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What do baboons, stereo amplifiers, glucose, convertibles, Republicans, lesbian lap dancers, and yellow school buses have in common? You got it, copyrights! OK, maybe you didn't get it, but I know you're just lying. Copyrights are what make this country so great. That and some façade of democracy, but lets not make this into another communism rant [at least not for another two pages]. If you're like that Noam Chomsky guy and like to bitch and moan about this country, then do us all a favor: Take this issue you're holding, and wipe your ass with it. Then use it to blow your nose.
Without copyrights, we could say we invented the Nike check. But we all know that some friend your business teacher knew in high school actually invented the Nike check. Said person also did it long before we were born, but that's only a minor technicality. If you've met us in person, you may think we're college-aged, but we're more negative than 90-year-olds. So we could have very well done it, at least in essence. Using that logic, we also invented Viagra, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the Inconspicuous Can of Beer™. Oh wait, we did invent the Inconspicuous Can of Beer™. But we didn't put that stupid ™ there, the legal world did [actually, Rocko Bonaparte did, and we all know he's the law]. And none of those items were copyrights -- they were trademarks.
So let's presume our 90-year-old cynical asses invented some other things too. Like the P-51 Mustang, used to bomb Nazis and other Fascists! Very nice … and very much not a copyright. That would involve patents. We won't bother to explain patents much more in this piece. All you information technology juggernauts will have those rammed up your asses after graduation anyhow. The engineering majors already do.
So what if we invented the code of conduct in treating female slaves? Well, actually, that would be a copyright. You see, some rocket scientist decided his prostate was too full. Rather than take medicine for it, he started writing novels. These novels started out on the action side of things, and slowly turned quite kinky. As he wrote, his inflamed prostate released pressure. He was healed, he got rich, and the whole world got the more stupid. What are these novels? The Adventures of Gor, of course! And they are copyrighted!
Copyrighted materials are creative like trademarks and patents, but more expressive than a patent and less commercial than a trademark. They include things like visual arts, music, poetry [bleh -- Rocko], techno (which isn't music but is still copyrighted), literature, science fiction (which isn't literature but is still copyrighted), movie scripts, and other stuff. We'll get into that other stuff later.
Somebody invents padded handcuffs; that's a patent. Somebody decides to call them "StuffyCuffs." That's a trademark. Somebody incorporates them into their next Gor fantasy … that's a copyright.
Let's get off this kinky business for a moment and use a more complex example. Somebody comes up with a way to brand cows. That's a patent. However, using it on a cow with a certain pattern makes a trademark. Using it on a female slave is done in Gor novels, and is … oh crap, did it again.
Off with this Gor business. Just remember that you're all nerds, and your predecessors read that stuff while waiting for their buddies to cast magic missile in level 1 of the AD&D dungeon. And since you're all nerds, you don't know what art is. After all, it sure isn't contained in these pages.
But what if somebody earlier in this article had actually wiped their ass with this issue, then that would have a level of expression to it. Combined with some of their snot, and it would be art. It would be quite beautiful. It would be the first Gracies Dinnertime Theatre done completely in color. After all, we produce a lot of shit, but it never comes out quite in that tone of brown. So we'd probably want to have a our noses in this truly brown stuff next time we publish an issue. Well, can we just do it? Well, yes we could, if it weren't for ***Jim "The Hammer" Chapiro***! He'd suck up all our time, run off with our dignity, and put us so far into debt that we'd never escape. Oh wait, that's what happened when we enrolled here. Well, he'd sue our poor asses anyhow.
The problem is we didn't come up with the shit smeared across our issues. We gotta suck up to the Noam Chomsky wannabe and hope we can afford his demands. However, being a Noam Chomsky wannabe, he would think we were representing some nefarious neo-liberal sect of Freemasons and would force us to read all of Chomsky's political texts! So we lose real bad.
On the other hand, everytime we see some image or text, do we have to bend over and suck just for the right to put it into our rag? I mean, we suck so much at this we have to rip off from truly funny work from time to time. Otherwise, the two of you still reading this issue would have gotten bored and went off to team kill in Counter-Strike already. But God bless your souls, you're still here. We think.
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