Intellectual "PROPERTY"

Reading classiccmp today I wanted to puke. I'm sorry, I'm with Stallman, fuck the corporate spin-doctors. In the real world ideas are free and even Bob Dylan was noted for his free use of others material. "Intellectual PROPERTY" ? That's a lawyer's and corporate term. Meaning the extension of material possession law to ideas cause lord knows they've got property rights down to a science. The pharmaceutical companies almost patented the human genone but were prevented by a few alert clinicists. Monsanto is busy trying to tie up our very grain foodstuff, our health is held ransom to the corporations. And some little sucks that hope they can emulate Bill Gates are peddling this game ? Sony, MCA, and the music conglomerates got their "copyrights" by stealing the songs from the musicians and composers for the most part. There's a long history of poor jazz and blues musicians behind all those songs. And even McCartney and Jagger will admit that they copied American blues musicians in what they did. These sterling words that the creator of some idea should benefit from his creation are simply bullshit to provide cover for the suits who do benefit. For the most part they paid a (barely) living wage to the artists who did actually do the creative part, whether songster, cartoonist, writer, or coder. Even Edison and his company ripped off Tesla. Damn, what has the impersonality of computers wrought ? A generation of egocentric, alienated, individualists with some sort of subjective morality ? It's OK to do a bad thing if it furthers my objectives ? A world I never made ! GNU forever ! Alt 2600 is looking good if I can just get by the spelling, the ingenuity, and "z" for "s". Get a new suit and eat more. You'll still die eventually. Lawrence Live life like you're never_gonna-die Love like you've never been hurt Dance and sing like no-one is watcing or listening And rejoice in our creation. lgwalker(a)mts.net bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com