HR 3261 - Internet Blacklist Bill

It still doesn't affect your ability to sing it to your kids or friends. The Girl Scouts is a huge public organization with 80 million dollars of yearly revenue and probably a hundred million dollars of assets. A little different story than singing it to your kids and friends. And from being a customer (by having my kids in scouts), I can tell you we definitely paid them.

You sing it to those same people at your kid's Bday party and there is no problem. A multi million dollar organization using it as part of their activities is a completely different story.

 

Tim Berners-Lee is the epitome of that thought:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

A quote from the link above: "Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due."

If he hadn't made the hypertext transfer protocol available to all, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

 

That might be a stretch. Netscape, MS, Apple, etc certainly would have had to pay the patent holder to make their browsers compatible (or come up with their own protocols, etc) but that doesn't mean that there would be no web. Look at all the Flash stuff out there. Adobe owns that and it is still in use everywhere.

 

Yep, there would still be the web... but I almost certainly wouldn't be here, the cost would likely be higher. As it is, this is a major expense. But yeah, it's a stretch somewhat to say I couldn't be here, I should have said it'd be less likely. The way I said it made it sound like there'd be no internet without Berners-Lee's generosity, and that is certainly untrue.

Sorry 'bout that, and good call lol

 

So the guy gave away HTTP free to the world. That's his prerogative, wouldn't you say? Or he could have charged for its use. Would you also agree to that assessment (without going into a long diatribe about how you wouldn't be on the Internet if he charged for its use)?

 

If I feel like going on a long diatribe, I'll do it. That you requested I not almost makes me want to lol

But yes, I'll agree with you assessment, though those points seem self-evident...

 

Knock yourself out. I think few people here read your diatribes anyway.

 

...but they respond often enough.

 

Guilty! LOL (just kidding, IQ; I love you, too!)

Seriously, while it might seem that there is a huge revenue stream formed by having a copyright on something, that's not usually the case. Authors benefit little enough from their written works--it's insulting how little of the revenue that comes from book sales actually go to the writer. Don't pay any attention to the stories of huge advances that are paid to famous writers, followed by thousands of dollars in royalty payments over dozens of years. That might happen to Stephen King, but the average writer is lucky to get a several hundred dollar advance and might collect royalties for about a year before his or her book is remaindered. I have a Christian mystery novel out with a couple of proofreaders before I send it out to make the rounds of publishers and I'm absolutely terrified that the time I spent writing it would have been better served flipping burgers at McDonald's.