SOPA and PIPA may sound like adorable gnomes from a Finnish children's program in which puppets teach Scandinavian children the virtues of taciturnity, taxation and hot-tubbing, but they're actually even more sinister than that. They are American legislation that, if enacted, would give giant media corporations the ability to effectively erase any website they wanted for no real reason. I'd love to exaggerate that for comic effect, but no, that's pretty much the deal.

SOPA, luckily, has been defeated (or at least postponed). So has PIPA, which is essentially the same legislation but with a bow in its hair so you know it's a girl. But before you breathe a sigh of relief, or possibly a sigh of indifference, there's still ACTA to deal with, which is (again) more or less the same thing, except it's international, which I'm not exactly sure how that works, but I assume it involves burly guys with cool accents who grasp your shoulder from behind in a menacing way if you repost portions of Young Einstein on your blog.

Even if ACTA is downsmacked, that's not going to deter the teams of lobbyists even now cackling over ever-more dank, ichorous pools of legislation. Herewith just a sampling of the horrors soon to emerge, as found in a possibly official document that may or may not have been found online by some 14-year-old with a smirk the size of New Zealand.

The Open Source Copyright Reallocation Act ——————————————

Copyright was established for one purpose, and it's not that pabulum in the Constitution about encouraging art and science. It's meant to allow hardworking creators of entertainment and curators of information – and their presumably somewhat less-hardworking heirs – to bank huge wads and live like videogame royalty, give or take the kidnappings by boss monsters. The sweaty nerds who invented open source have perverted copyright into a tool for sharing, which is like using a bust of Nancy Reagan as a bong.

Well, the invisible fist of government-enforced capitalism will deliver those self-satisfied geeks a real sackpunch when OSCRA is passed. Here's how it works: If you don't try to turn your intellectual property into a cash cow that also vomits stock options, then whoever does manage to make money off it gets the copyright. So you can fold your little self-replicating generosity virus into a thousand paper swans and stick each one up your ass, dorks.

The Lexicon Official Registration Act ————————————-

In America, we realize that nothing contributes to freedom like a proprietary, viselike grip on communication, and that's why we have increasingly stern copyright and trademark law. What kind of nightmare dystopia would ensue if characters in movies could freely sing "Happy Birthday"? How could we look ourselves in the eye and call ourselves free if just anyone could sell a cracker shaped like a fish?

Because more restrictions mean more freedom, LORA will auction the English language off, word by word, to the highest bidder. Rights-holders will have complete control over the words they own, and can take down any website using one of their words just by pressing a big red button that will be supplied to all successful bidders. Of course, a handful of prepositions and maybe a pronoun or two will be held in the public domain for the common good.

The Idea Presumption Prevention Act ———————————–

Every year, mega-corporations lose over four hundred thousand billion dollars because individuals and smaller companies engage in the anticompetitive practice of competing with them. These upstart startups use new ideas and better features to steal market share – that's right, steal, just like kicking in your front door and making off with your entertainment system while your family cowers under the muzzle of a shotgun – from the very corporations that own the government that taxes them.

This legislation would require any new ideas to be registered, disclosed, and submitted to established corporation-persons, who will have the option to purchase the idea at the fair market price of, I dunno, fifty bucks or something, and thereby exploit these exciting notions in a way that will benefit the consumer best. Or, alternatively, they can just bury the idea and keep anyone else from using it. Either way.

The Prevent Intellectual Property Annihilation and Prohibit Anti-Possessive Internet Proclamations Always, Please Act ———————————————————————————————————————

If you own intellectual property, then it goes to reason that you also have a right to protect that intellectual property, just as owning property in Texas confers the right to shoot anyone on said property, invited or not. If copying someone else's property is the equivalent of stealing a car, then disparaging intellectual property is obviously the equivalent of that scene in The Big Lebowski where John Goodman just completely goes nuts on a sports car while explaining the karmic link between anal sodomy and property destruction. It's awesome, he's all "This is what happens, Larry!" and then the other guy is all "I keel your car!"

Anyhow, the PIPAPAPIPAPA makes organizing against, interfering with or complaining about intellectual property laws illegal, and punishable by 10 years in prison or $50,000 per act, plus Rupert Murdoch gets to punch you in the eye.

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Born helpless, naked and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg overcame these handicaps to become a lobbyist, a lobotomist, and a lobopod.