As for movies, I wouldn’t even bother to pirate 99.9% of what’s made today. And much of it, isn’t exactly what you could call an original idea. Like, how many vampire and werewolf stories have there been, so far? Or how many world disaster movies? Come on! If it hasn’t been Meteors, or Glaciers, or evil Aliens, or earthquakes, or something. It’s been a combination of two or more of these. Forget piracy. The industry plagiarizes and steals from itself. Oh, but I guess that’s Ok. As long as the producers and directors are all old buddies.

The reason is that a copy of the copyrighted work, such as the source code for Windows7 and a DVD of “Debbie does Dallas” is available for scholars to study for the good of the nation.

He’s both

Patenting the use of all episodic media on the Web might sound absurd, but the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted just such a patent, to a company called VoloMedia. It’s a significant issue, one that could threaten the freedom of all media distribution online. Wherever you are in the world, you can help.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s patent-busting project aims to take down unfair patents that threaten common-sense uses of technology. A number of these have applied to music and audio. The EFF has already won a big victory against what had been the worst offender – media giant Clear Channel actually successfully patented recording live shows. (No, really — recording a live gig, then burning them on the spot. The EFF was able to bust that patent.) The advocacy group also scored significant victories against patents on sending and receiving online streams and encoding media. (If someone thought they could patent your ears and charge you royalties for hearing, they probably would.)

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VoloMedia’s Bogus Patent – And Why It’s Dangerous

VoloMedia has been granted a patent for “providing episodic media.” The patent is broad enough to endanger any independent podcast or episodic media producer. Over the summer, Volomedia’s own Murgesh Navar sidestepped concerns about patent abuse to brag on the company blog about just how broad that claim was – that even non-RSS-based episodic media belong to them:

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Aside from the “before the start of podcasting” lie – and I believe “lie” is the only accurate word – it’s the implied threat that should send a chill down the spine of anyone using the Internet. Make no mistake about it: VoloMedia wants anyone doing podcasting, via any mechanism, to work with them.

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Plain English translation: if what you’re doing with media has episodes, you owe VoloMedia.

If this patent were allowed to stand, and if VoloMedia were able to successfully enforce it, it would have a chilling effect on all Internet distribution. Regardless of the likelihood of their legal success, that underlies the fundamental problem with patent law – it has come completely unglued from reality. That alone ought to motivate people to fully document these issues and try to effect change.

For more copyright insanity, check out the story about “Walmart Won’t Let Family Print Photos Of Dead Relative For Funeral”

[unbelieveable - ed.]

If they did enforce every single copyright law, the Internet would be a very, very empty — and boring — place. Then again, that’s probably the goal, anyway.