Hey Batta Batta
I played softball with the ComedyWorx crew this weekend. It just takes a couple of hours of sports to remind a computer geek just how out of shape he is.
I’m walking like an arthritic 80-year-old today. But it was fun.
Orrin Hatch - 31337 h@x0r
From the “Moron Files” comes this little gem – Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said in Congress yesterday that he favors letting music/movie companies destroy the computers of people suspected of trading music and movie files online.
The actual quote:
“No one is interested in destroying anyone’s computer,” replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can’t.“I’m interested,” Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone’s computer “may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights.”
The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, “then destroy their computer.”
That’s nice, isn’t it? A new era comes along that threatens to make the jobs of middlemen who simply push media from the people who create it to the people who view it obsolete, or less profitable, and our elected representatives are tripping all over themselves to sic a vigilante lynch mob on their constituents.
Notwithstanding the fact that what Hatch proposes would certainly (hopefully?) be shot down by the courts, it really shows you what the people who make the laws think of you. Not only have they made a mockery out of the copyright system, they’re actively working to find more reasons to throw citizens in jail. There’s a reason that copyright violations used to be a civil, rather than criminal, matter – the notion of “theft” when applied to nonphysical items doesn’t hold up. If I download a song from someone, they haven’t lost anything (unlike if I stole a car) – the worst they can claim is a potential lost sale.
Not to mention the fact that under the PATRIOT act, the stuff Hatch supports is probably “terrorism.” I wonder if Hatch is willing to trade in his plush Washington digs for a cage in Cuba?
Both parties are slaves to the money. That’s why I vote Libertarian and support independent musicians.
Say What?
I got corrected on a long-misheard lyric recently. The song is “Drift Away”, by Dobie Gray, recently covered by Uncle Kracker. You know the song. The chorus goes:
Gimmie the beat, boys, and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll
and drift away.
For years and years, until Holly heard me singing it and set me straight, I thought they were saying:
Gimmie the Beach Boys and free my soul…
You learn something new every day.
New Edition
I got tired of my old website, which was pretty much just an updated form of my very earliest webpages, so I figured I’d throw this out there. I’ve already got the BabyBlog going from Hayley, so this will be a spot where I ramble about stuff other than fatherhood.
Or mainly it will be there to keep the space on my page from looking too empty.