Frog Applause by Teresa Burritt for January 18, 2012

Ok, sans culottes it is.

As USUAL the haves who got their from the past and want to hold on to all of it…want to constrict and limit those who ain’t got theirs yet…another example of the 1% doing their dirty enslaving schemes, just on the internet this time…

I favor judicious application of guillotines…

I never wear pants. For me, it would be an act of protest to put some on.

Sopa and Pipa will be soundly thrashed if I wear no pants! I have contempt for the self-righteous enforcers of “copyright” extremism.

I will being wearing no pants as I visit the blog today.But in compliance with San Fransisco CA ordinances and the recommendations of the “Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy” I will bring my towel.

To Whom It May Concern,

You make political activism so much fun.

Cleokaya ought to be all over this.

For once, solidarity with Ziggy!!

And another thing: Today, and today only, you can tell any 20 something that raccoons have gills, Ernest T. Bass was the 37th president, the 58-63rd floors of the Empire State Building contain the real Pentagon, the pre-Internet Wikipedia took up 600,000 floppy disks, a guy named Spiro was once the Vice President of the United States and his catch phrase was “Nattering Nabobs.” It doesn’t matter. These are just a few things you can tell kids today and they’ll have to believe you. What choice do they have?

Ah, some of my fellow devotees of FA are now joining me in reading the comics as intended, sans pants. I think I am Part of the 1%, boycotting the wealthy textile industry.

I thought ol’ Spiro’s catch phrase was ‘effete snobs’, but , in any case, his LAST catch phrase was "no contendere’

PIPA and SOPA, just a couple of more ways to put contols on everything that we do

If I take my pants off, my ears will be cold.

RE: Pizza gun. WTF?!?! They’re laughing about how they could do that when they were kids, but kids now can’t do it. Ugh. To quote Patton Oswalt: “the @55hole children of hippies” ruin everything.

Have you ever been a waiter?http://www.gocomics.com/comic/explore/1422351/18

If only SOPA were as palatable as a sopapilla.

Hmmm… I really do prefer to keep my britches tightly in place: it’s January in the Rocky Mountains, brrrrrrr!

It’s all a set up!

It’s not considered proper etiquette to wear pants in California….look it up in Wikipedia.

interesting….if you put PIPA into Wikipedia…it works fine.

I love the way people greedily “defend” their copyright rights. This gets so silly!

i think the basic idea behind these two bills is reasonable: no one wants you to steal the intellectual property they themselves worked hard to produce and wish to sell. That’s why we have patents, copyrights and trademarks. No law stops you from building something that has been patented, as long as you don’t try to sell it. That seems reasonable. That’s the same principle that should be applied to the internet.

My problem with the bills is that they go beyond this, and they put the onus on the web site to police it. That’s worse than bad. Both houses are supposedly coming together now to draft a new bill that will protect IP without spoiling our fun. I hope that can be done, but I won’t bet on it.

naked comment

The “Robot” is an image from the Italian Domenica del Corriere, a Sunday supplement to Corriere della Sera which ran for 90 years from 1899 to 1989. I can’t make out the date, but the caption indicates that this is a French robot named “Anatole,” a radio controlled device made by Jean Dusailly.According to Tout Savoir magazine for July 1954 Anatole could move its head right and left, move its arms and responded to ten commands; and it weighed 140 kg and was 2m 10cm high. More about Anatole here.

That was enjoyable reading, sort of a cousin to Fahrenheit 451. The reality is different, as I’m sure you know. Everyone is free to lend books (I’ve actually borrowed books from my library FOR NOTHING!) or to lend a copy of a movie. But suppose Spielberg makes a movie. I rip it, make a bunch of copies, and give them all away. Suppose a bunch of people do this. (e.g. over the internet) Nobody pays to see the movie, because they can get it for free. So Spielberg can’t make a profit from his movies, he stops making movies and buys a grocery store. I think that’s a more realistic scenario. A billion Chinese is a large market, and we’d like them to pay for what they watch. I’ve said that both bills were flawed, but I believe we can create a bill that preserves our freedoms and also the right of creators to profit from what they create.

Pipa Middleton? Yum!

Don’t forget! Obama had some pirates shot awhile ago.You’d better be careful about not wearing pants.

I never feel optimistic about anything Washington does, Needz, but especially when they try to resolve conflicting rights. It must be painful for them to know that when they pander to one side of an issue, those on the other side will try to vote them out. The pipeline from Canada being the latest conundrum.

I did enjoy your Bradburyesque ramblings, and of course I understood that it was a flight of fancy; but I thought there was some sarcasm directed at my comment and felt like I should clarify my thoughts in the traditional way: say the same thing again, only louder. On the bright side, my favorite politician, Senator Marco Rubio, has withdrawn his support for the senate version of the bill. We can also hope…