[MD] SOPA and PIPA

[Tuukka Virtaperko]

Carl,

www.insaneartist.net

Well, the domain is down. It didn't use to be. I hope the owner didn't die.

The domain is actually free again! Nobody owns it. Guess I could 
register it for the sake of nostalgy, but I don't really want to pay 29€ 
a year for nostalgy value when I'd rather need 40€ to buy a font from 
Adobe for moq.fi, but I haven't yet brought myself to do so, because if 
browsers were CSS 1.0 compliant, they would support font-weight. Then I 
wouldn't need to buy that font, since I've already bought one. But it's 
demi-bold and I'd need the same font as thin or extra thin. And I could 
make it thin with font-weight.

Wait a second... the font is somehow locked or something. It does go 
italic, but it doesn't even go bold. So I have to spend another 40 euros 
no matter what, if I want the site to look better. Nice. Photoshop 
already cost me some 1500. That's a lot of money for me, but luckily I 
had it. And no, I haven't nearly reached break even with my artistic 
projects. I'm operating at significant loss, depleting my savings when I 
need to and never having enough surplus to put back what I took. I 
should shape up on that though. I could always save a little. Actually, 
if I wouldn't have had to buy Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard, I 
think I might already have made a couple hundred profit in my life.

Not that I'd look forwards to that. :D I do appreciate the money, but 
it's silly that because of a welfare trap, if I get above break even, I 
have to pay some 30%-50% of everything I gain to the state. So maybe 
I'll get there and maybe I don't, but I'll get less than 70 cents for 
every dollar I earn. I don't think I would have made that much money in 
any case... so why put such tax and other bureaucratic forfeiture on the 
little I do gain? The system isn't perfect in Finland either. =) It 
would probably improve a lot with basic income guarantee.

If I manage to make 8000 a year with art, 4000 of that will go to the 
state. The tax level is not usually so high. It's just that the system 
is punitive for those who can make a little money, ie. they don't sit 
home, drink beer and watch telly, but who can't make enough money to 
live only on that. It's not a welfare state issue - it's just faulty 
implementation of the welfare state. Many people, once they prematurely 
become pensioners, never want to go through the period of losing 50% of 
all you earn. Then some economists are all boo hoo on magazines, 
seemingly ignorant of why people don't go back to work once they drop 
out. :P You don't really get so many pennies out of those pensioners who 
would maybe like to recover, and I don't know anyone who is just being a 
parasite with the pension. I know very few pensioners anyway, except old 
people who are at the age one normally is a pensioner. People do frown 
upon those who just sit on their asses and don't contribute. But it's 
quite unusual that someone frowns on me, because I do work a lot and it 
shows. Besides, the medical reason for me not working for money is 
completely real and legitimate.

In any case, this system is great, because there can't be people like me 
in the USA unless they inherit a lot of money, or receive scholarship 
(such as Pirsig), or some other "divine intervention" occurs. That's why 
a nation of five million can actually contribute to the extent that it 
shows internationally (moomins, Angry Birds, Nokia (going down, I 
admit), IRC, SMS... ) You know what? SMS was invented in Finland, the 
inventor Makkonen was not paid a penny, and he even was reluctant to 
admit he is, in fact, the inventor! :D That's what you get when you care 
about what you're doing instead of having a big paycheck and a fancy car 
to roadkill the poor and homeless with. :D Sorry, I'm going over the top 
again. =)

To be sure, Makkonen is probably right in downplaying his role in the 
invention of the SMS. According to the Finnish Wikipedia, no single 
inventor of the SMS can be named. But... when PIPA and SOPA are accepted 
as laws, Wikipedia will go down, so we'll again rely on magazines such 
as Kuukausiliite, which did portray Makkonen as the sole inventor of 
SMS, and I'll come here to tell you falsehoods. :D But the writer of 
Kuukausiliite got paid for that crap, so I guess an American won't mind. =)

-Tuukka