Peter Trei, a software engineer working in Massachusetts, was looking for an historical analogy to demonstrate how awful the SSSCA is. He had to search back through the ages ... waaaay back. Read his story below and/or take a look at a few stories of more recent vintage:
Newsweek, which publishes online on MSNBC, has published a piece by technology journalist Steven Levy, author of Crypto and Hackers, that argues that treating your customers as criminals is very bad for business and innovation (The Customer is Always Wrong). Slashdot readers discuss the article (The Customer is Always Wrong). Slashdot also picked up on the statement from Disney CEO Michael Eisner at the SSSCA hearings that all but accused electronics manufacturers of intentionally aiding and abetting piracy (Disney Blames Apple For Music Piracy). NewsFactor analyzes some of the business interests behind the SSSCA debate (Titans Clash at U.S. Senate Digital Piracy Hearing). A Business Week commentary claims that the entertainment industry is responsible for the problems it is facing, not technology (Entertainment Execs, Fear Not the Net). In related copyright news the Washington Post editorializes in favor of Congress limiting the length of copyright (Copyright Forever?).
The Original SSSCA
By Peter Trei
Statement of Yakval Enti, spokesman of the MPAA (Mnemonists, Praise-singers, and Anthemists Association) to His Highness Hammurabi, King of Sumeria:
Your Majesty: I wish to call your attention to a severe
threat to the security of your kingdom, and the
livelihoods of thousands of your subjects.
After Shamash sets and the people kick back after a
long day of growing millet, they desire entertainment.
Their favorite forms are stories, tales, and sagas,
told by the members of the MPAA. Talented boys spend up
to 12 years learning the tales by heart at the feet of
the masters. Any evening MPAA members can be found in
the taverns singing the old tales, praising the
praiseworthy, and creating new tales from the old.
This system has worked well since the beginning of time
— there were storytellers at your coronation, there
were storytellers at your father's coronation, and
there were storytellers in the caves of our ancestors.
This natural arrangement is now threatened from an
unexpected direction — the scribes and accountants.
The geeks' system of recording numbers and quantities
has been perverted to freeze speech onto clay.
Understand the threat to our business model. At the
moment, if someone wants to hear 'The Tale of the Ox,
the Ass and the Sumerian', they find an MPAA member,
pay him, and sit back to listen to the whole four hour
saga. While anyone could recall and tell others the
general outline, only MPAA members know every detail
and can give the listener the whole story. If you want
to hear it again, you pay again. Thousands of MPAA
members rely on this fact for their livelihoods.
With the recent invention of "writing" the system is in
danger of collapse. We've found that some scribes are
actually "recording" entire sagas onto clay. Any
scribe can "read" these out to people for free or for
money, complete and word-for-word, without being a
member of or paying the MPAA! A scribe who has
obtained a set of tablets of a story can even read it
an unlimited number of times, or (worst of all) make
copies. This is starting to have an economic impact on
our membership. Consider Rimat-Ninsun, whose
masterwork "The Epic of Gilgamesh" took him three years
to create, and who looked to it to put bread on his
table into his old age, as he told it for money, or let
others tell it under paid license after learning it
from him. 'Gilgamesh' is now circulating on 12 clay
tablets, and Rimat is starving. Who will bother to
create new tales if they are just going to be written
down?
"Writing" presents insidious dangers to your kingdom as
well. It can be anonymous. Before writing, any message
arrived with a person to speak it, who could be held
accountable for their speech. With writing, it is
impossible to tell what scribe "wrote" a
message. Anonymous threats, kidnap notes, and
untraceable sedition are now possible. Clearly
"writing" carries with it far greater problems for our
civilization than it does advantages.
However, scribes, accountants, and their skills are
essential to business, contracts, laws, and the
collection of taxes. We just need to make sure that
they are controlled properly.
I therefore propose the Scribal Stylus Safety Control
Act. (SSSCA). This requires every scribe to have an
MPAA approved, "literate" slave with him at all times,
peering over his shoulder. If a scribe is seen to be
"writing' something other then accounting information,
for example a story (stories are the province of MPAA
bards), or a message (which should have been given to
a paid mnemonist for delivery), or anything seditious,
then the slave will take away the scribe's stylus
and call the authorities. I ask you to have this Act
"written" into your Code of Law.
Is this difficult? Yes. Is it expensive? Yes. However,
it is clear that without strict controls, widespread
"writing" will not only destroy the entertainment
industry, it will threaten civilization itself!
"The Original SSSCA" is strictly the personal opinion of the author and he would be astonished if his employer had any official
position on the matter (so don't pretend otherwise). Distribution of substantively modified versions of "The Original SSSCA" is prohibited without the explicit permission of the author.