Way back in pop culture, there was a book(s), before the nets and "Find a Grave.com", called "Hollywood Babylon".

Candid photos, some taken on holiday, Black Dahlias, the whole gamut of Hollywood Noir.

Well, folks, another Carolyn or two, and WP will qualify for its first hot selling book to be not "How to Abuse Wikipedia for Dummies", but "Wikipedia Babylon".

I believe Disillusioned But Very Very Spirited Lackey has probably already done the artwork for the book jacket.

let's see the roster, names redacted because i'm trying to put on airs of class for once:

1 - WP COO had a very sketchy decade in the 90's. Shot boyfriend in chest while he was in bed. Now that's rough sex, but whatever gets them off. She got off afterwards too for the gunplay. Wears wire 6 times to entrap cokewhore friend, who actually succeed at taking down her man, to get in good with the gun police. CIA hubby dies on honeymoon. Not a swimmer.

2 - Long-time Arbitrator and Trusted Admin puts the "oh-my" in early lawyer retirement to spend more time with his wiki. At least he doesn't pull an Essjay and lie about it. Baudy!! I just like saying the word.

3 - 24 year old college flunkee spends 2 years as the Pope of Wikipedia.

4 - GodKing ran (runs?) a softporn site, and edits Bonzai Buddy and Mizoli's Meat articles. Badly at that.

5 - Uber Admin edits Pierre Salinger's BLP, nastily, 15 years after he fires him/her. Slimlips's Major Burnt erases evidence. Yes, that Press Secretary for JFK.

Babylon and on.

The Bible is copyrighted? By whom?

And ye hath misspelled "Psalm!" 400 lashes for that and naming thy teddy bear "Jimbo" named after our lord Jimbo!

( )

In English law, the King James Version has perpetual Crown Copyright. Americans, in their usual arrogant manner, refuse to abide by that. This law does not apply to other translations, or of course to the original Hebrew/Greek.

Arrogantly refusing to abide by Crown Copyrights

since 1776

Well, God's words are God's words. They don't belong to any man. But that's more of a theological argument than an argument that would win in court.

Of course, every holy document in Scientology is copyrighted, I believe. So it isn't far-fetched to say something holy can be copyrighted.

But did King James ask God for the copyright? I thought not!

It's "arrogant" to refuse to abide by a ridiculous foreign law that is not compatible with our own constitution (which provides that intellectual property rights must be limited in duration)?

Watery tarts from the bottom of a lake passing out swords is no basis for allocating intellectual property.

According to Henry David Thoreau, there is a duty of civil disobedience in the face of unjust laws. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King would agree.

Indeed. Having recently started editing on Wikisource, I've been shocked by the way that US copyright law prohibits the use of loads of material that's out of copyright in the UK, such as the later work of G K Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Bridges. The sooner that the US amends its ridiculous and draconian copyright law the better.

By the way, many translations of the Bible are copyright in America, including some that are out of copyright in the UK.

Blame Disney. Every time the original copyright on Mickey Mouse gets close to expiring, the entertainment lobby gets into high gear and eventually congress passes a new copyright extension.

Not just Disney. All the big studios: Warner Brothers, Paramount, etc. Even though Paramount actually junked thousands of hours of its own television film archives in the 1950s.

But especially Disney.