After-Dinner Conversation

Dinner was just me and Mom and Dad tonight; Dan's away with a friend, and Amy was out with a friend. We had chicken.

Afterward, I mentioned casually that I might try to be in DC on 9 October, the date of oral arguments in Eldred v. Ashcroft. She asked what the case was about, and I explained. Her reaction? "But shouldn't copyright be forever?"

I explained the concept of replenishing the public domain, why it's important, why the Constitution was written to allow limited copyright, and why the Sonny Bono act is potentially unconstitutional. From there, the conversation spread to why the MPAA and RIAA suck, Valenti's crying wolf over the VCR, the DMCA, the SSSCA, Palladium, and all the other threats to our freedom. I talked about how we are merely consumers, not customers. I talked about how the word 'pirate' has been thrown around to make p2p distribution sound worse than it is (and she said I sounded exactly like George Carlin at that point). And we talked about what it might be like someday if things go badly. How I may be telling my grandchildren stories of computers, multipurpose tools that I was able to program myself. How we didn't always depend on the television/radio/Internet/whatever hybrid that replaced it, which only permits communication that is approved by the governent and Disney.

By the time my mouth was dry and I was unable to keep talking much longer, I asked her, "Are you angry now?" She said she was. I feel like a teacher.

August 08, 2002 - 09:32 PM