Wednesday, July 13, 2005

A friend said, six people a day is all I ask

I understand the concept of this statement so very clearly now.

Just when you think that the background count of corporate idiocy and general civil law foolishness is stabilising, you have a day like today.

First, the French. No, no jokes coming about food, wine or surrendering rampantly; except, perhaps, that one. No, this is even worse. There is a story about a French Bus Company, but not referring to strikes or lateness as you might expect. No, they are suing some EU cleaning ladies for carpooling. Yep, no twilight zone music, no hidden cameras to leap out and note that the joke is on you. No, a corporation is suing people for NOT USING THEIR SERVICE! Apologies for the shouting, but FUCK! how stupid is this world.

First, its not right to sue people for driving themselves to work because it is cheaper than a bus to Brussels. Its made worse that the above story refers not to the original case, but to the companies APPEAL against a verdict dismissing the case. The world is a sad, sad place. Wrong and broken.

At this, I would have settled down and played good corporate monkey for the rest of the day; I might have even resisted deriding the managoids and marketrons as they walked the corridors due to my abject depression over the state of the world.

But then the British, not to be outdone by the French, went one step further.

Linking to slashdot, now there is a turn about. Anyway, I digress.

The BBC is by any measure a fine establishment that wisely uses the funds of the British people to produce a surprising volume of high quality media. Considering the effluvium that spews from the media machines in general, this is surprising alone. Anyway, their equally fine Orchestra played some Beethoven. His 9 symphonies in fact. These works are in the public domain being that said musician is long dead and there was a time in the distant past that copyright actually expired. A time before a certain nazi invented a mouse character and then the corporate shell of his extreme right wing ideals stumbled on like some zombie buying US senators and making them extend copyright everytime it risks expiring. Anyway, I digress again, more on this later.

So, the BBC have these recordings of some fine classical music. The BBC likes to engage the public in fine classical music. The BBC has a web presence and is rather technologically savvy. So, they make these recordings available for a limited time as MP3 downloads for the world to enjoy. A good thing, a fine endevour that could actually introduce new ears to this most excellent music. Or so you would think. A british classical music record company took offence to this. How dare they release for free to the public the performances of their own orchestra of public domain music, an orchestra paid for by that same British public. How dare they, as they are illegally competeing and reducing the pervieved value of classical music. I could go on, and would as I have issues with corporate positions on copyright in any case. However, I wont. This is blindingly and self evidently stupid. What the fuck gives them the right to demand a completely separate organisation not make available their own product for whatever price they see fit; regardless of the other issues involved.

I wonder if corporate idiocy is a gene which could be edited out of society. This crap makes me so angry I cant even find a humerous viewpoint from which to observe it.

later.
jak!

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