Roberta sent me some stories about copyright legislation in the USA, which has a very different but still depressing as hell attitude: they want to just ban everything. For the record, article one and article two. My favourite is the quote by Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA – “It is this infection which corrodes the future of creative works“. Um, Jack, it’s the future of making money off of other people’s creative works that you’re worried about. This is all very depressing. When you combine the music stuff with my city’s plan to basically ban postering, the fact that you can’t get a broadcasting license without millions of dollars, and the ever-increasing consolidation of retail book stores, it looks like the internet is fast becoming the last refuge for freedom of expression, and even that is subject to the whims of government and business. As I read recently, “free speech is a wonderful thing, as long as nobody’s listening”. The irony of me reading many of these stories from my desk at a large multinational corporation isn’t lost on me, and it’s really dragging me down. To add to all the upbeat stuff in my life (which really DOES have some good stuff going on in it, by the way), I’m just gonna add that when someone spends the morning worrying about a baby bird they saw on the sidewalk on the way to work, and then buys chicken wings for lunch, I really don’t know what to say, especially when my boss bought the same thing. Ok, actual upbeat stuff – Angela got accepted into a cool art show, so she’s really happy about that, and we’ll put something up about it on her web site, which we registered but haven’t put together yet, and Vegan Porn has climbed its way to number seven on the Google search for porn. About 200 people got exposed to a variety of vegan stories yesterday when they least expected it, which is double or triple the earlier rates, so I’m happy about that. Oddly, I’ve dropped to thirty on the search for vegan…