Each year the White House is required to report to Congress concerning "problems American companies are facing around the world with copyright piracy, which they contend is costing them billions of dollars in lost sales annually." In the annual report, known as Special Report 301, the administration threw the smack down, saying "China has a special stake in upgrading its protection of intellectual property rights, given that its companies will be threatened by rampant copyright piracy as they increase their own innovation." Ohh, snap, China. Your piratical (I'm going to keep using it until it becomes an official O.E.D. certified word) actions are going to come back in bite you in the butt.
Bush & Co. then went on to pimp smack Thailand, stating they had "deteriorating protection for patents and copyrights." That's right, Thailand, how dare you feel the moral imperative to produce low-cost generic versions of AIDS medication. Not when my boys Phizer need to get paid.Of course, Rohit Malpani, some crazy fool from Oxfam (this bunch of pie-eyed optimists who want to "find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice") stepped up and claimed that El Heffe Bush's report ignored "important international agreements signed by the U.S. government ... which clearly state that developing countries have the right to place public health and the public interest over intellectual property rules." Rules, schmooles.
As poet laureates The Wu Tang Clan said "Cash Rules Everything Around Me." I'm pretty sure the extended cut of their hit song went on to include that the need for cash clearly necessitates ignoring ratified international treaties. And just in case that wasn't enough my homies the RIAA and the MPAA stepped up to defend what is the heart and soul of America, the lust for cash money.Now I know that some of you half-educated fools may be thinking "Wait a hot minute, MatPat, didn't the U.S. routinely violate international copyright and patent rules to protect the nascent industrial foundation that America's current success was built on?"
Well, yeah, if you want to get technical about it, the U.S. definitely ignored all copy and patent rights until it financial suited us to obey them. But the thing you have to understand is that it's all different now.
"How so" you ask. Well clearly if my great-great grand pappy needed to get all piratical (admit it, the word is growing on you) and rip off dirty English dog Charles Dickens to make sure his Boston-based printing house was going to turn a buck, then that was ok.
Now when Borris D. Russian or his friend Johnny Ukraine take my copy of "Baby Geniuses 2: Super Babies", crank out 10,000 bootleg copies and don't cut me in for a slice, that's when we have a problem.I know you're probably getting all bleeding heart and thinking that most of the countries on the piracy watch list are all in various stages of transitioning to a market-based economy and that their nascent market-based industries need material that can guarantee them a profit, yet they often can't afford the absurdly high licensing fees that U.S. companies want to charge. Well tough...
Vinny Venezuela and Tammy Thai will just have to do without our excellently entertaining Baby Geniuses or life-saving Malaria medication.
I also know that some of you radical leftists (I got my eye on you Mr. White) may be suggesting that the U.S. should obey international law, craft new legislation that simplifies intellectual property rights to create a more manageable and equitable system that prioritizes life-saving and life-changing technology as well as the free and fast flow of culture for the betterment of the world citizenry, I got just one thing to say to that "Cash Rules Everything Around Me, C.R.E.A.M.,(get the money), dolla dolla bill y'all."
And if I had a second thing to say, it'd be that you'll have to pry my cash out of my cold, dead, cosmetically altered and well manicured due to my excessive royalty-funded-playboy-lifestyle, hands.And if there was one last thing I had to say about it, if we don't protect copyrights then we're in danger of losing potentially-award-winning filmmakers like Fritz Sciascia. (of course maybe that wouldn't be the worst thing ever).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070430/ap_on_go_ot/copyright_piracy
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0704/S00538.htm
http://www.leedstoday.net/ViewArticle.aspx?sectionid=39&articleid=2840243
http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=134329
http://www.ohhla.com/anonymous/wu_tang/enter_wu/cream.wtg.txt
