SOPA/PIPA: What and why

[Sachita]

Originally Posted by SuddenlyWestFemme

I also worked in the arts industry for a long time.

I don't really have an answer except to say that theft has always been a part of the industry. Many movies have been piloted through the ages. I can't tell you how many friends of mine made tapes for me off of records and other tapes. And at the time, I never even thought of it as theft. Listen to Lady Gaga and then Madonna (especially the "Express Yourself" song) and you can see how much 'borrowing' is going on. It used to be if someone shoplifted a CD, the people hurt were the storeowners and employees. With the internet that hurt has gone directly to artists more often.

I don't have an answer, but most artists I know wouldn't want the internet to shut down sites - without thorough and proper investigation - to protect them. It is very hard to be a successful artist without free speech and not being able to speak on this 'site' is a form of sensorship.

And one more side note. Pricing is based on expected theft. The reason everything is so expensive is because the industry now understands that there will be theft and they make up for it. I doubt that things will become cheaper for us to buy once we can't get onto our favorite websites.

This is true but that pirating also contributes to traffic and exposure. Any successful marketing plan needs to allow for a percentage of this. I also feel the music industry raped the public prior to charging 20 bucks for a CD? But this thread is not about that. But I do get your point.

[Cin]

The thing is piracy is more a service issue than one of censorship. Thieves will find ways to steal and peddle their wares no matter the restrictions. The way to win the war against piracy is to provide better service than you will get by illegally viewing or using copyrighted material. SOPA is about censorship and is akin to closing down a bookstore or a library because an author may or may not have practiced plagiarism. And at it’s core it is about controlling the flow of information on the internet and controlling it globally. The US has been applying pressure on other countries to join in using economic sanctions. This is one of those tricks the corporate controlled government is so good at confusing us with by using smoke and mirrors combined with the street hustler’s old game of 3 card monte. SOPA is not what it professes to be. It's about curtailing freedom, like so many laws being passed by the government. The internet should be protected. It needs to remain free. It is the greatest equalizer I have ever seen in this world. Information is available equally to anyone who can find a computer to use. To be coerced or hoodwinked into giving that up would be catastrophic.

[UofMfan]

Obama Says So Long SOPA, Killing Controversial Internet Piracy Legislation ~ Forbes

[Cin]

Interesting info in regards to piracy:

Numbers Cited By SOPA Supporters May Be Fictitious
Sacrilege's picture
Submitted by Sacrilege on 01/18/2012 18:16 -0500

Ignoring, momentarily, that the U.S. has already adopted international law which seeks to curtail online piracy (see, e.g., DMCA), and that these new bills seek to do little more than enact what amounts to police powers over foreign companies, it looks like the studies cited in support of piracy-gone-rampant may have never have existed. Julian Sanchez, a researcher at the Cato Institute, did his level best at tracking down the research behind the near-absurd numbers (the industry claims nearly $250B lost in revenues a year, and 750,000 lost jobs), but instead found only circular references.

So then, you may be asking yourself: how much does piracy actually cost the entertainment industry? $89MM. What’s the U.S. Taxpayer cost to enact new legislation (SOPA)? $47MM, by Sanchez’s estimates. That's 52.8 cents of U.S. Taxpayer money spent for every dollar in private enterprise saved, if the system works (which it won't), when there already likely exists a private remedy (private action in the host country).

From the GAO:

“First, a number of industry, media, and government publications have cited an FBI estimate that U.S. businesses lose $200-$250 billion to counterfeiting on an annual basis. This estimate was contained in a 2002 FBI press release, but FBI officials told us that it has no record of source data or methodology for generating the estimate and that it cannot be corroborated.

Second, a 2002 CBP press release contained an estimate that U.S. businesses and industries lose $200 billion a year in revenue and 750,000 jobs due to counterfeits of merchandise. However, a CBP official stated that these figures are of uncertain origin, have been discredited, and are no longer used by CBP. A March 2009 CBP internal memo was circulated to inform staff not to use the figures. However, another entity within DHS continues to use them.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/number...-be-fictitious

[Kobi]

Yesterday's internet-wide protest may not have killed Congress's anti-piracy efforts completely, but a lot of legislators (including some co-sponsors) suddenly can't run away from the bills fast enough. According to Ars Technica's count, 18 Senators, mostly Republican, have withdrawn their support for the Protect IP Act in the last 24 hours, including seven former co-sponsors. Roy Blunt of Missouri (pictured), is another one of the co-sponsors who turned on the bill, following Marco Rubio's lead. Most are now calling PIPA "flawed" or "not ready for prime time," but since they didn't seem to feel that way on Tuesday, it's pretty clear that Wednesday's public protests have had at least some of their desired effect.

Oddly enough, the defectors are skewing heavily Republican, though perhaps it shouldn't be that surprising since the architects of the bill are mostly media corporations that tend to be more left leaning. (As is Christopher Dodd, the current head of the Motion Picture Association of American, who used to be a Democratic Senator.) The truth is that the legislation is one of the few movements to not be divided evenly along party lines, but anti-SOPA opposition did get key endorsements from the Heritage Foundation and RedState.com.

The bills have not been completely taken off the table yet, but support is definitely waning and we may soon see a bipartisan effort to put them down for good. At the very least, they're both going to need some script doctoring before they find their way to the House and Senate floors.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/natio...lackout/47592/

[Linus]

What was interesting was that 3 of the sponsors were found to have copyrighted material on their websites --- without approval from the artist (as per the Rachel Maddow clip I saw last night). While their levels would not be enough to violate SOPA, the principle, IMO, is what they violated.