Message: 33
From: "Mark K. Bilbo" <mark@blorch.org>
Reply-To: mark@blorch.org
To: free-sklyarov@zork.net
Subject: Re: [free-sklyarov] More Frequently Asked Questions About e-Books
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 06:58:26 -0700

>From Megapublishers.fnord:

Q: Are eBooks popular?

A: No. According to surveys, three-quarters of the public wouldn't buy a book 
in any electronic form whatsoever.

Q: So the failure of eBooks is due to market forces?

A: It's due to criminal theft of intellectual property!

Q: But you just said nobody wants to buy eBooks.

A: Exactly. Refusing to give us money is theft.

Q: Isn't it rather silly to go to such lengths to protect something nobody 
wants?

A: Not at all. If we can establish the principle that corporate profits 
supercede civil rights, the profit potential is astonishing. 

Q: But if you criminalize so much doesn't that make everybody a criminal?

A: Yes! That's the point. If essentially everybody is a criminal, then 
anybody who upsets us can be arrested, charged, and punished on a whim.

Q: That sounds rather Soviet.

A: Where do you think we learned it?

Q: Doesn't that make you communist or something?

A: Absolutely not! We're making oppression profitable!

Q: Won't people just read books and you'll go broke?

A: Not after we own all the publishing companies, all the copyrights, and all 
the books.

Q: But then you'll have to ban reading books or something. Close libraries 
and such.

A: We're working on it.

Q: Oh so that's why you called them "Ruby Ridge" types? Start the propoganda 
campaign early?

A: We don't like where this is going. You're under arrest.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Music: Bjoerk - Hyperballad (Post)