You see what I did there? That Halo trailer is still my favorite.

This write up on Slashdot relates the story of a man who created a video. He uploaded it to YouTube, as many people might. Viacom, owner of VH1, featured the clip in a "web junk" segment on that channel without requesting any sort of permission to do so.

So far, not too out of the ordinary. Then...

Guy sees his video on VH1, and thinks, "Hey, cool. I'm semi-famous." He uploads the clip to YouTube, then gets notified by YouTube that it's been pulled because Viacom claimed he was infringing their copyright.

This is such digital inbreeding that I can hardly wrap my mind around it. It's like one big, giant legal circlejerk. Amusingly similar in concept to the comments posted on the Slashdot entry. I know one thing, if I had life to live over again, I'd be shooting to be an intellectual property attorney.

I am utterly convinced now that the world will bankrupt itself by suing back and forth over intellectual property, never actually causing overall economic harm but for the constant hemorrhaging of legal fees. In fifty years our ruling elite will either be lawyers or the hookers and coke dealers they blew all the money on. Johnny Cochran will descend in his pimp suit and declare that O.J. did it, and lead our damned souls into the underworld like some perverse Rapture.