Unbossed
and unbought news and information you can use
Volume
7 Issue 49…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…December 10, 2004
News You Use
Time for
You 2 Wake Up
By John
Burl Smith
Making it big today, as an artist
or entertainer, is the dream of millions.
Reminiscent of many who went west in the early 1800s to search for gold
or wildcat for oil, the lure of quick and easy riches is as much a part of the
American dream as a good job and home ownership. The current crave of the hip hop generation to make it big or
strike it rich, like the mega-stars they see in videos or read about in
magazines, is no different from young blacks emulating artists and entertainers
during the Harlem Renaissance. What
have changed are the technology and rules governing ownership and protection of
intellectual property rights.
Most aspiring artists today are
like Glenn Dale Gordon, "GG" as he is known on stage. A carbon copy of most beginners,
"GG" thought business people had his best interest at heart or could
be trusted to look out for him. He
listened to that "older father figure," who knew just what it took to
get him into the business. All
"GG" had to do was leave it all up to him. Of course, once he got "GG's" portfolio of original
poems and songs, he was never heard from again.
Unfortunately, "GG"
had not copyrighted any of his material, so years later when he heard his music
blasting on the radio, he sought compensation.
Again, like miners, wildcatters and artists, who did not properly file
their claims or copyright their material, "GG" was simply out of
luck. Someone else had gotten rich off of his sweat and tears.
Vowing to never allow that to
happen to him or anyone like him again, "GG" spent the last ten years
learning everything he could about protecting artistic creativity and
intellectual property. He has compiled
and condensed a lifetime of struggle reading through how to books, money wasted
paying lawyers and drudging down blind allies into one simple easy to read
compact disc (CD). Time for You 2 Wake
Up was produced to help individuals in the United States that are totally naive
about copyright protection.
Designed as a step-by-step
process, the CD provides information from start to finish on what one needs to
do to protect their dreams. Starting
with "Before You Write A Word", moving on to "First, Some
Basics," the CD includes Copyright Forms and Instructions, filing fee
information, a checklist and follow-up procedures to make sure your work has
been properly copyrighted and protected.
Most professionals charge up to
$400 for the information on this CD.
Time for You 2 Wake Up is formatted in Adobe-Acrobat reader and is
available online at www.copyrightkit.com for
less than $100. If you are a beginner,
serious artist or entertainer, who wishes to make sure your intellectual
property rights are protected, check out "GG" at his website. Make sure your dream of success does not end
in a legal nightmare.
Amsterdam
at Last!
Armed with well wishes, hugs
and kisses, Yohannes Sharriff embarked on his European tour on Monday, December
6. He arrived safely in Amsterdam.
His first engagement is on
December 9th at The Open Stanza hosted by Prue Duggan. Afterwards, he is planning some sightseeing
and connecting with the people of the Netherlands. He will hook up with Aqiyl
in London for a couple of days to visit with friends and do a feature on
December 17th. The pair will return to
Amsterdam for shows on December 19th and 20th.
Then, they will return to London for a feature on the 26th, with dates
in Vienna and Munich to follow.
While the above dates have been
confirmed, their itinerary remains a work in progress. For specifics on those engagements or to
make suggestions, please email yohasha@yahoo.com or
Noah
Webster (1758-1843)
Lexicographer and journalist, Noah
Webster was born October 16, 1758 in West Hartford, Connecticut. After graduating from Yale in 1778, Webster
taught in village schools in order to finance his legal studies. He was admitted to the Hartford bar in 1781.
Webster's experience in village
schools probably influenced his publication of A Grammatical Institute of the
English Language (1783-85), which contained a spelling book, a grammar and a
reader. A pioneer US work in this
field, its simplified spelling and patriotic tenor made it popular in US
schools. The Elementary Spelling Book,
also called the "Blue-Backed Speller," sold more than a million
copies per year before 1861. This was
the main source of income for Webster's family over the twenty years he
compiled his dictionary. In 1783, he
spearheaded efforts that resulted in passage of copyright laws to protect
intellectual property.
In 1788, Webster launched the
American Magazine in New York; it failed by year's end. He resumed his law practice in Hartford and
continued his association with the "Hartford wits." In 1793, he established a daily paper, the
Minerva in New York, and a semi-weekly paper, the Herald, and he helped
establish Amherst College. While
Webster held various public offices, including a county judgeship and membership
in the Connecticut House of Representatives, he primarily devoted himself to
linguistic studies.
In 1806, he published A
Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. The following year, he published A Philosophical and Practical
Grammar of the English Language and began working on his great dictionary. Webster's An American Dictionary of the
English Language (1828) contained 70,000 entries. In 1840, a second edition was published. He completed the revision of an appendix a
few days before his death May 28, 1843 in New Haven.
Many revisions and abridgements
have appeared since his death.
Webster's other works include an English translation of the Bible
(1833), Sketches of American Policy (1785), Dissertations on the English
Language (1789); The Rights of Neutral Nations in Time of War (1802) and A
Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects (1843).
(Sources: Encyclopedia Americana, www.lexrex.com, www.netstate.com and www.greatsite.com)
The
Matrix: Stolen Property
Did you ever wonder about the
creative genius behind the blockbuster trilogy The Matrix or The
Terminator? Most movie buffs probably
assumed the Wachowski brothers, Andy and Larry, or some other mad genius tied
to Warner Brothers Studios wrote these screenplays. According to a copyright infringement lawsuit filed in the United
States District Court of Los Angeles, California, Sophia Stewart of Salt Lake
City, Utah, wrote The Matrix screenplay.
Stewart's lawsuit alleges
Warner Brothers, Joel Silver and the Wachowskis used her work, a screenplay
titled The Third Eye, in creating The Matrix.
According to www.daghettotymz.com, which
has news releases, court briefs and excerpts from the original manuscript, the
copyright on Stewart's sci-fi screenplay dates back to 1981. During the mid-eighties, Stewart, a black
woman, submitted the screenplay to the Wachowskis in response to a request for
original sci-fi works.
After seeing The Matrix in
1999, Stewart knew her intellectual property had been stolen; she filed a
copyright infringement lawsuit. An FBI
investigation into her claim produced eyewitness testimony that Warner Brothers
executives and lawyers knew the screenplay closely followed in producing the
film did not belong to the Wachowski brothers.
The evidence gathered in this lawsuit has also identified Stewart's work
as the creative genius behind The Terminator.
Combined the two trilogies have
grossed more than $2.5 billion at the box office, and Stewart has received
neither revenue nor recognition for her work.
With her victory in court, that will all change, and one would think the
mystery behind the creative genius that gave us The Matrix and The Terminator.
Or, maybe not! According to Stewart, "The reason you
have not seen any of this in the media is because Warner Brothers parent
company is AOL-Time Warner... this GIANT owns 95 % of the media... Let me give
you a clue as to what they own in the media business... New York Times
papers/magazines, LA Times papers/magazines, People Magazine, CNN news, Extra,
Celebrity Justice, Entertainment Tonight, HBO, New Line Cinema, DreamWorks,
Newsweek, Village Roadshow... many, many more!
They are not going to report on themselves. They have been suppressing
my case for years..."
From
The Anarchiad, On Paper Money
By The
Hartford Wits
Hail! fav'rite State, whose nursing
fathers prove
Their fairest claim to my
paternal love!
Call'd from the deck with
pop'lar votes elate,
The mighty Jacktar guides the
helm of state;
Nurs'd on the waves, in
blust'ring tempests bred,
His heart of marble, and his
brain of lead,
My foes subdued while knavery
wins the day,
He rules the senate with
inglorious sway;
Proud, for one year, my orders
to perform,
Sails in the whirlwind, and
enjoys the storm.
Yet not alone the per'lous
watch he keeps,
His mate, great O---n, bustles
while he sleeps;
There G---n[A]
stands, his head with quibbles fill'd;
His tongue in lies, his hand in
forg'ry skill'd;
To him, my darling knave, my
lore I teach,
Which he to C---s[B]
lends in many a pompous speech.
Oh, roguery! their being's end
and aim,
Fraud, tendry, paper bills,
whate'er thy name;
That medium still, which
prompts th'eternal sigh,
By which great villains
flourish, small ones die.
Plant of infernal seed, without
hell's heat,
Say in what mortal soil thou deign'st
to cheat?
Fair from the Gen'ral Court's
unpardon'd sin,
Ap'st thou the gold Peruvian
mines within?
Wak'd to new life, by my
creative power,
The press thy mint, and
dunghill rags thy ore.
Where grow'st thou not? If vain
the villain's toil,
We ought to blame the culture,
not the soil;
Fix'd to that isle, it nowhere
passes free,
But fled from Congress, C---s
dwells with thee.
Hail! realm of rogues, renown'd
for fraud and guile,
All hail! ye knav'ries of yon
little isle.
There prowls the rascal,
cloth'd with legal pow'r,
To snare the orphan, and the
poor devour;
The crafty knave his creditor
besets,
And advertising paper pays his
debts;
Bankrupts their creditors with
rage pursue,
No stop, no mercy from the
debtor crew.
Arm'd with new tests, the licens'd
villain bold,
Presents his bills, and robs
them of their gold;
Their ears, though rogues and
counterfeiters lose,
No legal robber fears the
gallows noose.
Look through the State, the
unhallow'd ground appears
A pen of dragons, and a cave
for bears;
A nest of vipers, mix'd with
adders foul;
The screeching night-bird, and
the greater owl:
For now, unrighteousness, a
deluge wide,
Pours round the land an
overwhelming tide;
And dark injustice, wrapp'd in
paper sheets,
Rolls a dread torrent through
the wasted streets;
While net of law th'unwary fry
draw in
To damning deeds, and scarce
they know they sin.
New paper struck, new tests,
new tenders made,
Insult mankind, and help the
thriving trade.
Each weekly print new lists of
cheats proclaims,
Proud to enroll their knav'ries
and their names;
The wiser race, the snares of
law to shun,
Like lot from Sodom, from Rhode
Island run.
About Me: A Hartford, Connecticut literary group, the
Hartford Wits were Yale graduates and
Federalists. The group included Joel Barlow, Benjamin
Trumbull, the historian, and Noah Webster.
Excerpts from their satirical poem, The Anarchiad, appeared in The New
Haven Gazette and Connecticut Magazine on December 28, 1786. Reference (A) is to Henry
Goodwin, a Newport attorney that reportedly wrote the 1786 Annual Address of
the Governor of Rhode Island to the state legislature. Reference (B) is the Hon. John
Collins, Governor of Rhode Island (1786-1789). (Source: http://dlib.stanford.edu:6520/cgi-bin/hugo#MORE)
Mailbox:
E-Mails, Faxes & Telephone Calls
Email HowWil@aol.com Your "Silent Majority" piece (The
DISH Vol. 7 No 47) is so-o-o completely right!
Deserves to be hung from every Evangelical church in the nation.
Email www.ajc.com This is where they found Bernard Cantrell
Burden in the towering red oak tree in the back yard of Donna Young's green
rented home on Roger Arnold Road. In
Grantville, an old Coweta County mill town, where subdivisions fade into
forests, a friend of Burden's was walking his dogs when he spotted the
6-foot-6-inch, 220-pound lifeless body swinging from a blue rope. The rope had
been looped over two limbs about 10 feet from the ground.
Email www.cbsnews.com Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster is out
with its list of the 2004 "Words of the Year." Topping the list by a wide margin is the
word "blog," which is generally used to describe an online personal
journal.
Copycats
Over the past two years,
plagiarism, copyright infringement and efforts to protect intellectual property
have been in the news. Recently, the US
Senate passed a measure that criminalizes the videotaping of movies at theaters
and provides stiff penalties for those caught distributing music, movies and
other copyrighted material before it is officially released to the public.
Laws are already on the books
in the United States that fine and/or imprison Internet song-swappers of
copyrighted music. To enforce new and
existing copyright laws, the Justice Department has launched a task force to
crack down on intellectual property crimes from the theft of pay-TV signals to
music file-sharing.
While a great deal has been
written about plagiarism, which is the theft of intellectual property, by some
well-known historians, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, these
famous authors have not been treated as criminals, forced to pay a penalty or
imprisoned. In academia, plagiarism is
a crime that is often punishable with expulsion from the university, loss of
course credits or some form of penalty for the accused. Rarely is plagiarism simply excused.
With the advent of the
Internet, it is easy to cut and paste one's way through a doctoral thesis. However, if sources are not properly
credited, the equally sophisticated and readily available plagiarism detection software
can thwart lazy students.
Given the stringent rules and
punishment meted out to students that violate them, it is disconcerting that
professors and well-known writers, such as Ambrose and Goodwin, can get away
with plagiarism. Recently, revelations
of plagiarism by Harvard University law professors Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. and
Laurence H. Tribe highlighted the dichotomy in treatment accorded professors
and students. While famous writers can
claim the copying without proper credit was "an error" and can
continue as though nothing happened, students cannot escape unscathed under
Harvard's copycat rules.
Like Harvard, outside academia
there are two sets of rules. Fat cat
copycats, the rich and famous, escape with their millions intact. Even when their thievery is acknowledged,
the people they stole from remain anonymous.
In general, it is the petty thieves, like students, that get snared and
suffer the penalties for stealing intellectual property.
Disgruntled says: A
gun-like weapon, the taser shocks its victim with 50,000 volts of electricity. Like the stun gun, it is a dangerous
weapon. Even though law enforcement
considers them non-lethal alternatives for controlling suspected criminals and
felons, they have been implicated in dozens of deaths. The recent hanging in Georgia of another
young black man that happened to have been dating a white woman firmed up
suspicions that the stun gun or something is used to incapacitate these men
prior to them being hung. With no signs
of struggle at the crime scene, their deaths are quickly ruled suicide. It is time to look more closely at the
possibility that something that eliminates or minimizes struggle occurs to
facilitate these suspicious hanging deaths.
Disgruntled wants to know:
According to the Bush Administration, Muslim extremists hate our freedoms so
much that they want to kill us. Truth
is, Muslims really want us to leave their countries and cease implementing
policies that kill, maim and impoverish their people. Given US standards, there is nothing radical or extreme about wanting
foreign occupiers to leave your country.
The US invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused untold death and
destruction. Nearly every Iraqi family
has been adversely impacted. Many
compare the US in Iraq with Israel in the Gaza and on the West Bank. This is an extremely negative
comparison. So, why are we surprised
that a recent Pentagon report found that the US has failed to win hearts and
minds in Iraq?
Disgruntled feels:
Sober! According to a recent Health and
Human Services report, more than forty percent of US citizens take at least one
prescription drug. Coupled with alcohol
and illegal drug use, this makes the US the most drugged nation in the
world. This may explain how the US came
to choose a leader that says war is peace and he be believed by a majority of
the nation's citizens. Drugged, the
people are in a state of oblivion and readily accept any media
manipulation. For example, they did not
complain when television networks, which run movies with gratuitous violence
and sex enhancement commercials, refused to air advocacy ads for the United
Church of Christ that deals with inclusion.
Something in this picture is amiss.
This nation is headed towards a slippery slope. The people need to get off their illegal and
prescribed dope and sober up before the nation plunges into the abyss!
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