Artists and Anarchists
Bob pulled up the HUD in his helmet, scanned the release notes for the...thing, the, uh...the Association ops manual for two seconds before his attention span gave out. Left eye twitched from the Starbucks drip and he dialed back the dose while eyetracking through live feeds of the latest virals and nodding, pretending to listen to his buddy Mort.
Mort was saying something about the last session of Congress and the integration of semantic chatworks in dynamic network nodes, or maybe that was the CNN headcast he was listening to...
"To which he was listening," Bob corrected his mental narration, wondering how the legacy twitters managed to say clever things about themselves all the time. His own thoughts were so boring, scattered.
The mental-twitch blarg he'd started as a part of his ADD therapy wasn't really helpful, but it made him feel productive. Made him feel more like the hero of his own story rather than a passive audience. He was in charge of his destiny. He decided what he wanted to buy. Damn right!
Of course he gave up the meds for the caffeine drip after a week, though the company therapist advised him after he signed the waiver that caffeine might not possibly maybe be a good substitution for the concentration meds. It did give him more interesting material for the blarg though.
A stray thought remembered...reminded Bob to check his clip. Last time he tried to put two in the forehead, he only got one shot off and had to reload. Embarrassing. Em-bare-ass-ing. Bob could never remember how to spell it. Spelling was obsolete, but for some reason he couldn't forget that it had once been necessary. How did they communicate before spell-check? How did they know what they were blarging about?
Bob disengaged the clip and listened to Mort spout off about something historical. Mort was always studying history feeds and relaying the good bits to Bob.
"And the worst part is - they gave it away for free!"
Bob's ears perked up. "Free? Free as in free?"
"Yep, free as in illegal. Of course it wasn't illegal when they started, I don't know why, but they kept up even after. Their symbol was this red hat. Red...Hat... You get it? Red as in communist!"
Bob got puzzled, turned down the music stream he was listening to for a second. "To which he was listening..."
"Thought you said they were anarchists?" Bob asked.
"Commies and anarchists are the same. It's just different marketing campaigns. Their goals are identical. They all wanna destroy America, destroy democracy. They're afraid of the choices we have as citizens, the God-given freedom we have as consumers. I saw a feed on this last week."
"You see, this country was built by corporations, literally. A bunch of the founding fathers were senior execs in this Masonic Construction Company. A few were CEOs of their own religious and media conglomerates. This guy, Thomas Payne, was a world famous blogger. They said Thomas Jefferson even marketed his own version of the Bible and sold millions of copies."
"Were there millions of people in the U.S. at that time?" Bob asked.
"I think he got foreign distribution rights as well. It was big with the Chinese or something."
"But I thought the Bible was written by other people, like in the Middle Ages...? How did he get the rights to create derivative works?"
"It was, but they had something called "public domain" back then. Stuff you could use without getting permission because the authors were dead and stuff. The copyrights were expired."
"Expired?"
"Yeah, dead. The copyrights died."
"Who killed the copyrights?"
"Communists. Communists and artists...er, anarchists, I mean." Mort shook his head.
Bob understood what Mort meant. It was easy to get anarchists and artists mixed up sometimes.
Bob looked down and noticed the clip in his hand. Not sure why he'd disengaged it, he shoved it back in, played with the safety to the beat of the song in his head.
"Shit!" Bob exclaimed as he fumbled with the iNode behind his ear. "I didn't mean to listen to this song again. There goes another $4. Shit."
"No, it's $6 now," Mort replied. "They raised it last week. Something about overhead and a re-examination of current market values."
"Well, I'm stimulating the economy at least."
"Actually, this week's earnings are going to pay down the Chinese interest on the deficit. The FED raised the payday interest limits again too, so the Association's company store is getting a little more from me next week."
The Association was the common term workers used for the IPAA, the Intellectual Property Association of America. Bob wasn't sure why they kept the last A since they'd been in the cloud for decades and didn't technically have a physical presence on national soil. All the workers were contractors. All the execs lived in the subsurface annex of the Sealand resort off the coast of England, safe from taxes and liability in their own little corporate magic kingdom. Mort said the last A was some kind of retro name convention the Association got from the older associations it has absorbed during its inception.
"It's worth it though, if you think about it," Mort reasoned. "If it weren't for the IP companies, artists wouldn't create anything. There'd be no music, no virals, no feeds..."
Bob couldn't sit still for five minutes without viewing a feed or thumbing his iNode or...whatever he ended up doing. He couldn't imagine a world without IP. Fucking communists and their sadistic ideologies. He couldn't figure out if they just hated art or if they were afraid of choice. Freedom is beautiful. Being able to license IP whenever you want is priceless. Well, not without price, but it was better than the alternative at least. Nothing is without price of course. That would be illegal...
Mort pulled up in front of the address and shut down the engine. The Google projection was still current. The defendant's car was parked in the driveway just as the projection showed. Bob looked up into the sky as if expecting to see the Google UAVs but he knew they flew too high to detect without magnification. The Google birds updated so quickly that the Association's unmarked personnel carrier appeared in the latest refresh seconds later. Bob watched himself in miniature as he got out of the vehicle, moving rather slowly since the miniature Bob was watching an even more miniature version of Bob get out of the vehicle, slowly.
Bob zeroed the model and eyetracked through the briefing about the defendant. Early 30's. Synergistic Network Facilitator at some semi-autonomous firm that was traded in Eastern European markets. Bob couldn't parse the job title. Mort said he thought "facilitator" meant "a manager who doesn't manage anyone and doesn't get paid like management" but he wasn't sure. Bob didn't really care though. The man made more than he did.
This is why Bob loved this job. Bob was 40K in debt for the two weeks of legal and firearms training that the Association required before he was certified for the job. This guy, this defendant, had probably spent six years and 400K on an education, just to run afoul of the Association's legal department. Where did all that education get him?
Bob kinda felt bad for the family, getting saddled with all the inherited liability, but the artist's need to get paid for their work after all. It's not like reality shows write themselves...
Bob kicked in the door's Arfid security protocol with a few button taps and walked in as the door swung open for him. Mort was on his heels, sidearm drawn, watching his HUD for signals from Mr. Smith's personal area network. They detected him in the kitchen and stealthily made their way to it. Bob tapped his ear and Mort nodded in response. Bob triggered the Banshee and they both flinched from the infrasound. No amount of filtering made the compliance device any more pleasant, but it was certainly more pleasant for them than for Mr. Smith.
When they entered the kitchen, they found Mr. Smith on the floor, fetal, and lying in a pool of his own vomit. Bob had pissed himself when they tested it on him in firearms training. He didn't envy Mr. Smith, or his bowels.
They dragged Mr. Smith to the living room and let him fall slack on the carpet. Despite knowing he'd be dazed for several minutes, Mort's gloved fingers pulled at Mr. Smith's eyelids clumsily. Mort stared into the dilated pupils as if looking for something in particular, but he didn't know what it was he was looking for at all. It was just something he'd seen a cop do on a feed once. He didn't tell Bob that he didn't know what he was doing.
"I think he's coming around," Mort said.
Bob nodded and queued up the legal pad with the usual script. The Kindle's vocal emulation was eerily realistic, but Bob had gotten used to it. Bob liked the snooty British barrister voice mod. He'd gotten it from some old movie he'd licensed to view last summer. He paid a little extra to license the vocal emulation rights, but it was worth it.
"Mr. or Ms. Edward Smith, I hereby inform you of the litigation proceedings against you by the Intellectual Property Association of America. This is a civil action seeking damages and sanctions for intellectual property infringement under the Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement Act of the United States, European Union, et al."
Mr. Smith was shaking his head slowly and wiping at the vomitus on his cheek in between heavy breaths. He wasn't all there yet, but his eyes started to focus on Bob and Mort and the muzzle of Mort's sidearm so close to his head.
"The IPAA, heretofore referred to as the plaintiffs, hereby file motion for leave to take expedited discovery of any evidence supporting the complaint. It is your right to file a memorandum in opposition to this motion. Would you like to do so at this time?"
Mr. Smith looked up, worried. He was all there now.
"What are you talking about?"
The Kindle continued. "Since you have chosen to waive this right, we shall proceed forthwith."
Bob took the queue to start the intrusion of Mr. Smith's network. The spike cracked the firewall with minimal effort and the script started deep sniffing the files for errant code and unlicensed content.
"If you tell us where the files are, we can finish the proceedings a lot faster, Mr. Smith," Mort said.
"Smith? Who's Smith? My name is Simmons, Jonathan Simmons."
"Yeah, right," Mort laughed. "And IP addresses don't uniquely identify individual users either..."
"Actually..." Mr. Smith started.
"STFU before I make you permanently AFK!" Mort shouted the letters. He didn't even know what they originally stood for. Who did anyways?
"But I'm telling you, you've got the wrong..."
Mort pushed the gun closer to Mr. Smith's face, impressing upon him the reality of his predicament. Mr. Smith STFU'd.
Mort looked to Bob. Bob looked back, eyebrows raised.
"The script is taking longer than usual to find anything. Maybe he's got some really good crypto or something?"
"Tell me, Mr. Smith. Are we gonna find any illicit Nix cryptoloops hidden in your network? Is that where you're stashing the stolen IP? I don't want to have to spend all afternoon trying to crack your ice. Where are the files?!?"
"I'm telling you I'm not Smi..."
Mort interrupted Mr. Smith's infinite loop with the back-handed pistol-whipping technique he'd been practicing. The blood was a known side effect. "May cause nausea, bleeding, discomfort, swelling and inflammation of the affected area," the manual had said.
"Hey Mort, this guy must be good," Bob yelled out as he scanned the system info of the house's network. "He managed to fake a TrustComp ID on his network under someone else's name. I think he's an identity thief. Didn't he claim his name was Simmons? Looks like that's the name on the fake ID."
Bob hadn't thought it possible to fake a Trusted Computing ID before now, but that was the only possible explanation. Mr. Smith was good, really good.
Mort smiled and pushed the muzzle of his sidearm against Mr. Smith's head again. That was the killerapp they were looking for. No need to interrogate the kitchen appliance systems for hidden media. Mort didn't like having to get into arguments with microwaves anyway.
"That's all we need. Let's wrap it up," Mort said.
Bob punched up the evidence.
"Based upon the incontrovertible evidence that has been found during the period of discovery in these proceedings, the plaintiffs have determined that further discovery is not necessary. The plaintiffs now file a motion for summary judgment and the execution of appropriate sanctions with prejudice. As you should already be aware, you are subject to the financial and legal sanctions predicated in the metadata found in any media the copyrights of which you have allegedly violated and agreed to by yourself or your representatives through their use, transfer, acceptance, perusal, encryption, de-encryption, downloading, uploading, copying, etc, as stipulated in the End User License Agreement contained in said metadata. It is your right as the defendant to file a motion in opposition to the motion for summary judgment. Would you like to do so at this time?"
"Yes, for God's sake, yes!"
"Your motion is hereby noted. Unfortunately, before your motion was filed, the plaintiffs preemptively filed a motion to suppress your motion against the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. Your motion is thus denied. The plaintiff's will now proceed with the execution of legal sanctions against your person, Mr. Smith. Have a nice day."
"BUT I'M TELLING YOU, I'M NOT..."
Bob still didn't know why they didn't put some plastic down before the legal proceedings. If the Association was going to auction off the property to recoup damages, wouldn't it be a good idea to not get blood spatter on everything?
Mort said that the blood splatter could potentially raise the market value of the property if you market it right. He said he'd learned that from some HGTV feed he licensed to view last week.
Bob nodded, thinking that made sense, and thumbed the iNode to life. He felt good about the $6 he was paying to listen to this song again. After all, the artist needs to get paid...
The End
4/10/2009