to that behind the creation of the currency; by storing value in generic units an incentive is provided for farmers and other tradesmen to produce a surplus, which then allows some citizens to spend their time doing things besides farming and similar trades. This was seen to promote the general welfare.

Corporations were swindling people out of their trademarks as an industry standard decades before the 1950s. The publishing industry that Mark Twain worked in was built on ripping off foreign editions and re-publishing them in the U.S., where foreign copyright law could not reach. This was a major cash cow and the U.S. government was happy to turn a blind eye. I will stipulate for the sake of this argument that it is the emergence of large-scale media technology that really draws the fundamental inequities of intellectual property law into sharp focus. Previously the high barriers to entry prevented most people from becoming copyright violators. Now, with complicated laws like the DMCA, it is almost impossible not to be a copyright violator.

I was being a bit facetious by aligning the belief in abstract intellectual property with the belief in gods, but I do think there is a connection between our (humanity's) ability to conceive of these non-corporeal constructs and use them as fulcrums to turn ourselves against. Believing in a god requires a certain kind of mindset which is not dissimilar from that required to believe in abstract laws. You can't pull out a piece of intellectual property and touch it (paperwork aside), and so a certain amount of "buying in" is required for the construct to be accepted as fact. If people on a battlefield stop believing in tanks, the tanks, as tanks do, will still roll over them. If people in a country stop believing in copyright, eventually copyrights just goes away. "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

In the United States, physical property rights are inherent to our existence as "Men", but intellectual property is a good deal murkier.

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Commie! :)

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lord-whimsy.livejournal.com

Can't imagine being able to make a living as a creative professional without some form of protection for my work (books, art, illustrations, typefaces, etc.)

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imomus.livejournal.com

This is, if I may say so, Stanley, an extremely impressive piece of argument.

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The fact that idea and laws can be corrupted does not make the ideas and laws fundamentally wrong.

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I should hope that human rights trump the viability of your chosen business model. I don't think the question of intellectual property has been satisfactorily resolved with respect to certain unalienable rights.

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I sort of agree. But the emphasis and goal of Jefferson and co. wasn't to share ideas in the marketplace but 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 emphasis is on progress and the betterment of mankind and, consequently, the nation. Our "forefathers" wouldn't consider themselves libertarians but humanitarians, and valued the idea of "betterment" more than the "market."

My main point was that copyright law after the Sonny Bono act is completely corrupt and only protects the work of corporations at the expense of independent creators. The '98 and '76 laws are utterly insane and directly go against the needs and desires of the larger country and the very idea of copyright.

And lastly, I think our belief in the abstract has gone beyond gods and has done so for the last several hundred years. I, for example, am an uninterested atheist (the whole idea of gods bores me) but am a believer in things like law, copyright, free speech, Natural Rights, etc. I realize that all are fictions that I strongly believe in, which is vaguely religious, but only vaguely.

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