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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

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With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Republicans do not trust women.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

He really is that stupid.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

People are weird.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Let me file that under fuck it.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Trump Crime Cartel Open Thread: The Cost of Obtaining Justice

Trump Crime Cartel Open Thread: The Cost of Obtaining Justice

by Anne Laurie|  June 1, 201810:32 am| 190 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Dolt 45, Election 2016, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Russiagate

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The price tag for Robert Mueller's investigation is about $17 million–and counting. https://t.co/Zgz6xXQbOa

— Carrie Johnson (@johnson_carrie) May 31, 2018

and for that we've gotten 22 indictments, sanctions against a Russian oligarch also implicated in attacks on US troops, 5 felony pleas including against an ex 3-star general with frightening foreign allegiances, & a sprawling case against one of the world's worst blood merchants. https://t.co/F3yHq3uK3l

— zeddy (@Zeddary) May 31, 2018

Per the Washington Post:

… The cost is not necessarily out of line with prior special investigations, and the documents note that Mueller is reporting what his work has caused other Justice Department components to spend — which previous special counsels have not. Mueller reported about $4.5 million in expenditures from October through March, and indicated his investigation caused other Justice Department components to spend about $5.5 million.

The money that Mueller spent directly came from an indefinite appropriation for independent counsels, which the Justice Department determined could be used to fund Mueller’s work. The department said the other money would have been spent by Justice Department components for the investigations “irrespective of the existence” of the special counsel’s office.

From October through March, Mueller, who has a team of 17 lawyers, spent $2.7 million on personnel costs, the new documents show. He also spent more than a half-million dollars on travel and more than $880,000 on rent, communications and utilities, the documents show.

By comparison, Lawrence E. Walsh, the prosecutor who investigated Reagan administration officials in the Iran-contra affair, spent $47.4 million during his eight-year investigation. Former independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr spent more than $52 million investigating President Bill Clinton, and the five independent counsels appointed to look into various Clinton-related matters during the 1990s spent more than $100 million.

If the case weren't getting results we could talk how much it costs. But it's hitting pay dirt again and again and again.

— zeddy (@Zeddary) June 1, 2018

pic.twitter.com/1LxoxBDQge

— McDeere (@McDeereUSA) May 31, 2018

4 Americans killed in Benghazi
•7 Federal investigations
•$6.9M in taxpayer money
•Total Outrage from the Right

4600 Americans killed by Hurricane Maria
•0 Federal investigations
•0 accountability
•Total Silence from the Right

The hypocrisy is deafening??

— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@MuslimIQ) May 30, 2018


 
Speaking of Follow the Money, this widget is getting favorably reviewed:

Friends, please check out our new RUSSIA TRACKER. We are following all the witness interviews, subpoenas, criminal charges, and much more. Track all the key players. I've worked on this for months with @talyellin and @stark_talk. Hope you find it useful. https://t.co/cFhLddbnaH

— Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) May 30, 2018

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Reader Interactions

190Comments

  1. 1.

    LAO

    June 1, 2018 at 10:44 am

    And yet, I have failed to make a penny off the investigation. Sheesh. I need a better class of client.

  2. 2.

    schrodingers_cat

    June 1, 2018 at 10:48 am

    Some good news out of India. Tabassum Hasan beat the sitting BJP (India’s RWNJ party) MP (equivalent to a Congress critter here) in a by-election (special election) in Kairana UP by a 10% margin in a huge upset.

    ETA: That she is a Muslim woman from lefty leaning party is sweet. Its like Ted Cruz being beaten by Hispanic woman.

  3. 3.

    oatler.

    June 1, 2018 at 10:49 am

    Trump’s burning down the country (and the world) faster than Mueller’s probe can wind up, that’s my kvetch.

  4. 4.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 10:50 am

    The price tag for Robert Mueller’s investigation is about $17 million–and counting. https://t.co/Zgz6xXQbOa

    — Carrie Johnson (@johnson_carrie) May 31, 2018

    It could be $170 million, and I wouldn’t give a shyt.

  5. 5.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 10:51 am

    thanks for the Russia Tracker

  6. 6.

    Cermet

    June 1, 2018 at 10:51 am

    @schrodingers_cat: I don’t follow Indian politics so some back ground information on why this is good would be useful.

  7. 7.

    Mike in NC

    June 1, 2018 at 10:53 am

    $17 million is about what it costs Fat Bastard to spend one weekend at Mar-A-LaGoFuckYourself.

  8. 8.

    schrodingers_cat

    June 1, 2018 at 10:54 am

    @Cermet: She beat her BJP opponent. The ruling party is using increasingly divisive appeals to the electorate on the basis of religion. And its only a year to the general elections in 2019. The tide may be turning against BJP led by Mr. Modi.

    ETA: I was wrong about the opponent being the sitting MP. The incumbent died in office, Ms Hassan beat his daughter who was running for her father’s seat.
    ETA2: UP sends the most MPs to the Parliament. Its a crucial state currently controlled by the BJP.

  9. 9.

    cain

    June 1, 2018 at 10:55 am

    Just one note off the friday morning thread regarding TPP – one good thing about us not in TPP is that we have sane copyright proposals. The U.S. has primarily been responsible for extending copyright ad infinitum because of companies like Disney. Now those people don’t have representation. So there is definitely some good with us out of the picture because we ask for shit things. In fact, it might be the world is seeing the benefits with us not around. :P

  10. 10.

    LAO

    June 1, 2018 at 10:56 am

    @rikyrah: Seconded.

  11. 11.

    Brachiator

    June 1, 2018 at 10:57 am

    4600 Americans killed by Hurricane Maria
    •0 Federal investigations
    •0 accountability
    •Total Silence from the Right

    This pretty much says it all. It’s been a crazy week. I got no time for right wing bullshit today.

    @schrodingers_cat:

    ETA: That she is a Muslim woman from lefty leaning party is sweet. Its like Ted Cruz being beaten by Hispanic woman.

    Great comparison that clearly helps give an idea of the significance of Tabassum Hasan’s victory. Thanks!

  12. 12.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 10:59 am

    About Blago’s possible pardon:

    Unlike our previous Governor that got sent to jail, I never had sympathy for Blago.

    I understood why George Ryan had to go to jail. Yes, he was dirty, but, he was stupid and dirty and everyone else made money off him. HE didn’t actually prosper from his corruption.
    He went to jail for two reasons:
    1. Those six little kids that died in the car crash because the other driver got his DL through a corrupt system set up in Ryan’s office
    2. He halted the Death Penalty in Illinois. I mean, he literally had a ‘ Come to Jesus’ moment about the Death Penalty, went 180 in the opposite direction, and walked the walk. He was NEVER forgiven for that.

  13. 13.

    Jeffro

    June 1, 2018 at 11:03 am

    @Mike in NC: I was just going to say – can’t we just quantify it in terms of number of Trumpov golf trips ? It’s probably about 10 golf outings

  14. 14.

    Kay

    June 1, 2018 at 11:04 am

    Just a mile marker for you-all. When this started Trump was obstructing. Now the whole GOP (and affliated entities) are obstructing.

    It’s getting worse. We dropped another couple of floors just this week, admittedly a bad week, it’s not a smooth downard trajectory but it is still going down.

    We need a graph as a visual until the big-picture damage starts to come into focus. When we hit bottom there will be “how did we GET here?” – we got here in steps.

  15. 15.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    June 1, 2018 at 11:06 am

    @cain: Europe has some shit copyright rules on the way according to the EFF. It’s not just us.

  16. 16.

    gene108

    June 1, 2018 at 11:08 am

    @schrodingers_cat:

    ETA2: UP sends the most MPs to the Parliament. Its a crucial state currently controlled by the BJP.

    Is she with the same party as Mayawati? Or some other local UP party, like the one run by Lalu Prasad Yadav?

  17. 17.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 11:08 am

    @cain: For the life of me, I can’t understand why people get so worked up about copyright extensions – are they angry at having to pay to watch Mickey Mouse cartoons, or because they can’t make some $ off of their Mickey Mouse fan fiction? None of these libertarian crusaders get upset about other property rights extending into perpetuity.

  18. 18.

    Kay

    June 1, 2018 at 11:09 am

    Which celebrity gets pardoned today? When they invented up the pardon power did they ever think it would be used to give rich people extra special treatment?

    Celebrities now get a special immunity from the justice system. Wow. That was a bold policy choice, on the Right! Did not see that coming!

    All those millions of Americans who are shuffling thru courthouses and jails and prisons in their plastic sandals? The justice system applies only to them.

  19. 19.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 11:10 am

    @Kay:

    We need a graph as a visual until the big-picture damage starts to come into focus. When we hit bottom there will be “how did we GET here?” – we got here in steps.

    You think we got here in steps?

    I don’t. When the GOP in Congress decided that they were no longer a co-equal branch of government, that was the one big step. They’ve just been adding onto it. Their abdication of their responsibilities wasn’t a bunch of steps – it was one major one that they continue to double down on everyday, showing them to be the TRAITORS that they are.

  20. 20.

    schrodingers_cat

    June 1, 2018 at 11:10 am

    @gene108: Rashtriya Lok Dal* according to Indian news sources. She was in Mayawati’s party the last time she was the MP. For those who don’t know, India’s politics is far more fluid than here and there are elebenty parties.

    ETA: Lalu is from Bihar not Uttar Pradesh.
    * Rough translation would be National People’s Party

  21. 21.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 11:12 am

    @Kay:

    Chris Hayes was on point last night. How the pardon situation crystallizes Dolt45’s view of the legal system.

  22. 22.

    chopper

    June 1, 2018 at 11:12 am

    and the starr probe cost 52 million in 2000 dollars. that’s about 77 million today.

  23. 23.

    Aleta

    June 1, 2018 at 11:12 am

    In comparison

    Overall, the Secret Service spent about $58 million in travel expenses, including airfare, vehicle rentals and meals in 3,236 travel stops during the campaign, the GAO report said. Expenses for Trump’s campaign were $26.3 million, Clinton $20.2 million, Sanders $7.9 million and Carson $3.4 million.

    4 million of that money was “overpaid for seats on campaign planes.”

    And how much is it by now, so far, that’s been spent on weekends in Fla? On travel for all the punks?

  24. 24.

    MattF

    June 1, 2018 at 11:12 am

    17 million is peanuts. It means Mueller’s investigation is staffed by people who are doing their jobs and doing their jobs well, full-time. Which, for the Trumpites, is evil, unforgivable, and totally unfair.

  25. 25.

    Bex

    June 1, 2018 at 11:13 am

    @Mike in NC: Taxpayers have spent $67.7 million on Emperor Cheeto’s golf vacations. http://trumpgolfcount.com/

  26. 26.

    MattF

    June 1, 2018 at 11:14 am

    @Bex: And that includes the cost of mulligans.

  27. 27.

    Ladyraxterinok

    June 1, 2018 at 11:14 am

    OT–Trustees of SBC’s Southwestern Seminary cut all ties to former president Paige Patterson–no emeritus status, no house, no ongoing compensation.

    They took this action after a report in the WaPo. Wade Burleson, a SBC preacher in OK, was contacted by a woman who had been a student at the SBC Southeastern Seminary in NC when Paige was president. When she reported she had been raped to the administration, she was put on probation. They did not report the rape to the police.

    Burleson contacted a reporter at the WaPo because he wanted journalist training and resources to investigate the story.

    So now the 2 leaders of the RW iakeover of the SBC are out–Paige because of his coverup of a rape and Paul Pressler because of multiple charges of decades-long abuse of boys and young men in the church groups he led. (Paige is also charged with helping to coverup Pressler’s deeds.)

    Paige and wife, Pressler and wife–all 4 have their portraits in staind glass in the chapel at Southwestern Seminary!!

    The SBC convention is this month, and Paige was/is? scheduled to speak.

  28. 28.

    EBT

    June 1, 2018 at 11:14 am

    @cain: Disney still has money and the Mickey Mouse laws won’t be changing.

  29. 29.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 11:14 am

    @Kay:

    Hayes has been good about the separating families evil going on right now with Dolt45.
    I said from the beginning, that THIS might actually STICK, because of the simplicity of its utter EVIL.
    You don’t have to approve of illegal immigration to believe that CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN AWAY FROM THEIR PARENTS.

    ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES 5/31/18
    Backlash grows against separation of migrant families
    A backlash is growing against the Trump administration’s new policy of separating parents and children at the border.

  30. 30.

    HeleninEire

    June 1, 2018 at 11:14 am

    @LAO: Hun, keep your chin up they are ALL gonna be scrambling for good defense attorneys. Without even trying, you can get yourself a piece I’d that sweet, sweet wingnut welfare.

  31. 31.

    Nethead Jay

    June 1, 2018 at 11:15 am

    @schrodingers_cat: That is very good news indeed. And excellent work with the Cruz comparison.

  32. 32.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    June 1, 2018 at 11:17 am

    @Aleta: @Bex: and how much of that went to trump properties? IIRC, this includes golf cart rentals for the Secret Service, an apartment or offices in trump tower, NYC…. am I missing anything?

  33. 33.

    MattF

    June 1, 2018 at 11:19 am

    @Ladyraxterinok: WaPo article is informative.

  34. 34.

    cain

    June 1, 2018 at 11:20 am

    @Rail: @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    How did y’all manage to write the exact same sentence?! :D

  35. 35.

    cain

    June 1, 2018 at 11:23 am

    @PJ:

    @cain: For the life of me, I can’t understand why people get so worked up about copyright extensions – are they angry at having to pay to watch Mickey Mouse cartoons, or because they can’t make some $ off of their Mickey Mouse fan fiction? None of these libertarian crusaders get upset about other property rights extending into perpetuity.

    It’s because nothing ends up being in the commons. Imagine if we still had copyrights on Shakespeare? Basically, you’re monetizing and overly controlling culture. Worse, we’re only doing this on behalf of one company, Disney. There are millions of works out there that can’t go into the public domain because of that. We shouldn’t have that kind of limitation just to save Mickey Mouse. There has been plenty of evidence that even if they go into the public domain a company can still monetize it.

  36. 36.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.)

    June 1, 2018 at 11:23 am

    I know a guy who’s a big Tяumper. He looks at all this shit we’ve seen over the last two years, and what he sees is that Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Barack Obama, Robert Mueller, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Susan Rice and James Clapper and John Brennan all need to go to jail, along with other, smaller, more random players like Evelyn Farkas for some reason.

    I’ll give it to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News and Tяump himself, along with his collection of administration and Congressional asskissers, they’ve thoroughly brainwashed 30-35% of the people in this country. They’ve turned them into credulous zombies. Shit. I thought it was bad under Bush the Younger…

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    June 1, 2018 at 11:24 am

    @rikyrah:
    My Mueller budget cap is the flyaway price of one (1) F-35. Spend it wisely, Bobby Three-Sticks.

  38. 38.

    Leto

    June 1, 2018 at 11:28 am

    @rikyrah: I do think Kay is correct with “steps” but you have to take a longer view of it. I feel like it’s been documented fairly well over the past 40+ years how Republicans have slide off the rails, though the derailment really took hold in 2008 with the election of Obama, and is coming to head with what you wrote concerning Republican Congressional abdication of duty/active abetting of traitorous shitheels. If we survive this, the question becomes how do we keep this from happening again? What laws/regulations need to be passed, and how do we keep Republicans from sabotaging them? Because we know they will.

  39. 39.

    Jeffro

    June 1, 2018 at 11:28 am

    @Kay:

    When we hit bottom there will be “how did we GET here?” – we got here in steps.

    Instead of Friedman Units, which at 6 months a pop are far, far too long for this crowd, we deal in Trumpov Units, which = 1 Infrastructure Week (IW) each.

    Then again, the new scandals and different varieties of corruption come so quickly, we may have to switch to Infrastructure Days (IDs)

  40. 40.

    gene108

    June 1, 2018 at 11:29 am

    @Ladyraxterinok:

    Heh…I’m not holding out much hope the SBC will actually change much…

    I think they are too vested in their 40+ years of RWNJ dogma to change, and if they do, they would alienate most of their remaining faithful.

  41. 41.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    June 1, 2018 at 11:29 am

    I am not one to follow the conspiracy theories but CNN now has a tracker to show that it has been 22 days since Melania has been seen in public. I was extremely surprised that she did not appear at the youth sports event that Donny Dollhands had seeing as it would be tailor made to go along with her “Be Best” initiative. They are now reporting that she is not going to Camp David with him this weekend. Perhaps the rumours that she has moved back to New York are true. But as Betty said on Twitter if Michelle or the girls had gone missing for 22 days there would have been a screeching and gnashing of teeth on the right.

  42. 42.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 11:29 am

    @Ladyraxterinok:

    When she reported she had been raped to the administration, she was put on probation.

    Uh huh
    Uh huh

    lowlife muthaphuckas.

    They did not report the rape to the police.

    of course, not.

  43. 43.

    Brachiator

    June 1, 2018 at 11:30 am

    @cain:

    one good thing about us not in TPP is that we have sane copyright proposals. The U.S. has primarily been responsible for extending copyright ad infinitum because of companies like Disney.

    I have to confess that copyright proposals don’t really move the needle for me with respect to TPP. And I am curious why this is such a hot button issue for others. I know some techno-libertarians who think that there should be no such thing as copyright, period, and I kinda see some of their point, but think it often too extreme.

  44. 44.

    Gelfling 545

    June 1, 2018 at 11:30 am

    @LAO: or worse.

  45. 45.

    Leto

    June 1, 2018 at 11:31 am

    @trollhattan: As weird as this might seem, the F35 is small peanuts compared to the ALIS system. You want the ALIS budget :)

  46. 46.

    MattF

    June 1, 2018 at 11:31 am

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Not to mention a frenzy of crazy conspiratorial theorizing. Those Wal-Mart tunnels haven’t been used for a while now.

  47. 47.

    Gelfling 545

    June 1, 2018 at 11:32 am

    @rikyrah: Yep. One of the things on my short list of reasons I’ll gladly pay taxes.

  48. 48.

    westyny

    June 1, 2018 at 11:32 am

    Who the hell is Carrie Johnson?

    ETA: Oh, I see. Mbleh.

  49. 49.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 11:33 am

    @cain: Look, I personally think current copyright terms are long enough, but if everyone had to pay Shakespeare’s heirs a fee to perform Measure by Measure, I don’t think it’s the end of the world. What gets me is that people (libertarians mostly, but also people who just want free stuff) get so worked up about copyright, when the vast majority of the world’s wealth is distributed in perpetuity, meaning it never becomes part of the commons. You never hear these people calling for term limits on ownership of real estate or businesses or investments or art.

  50. 50.

    Jeffro

    June 1, 2018 at 11:33 am

    Btw John Brennan has decided to remain shrill for the duration: I Will Speak Out Until Integrity Returns To The White House

    Swing that bat, John!

    …over the next quarter-century, I returned to the Oval Office several hundred times during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The jitters that accompanied my first Oval Office visit dissipated over time, but the respect, awe and admiration I held for the office of the presidency and the incumbents never waned. The presidents I directly served were not perfect, and I didn’t agree with all of their policy choices. But I never doubted that each treated their solemn responsibility to lead our nation with anything less than the seriousness, intellectual rigor and principles that it deserved. Many times, I heard them dismiss the political concerns of their advisers, saying, “I don’t care about my politics, it’s the right thing to do.”

    The esteem with which I held the presidency was dealt a serious blow when Donald Trump took office. Almost immediately, I began to see a startling aberration from the remarkable, though human, presidents I had served. Mr. Trump’s lifelong preoccupation with aggrandizing himself seemed to intensify in office, and he quickly leveraged his 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. address and his Twitter handle to burnish his brand and misrepresent reality.

    Presidents throughout the years have differed in their approaches to policy, based on political platforms, ideologies and individual beliefs. Mr. Trump, however, has shown highly abnormal behavior by lying routinely to the American people without compunction, intentionally fueling divisions in our country and actively working to degrade the imperfect but critical institutions that serve us.

    Although appalling, those actions shouldn’t be surprising. As was the case throughout his business and entertainment careers, Mr. Trump charts his every move according to a calculus of how it will personally help or hurt him. His strategy is to undercut real, potential and perceived opponents; his focus is to win at all costs, irrespective of truth, ethics, decency and — many would argue — the law

    It gets better:

    …for more than three decades, I observed and analyzed the traits and tactics of corrupt, incompetent and narcissistic foreign officials who did whatever they thought was necessary to retain power. Exploiting the fears and concerns of their citizenry, these demagogues routinely relied on lies, deceit and suppression of political opposition to cast themselves as populist heroes and to mask self-serving priorities. By gaining control of intelligence and security services, stifling the independence of the judiciary and discrediting a free press, these authoritarian rulers followed a time-tested recipe for how to inhibit democracy’s development, retard individual freedoms and liberties, and reserve the spoils of corrupt governance for themselves and their ilk. It never dawned on me that we could face such a development in the United States…

    …Many have condemned my public criticism of Mr. Trump, arguing that as a former CIA director, I should bite my tongue. My criticisms, however, are not political; I have never been and will never be a partisan. I speak out for the simple reason that Mr. Trump is failing to live up to the standards that we should all expect of a president.

    As someone who had the rare privilege of directly serving four presidents, I will continue to speak out loudly and critically until integrity, decency, wisdom — and maybe even some humility — return to the White House.

    (raucous applause)

  51. 51.

    randy khan

    June 1, 2018 at 11:36 am

    @PJ:

    Intellectual property rights have not, in general, extended into perpetuity. Both patent rights and copyright were conceived as limited – long enough to give you the incentive to do something, but short enough to prevent you from having a stranglehold over use of your ideas.

    Take patent law. I’m going to take a small but relevant example – imagine if the person who invented the laser had patent rights forever, and anybody who used lasers had to pay that person a royalty (and, not a small point, get permission to use them). Lasers of one kind or another are all over the place these days, in everything from laser pointers to DVD drives. Having a permanent right to exclude others from using lasers would be a huge drag on innovation.

    Of course, the examples are easier for patents than copyright, but the same principle applies. To pick an example that may make some people want to extend copyright forever, Barry Manilow extensively quoted from Chopin in “Could It Be Magic,” and there are literally dozens of other examples of that sort of thing. Also, given the relatively limited numbers of ways to combine musical notes in ways that people find pleasing, it’s not very hard to accidentally use something that somebody else once did. The current explosion of copyright suits over pop music is just a taste of what would happen if copyrights were forever.

    I’m not unsympathetic to copyright holders – I have cousins who own the rights to books my uncle wrote, and I get why those rights are important to them – but it’s entirely reasonable to have limits.

  52. 52.

    Platonailedit

    June 1, 2018 at 11:37 am

    @Kay: Would bibi nut n yahoo’s depiction would help?

  53. 53.

    Cermet

    June 1, 2018 at 11:40 am

    @schrodingers_cat: Thanks and that is good news; hopefully, it may be a trend against such decisive politics.

  54. 54.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 11:40 am

    @Brachiator: I don’t understand the animus, either, but I think it mostly stems from a resentment that certain people have against artists and the notion that they should be compensated for creative work. (I think it’s akin to the resentment that people have against teachers – what they’re doing isn’t real work, it looks like fun, and they’d be doing it even if they weren’t paid, so let’s pay them peanuts.) If someone plants a fruit tree that bears fruit for 100 years, they aren’t clamoring for that fruit to belong to the commons after 14 or 28 or 50 years, but woe unto the artist who still wants to be paid for their work.

  55. 55.

    randy khan

    June 1, 2018 at 11:42 am

    @PJ:

    Look, I personally think current copyright terms are long enough, but if everyone had to pay Shakespeare’s heirs a fee to perform Measure by Measure, I don’t think it’s the end of the world.

    His heirs also would be able to stop any performance of any of his shows that they didn’t approve. (This is not some kind of crazy notion – Samuel Beckett’s estate regularly forbids performances of Waiting for Godot that don’t exactly conform to what Beckett said he wanted done, and that’s not the only example of that sort of thing.)

  56. 56.

    Kay

    June 1, 2018 at 11:42 am

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    Melania is the Trump I loathe the least. Faint praise, I know, but there it is.

    How was she supposed to be a traditional first lady anyway? Ivanka muscled in and took the job. We barely need one let alone two. The Trump’s are a weird family in one very specific way- the mothers disappear. It’s like the father can’t handle the competition. He can’t even operate in a team of two.

  57. 57.

    West of the Rockies

    June 1, 2018 at 11:43 am

    @cain:

    Well, what do you propose as reasonable before a work of art enters the public domain? Death of the artist? Death plus ten years? Ten years from presentation/publication date?

  58. 58.

    Tokyokie

    June 1, 2018 at 11:45 am

    @rikyrah: He’s pardoned, or is considering at least lessening the sentence, of 1) a dyed-in-the-wool racist (Arpaio); 2) a phony who grifts white evangelicals (D’Souza); and 3) an elected official who was openly soliciting bribes (Blagojevich). Seems to me that der Trumpenführer is only choosing those who remind him of his own glorious self.

  59. 59.

    Brachiator

    June 1, 2018 at 11:45 am

    @Leto:

    If we survive this, the question becomes how do we keep this from happening again? What laws/regulations need to be passed, and how do we keep Republicans from sabotaging them? Because we know they will.

    I don’t think it is a matter of law and regulations. Trump flouted clearly established law, policy, tradition, and neither the Republican Congress nor Trump’s supporters cared.

    If we could resurrect Locke, Hobbes and company, they would remind us that the social contract is voluntary. No law binds us, not even fantasies of “natural law.”

    It is an interesting question as to whether we as a nation can go back again, after Trump.

  60. 60.

    randy khan

    June 1, 2018 at 11:46 am

    @Kay:

    Barron gets my vote, but I hear what you’re saying about Melania.

  61. 61.

    LAO

    June 1, 2018 at 11:50 am

    Hmm — Do we think he invoked the 5th Amendment, or did he answer the questions put to him?

    Jason Sullivan, who worked as Roger Stone's social media strategist during the 2016 campaign, came before the grand jury today. Declined to comment after, his lawyer said "he's going to fully comply with all legal requests made to him for information, and he's done nothing wrong" pic.twitter.com/XMH3dFlBx2— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) June 1, 2018

  62. 62.

    Kay

    June 1, 2018 at 11:51 am

    @randy khan:

    Oh, Barron. Barron’s fine. I forgot about him, which is good.

    I genuinely hope Melania is not sick. I think that’s the most likely explanation and I could see the Trump family denying it, just ’cause they lie as a reflex. That’s the daily practice in that White House.

  63. 63.

    trollhattan

    June 1, 2018 at 11:52 am

    @Tokyokie:
    Somehow he’s made himself the arbiter of what comprises “fair treatment.” If Trump thinks you’ve been treated unfairly, you get a hall pass. It’s like me evaluating Mandarin language instructors. “I really like your shoes, you get all 5s.”

  64. 64.

    Tokyokie

    June 1, 2018 at 11:53 am

    @cain: Hey, one of Margaret Mitchell’s nephews, who was 14 when she was run over right down Peachtree Street, is still collecting money from the copyright to Gone With the Wind. The time between The War of Northern Aggression and the book’s publication is shorter than the copyright has lasted so far.

  65. 65.

    West of the Rockies

    June 1, 2018 at 11:55 am

    @randy khan:

    As a writer, I’m concerned about people wanting to do away with copyrights.

    For a recent example, take Hamilton. LMM holds the rights and wants the play to be presented a certain way, with a majority POC cast. Do we just say F him and put the play on however we want, casting whomever we want?

    Do we declare that JK Rowling is now shit out of luck, it’s time to turn Harry Potter into a farcical sex romp?

  66. 66.

    LAO

    June 1, 2018 at 11:56 am

    @Tokyokie: @trollhattan: I think Trollhattan is correct. It’s the Trump Doctrine, thank you Dr. Silverman, writ small. It’s ridiculous but I fear very compelling to his followers because they feel society has treated them unfairly. (Note: they haven’t been treated unfairly, but they have an out sized sense of grievance and self-pity.)

  67. 67.

    Kay

    June 1, 2018 at 11:58 am

    I’m reading Bad Blood (which is really good). One of the Theranos employee’s quits ( a lot of them quit, but this one was notable) and he writes in his resignation notice that everyone in the place lies all the time, and he just can’t function in that environment. He doesn’t use the word but he’s identifying a systemic problem, one that has so infected the place that he can’t even get a straight answer on small things, like if someone is in the building.

    That’s what the Trump Administration is like, and yet all those Trump hires stay there. It reflects poorly on Trump but also THEM.

  68. 68.

    Brachiator

    June 1, 2018 at 12:00 pm

    @PJ:

    I don’t understand the animus, either, but I think it mostly stems from a resentment that certain people have against artists and the notion that they should be compensated for creative work.

    Yep. I’ve seen some people say that copyright should only last for the life of the artist, but my college girlfriend and her sister were able to pay for college with the songwriting royalties paid to their father’s estate, and he had died when they were children.

    Some like to hold Disney up as the worst best bad example (and they may have earned the anger), but I always find it a bit ironic that Walt Disney was moved to create Mickey in part because a rival company stole the rights to his earlier creation, Oswald Rabbit (co-created by Ub Iwerks).

  69. 69.

    M4

    June 1, 2018 at 12:01 pm

    @PJ: it sounds to me like you’re letting animus against libertarians blind you to the fact that we have copyrights and patents for clearly delineated reasons, and that the American system as currently implemented makes a mockery of these, especially for copyright.

    ETA to Brachiator’s point, “life of the artist and spouse, plus dependents up to age 25” seems reasonable.

  70. 70.

    Aleta

    June 1, 2018 at 12:01 pm

    Rs: ‘Run government like a business.’ So fire Trumpov you sleazy haired hypocrites. A CEO like him would be long past fish food by now.

  71. 71.

    schrodingers_cat

    June 1, 2018 at 12:01 pm

    @Kay: Also the ones who are still justifying their vote for him.

  72. 72.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 12:07 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    22 days?

    try 2 days.

    And, I still say..

    WTF about her moving back to NYC.

    Uh huh.
    Phuck that shyt.

  73. 73.

    catclub

    June 1, 2018 at 12:08 pm

    @cain: yes. The reason the copyright is different from other property rights is that it is ISSUED by the government as a means to improve the common good. The other property rights, such as, once you buy some physical thing, you own it in perpetuity, are not issued by the government to improve the common good.

  74. 74.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:08 pm

    @randy khan: @randy khan: I’m very familiar with IP law and the reasons behind it’s existence and the limitations on it. Some of these rights are pretty restrictive in terms of duration, others can last potentially forever (trademark, trade secrets). Copyright protects expression, not ideas (original ideas about technology or processes are protected by patents). I honestly can’t think of any “good” work (I know notions about quality are entirely subjective) that’s been prevented by modern copyright extensions. When you remove copyright, you end up with artists dependent upon patronage by the wealthy (or wealthy institutions), which is not conducive to the free expression of ideas.

  75. 75.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 12:09 pm

    @Kay:

    Melania is the Trump I loathe the least. Faint praise, I know, but there it is.

    How was she supposed to be a traditional first lady anyway?

    Kay,

    NEVER EVER FORGET…

    1. She was a birther. Her illegal azz was a BIRTHER.
    2. Part of the lawsuit against that newspaper, was because she was upset AT HER CHANCE TO MONETIZE THE FIRST LADY POSITION.

    So, phuck her.

  76. 76.

    M4

    June 1, 2018 at 12:11 pm

    @PJ:

    I honestly can’t think of any “good” work (I know notions about quality are entirely subjective) that’s been prevented by modern copyright extensions.

    Well—considering that an artist will often dismiss out of hand any work that might violate a copyright, before it even gets to the phase of serious consideration, then no, I imagine you couldn’t.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    June 1, 2018 at 12:11 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Reading it I was thinking what is different about the people who saw thru Theranos. It isn’t formal education- they’re all formally educated, and it isn’t “smart” – the quickness that is the common measure of that. It’s that they’re not attached to believing. They can let it go, and they do let it go. There’s no agonizing or threats of quitting. They just quit. They get out. It’s almost like to hesitate is to be lost, because she’s a persuasive liar! If they wobble even a little she sucks ’em back in.

  78. 78.

    catclub

    June 1, 2018 at 12:12 pm

    @West of the Rockies:

    I’m concerned about people wanting to do away with copyrights.

    always good to start out with a straw man. Getting better copyright laws which do not last forever is not quite getting rid of copyrights.

  79. 79.

    Brachiator

    June 1, 2018 at 12:13 pm

    @Kay:

    Melania is the Trump I loathe the least. Faint praise, I know, but there it is.

    She was an early rider on the birther train. Even if it were just to support her husband, I cannot give her a pass, without some serious repentance. I agree that the younger children are blameless.

    How was she supposed to be a traditional first lady anyway? Ivanka muscled in and took the job. We barely need one let alone two. The Trump’s are a weird family in one very specific way- the mothers disappear. It’s like the father can’t handle the competition. He can’t even operate in a team of two.

    Trump claims to love and have learned much from his mother, but his wives, as you note, seem to all have been pushed aside. But they were never chosen to be potential partners or competitors.

  80. 80.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:14 pm

    @catclub: All property rights are created by and defined by law, which is created by the government.

  81. 81.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 12:15 pm

    @West of the Rockies:

    As a writer, I’m concerned about people wanting to do away with copyrights.

    I’m not a writer, but I am also concerned.
    Most artists are starving.
    A rare few, are prolific with the popular culture.
    The larger group are those that maybe have one or two hits with popular culture, and it helps to sustain them, while they create.
    It is THEIR creation. Why should we not have to pay for it?

  82. 82.

    Tokyokie

    June 1, 2018 at 12:18 pm

    @Brachiator: But then, Disney is the worst offender of making company franchises out of works in the public domain such as Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Pinocchio, Snow White, and Beauty and the Beast, to name but a few. The most egregious example is the Disney interpretation of The Jungle Book. The project’s production was timed so the its release would coincide with the expiration of the Rudyard Kipling heirs’ copyright. Kipling’s descendants got bupkis from the Disney film, but Walt Disney’s heirs still prosper from the sale of Mickey Mouse ears and the like.

    To contend that the descendants of the Brothers Grimm (if they could even be found) deserve compensation for the sale of a Grumpy plush toy is ludicrous. But so is the U.S. government’s insistence on extending the length of a copyright every time Steamboat Willie appears headed toward public domain. It should have been there years ago. Copyrights, like patents, were intended to be limited. But such limitations are legislated away when a media behemoth’s interests are at stake.

  83. 83.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:18 pm

    @M4: Cervantes, who was writing before there was any copyright in Spain, spent a good portion of the second book of Don Quixote complaining about the many unauthorized sequels to the first book of Don Quixote that were issued by others after it became successful. Has any scholar said that those unauthorized sequels were as good as Cervantes, or even worth reading?

  84. 84.

    Frankensteinbeck

    June 1, 2018 at 12:19 pm

    @Brachiator:

    It is an interesting question as to whether we as a nation can go back again, after Trump.

    We will be in the same situation that we are, and that we have been in: The racists want to burn down the country because they get less special by the minute, pitted against the people who believe in helping everyone. Theirs is a motivated, frothingly insane demographic that cheats everywhere they possibly can. We already outnumber them and we continue to grow and they continue to shrink, mostly because America keeps getting more brown. It’s painful to be at the point where they’re weak enough to go all in on nihilism as their only way out, and we’re not strong enough yet to overcome the cheating and shut them out.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    June 1, 2018 at 12:19 pm

    @Brachiator:

    Oh, I know. Loathe least. She has some stiff competition in that bunch. They win the “bigger assholes” contest. Her face is like a mask to me. It’s impenetrable. Maybe that comes with making a living being photographed. Ivanka and Jared are different- they assume, compose facial expressions for situations. Hers doesn’t change.

  86. 86.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 12:20 pm

    @Brachiator:

    Yep. I’ve seen some people say that copyright should only last for the life of the artist, but my college girlfriend and her sister were able to pay for college with the songwriting royalties paid to their father’s estate, and he had died when they were children

    If I had any talent, I would want to be blessed with the talent of songwriting. That ‘phuck you’ money that you can get if you are a good songwriter?

  87. 87.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:22 pm

    @Kay: There’s a reason why she never made it as a legit working model – they have to have some minimal acting ability so they don’t always look like they’d rather be somewhere else.

  88. 88.

    Humdog

    June 1, 2018 at 12:22 pm

    @Kay: I grew up in a family of gaslighters. I can kinda understand why the liars lied, they were keeping up their self image as well as keeping a lid on the free thinkers. I have a harder time understanding my siblings who went along with the gaslighting. They did not seem harmed by choosing to pretend to believe the liars’ damaging lies. All I can figure is they were trying to get through it so they pretended to go along. They did not get a Theranos salary out of it, and we all know people who have had to suffer at work for the paycheck. Maybe they also liked watching the free thinkers suffer as well. It just about broke my brain, so count me among the quitters. I also understand why the quitters didn’t fight it but just left. There are too many lies to fight and when you get pushback when you present the truth, it is disconcerting. It made me think maybe I was the one who was incorrectly perceiving what was happening.

  89. 89.

    Major Major Major Major

    June 1, 2018 at 12:23 pm

    @PJ: (this is me on desktop)

    I’ve read some very creative Harry Potter fanfic stories, two of which I would classify as pretty good! It doesn’t have to rise to the level of ‘as good as’ to be worth existing. (Obviously nobody is trying to monetize that, but it’s still probably(?) illegal.)

    One is a crossover with D&D, which interestingly means it’s not a copyright violation of D&D, since WOTC released the bulk of their 3.5-edition product under a share-alike license.

    But you’re arguing about a world with no copyright, which is rather a straw man considering my earlier comment to you about “life of the artist and spouse plus dependents up to age 25” as a reasonable policy.

  90. 90.

    rikyrah

    June 1, 2018 at 12:24 pm

    Trump sends signal with pardons, could face rude awakening

    Rachel Maddow shows how Richard Nixon’s open talk of using his pardon power to excuse his staffers in Watergate ran afoul of legal understandings of limits on a pardon, limits Donald Trump is likely to discover himself if he does for Michael Cohen what he seems to be suggestin

  91. 91.

    Kay

    June 1, 2018 at 12:24 pm

    @PJ:

    That’s interesting. I don’t find it appealing if she was selling something because there’s just nothing to look at there. Nothing’s going on :)

    It’s like “those sure are some even features!” There’s no way to engage with her.

  92. 92.

    West of the Rockies

    June 1, 2018 at 12:27 pm

    @catclub:

    I was responding to a sentence Brachiator wrote (44): “I know some techno-libertarians who think there should be no such thing as copyright, period.”

    Straw man?

  93. 93.

    JPL

    June 1, 2018 at 12:27 pm

    @Kay: If Melania were sick, Trump would invite the evangelicals together and have a prayer circle. He’d assume it was good for ratings. I think she is in DC, because at this point the sleuths would have found her if she was someplace else. She’s not going to Camp David, but I’m not sure about Barron.

  94. 94.

    Wumpus

    June 1, 2018 at 12:27 pm

    @West of the Rockies

    Should Shakespeare only ever be produced with an all-white (and all-male!) cast, because that’s how it was produced when he was alive?

    No one here is talking about not giving copyright to living authors. Walt Disney has been dead for half a century.

  95. 95.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:29 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: My point is the same, which is that fan fiction is basically crap. I’m not arguing for no limits on copyright, I’m arguing that current limits are not extreme and that they have caused no real harm to free expression. I’m also curious as to why some people get so worked up about copyright (and mostly about copyright in works that can be generally classified as “entertainment”), and have no concern whatsoever about all the wealth tied up potentially forever in other forms of property.

  96. 96.

    Kay

    June 1, 2018 at 12:29 pm

    Future Presidents will hate Trump because if we get thru this and things start working properly the first order of business is gonna be to regulate the Presidency. That’s always how it goes. The people who take advantage ruin it for everyone else.

    Obviously can’t be relying on “norms” or “decent behavior” or “the inherent power of institutions” anymore. Draft a code.

    Nixon brought about a “transparency” push that resulted in sunshine laws and all sorts of new rules. Trump’s rules will be baser, and will mostly have to do with self-serving and dishonest behavior.

  97. 97.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:31 pm

    @Kay: That could be the very thing that attracted Trump to her, that she’s like a doll.

  98. 98.

    burnspbesq

    June 1, 2018 at 12:32 pm

    Tiffany has a chance to turn out OK. She was raised 2,000 miles away form her old man’s toxic orbit. Penn undergrad, Georgetown Law.

  99. 99.

    Kay

    June 1, 2018 at 12:34 pm

    @JPL:

    I don’t know. Do you know any germaphobes? They’re the worst with illness. I bet Trump finds sick people disgusting and frightening. He talks about pregnancy and small children like they’re icky and gross, and that’s not even illness. People are just props to him. If they’re not decorative they’re not serving his purposes.

  100. 100.

    West of the Rockies

    June 1, 2018 at 12:37 pm

    I should say that I also have been frustrated with copyright law from the other angle… The movie Clueless is a clever re-do of Emma. I wanted to explore something similar with a different work, but even though the author passed away before I was born (I’m 56), I can’t. The work remains protected for years to come. It can be irksome.

  101. 101.

    Major Major Major Major

    June 1, 2018 at 12:40 pm

    @PJ:

    My point is the same, which is that fan fiction is basically crap.

    So is most fiction. The percentage is rather irrelevant to the discussion, methinks.

    I’m also curious as to why some people get so worked up about copyright (and mostly about copyright in works that can be generally classified as “entertainment”), and have no concern whatsoever about all the wealth tied up potentially forever in other forms of property.

    This is not actually germane to a conversation about what copyright policy should be. And FWIW I’ve seen arguments from the same sorts of people you’re talking about, for reverting real estate back to the commons after 100 years.

    I’m not arguing for no limits on copyright, I’m arguing that current limits are not extreme and that they have caused no real harm to free expression.

    This is the only actual sentence here that’s germane to the discussion, which was originally started by cain talking about how they consider current limits to be extreme. There’s a lot of BS being flung in this thread for some reason, addressing everything but that one sentence. My point is that you can’t really quantify the harm done because people don’t try to distribute things that would get them sued, so you can’t actually determine the amount of missing material. I also see no reason for IP to perpetuate indefinitely, and find a meaningful distinction between IP and things you can drop on your foot. And I think the current limits go far past the point where they help the artist, and the extensions do nothing other than enrich the people who didn’t do the actual work.

    (Minor edits for clarity)

  102. 102.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:41 pm

    @West of the Rockies: You could always obtain a license from the author’s estate, or just make something original that uses the same themes.

  103. 103.

    cckids

    June 1, 2018 at 12:41 pm

    @Kay:

    We need a graph as a visual until the big-picture damage starts to come into focus. When we hit bottom there will be “how did we GET here?” – we got here in steps.

    We did, we are. I was at a local bookstore, relaxing a bit, and saw this on a table. And I could not even pick it up. The tagline gets me still: “Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember”

  104. 104.

    Major Major Major Major

    June 1, 2018 at 12:44 pm

    @PJ:

    You could always obtain a license from the author’s estate

    As I’m sure you know, that works great for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

  105. 105.

    Peale

    June 1, 2018 at 12:48 pm

    @Kay: Yeah. This whole issue of what is “National Security” needs to be reviewed. Its apparently inscrutable. I know we are going to end up at war with Iran because reasons and we’ll have even less a say in it than we did in 2003. But it clearly doesn’t apply to “coal fired power plants” in the midwest or automobile factories in Tennessee. I can understand wanting something broadly resilient so that Congress doesn’t need to vote each and every time a new “national security” threat pops up to determine whether it fits. You want a little resiliency in the law. That said, maybe that’s what we need to do.

  106. 106.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:49 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: The vast majority of property law has nothing to do with personal property – you can’t drop an acre or a business on your foot.

    As to enriching people who didn’t do the actual work, one of the main features about property is its ability to be transferred – to heirs, or to completely unrelated people or entities. The value – the thing that is copyrightable – still stems from the people who created it.

    Look, I get it, you and some others have a concern about the length of copyright. I addressed that in my comments, and I also addressed other issues that you apparently don’t want to talk about. That’s ok, you’re welcome to be silent, but you can’t tell people what they can and cannot discuss (not on an almost Top 50,000 Blog!)

  107. 107.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 12:49 pm

    @cain:

    Worse, we’re only doing this on behalf of one company, Disney.

    Er, no. Not even close. It’s not like the other studios and record companies and publishers are saying, We would love to stop pushing for copyright extension, but mean ol’ Disney made us do it!

    You think that the record companies suing people for tens of millions of dollars for having downloaded music on their computers are not all in for extending the copyrights on works they’re making money from?

    Look up the Bourne Company on Wikipedia. Music rights are fucking everything else up when it comes to film copyright, because they’re separate from the copyright on the film, and nobody wants to deal with a situation where the film itself is in the public domain but the Bourne Company still expects their cut of the profits because the music is still under copyright.

  108. 108.

    West of the Rockies

    June 1, 2018 at 12:50 pm

    @Wumpus:

    Oh, I quite agree with your points. No, copyright should not be forever. I dont think I suggested as much. Death of artist, spouse, plus some point to protect the kids to adulthood… Something along those lines.

  109. 109.

    Rob in CT

    June 1, 2018 at 12:50 pm

    In case nobody else mentioned it already: the other comparison with Benghazi is the list of embassy/consulate attacks during the Bush II administration, and the lack of outrage & investigation of those.

  110. 110.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:52 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: That’s the thing about owning property, the ability to decide what gets done with it, but West of the Rockies will never know if he or she doesn’t ask.

  111. 111.

    Major Major Major Major

    June 1, 2018 at 12:52 pm

    @PJ:

    you can’t tell people what they can and cannot discuss

    I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that trying to trace the conversation to its root so I could make sure the two of us were on the same page was content policing.

    ETA:

    Look, I get it, you

    A sure sign of a conversation that’s gone off the rails. I’m gonna get some work done.

  112. 112.

    Mary G

    June 1, 2018 at 12:53 pm

    For fuck’s sake:

    EPA’s Pruitt spent $1,560 on 12 customized fountain pens from Washington jewelry store @brady_dennis @eilperin https://t.co/isyzwNcgGL— Dan Eggen (@DanEggenWPost) June 1, 2018

    I expect he will be saying “let them eat cake” soon.

  113. 113.

    LAO

    June 1, 2018 at 12:53 pm

    There is not enough discussion about Trumps use of mass rallies to incite his base.These rallies are fueled by lies, scapegoating, and communal victimization. Trumps lies require his followers to submit to a dystopian reality where truth is defined by what the leader says is true— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 1, 2018

  114. 114.

    NY Robbin

    June 1, 2018 at 12:54 pm

    @rikyrah:
    Amen!

    3. Also, remember she justified the Nazi sh*t flung at Julia Ioffe after JI wrote a truthful article about her by saying that she shouldn’t have “provoked” them.

    She married someone like him because that’s what she wanted. Oh well, sucks to be her. I have no sympathy,

  115. 115.

    chris

    June 1, 2018 at 12:55 pm

    @cckids: You can read The Weekly List any time you like. The book is just the first year, the project continues. And it’s terrifying.

  116. 116.

    JCJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:57 pm

    @Kay:

    It’s getting worse. We dropped another couple of floors just this week, admittedly a bad week, it’s not a smooth downard trajectory but it is still going down.

    During the Republican primaries my daughter asked which of that crowd would be best. I said Trump because any of them would be bad and cause problems, but Trump would just put an end to America. I figured it would be like ripping off a band-aid quickly. For the most part I think I was right – Trump is enacting Republican dream policies and destroying things blatantly with no window dressing. Will enough people notice in time to change things? I live in RWNJville so I will have to hope it is seen elsewhere because it sure isn’t here.

  117. 117.

    randy khan

    June 1, 2018 at 12:57 pm

    @Mary G:

    Clearly he’s not a real Washingtonian. You buy your fancy fountain pens at Fahrney’s, just around the corner from my office, and actually much closer to EPA headquarters than Tiny Jewel Box.

  118. 118.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 12:57 pm

    @randy khan:

    I’m not unsympathetic to copyright holders – I have cousins who own the rights to books my uncle wrote, and I get why those rights are important to them – but it’s entirely reasonable to have limits.

    The problem with our copyright law is that it was written with an assumption that a creator’s life was finite — someone who wrote a book or a song was mortal and would eventually die, and they wouldn’t have any more use for royalties from their work so it could go into the public domain.

    But in the movie business, the corporation buys the copyright from the writer and owns it from then on. Corporations are not people and are pretty much immortal. So what’s the process to end copyright for an immortal entity? What happens if the corporation does “die” but it sells its assets (including copyrights) to another immortal corporation?

    Basically, copyright law was never written to allow corporations to hold them, and yet here we are anyway.

  119. 119.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:58 pm

    @NY Robbin: Whatever contract she entered into with Trump, it was because she wanted to get paid. She knew she was marrying Donald Fucking Trump, a bigoted moron and a pig, she just didn’t realize what holding up her end of the bargain would entail.

  120. 120.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 12:59 pm

    @Mnemosyne: Actually, the first copyrights (under the Stationer’s Act in England) were held by businesses (not sure if they were corporations).

  121. 121.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 1:00 pm

    @randy khan: I’m familiar with IP law and the reasons behind it’s existence and the limitations on it. Some of these rights are pretty restrictive in terms of duration, others can last potentially forever (trademark, trade secrets). Copyright protects expression, not ideas (original ideas about technology or processes are protected by patents). I honestly can’t think of any “good” work (I know notions about quality are entirely subjective) that’s been prevented by modern copyright extensions. When you remove copyright, you end up with artists dependent upon patronage by the wealthy (or wealthy institutions), which is not conducive to the free expression of ideas.

  122. 122.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 1:02 pm

    @Mnemosyne: But your complaint about corporations can extend not just to copyright, but to everything a corporation owns, or has power to do. Why should it be the same as for a natural person?

    On the other hand, if copyright could not be transferred to corporations or other businesses, then you would never have any creative productions that cost more than one individual (or a few, in the case of co-creations) could afford.

  123. 123.

    Ruckus

    June 1, 2018 at 1:03 pm

    @chopper:
    It’s a lot easier to be cost effective in legal research when the people you are researching have done things wrong and it isn’t a witch hunt. Especially when they have left a trail miles long and wide.

  124. 124.

    randy khan

    June 1, 2018 at 1:04 pm

    @PJ:

    I don’t think anyone is talking about preventing living writers from controlling their work and the profits received from it. I’m certainly not. But the point of intellectual property law is to create incentives for the people who make the work, and there’s a point of diminishing returns in terms of those incentives. (And I don’t think I’d cite trade secrets as an example here – if I independently came up with the formula for Coca-Cola, there’d be nothing that Coca-Cola could do about it; I’d only be in trouble if Coca-Cola could show that I’d stolen it.)

    It’s interesting that you say you aren’t aware of any examples of people not being able to make works because of copyright. I cite one pretty well known example in one of my comments – Beckett’s estate refusing to allow any variations in productions of Waiting for Godot. And there certainly are plenty of other examples of people trying, albeit not always successfully, to prevent use of copyrighted work. There was, for instance, a court case attempting to prevent the publication of “The Wind Done Gone,” the retelling of “Gone with the Wind.”

  125. 125.

    The Other Chuck

    June 1, 2018 at 1:05 pm

    @PJ: Many of us thought the “current limits” were fine decades ago. What do you think should be the limit? A thousand years? Forever?

    People whose livelihoods are ruined by controlling corporate copyright holders do tend to get “worked up”. Yes, some people actually make a living in entertainment by working with culture they don’t invent from scratch with every work.

  126. 126.

    Brachiator

    June 1, 2018 at 1:05 pm

    @rikyrah:

    If I had any talent, I would want to be blessed with the talent of songwriting. That ‘phuck you’ money that you can get if you are a good songwriter?

    The money can be very good. On the flip side, once I got into the tax biz, I ran across artists who sold away the rights to their works early, before they married or had a family, and who later regretted not leaving more for their dependents. But this happens when you are young and full of talent and can’t quite imagine living into a ripe old age.

  127. 127.

    Kay

    June 1, 2018 at 1:07 pm

    @Peale:

    Well, just today. The “rule” against using the jobs numbers. Now we need a real rule because asshole took advantage of our leniency.

    My husband says people like Trump create situations where there has to be a “cop in every kitchen” and it’s true. They create exceptions for themselves and then decent people have to be policed to the extent that THEY have to be policed- a lot. Constantly. You can’t turn your back for a minute or they’re stealing something or breaking something. They’re the worst case that makes the rule necessary. It’s a kind of collective punishment, like when the teacher made you all give up recess because of the asshole who wouldn’t sit down. I’m SPECIAL and you DON’T MATTER. That’s the root of it.

  128. 128.

    randy khan

    June 1, 2018 at 1:08 pm

    @West of the Rockies:

    My position is that there need to be reasonable time limits, and from my perspective the bottom limit would be the life of the author plus something. As the nephew of someone who made a nice living from his novels, and who I know worked very hard to write them, I’d never want to deprive writers (and other creative people) the fruit of their labors.

  129. 129.

    Barbara

    June 1, 2018 at 1:09 pm

    @Mike in NC: Yep, it’s worth saying again: $17 million is a drop in the bucket compared to what is wasted weekly on Trump’s golfing trips.

  130. 130.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 1:10 pm

    @M4:

    ETA to Brachiator’s point, “life of the artist and spouse, plus dependents up to age 25” seems reasonable.

    That seems reasonable to me, too, but IMO it’s all of the ancillary stuff that fucks it up. Does the copyright on Disneyland eventually expire because all of the films it’s based around are in the public domain and anyone can open their own low-rent carnival and call it “Disneyland,” or is that covered by trademark? And what happens when your trademark’s copyright is in the public domain? What about the Harry Potter and “Simpsons” rides at Universal? No one really seems to know, and the law is unclear.

  131. 131.

    Yutsano

    June 1, 2018 at 1:10 pm

    @LAO: Shut up Steve. You’re just as responsible as every other Republican for the Dolt45 mishegas.

  132. 132.

    The Other Chuck

    June 1, 2018 at 1:12 pm

    @Mnemosyne: “Disneyland” is a trademark. Trademarks are not Copyrights are not Patents. There cannot be any meaningful discussion of the issue among people who are confused about that.

  133. 133.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 1:12 pm

    @The Other Chuck: Whose livelihood has been ruined? Did somebody make a whole bunch of Mickey Mouse cartoons on their own, not knowing that they couldn’t publish them?

    If real estate can be owned forever, why not copyright? I don’t actually think either should be owned forever, but I think to push for shorter durations on copyright (which only benefits people who aren’t making something original) without addressing the much more significant problems stemming from other types of property in our society is just punishing artists.

  134. 134.

    TenguPhule

    June 1, 2018 at 1:14 pm

    @Kay:

    It’s getting worse. We dropped another couple of floors just this week, admittedly a bad week, it’s not a smooth downard trajectory but it is still going down.

    We need a graph as a visual until the big-picture damage starts to come into focus. When we hit bottom there will be “how did we GET here?” – we got here in steps.

    It was never about steps. This whole thing has been the world’s worst waterslide into the sewers.

    The GOP were always going to cover for Trump. Its who they are. Their Reich has come and now they are daring us to pry it back from their cold dead fingers.

  135. 135.

    Brachiator

    June 1, 2018 at 1:15 pm

    @Tokyokie:

    The most egregious example is the Disney interpretation of The Jungle Book.

    I don’t know. The history of Winnie the Pooh and how it became a Disney property is also very bad. But again, although Disney is a villain, I don’t think anyone should focus solely on them when considering what copyright should be.

  136. 136.

    TenguPhule

    June 1, 2018 at 1:15 pm

    @PJ:

    For the life of me, I can’t understand why people get so worked up about copyright extensions – are they angry at having to pay to watch Mickey Mouse cartoons, or because they can’t make some $ off of their Mickey Mouse fan fiction?

    Disney has a shitty habit of copywriting public domains. You think Cinderella and Snow White belonged to Disney to begin with?

  137. 137.

    The Other Chuck

    June 1, 2018 at 1:16 pm

    @PJ: I’m not continuing a discussion with someone who simply ignores responses and repeats exactly the same questions. Good day sir.

  138. 138.

    TenguPhule

    June 1, 2018 at 1:18 pm

    @trollhattan:

    My Mueller budget cap is the flyaway price of one (1) F-35. Spend it wisely, Bobby Three-Sticks.

    $26 billion dollars?

  139. 139.

    Ruckus

    June 1, 2018 at 1:18 pm

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.):
    A percentage of people will believe anything as long as it “proves” their hate. Because for them, hate is their overriding emotion. They get to hate and blame someone else for all their self inflicted bullshit and belong to a pack.

  140. 140.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 1:19 pm

    @catclub:

    Getting better copyright laws which do not last forever is not quite getting rid of copyrights.

    I am also a writer, and the idea of going back to the days when individual artists had to re-file their copyrights every 10 years or lose them permanently gives me the heebie-jeebies.

    As with so much of our current law, we need to figure out how to protect individual creators without giving too much power to institutional copyright holders.

  141. 141.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 1:20 pm

    @Mnemosyne: If a trademark ceases to be used, it can be used by others (but then they can trademark it, preventing others from using it.) Things which are copyrightable can also be trademarked (think Mickey Mouse’s face or Donald Duck’s face stamped on Disney merchandise), and that trademark can persist long after the copyright has expired. So when Mickey Mouse goes out of copyright in a few years (unless the law is changed), anyone can publish those early Mickey cartoons now out of copyright, or create their own Mickey cartoons, but if they are selling them by putting an image of Mickey on the cover which would cause people to think it was a Disney product, then they could be liable for trademark violation. If they don’t have an image of Mickey on the cover, I think it would be very hard for Disney to win a copyright suit (not that they wouldn’t try.)

  142. 142.

    cain

    June 1, 2018 at 1:21 pm

    @PJ:

    @cain: Look, I personally think current copyright terms are long enough, but if everyone had to pay Shakespeare’s heirs a fee to perform Measure by Measure, I don’t think it’s the end of the world. What gets me is that people (libertarians mostly, but also people who just want free stuff) get so worked up about copyright, when the vast majority of the world’s wealth is distributed in perpetuity, meaning it never becomes part of the commons. You never hear these people calling for term limits on ownership of real estate or businesses or investments or art.

    Because it limits creativity. If everything is extended 70 years after an author dies.. it doesn’t really make sense to make it last that long. Should an author’s progeny be able to make money from an author’s work for generations? More than that, we can’t take existing work and put a spin on it. How many re-imagngings of shakespeare’s play have happened? Hell, Disney itself takes advantage of folk tales and puts a new spin on it. You couldn’t have Snow White and the Seven Dwarves if there was a copyright law that existed at the time those tales came out because it would be controlled by someone else. I find it ironic that Disney wants this given that they would not exist or those characters and movies couldn’t exist without drawing on our commons to make it happen.

    This is exactly why we have Creative Commons so that we can do new things with our media. See http://www.creativecommons.org/. As a person who believes in Free Software/Open Source, it’s vitally important that we have openness in our society as much as possible.

  143. 143.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 1:21 pm

    @TenguPhule: The characters and stories of Cinderella and Snow White don’t belong to Disney, if you want to make your own version, go to town.

  144. 144.

    TenguPhule

    June 1, 2018 at 1:22 pm

    @Leto:

    If we survive this, the question becomes how do we keep this from happening again? What laws/regulations need to be passed, and how do we keep Republicans from sabotaging them?

    When Republicans are outlawed only outlaws will be Republicans.

  145. 145.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 1:23 pm

    A potentially interesting edge case for this debate — the Great Ormond Street Hospital, holders of the copyright for “Peter Pan.” They have now been granted special rights within the UK to continue receiving royalties from “Peter Pan” in that country because they provide a public benefit using those royalties.

  146. 146.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 1:24 pm

    @cain: But anyone is free to set shorter term limits, or to put other rights in the public domain, of things they copyright.

  147. 147.

    TenguPhule

    June 1, 2018 at 1:25 pm

    @PJ:

    if you want to make your own version, go to town.

    That’s just it, Disney is notorious for deploying their lawyers for “brand” protection. Make your own version and Disney thinks that there’s even a hint of it resembling one of theirs, the legal threats begin. It doesn’t even have to be characters, they’ve sued over names.

  148. 148.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 1:28 pm

    @PJ:

    This link is NSFW, but one of the things Disney is probably worried about is a perfectly legal revival of the pornographic “Tijuana bibles” that featured Mickey and other characters doing all of those things adults always assumed they were doing anyway. ?

  149. 149.

    KithKanan

    June 1, 2018 at 1:28 pm

    @PJ: We have ways of returning abandoned real estate to public/private use (if someone doesn’t pay the property taxes, eventually the land is sold at auction).

    I personally care less about Mickey Mouse and more about thousands and thousands of works from the 1920s and later that may be worthwhile, but are unable to be republished, adapted, etc. because they’re still under copyright, but nobody can figure out who currently owns them to properly license them.

  150. 150.

    West of the Rockies

    June 1, 2018 at 1:28 pm

    @PJ:

    It especially gets sticky with pharmaceutical patents… I know R&D is EXPENSIVE, but it’s a drag for people who must spend $400 on one pill to keep them alive when that pill costs $1.00 to now produce. Companies want to protect their investments, as well they should… But the consequences are sometimes unfortunate.

  151. 151.

    EBT

    June 1, 2018 at 1:28 pm

    Fun fact, I can think of the time the estate of Maurice Leblanc sued a fanfiction writer in Japan.

  152. 152.

    cain

    June 1, 2018 at 1:29 pm

    @West of the Rockies:

    I would say about 15 years max after the author’s death. It’s hte author’s work, I don’t see why his family need profit from it. Besides, if they were smart they would have all kinds of original works that the author may have done that could be republished. 70 years is really extreme, that’s nearly two generations of people after the authors death and you can imagine the heirs would not want the money train to stop for famous works.

    In practice, heirs don’t have as much to worry about after all, they can themselves sell themselves as heirs and/or create new works based on their own interpretations.

  153. 153.

    KithKanan

    June 1, 2018 at 1:31 pm

    @EBT: I’m certainly glad that copyright eventually expired, and that fanfiction character can now legally be sold under his own name in the rest of the world.

    I still have my “Tales of the Wolf” tape, in part because Discotek hasn’t released those episodes yet.

  154. 154.

    cain

    June 1, 2018 at 1:31 pm

    @Kay:

    I genuinely hope Melania is not sick. I think that’s the most likely explanation and I could see the Trump family denying it, just ’cause they lie as a reflex. That’s the daily practice in that White House.

    If she was sick they could have released that information and get sympathy points. Of course, Trump won’t because the attention would be on her not him. But otherwise, these assholes would have totally exploited it for their own ends. I find it interesting there is no leak. Most likely she’s cloistered to the point that a leak can easily be traced.

  155. 155.

    Ruckus

    June 1, 2018 at 1:33 pm

    @Brachiator:
    The problem with intellectual property is that the two sides are either none at all or everything forever. And that forever is so that people can continue to have control of the money, long after it’s not reasonable.

  156. 156.

    Amir Khalid

    June 1, 2018 at 1:33 pm

    @Tokyokie:
    Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were not the authors of the stories attributed to them. They were academicians who collected folk tales as part of their work.

  157. 157.

    ruemara

    June 1, 2018 at 1:33 pm

    @Kay: The mothers are there to breed heirs. The daughter – there’s only one – is daddy’s little fixation because he can’t be her, he didn’t get to touch her, well, probably not much, & her beauty is a credit to him. There’s really not much more than that. It’s a gross narcissistic family combined with his pedophilia. Yeah, I said it. He’s cool with adult women, the underage are an exciting predilection. Even then, I’m sure the tape is worse.

    @JCJ: ripping off the band-aid has sometimes brought the unintended consequences of increasing the infection.

    @cain: I think she’s contained.

  158. 158.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 1:34 pm

    @Tokyokie:

    To contend that the descendants of the Brothers Grimm (if they could even be found) deserve compensation for the sale of a Grumpy plush toy is ludicrous.

    What about the descendants of the Disney artist who designed the character of Grumpy — a character that does not exist in Grimm?

    Or, more to the point, the descendants of Frank Churchill and Larry Morey, the guys who wrote “Whistle While You Work”? Music rights are separate from the film itself, so Churchill and Morey’s descendants get paid separately, and not by Disney.

  159. 159.

    TenguPhule

    June 1, 2018 at 1:34 pm

    @PJ:

    You could always obtain a license from the author’s estate,

    Sounds like a libertarian free market inspired solution.

  160. 160.

    artem1s

    June 1, 2018 at 1:36 pm

    for the price of Poppy’s War On Drugs, for the price of W’s War on Tara and War on the Death Tax, for the Price of ZEGS War on the Poor and Corporate Tax Cut Xmas, the US could have endowed every single person in America with a $1M trust five or six times over. Fuck the GOP and their oh so very serious concern for the use of taxpayer funds.

  161. 161.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 1:37 pm

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Fanfic seems to be in a weird grey zone, which is why the author of 50 Shades of Grey was able to make a bajillion dollars by changing the names and a few of the details in her Twilight fanfic.

  162. 162.

    sukabi

    June 1, 2018 at 1:38 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt: they’re going to find Melania moldering in the rose garden after they drag Drumpf out in handcuffs.

  163. 163.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 1:39 pm

    @KithKanan: This is a problem, and while there are currently legal incentives (that most artists are unaware of) to get people to file their copyrights with the Library of Congress, there’s no reason the LoC couldn’t establish a database to track who currently owns a copyright, but obviously it would depend on the owners complying with it.

  164. 164.

    Waynski

    June 1, 2018 at 1:39 pm

    I got into a beef, though friendly and professional, with the heirs to Dr. Seuss. We wrote a lesson plan using The Lorax regarding balancing environmentalism with capitalism (it was about socially responsible investing, before anyone takes my head off).

    They were originally a bit aggressive, but once I sent them the lesson plan they asked for some minor changes and we worked it out. They gave us a waiver. No money changed hands. So in many cases, as was mentioned upthread, it’s about maintaining the integrity and intent of the original work – not necessarily about money. I think the current 100 years works fine from that perspective.

  165. 165.

    chris

    June 1, 2018 at 1:41 pm

    @cain:

    If she was sick they could have released that information and get sympathy points.

    I thought of that but what if it’s plastic surgery gone wrong? Or just plastic surgery, breast (re)augmentation recovery period is at least 6 weeks and is not the sort of thing one wants in the news.

  166. 166.

    pamelabrown53

    June 1, 2018 at 1:43 pm

    @catclub: @#79.

    Re: copyright laws. A problem I apprehend is treating all copyright laws equally. Perhaps we need a better way to classify them. For example, Hamilton, Disney’s Mickey Mouse are examples of a creative type of copyright, maybe they deserve longer protection than a drug company’s stranglehold on an important drug?

    Bottom line, one size fits all may not work with all types of copyrights?

  167. 167.

    TenguPhule

    June 1, 2018 at 1:43 pm

    @PJ:

    but I think to push for shorter durations on copyright

    Fail.

    The pushback is AGAINST extending copyright length further.

  168. 168.

    TenguPhule

    June 1, 2018 at 1:44 pm

    @pamelabrown53:

    For example, Hamilton, Disney’s Mickey Mouse are examples of a creative type of copyright, maybe they deserve longer protection than a drug company’s stranglehold on an important drug?

    Patents are not copyrights.

  169. 169.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 1:44 pm

    @Waynski: Fair use (which is a whole ‘nother topic) generally covers teaching purposes. It sounds like the Seuss estate was pretty reasonable.

  170. 170.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 1:46 pm

    @TenguPhule:

    You think Cinderella and Snow White belonged to Disney to begin with?

    You think there have been no new versions of Cinderella or Snow White since the Disney versions came out 50+ years ago?

  171. 171.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 1:46 pm

    @TenguPhule: If only you could read: many comments have been about how the current copyright term is too long.

  172. 172.

    Waynski

    June 1, 2018 at 1:46 pm

    FYWP – Clarifying edit to comment 164. It was Dr. Seuss’ heirs’ lawyer. I never spoke with them directly.

  173. 173.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 1:49 pm

    @PJ:

    or create their own Mickey cartoons

    I think this is the part that keeps Disney’s lawyers up at night. See my Tijuana bibles link above. Having stuff like that be perfectly legal to make is a family entertainment company’s worst nightmare.

  174. 174.

    PJ

    June 1, 2018 at 1:50 pm

    @Mnemosyne: I can’t wait for the fireworks to begin.

  175. 175.

    Ruckus

    June 1, 2018 at 1:51 pm

    @Mary G:
    Well the French did get told to eat cake and look what it got the people that told them.
    Only seems fair to give Pruitt the same consideration.

  176. 176.

    KithKanan

    June 1, 2018 at 1:53 pm

    @PJ: That doesn’t work for all the cases where the current owners may not even be aware they own the copyright, or exactly who owns the copyright after multiple generations during which the work has been out of print is now unclear.

    There needs to be some system for returning abandoned copyrighted works to the public domain before they get lost, though I agree it shouldn’t be returning to the strict former registration/notice requirements.

  177. 177.

    Waynski

    June 1, 2018 at 1:56 pm

    @PJ: Quite correct. That’s what our lawyer said (forgot about that). In any case, he made that point, but we decided to play nice anyway and resolved it amicably.We decided it was a better PR move to play nice – we were the non-profit education arm of Wall Street’s main lobby (SIFMA). Getting in a pissing match with Dr. Seuss was not in our interest.

  178. 178.

    Immanentize

    June 1, 2018 at 1:56 pm

    @LAO: Re Stone’s assistant at the G.J.; to paraphrase the Talking Heads (and in keeping with Cole’s posts)

    “He went tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, like a little bird”
    Talking Heads – Love -> Building On Fire

  179. 179.

    Brachiator

    June 1, 2018 at 1:58 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    We will be in the same situation that we are, and that we have been in: The racists want to burn down the country because they get less special by the minute, pitted against the people who believe in helping everyone. Theirs is a motivated, frothingly insane demographic that cheats everywhere they possibly can. We already outnumber them and we continue to grow and they continue to shrink, mostly because America keeps getting more brown.

    America has been a racist country with the majority either actively or passively participating in it. One of the great evils of Trump is that he encourages and appeals to racism, and tries to create a new myth in which America is great because it is racist and excludes people. This can become tempting to many people, including those who logically should be repelled by Trump’s attempts to seduce them.

    Demographics, mere numbers, are not necessarily an antidote. And Hispanic communities have fought their own versions of racism and colorism, which can add to the complexity of the issue.

    I do not believe by any means that Trump has won or will sweep decency away. But the damage he has caused may not be as easy to undo as people think. It will take effort and a tremendous commitment to goodwill and tolerance.

  180. 180.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 2:23 pm

    @PJ:

    But I think that’s also where the trademark and copyright issues get muddy. If the character that they use in their new cartoons is Mickey Mouse, which is also a registered trademark of The Walt Disney Company, which law predominates? It gets extra tricky if you’re talking about a cartoon, which inherently uses a drawn figure that may be very similar to the trademarked figure. It would be easy to write a book using the characters, not so easy to draw a comic book or create an animated cartoon without running afoul of the trademarked character, especially since Disney has created merchandise of Mickey at all stages of his career (you can buy a “Steamboat Willie” plush), and that merchandise is trademarked. IANAL, but I know that if a trademark is not defended, you lose it, so they would need to fight every work that resembles any of the trademarked characters since they could lose the whole IP if they don’t.

    Are you surprised that they’re trying to avoid the whole fucking mess for as long as possible?

  181. 181.

    Citizen Alan

    June 1, 2018 at 2:26 pm

    @cain:

    My biggest objection to are copyright regime is that we have so many works that are terminally out of print. Which means that it is essentially impossible to purchase a copy of the work and damn near impossible to find a copy on loan from a library. And yet if you copy one of these works, and get caught, you’re on the hook for a 6 figure penalty. When I was in grad school, I had to change the topic of my thesis, because the topic I originally wanted would have essentially required me to travel to Europe to find the necessary research materials.

  182. 182.

    Citizen Alan

    June 1, 2018 at 2:34 pm

    @PJ:

    The “artist” in this case is clamoring to be paid for his work 75 years after he’s dead. And by the artist, I really mean the corporation that obtains the rights to prohibit derivative works as part of its publishing deal with said artist while he was alive.

  183. 183.

    Citizen Alan

    June 1, 2018 at 2:37 pm

    @Kay:

    Given the quality of the grown children, I honestly hold out hope that Barron’s father was actually the chauffeur or something.

  184. 184.

    Citizen Alan

    June 1, 2018 at 2:42 pm

    @The Other Chuck:

    When the Bono Act was passed, Mary Bono joked that they wanted to make the new copyright term “Infinity minus 1 day” to get around the Constitutional requirement of limited terms.

  185. 185.

    Citizen Alan

    June 1, 2018 at 2:50 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    To be fair, those “few details” that were removed included, among other things, every mention of vampires and werewolves.

  186. 186.

    Mnemosyne

    June 1, 2018 at 3:16 pm

    @Citizen Alan:

    Meyer holds no copyright on vampire and werewolf characters, only ones engaged in creepy BDSM-style pure and holy LDS relationships. ?

  187. 187.

    Citizen Alan

    June 1, 2018 at 5:10 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    To clarify, there’s an (IMO) odd sub-genre of fanfic in which people write stories ostensibly using the characters from an existing work, but transplanted into wildly different settings completely unrelated to the original. AFAIK, it started with the Xena fan community which would produce things like stories of characters called “Xena” and “Gabrielle” who were WW2 spies or adventure-archeologists or space explorers. There’s also tons of Harry Potter fiction in which magic is completely erased from the setting and, for example, Harry is just a guy from an impoverished background going to college on an athletic scholarship who makes an unlikely friendship with a brilliant student who hates sports named Hermione and also becomes enemies with a spoiled rich kid named Drake who’s jealous of Harry’s talent. As I understand it, 50 Shades started as off as something like that — Bella was a journalist sent to interview mysterious rich guy Edward and bondage games ensue. Then, the author just changed the names to make it a completely original work.

  188. 188.

    J R in WV

    June 1, 2018 at 5:11 pm

    @PJ:

    …I can’t understand why people get so worked up about copyright extensions….

    No one really cares about The Mouse. But there are thousands of books published every year, for the past century, that are under copyright. Thus they can’t be made freely available on the internet, or reprinted by any publishing house that doesn’t own the copyright, maybe from 1942.

    So those books just disappear. History, mostly, fading away as the original copies moulder away and are thrown out because they’re falling apart. Art, also too. Poetry, travel books about cultures that disappeared years ago.

    That’s what people are upset about.

  189. 189.

    J R in WV

    June 1, 2018 at 5:57 pm

    @PJ:

    When you remove copyright…

    No one here advocates removing copyright. We all seem to agree that eternal copyright is also wrong. We want a reasonable agreement between 0 and infinity, which seems completely unacceptable to Giant Evil Corporation, The Mouse, etc, etc.

    Corporations need an infinite copyright because Corps never die, they just reorganize or are bought out. I have a friend whose family’s publishing business printed a reference book 170 years ago. The name of that reference book is, for a subset of households, a household name, and as they republish the reference information as that science learns more, it will never lose copyright/trademark protection. I’m OK with that. I’m not OK with literature being lost because of a perverse heir.

  190. 190.

    J R in WV

    June 1, 2018 at 6:09 pm

    @PJ:

    There is a fundamental difference between material possessions, like tools, autos, houses and such, and immaterial creations, like a fugue, a concerto, a novel, a play. Art is not the same as dinner, crops harvested and stockpiled.

    Your refusal to admit this simple and obvious truth, and your insistence upon arguing against strawman that you create, forces me to admit that you are a troll, a wanker, and a SOB that I will never engage again.

    Welcome to the world of pie!! YUMmmm that smells good!

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