Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Google Grabs Polish Poets By the Bards

The only one sounding their barbaric YAWP in the poetry world these days is Google. A Polish writing group – the AFP chunks them all as poets – named Grupa Mlodych Artystow i Literatow, or GMAiL, has been set upon to analyze the finer points of rhetoric from Google’s legal team.

Yes, I like what the lawyer’s done here. He expresses his message with such clarity yet with such ferocity that the reader cannot help but get lost in the author’s finger pointing style. While the legalese is somewhat fatiguing, it adds an air of authenticity to the work, making this commanding prose a true fait accomplis.

At issue for the Group of Young Artists and Writers, better known in Poland as GMAiL, is the association of artists’ ownership of the domain gmail.pl. Google’s trademark lawyers are demanding the group give up the domain.

This isn’t the first time Google’s made an assault on poetry. Remember Matt Waddell’s arrhythmic tribute to Google Mobile services? Sadly, some of us will never forget.

The Group, in traditional artistic defiance of corporate governing, said that not only did they buy the domain “legally, with our own money,” but they have no intention of giving it up without a fight.

Accusations that the Group was purposefully cybersquatting on the domain for a payday, which they deny, are moot. Google’s legal team made it very clear that the company “had no intention of paying for something which belonged to [Google].”

Google hasn’t had much success in Europe claiming the variations on Gmail domains. Their insistence has fallen on deaf ears in the UK and in Germany, where gmail.co.uk and gmail.de were in question. The difference in those cases, however, is that the domains were purchased before Google launched Gmail.

But that may not matter either considering Europe’s historical support of the arts. As we’ve seen in Belgium, writers win whether it makes any sense or not.

So, on this occasion of Google’s second assault on poetic profundity, we thought we’d revisit the ever-useful-in-a-poetry-spoof-bind Vogon poetry generator. Warning: do not read this aloud, as the point is to create really, totally, profoundly awful poetry that if uttered into the air, matter and antimatter everywhere would find each other thus negating existence. Ahem. Here ya go:

Googledygook

See, see the authoritarian sky
Marvel at its big salmon depths.
Tell me, Eric Schmidt do you
Wonder why the bush baby ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel scrunch-goggled.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your pusserchunked facial growth
That looks like
A Polish sausage.
What’s more, it knows
Your butternut potting shed
Smells of goose berries.
Everything under the big authoritarian sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm foot fungus.

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