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BABBELUS NON GRATIS
As of the 15th of this month, you won't be able to say anything in America without paying a royalty or getting someone's permission. Even Google has started charging for every argument entered in their search engine in english. "We have to pay royalties to someone for every word we search on," Waldo Seeker, Google CFO told a newspaper reporter yesterday, "so, there's nothing we can do but pass the cost on to the user." This all started when the Patent and Trademark Office allowed Donald Trump to trademark the phrase, "You're Fired!", the so-called "signature phrase" of his "hit" TV series, The Apprentice. That opened the door . . . Howard Stern trademarked the phrase, "Up Yours" . . . The National Association of Retailers trademarked the phrase, "Have a nice day!" . . . McDonald's trademarked "Bite Me!" . . . The estate of Charles Shulz copyrighted the phrase, "'Twas a dark and stormy night" (which immediately put more than a thousand aspiring writers out of business) . . . Saddam Hussein wanted to trademark "Mother" of anything . . . Jim Carrey wanted to trademark the phrase "Dumb Happens" from the movie Dumb and Dumber . . . "Duh!" was claimed by more than a dozen groups . . . And on and on and on. It came to a head this month when "Rah! Rah! Sis Boom Bah!" was trademarked by the NCAA. With the acceptance of the trademark application for this phrase, virtually every word in the english language has been either trademarked or copyrighted. Now, you can't open your mouth in America without literally paying the price. So much for "free speech". |