The recording industry, that bastion of good taste, honesty, and fair distribution of costs and profits thinks file sharing is a crime!
Well, we saw it with the book industry too.
Once, nobody outside a monastery had the skills to make a book. Then along came that damned Gutenberg, inventing printing presses, and any fool could duplicate books.
Even more worrying. Peasants eventually learned to read and write, putting literally dozens of scribes out of work.
What really worries me though, is libraries, and the growing trend of book owners to lend books to others to read, thus depriving the publishing industry of profits and throwing the families of jobless monks into the street.
A further worry to us is the open availability of pencils and pens. Using these, it is possible for criminals to copy whole sentences, and, with that other item, whose posession we'd like to see controlled, or restricted, paper, these people can pin up illegally copied words, sentences, even whole Paragraphs in public places for all to see.
Furthermore, in a recent visit to an academic establishment I was horrified to find students being encouraged to learn and memorise, for instance, whole poems- even formulae, and songs. I saw plays performed where actors and actresses had memorised the lines, not a single one carrying an authorised text.
I tell you, unless the perpetrators are given punitive fines and prison sentences, the book publishing industry is doomed.
I have heard it said that there is an underground movement called the interweb where the plebs can write write whatever they want for all to see in broad daylight.
ReplyDeleteAdded to this horror are places named 'Lulu dot com' (spawn of the devil) where the riff-raff can have their own books printed. Who do they think they are?
The record industry is already on it's knees - the Lords of I Pod, will settle for nothing less than world domination, and can we stop them? Simon Cowell and the rest of the Small Gods of Pop Music have been relegated to plucking peasants..... off the street!
I've heard of the interweb, but have been told it is a dangerous place, full of cutpurses and charlatans, fast women and slow horses.
ReplyDeleteAnd I doubt the likes of myself and similar humble fellows will be permitted to enter safely therein.
Not without some arcane password.
And plebs writing? Openly? how can this be tolerated?
Surely there is some form of policing? A master editor?
Snatch squads to disappear the indiscreet?
Wait! Who is that- splintering my front door -O flee! flee for your lives, they have found me... save yourselves, wipe your drives -quickly......!
Be still, Mr Soubriquet, no need for the vapours, tis only Mrs Miggins from the pie shop, at your door. She has come to tell you that her daughter, Irma Trollop, has been chosen as a candidate for the latest Popular Idol programme - please try and look interested!
ReplyDeleteAnd please, keep away from the interweb. The rumours are true - slow charlatans and horse-like women abound.
Snatch Squads?
ReplyDeleteI like the sound of that.
Minx: Ah, yes, Irma Trollope....I wonder if Trollop23 will enlighten us?
ReplyDeleteI asked Simon Cowell, who replied,
I'm not a pheasant plucker, i'm a pheasant plucker's son, and I'm only plucking pheasants til the pheasant plucker comes.
Steve:
I sometimes forget that we're two nations separated by a common language.
On my side of the atlantic, snatch is a verb. not a noun.
I suspect your snatch squads are reading from a different page......
No relation. My first name is Trollop, surname 23. The scuttlebutt around the watercooler is that Irma is indeed idle - too idle to be trollopian in any fashion.
ReplyDeleteShe is currently dating Simon Callow. They feed each other stale Doritos (a sponsor of the relationship) and whisper sweet snatches of Elton John songs to ech other.....