O O Ø O O O O
Montsatan
I woke up to an insistent buzzing. From across the room, I could see my phone glowing. It was still pre-dawn, so the sleep filter should have screened just about any of my calls. Except…
I jumped out of bed and ran across the room. The phone read simply: “CrO raid 0700.”
It was 0645. I had only 15 minutes to rid my house of anything illicit. I had no idea if I was going to be able to make it.
I sprinted to the kitchen, yanked open both refrigerator doors, and started spilling leftovers out onto the floor. Ever since the Jamie Oliver Copyright Reform Act, cooking at home was only permissible if the meal plan was filed in advance, and all applicable license fees paid. And while I wasn’t stupid enough to keep actual recipes in the house anymore (books and hardcopy having been eliminated as part of the Rights Management Tagging act of 2014), it was next to impossible to come up with anything that hadn’t been registered somewhere, even if you were improvising.
Food flinging over, I gathered up all the containers and started emptying them into the sink. I had long ago disabled the in-sink waste analyzer, taking advantage of a plumbing accident to “accidently” rip out a power wire. Of course, getting caught with a defective analyzer carried its own penalties, but those were merely fines—not the criminal penalties associated with copyright violation. The only way they were going to catch me with unlicensed food was to obtain a sample directly, and I planned to keep running the sink until they arrived. Dilution is the solution to Intellectual Property Violation, or so they say.
Kitchen purge under way, I ran next to the bedroom. There, on the bedstand sat my greatest prize (and my most dangerous posession)—a 1980s-era clock radio. Not only was it an analog device (allowing audio input via, of all things, radio transmission), but it actually played the music on a speaker. I couldn’t help it—I had been an audiophile long before speakers and headphones were outlawed for encouraging the unlicensed dissemination of audio property, and to me, bone conduction just didn’t seem have the same range of response. Broadcast-licensed, or not, I just liked to hear my music once in a while (though I never had the courage to turn the volume up past a whisper—my neighbours were old, but not that old.) I quickly grabbed an old t-shirt from my drawer, and started wrapping the radio in it. When I was done, I hid my precious bundle near the bottom of my laundry hamper. Fortunately, I had gone running the day before, and only the most determined of inspectors was going to dig past those skivvies to search for contraband.
Bedroom sweep completed, I headed to the my last stop: the bathroom. Just then, I heard the pounding on the front door:
“Copyright Police! Cease consumption and present licenses at the door!”
I skittered around the corner and into the bathroom. I grabbed for my dog-eared hardcopy of “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader” and, with pounding heart, threw it into the toilet tank. All I could hope for was a cursory inspection of the room, or I’d be sunk.
I ran back into the living room and, heart still pounding, tried to slow my breathing as I made my way to the door. As my hand reached for the knob, I glanced back at my living area.
And then I froze. My late-night snack was still sitting on the coffee table—Peanut Butter and Jelly. Copyright 2014, Monsanto Food Corporation
Damn. I always knew it would be them.
Kjell Wooding
October 17, 2006
OOØOOOO
October 19th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Thanks, now I crave a PB&J sandwich…haven’t had one in YEARS. The US Patent on the sandwiches have already expired, but if you happen to crimp the edges while you cut the crust off, you may end up sued by Smuckers, for violating USPTO Patent Number 6,004,596 - in effect until 2019.