the awesome/terrifying freedom

the power of lawyers is so irritating. pearlyrics, the wonderful little lyrics upload program i described a couple weeks ago, has now been shut down because of lawsuit threats. what? how is this little application that "searches public websites and caches the content" illegal? they might as well sue the entire universe for ever using google. god it just make me steaming crazy mad, this shit.

at some point, the legal world is going to have to realize that once something is on the internet, its value is promotional, not monetary, and it belongs to the entire online community. there's no fighting it, there's no taking it back, and there's no one to sue. only apple seems to understand that, and knows that the only way to make money off something free to begin with is to offer it easily, quickly, and in stellar quality.

check out this gap commercial by spike jones. the suits at gap changed the music - i can't listen to it at work, so i don't know how it changes the experience, but it's a pretty interesting commercial nevertheless. you can feel jones' distase for all things 'gap,' and his glee at destroying it. perhaps the suits felt that subversion, and called for the change in music to highlight the 'fun' of it rather than the joy of dismantling a homogenized coporation made possible by sweatshops.