> Go China! At this point, they're our best hope of saving the world from the Americans.

Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

> And yet we live in a world where every artist / writer / collective CAN have their own publishing company and it is trivial to set up.

Sure, they can do that, which is a really cool thing. However back in 1787 the problems of being a publisher were much more severe. Ben Franklin had all kinds of issues publishing his periodicals, including such basic things like there being an extremely limited supply of paper in the US. The history of RittenhouseTown is pretty interesting if you are interested.

And can is NOT the same as SHOULD. Authors aren't necessarily interested in being publishers. It is said that the really good writers write because they MUST write. Is it reasonable public policy to force them to be publishers as well?

It think the idea is ridiculous.

> No ownership required. The copyright holder would simply hire a publisher to print his works and pay them their fee, he would then be free to sell his works for whatever he could get for them. If he is popular enough he gets rich, if his works suck he goes out of business. That's the American way.

That still forces the author to put down his typewriter and run a distributions and sales enterprise. Sorry, but it's not acceptable to force this sort of structure.

When the Constitution was put into force the Statute of Anne had been in place for something like 80 years, and authors selling copyright along with their manuscript was well established. The idea that the Founders anticipated a system where these rights could not be sold is preposterous.

Ugh.

If some surfer dude from Oz can do this imagine what the Chinese Army and the TLAs have gotten into.

I don't know is this is good or bad, Mutually Assured Destruction can be a good thing, as well as can be the dissemination of information.

However it sure should give people pause when they put a server online. Or make their bank accounts available on the web.

It might be a case of not if but when.

You think this was the first time an American was killed unconstitutionally by his own government?

Very, very unlikely.

Huey Long had it right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvZb8y7Cp7w

It would be perverse indeed to assume that the founders intended a system where every copyright holder would have to own a publishing company. Because that is exactly what you are proposing.

It was certainly NOT true under English law that this was the case, and there is no evidence that such was the intent of the founders to require this.

The existing process in English law included the sale of the copyright to publishers, and in fact this process was encouraged by people like John Locke when the reform of Licensing led to the Statute of Anne.

I have seen companies much gone than Yahoo come back.

Apple would be one of those.

That article claimed that super-rich people world wide have 21 trillion in assets. Suppose that's true AND we confiscate all of it.

Guess what. It's not enough. The public debt of the US, Japan and Europe combined is more than twice that, some 44 trillion.

We are broke.

Exactly right. Scratch a bloated unneeded program and you will find a Congressional mandate. It isn't the military - they don't want this junk. IT'S CONGRESS.

These days Congress is about one thing - getting re-elected and they will do anything yes anything toward that goal. And that means wasteful government programs by the $trillion are not a problem so long as they can be shown to benefit a constituent base which can be parleyed into a vote.

It is the NUMBER ONE argument for term limits.

I was thinking of buying some Yahoo stock based on the idea the Mayer might turn that company around.

Now it is apparent she is not that type of leader.

Low energy fusion has no potential of being real.

Nature just doesn't leave large sources of energy lying around un-tapped. If low energy fusion was possible we would have seen lots of it in nature by now.

There wasn't any credibility here anyway so nothing was lost by posting this link.

I did read the article. Perhaps you should read one on the subject of syngas.

Syngas is a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Syngas is not generally produced starting from coal, with is the topic of this story.

In other words the pilot facility they are describing would not be testing the coal process.

Anecdotal observation here.

Went to Google and typed in Mumford. Guess what, no pirate sites appeared on the first page.

But there was a Wired article complaining about the "no unauthorized copying lending public performance etc. statement on the back of their latest album.

Maybe the RIAA doesn't want us noticing that the 'no unauthorized lending clause' has no legal basis.