Sunday June 9, 2005

Dear Visitor:

Years ago, I was driving through California on my way to some place. I believe I was stopped in Barstow. On the gas pumps they had little snippets of information about California and its history. I was nearly empty and so I was there for a while. Some of it was interesting; some of it wasn't.

One particular thing I found very interesting was about the history of Hollywood. They left the east coast to get away from the "draconian" patent and copyright enforcement by one Thomas Alva Edison and his companies. Two patents in particular were for motion cameras and, I believe, the film they used. Apparently, Edison would have cameras that weren't licensed destroyed, along with film made with them. So far, so good. It seems like our Hollywood friends were heroes in fighting a patent that stopped progress instead of aiding it.

Fast forward to the 1970's. Copyright terms were drastically extended, for and on behalf of Disney (and others) by the Sonny Bono Copyright Act (also known as the Disney Welfare Act). Fast forward to the 1990's and we have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (thanks to Orrin Hatch). This law made it illegal to make even otherwise legal copies of movies. Also, when the copyright term runs out, copies still can't be made, because the technology to break the encryption is illegal.

So, this may all seem good to you, but think about it for a minute. They ran away and avoided paying Edison money for his efforts. They also used many books that would not have been in the public domain if the laws they have passed had been on the books. It seems to me that Hollywood (and Microsoft if you research it further) are just a bunch of hypocrites. Extending copyright and patent terms hinders progress, not helps it. Yet, these nuts from Hollywood have successfully hijacked the laws.

Interestingly enough, a year or two back a group brought suit on constitutional grounds against these new laws saying Congress had overstepped their bounds. The court ruled that under the "right to regulate interstate commerce" they had not. This is bogus. The Constitution should always be interpreted on the most strict and stringent levels. Why? Because the Constitution, via Amendment 10, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people." Therefore, it such laws should always be judged under "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." In other words, these new laws impede the progress of the arts and sciences, in their extreme terms and in the anti-copy-technology aspects.

In all, Hollywood is full of hypocrites, liars, and thieves who then have garnered enough control (through "graft" and "contributions") to protect their ill-begotten gains from everyone else. And what has it brought us? Junk! More bad movies! More bad acting! More bad scripts! And so many patents in the area of computer programs that you can't hardly program any given system without stepping onto a mine in a mine field.

Hollywood go home, you too Orrin Hatch. Let real statesmen handle the issues from now on.

Sincerely, Trever Adams

P.S. While I do not always agree with my friend, the Idealist1776, I do find his analysis interesting and insightful. He and I have had a great many deep and long political discussions. You may find his writings interesting.