I've just had a busy week of meetings with my company's intellectual property lawyers, and I've got a lot of exciting news which I'd like to share with our stockholders and all my fellow True Christians. But first, a little historical background.
As you all no doubt know, America doesn't really export or even make anything anymore, since we outsourced our entire manufacturing industry to China. However, this doesn't mean that the USA is no longer No. 1 - far from it! The whole concept of measuring a nation's wealth by its ability to manufacture useful products or create a decent standard of living for its citizens is totally outdated. You've got to get that idea out of your head in order to understand America's
New Economy.
In fact, the USA is still No. 1. Even though we no longer can manufacture cars, bowling balls or pencil erasers, we still lead the world in wealth. And the key to our wealth is
services. No, I don't mean services like creating software, as we outsourced that to India more than 10 years ago. Nor do I mean services like flipping hamburgers - that too has been outsourced to Messicans.
No, what we have are
financial services. We create awesome derivatives like mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps, which are then leveraged 100-times their face value and sold to unsuspecting pension funds, Third World countries, and dumb suckers who mortgage their homes at subprime rates to buy our triple-A-rated toxic waste before it collapses and my company collects the bailouts.
Of course, financial services are only part of the equation that makes the USA such an awesome financial powerhouse. Another very important source of wealth creation is
intellectual property. Again, one needs to put aside outdated concepts of intellectual property such as copyrighted books or movies. Nor are we talking about creating patents for useful products such as extra long-lasting cell phone batteries, for example.
No, thanks to the "revolving door" - where my company offers employment to retired federal regulators and their families - we've all but purchased the US Patent & Trademark Office. So now we can patent "business methods," like
one-click shopping, as well as
swinging sideways on a swing. That last patent has proven to be particularly lucrative - I can't even count the number of kids we've sued when we caught them on the playground swinging from side-to-side on the swings without first licensing our patents. Since these are usually young first-time offenders, we generously offer them a settlement for a measly $5000, which they can pay off over a 30-year period at low-monthly interest rates. Hey, we don't want to make criminals out of them - at least, not until they've grown up and we can get some useful work out of them.
Our new copyright laws are another great method of legal rent extraction. No only have we extended copyright terms so that they never expire, but we got Congress to pass new laws to redefine "public performances." So, for example, if you listen to the radio in your car while you have a passenger in the back seat, it's a "public performance." Since this is a violation of the legal terms you agree to when you push the "on" button on your radio, you would be guilty of copyright infringement (those terms are verbally broadcast to you at ultra-high frequency beyond the range of human hearing, but I assure you it's there and dogs can hear it just fine). Each copyright violation is a $150,000 fine plus 10 years in jail, though again we usually offer a settlement which allows offenders to stay out of prison and make payments to us for the rest of their lives.
OK, once you've digested all that, it should be easy to understand why my company got so excited at the recent news about how the Canadian metal band
Skinny Puppy decided the invoice the government because the US Military
played their music to torture prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. It goes without saying that these torture sessions were a "public performance," and thus a license fee should have been paid.
Needless to say, when my company's lawyers heard about this, they were ecstatic. As the largest owner of copyrighted works in the world, the Uranus Corporation even sues little kids for singing "Happy Birthday" unless they've purchased a license. Now we've billed the US Government $3 billion for the use of our music at Gitmo,
Abu Ghraib and other fine locations around the world. Since the
War On Terror never ends, this should prove to be a steady source of income for us.
And the good news doesn't stop there! We've got business method patents like - for example - our patents on
water boarding, solitary confinement and
sleep deprivation. I'm sorry to say, but the Department of Homeland Security failed to obtain a license when they deployed these methods, and I think it's high time that Uncle Sam paid up!
Patent violators at Gitmo
Unlicensed use of my
company's intellectual property
And of course, the US Government is not the only offender here. We fully intend to push our case (via free-trade agreements) to collect license fees that are due us from such serial patent violators like Sudan and North Korea. Furthermore, the prisoners themselves may have violated a number of our patents and copyrights. These rogue countries think that they can get away with anything, because they mistakenly believe that their national borders offer some kind of legal protection. Hah! As a merciful Christian nation, it's our duty to enforce international law and human rights. Even if that means a sustained aerial bombing. It's what Jesus would do. Freedom isn't free!
As the most innovative company (and largest campaign finance donor) in the world, Uranus Corporation feels that it is necessary to defend Freedom™. The abuse of "national sovereignty" has no place in a civilized world. We have to collect royalty payments for our nation's future generations. It's part of our national heritage. For the children!