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Now Here's An Idea...
05-01-2010, 03:48 AM
I was just thinking... what if there's a ship that goes out into interstellar space with big freaking antennae and lots of amps and signal processors and whatnot, intercepting, cleaning up and saving old broadcasts -- like the lost Dr. Who episodes, and first run Trek and anything else that catches their fancy. There'd be a pretty good market for that stuff, not just in Fenspace but in the Danelaw...
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Most broadcast signals are pretty weak, compared to what Sol itself puts out. We'd need a fleet of Miranda-class ships in various positions in communication with each other, filtering out the random distortions from stellar bodies and keeping what they can get of the broadcast signals... but it could be done.
As for legalities, how many factions have signed the Berne Convention? (Stellvia hasn't, but they've officially been Australian since they left the USA...)
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Rob Kelk
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them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
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Moot point for Roughriders. Some of them may patronize such a service, but as a whole it's out of their scope.
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I would think that the BBC would commission/tender out such a project just so they could get back their missing material and the major libraries (British, Congress) and archives would want some of the action too. I also think the History Channel wouldn't mind some genuine WW2 German propaganda TV footage to suppliment their newsreel collection.
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Hadn't thought of that angle, Rod, yeah, that works nicely. BA -- I think we have something in the wiki that officially says that IP piracy is a rampant fact of life in Fenspace; a project like this will make no more of a splash than any other act of copyright piracy. Possibly less, depending on the Danelaw state involved -- selling those recovered Dr. Who eps to the BBC would be no more illegal than someone who found the equivalent kinescopes in his basement selling them.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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heh, just had a thought. If some Dane compay managed to successfully sue a fen, they could demand say, $1 million in damages. To which the Fen responds by delivering 36 or so pounds of pure platinum (or whatever valuable metal they've traded for/accumulated thru asteroid mining) and says "Here, 1 million bucks worth of X, using the price from the NYSE/ect at close yesterday."
The Fen aquired the metal much easier than terrestial sources, and if the Dane Company tries to cash it in, they depress the market so they sell it for less. 8P
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*SNRT!*
You know what? That's the perfect way for Benjamin to deal with whatever fines the US Government levies against him for Grand Theft Blackbird. After all, they probably won't want her back after she's been 'contaminated'. And TSAB can't have her simply because they won't be able to contain her - she'll just tow their space station out of orbit with the raw brute-force thrust she can pack. 
(They do have their own station and not just some office on .B5 or Stelvia, right?)
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I doubt they'd (the TSAB) have their orbital HQ on a Fen-station considering their anti-wavium stance. Stelvia maybe, since it's mostly hardtech based, but I believe they do have their own station.
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TSAB's orbital HQ is a Rock, officially USAFSS (United States Air Force Space Station) Benjamin Franklin.
It's all hard-tech. The 'wave labs are kept there in order to keep them isolated from Earth, and they're in a very isolated part of the 'rock. As in, no non-vacuum connection between the sections.
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Besides, Stellvia won't have them. StellviaCorp owns a controlling share of TSAB's arch-rivals, the Artemis Foundation.
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
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Timote Wrote:heh, just had a thought. If some Dane compay managed to successfully sue a fen, they could demand say, $1 million in damages. To which the Fen responds by delivering 36 or so pounds of pure platinum (or whatever valuable metal they've traded for/accumulated thru asteroid mining) and says "Here, 1 million bucks worth of X, using the price from the NYSE/ect at close yesterday."
The Fen aquired the metal much easier than terrestial sources, and if the Dane Company tries to cash it in, they depress the market so they sell it for less. 8P I guess Fenspace|RIAA is making their presentation gold and platinum records out of real gold and platinum, then. What else are they going to do with tons of precious metals gained by suing various fen?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Yeesh... Those record producer office brawls would get pretty ugly if someone started chucking those bad boys around.
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