3 Jul
2010
3 Jul
'10
5:49 p.m.
On Saturday 03 July 2010 06:49:05 david wrote:
snip
> Just think what the world would be like if
someone back in the early
> days of movie making had patented the whole movie making process
I heard that Hollywood is where it is and not the East coast because things
were patented and they went far away to "hide" - that's one story I have
read
at least.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company#Backlash_and_De…
> ("business process patents," anyone?), then used their resulting wealth
> to successfully keep extending patents the way Disney Corporation got
> copyright protection extended to prevent Mickie Mouse from entering the
> public domain). We'd have only Hollywood movies - and barrages of patent
> infringement suits keeping Japanese, Chinese, Indian and European movies
> out of the United States! There'd be a flourishing black market in
> "foreign" films, with "film runners" smuggling the latest Hong
Kong
> martial arts movie across the borders into the grubby hands of organized
> crime who would shift it down to shady "film dealers" and "speakeasy
> movie theaters"!
> All because of copyrights and patents. See
- back on topic!
> ;-)
> David
> gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
> authenticity, honesty, community
all the best,
drew
I used to write and sell poetry. Didn't make a
living at it, it was just
part of the creative writing business back then. At the time, poets in
America made a living in only a few ways: wrote greeting card verse!, or
were university professors. (I think one woman poet made a good living
writing small books of maudlin verse that were sold on rotating racks
near the greeting cards.) One of my poetry instructors (and my
undergraduate advisor) has had several poetry collections published. I
have one of them. None of the poems strike a chord with ordinary people.
He's probably not sold enough copies to recoup the publishing cost!
I seem to remember reading some science fiction once where poets were the
stars and musicians were in the state poets are in now.