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Replying To:
It's Self-Importance (none / 0) (#5)
by Anonymous User on Thu Aug 19, 2004 at 10:35:20 AM PDT

You see it in almost every industry at some point (viz the RIAA): once a company gets big enough or profitable enough, they seem to think that their success and their cash flow is a right to which they are entitled, and that a threat to either can be legitimately dealt with through any means necessary. Science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein summed it up in his short story "Life-Line":
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest.
(Then again, the judge in the story followed this up with:
This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
We can only hope.)


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