[humorix] Congress Copyrights Copyright Law

[James Baughn <jbaughn@ldd.net>]

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Warning:  humorous content ahead.
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take your discussions to humorix-l@nl.linux.org...
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Congress Copyrights Copyright Law
August 19, 2001

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In a move designed to thwart "those
evil open-source pirates and Commie hackers", Congress has
passed a bill permitting the Federal government to slap
copyrights on all statutes, regulations, laws, and even the
US Constitution.  

Last week, with little fanfare and absolutely zero notice
from the lamestream press or from rabid webloggers,
President Dubya signed the bill, known as the "It's For The
Children Act of 2001", into law.   He was too busy learning
how to speak Latin for an upcoming trip to Latin America
that he didn't have time to study the contents of the bill,
but he went ahead and signed it anyway. "I'm not going to
veto something that's for the children..." he said.

We asked the bill's sponsor, Sen. Fattecat (R-Washington),
why the bill was called the "It's For The Children Act"
even though it had nothing to do with children.  He
replied, "Everything we do is for the children.  Or for
kickbacks.   Err... that last sentence is strictly off the
record, okay?"

As a result of the bill's passage, the US Patent and
Trademark Office has already slapped a copyright on the
text of the DMCA, along with a registered trademark on the
name Digital Millennium Copyright Act(R).  The text of this
law, or any other Federal law, may not be copied,
distributed, or disseminated without the express written
permission of both Major League Baseball and the US
Attorney General.

Obtaining "express written permission" involves completing
three reams of paperwork and forking over a bribe... er,
"service fee" of around US$10,000 in unmarked bills.  Law
enforcement agents, Federal prosecutors, and the executives
for Big Evil Corporations are all exempt from this
requirement.

Needless to say, free-speech advocates are up in arms. Of
course, quoting the First Amendment(R) (also a newly
registered trademark) is now illegal without first
obtaining prior permission, so there isn't much they can
do.

"If we try to argue in court that the DMCA is a violation
of the First Amendment, we'll get arrested for both
copyright and trademark infringement," explained
Constitutional scholar Mr. Bill O. Rites. "And we won't
even be able to use the Fair Use Doctrine in our defense
because the Fair Use Doctrine is itself copyrighted!"

Along with DeCSS, illicit copies of the US Constitution and
the DMCA have already started to float through the seamier
parts of the Internet. An FBI&PV swat team raided the
offices of Google a few hours ago because the company still
has verboten copies of the First Amendment and other
copyrighted government documents within its search cache.

"The United States has invested countless man hours
crafting these documents," said the US Attorney General at
a press conference filled with angry reporters worried that
they might go to jail for accidentally blurting out the
copyrighted and trademarked phrase "freedom of the press".

He continued, "We need copyright protection on these
important works.  Without it, there's absolutely no
incentive for us to spend the effort on creating new laws
or regulations.  Why should we draft laws that some upstart
nation could copy or steal without compensation?  Why
should citizens be allowed to quote these laws in a
courtroom _for free_?  Everybody needs to remember that
there's no such thing as a free lunch."

At press time, the MPAA's spokesperson was busy purchasing
a fifth luxury car as a way of celebrating the new law's
passage and was therefore unavailable for comment.

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