[105225] in Cypherpunks
Re: Advertising Creepiness
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Young)
Sun Nov 8 22:03:40 1998
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1998 21:31:55 -0500
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
In-Reply-To: <199811090115.RAA23804@smtp.well.com>
Reply-To: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Hasn't it been admitted even by advertisers that there's
no evidence that it works any better than prayer, but
that only a fool would not invest in it for who knows what
will happen if you don't. (The apology for it providing
information doesn't nearly match the tsunami of
non-informative crud.)
It's admirable that those on the editorial side valiantly
defend whatever voodoo keeps the funds coming.
As must we all work to advance credulity in the
unbelievable value of our near-useless products.
Surely, though, they know advertising is a scam, again
like raindancing, a godsend to compensate for readers
wise refusal to pay full price for repackaging sources'
intellectual property into something needing copyright
law to stamp it valuable.
'Course copyright is a prayer, too, sometimes answered,
usually not, as others grab your garbage to recycle it as
theirs (that's you, publishers, squeezing writers), flip you
a footnote finger at best, at worst swear to god it aint
plagiarism, it's inspired, it was in the air, nobody's,
free for the taking, eat shit, read the fine print of your
author's contract.
Which doesn't even appoach the issue of whether
most editorial copy (and IP in general) is not worse
than advertising, bloated, repetitious, imitative,
derivative, lazy, uninteresting, delivering the SOS
bylined-wrapped in tortilla, Pita, bun, corn husks,
pone, chicken fry, as though the coating is the
essential, sort of like advertising, like a prayer to
the cops to bag a deadbeat dad and mom who
bugged out providing their overgrown baby a
lifetime dole.
When IP con artists writers stop stealing that'll be
the time to stop stealing from them. Aint gonna
happen.
