Do any real people support SOPA?
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Very few of us live in a world remotely representative of the nation as a whole; I certainly don’t. How many of my friends and acquaintances have a college degree? How many live in dense urban centers? How many have smartphones? How many have ever voted Republican? In all these respects and many more, the world I see is incredibly skewed. But what about the Stop Online Piracy Act?
I spent last night with a fascinating group of Silicon Valley geeks, talking Bitcoin; among them was Dan Kaminsky, who’s spending most of his time these days lobbying hard against SOPA. And it occurred to me, as we talked very briefly about how the lobbying effort was going, how very lopsided my view of SOPA is.
Everybody I know, and everything I’ve come across on the internet, falls into one of two categories: either they’re vehemently opposed to SOPA, or else they simply don’t know about it. Racking my brain for any counterexamples, the only one I can come up with is a pre-roll ad which I’ve seen before a couple of my videos here on Reuters.com, which complains about pharmaceutical counterfeiting.
In one sense, this is entirely natural: I’m a journalist, and journalists by their nature hate anything which smacks of censorship. On the other hand, I’m also a media professional, and the pro-SOPA lobby is led by media companies of various descriptions. I just don’t know anybody who’s part of it.
Yet the bill is very much alive, and it seems that if a bill makes it to Barack Obama’s desk, he’ll sign it.
Today, in his big NYT piece about the war being fought in Washington, Edward Wyatt is careful to be symmetrical in his descriptions, and talks about how “the howls of protest” against SOPA “have been loud and lavishly financed” by Silicon Valley — it’s one of those articles based on the idea of explaining that there’s a disagreement, without bothering to try to adjudicate whether one side makes vastly more sense than the other.
You don’t need me to tell you that SOPA is an incredibly bad idea — others can do so much, much better than I can. But here’s where I have a genuine question. I know that the MPAA and the RIAA are lobbying hard for SOPA. (As well as, oddly, the AFL-CIO.) They seem to have a lot of politicians on their side. I can also point to an almost unlimited list of people and organizations who are lobbying equally hard against it — although it’s harder to find die-hard opponents of the bill in Congress.
But does SOPA actually have any popular support? Are there any real outside-the-beltway people who think it’s a good idea? If so, where are they? And if not, how did Congress become so bad at reflecting popular opinion?
I guess what I’m asking here is whether the strength of support for SOPA in Washington is an example of the failure of democracy, or whether it’s just another case of a bitterly divided country. I suspect it’s the former, but I really would be interested in finding out about anybody who doesn’t share my views on this subject.
Update: I’m told that Creative America is a grassroots organization of real people who support SOPA. I’m not entirely sure I believe it, though.
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From a purely cynical/economic sense, the bill makes quite a bit of sense. In short, taking a position guaranteed to generate *huge* amounts of lobbying to sway congress. Note that I’m not actually referring to whether its a good or bad idea. Its just sufficient that the idea be sufficiently divisive that enough (monied) people would find it in their own best interests to support/oppose it.
Interestingly enough, patent/copyright reform is an edge case of this scenario, i.e., a situation where *small* changes in the law are sufficient to attract *huge* lobbying – an argument could be made that the status quo *is* a stable equilibrium, since any change, however small, will result in maximal lobbying (and hence benefit) for Congress.
I know, cynical, but hey, it seems to be accurate…
I’ve seen a few people who are pro-SOPA, but they tend to be either
A. Trolls
B. Clueless, naive doofs who think that the bill will only be used against Evil Foreign Pirates and nobody else
The rest are smart enough to not support it. I mean, even the EU got off its butt and passed bills AGAINST it.
I was wondering when you were going to chime in on SOPA…
or Protect-IP…
or the regularly scheduled take down of online free speech.
I suspect it’s something of a case of asymmetrical warfare. The narrow group people and companies who stand to benefit *really* stand to benefit a lot, and also have custom-built DC lobbyist shops, so their voices are very loud, to Congress (and when getting laws passed its usually how loud your voice is to Congress that counts). The somewhat larger group of people vehemently opposed to it are less organized, though they’ve rapidly organized as the details have gotten clearer. And the very large mass of people who probably would be opposed if they had it explained to them haven’t had it explained to them and therefore don’t care.
I’m a real person, and I’m very much in favor of SOPA.
1) It’s about time somebody gave a damn about protecting creators’ rights. Felix has long been going on with excuses about how it’s ok to steal anything you want whenever you want, and I imagine his hard drive is full of stolen material. But as a creator of material a lot of people like, it’s made me sick that we as a society apparently don’t care that creators actually be protected, and that those with big megaphones (if small minds, with regard to this) like Felix are cheerleading stealing from the mountaintops.
2) Felix’s example of the good arguments against it are ridiculous. For example, the argument he references says:
“First, both bills would still result in the censoring of non-infringing speech. That is because they allow for the blocking of entire websites – even though the site may contain a great deal of perfectly legal speech. ”
This is a bad argument. One can have a new website up in 30 seconds today for the ‘non-infringing speech’. So put it up and go on with your business.
“Professor Laurence Tribe puts it, “The First Amendment requires that the government proceed with a scalpel – by prosecuting those who break the law – rather than with the sledgehammer approach of SOPA, which would silence speech across the board.””
A strawman argument if I ever saw one. There are many ways to ramp up enforcement in a “scalpel”-like way. 1) Cease and desist; 2) Fine, 3) 1 day site shutdown.
etc, etc.
I don’t have time to go through it point by point, and I know the “screw the creators, steal whatever you want, and hell, monetize it if you can” crowd like Felix are unswayable.
But it’ s about time we did something –anything– to protect creators.
The practical effects of SOPA will be a general data & web services flight from the US. Companies that built cloud infrastructure inside the US will see their assets depreciated substantially. IT engineers who support such assets will find themselves less valuable or unemployed.
However, we software engineers can be anywhere relative to where the technology is actually deployed. SOPA might kill off the infrastructure to host & deploy web services inside the US, but engineers can develop inside a separate corporate entity and be protected. Just like the internet, we route around random failure enacted by a body with a 9% approval rating. ;) Our brethren in IT will take it in the nuts, but nobody likes them anyway!
Media will get subsidies and market controls in the US eventually, I believe that to be inevitable. Most likely it will come at the expense of companies that are building business models for the 21st century. I am against SOPA, but I believe something like it to be inevitable. Besides, patent law is so screwed up that it is already impossible to develop successful software without hordes of lawyers. At least now we can keep those lawyers fed fending off take-down notices while they wait for patent trolls.
@EconomistDuNort
“A strawman argument if I ever saw one. There are many ways to ramp up enforcement in a “scalpel”-like way. 1) Cease and desist; 2) Fine, 3) 1 day site shutdown.
etc, etc.”
Universal Music Group and other media are already trying to do that. see:
http://torrentfreak.com/universal-censor s-megaupload-song-gets-branded-a-rogue-l abel-111210/
Then Lied about an artist issuing a DMCA:
http://torrentfreak.com/will-i-am-i-did- not-authorize-megaupload-video-takedown- 111214/
Then they shut down a news video reporting on the takedown:
http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/15/univer sal-yanks-twits-tech-news-today-episode- from-youtube-due-to-mega-video-clip/
This is all before SOPA is passed. You can’t tell me they won’t abuse SOPA if they are already abusing DMCA.
Also, I AM an network admin. I know all about how the internet works and SOPA WON’T SOLVE THE PROBLEM. A large majority of pirates are tech saavy enough to just create ways around the SOPA blocks OR use legal encryption technologies to hide their actions.
Not to mention that all SOPA takedowns require are allegations, NOT proof. Taking down a web page or site will damage its business, even if it’s only for a couple hours. Web Business is based off people looking for products NOW, not later. You can’t tell me that will be good for jobs.
Finally, the entire tech business, from the 70s to today, is based off someone else’s idea being taken and then improved. Almost everything out there is from something that came before it. Microsoft’s Windows came out of MS-DOS, which itself was a program made by another company that MS took and improved. Same with Mac OS X. How does that fare in SOPA and IP law?
The reasons for SOPA’s political support seem obvious. People in government like to govern which makes unregulated markets an anathema. Regulation brings power and, as Henry Kissinger famously said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Besides power brings supplicants and supplicants bring money. If you are a politician what’s not to like about SOPA?
@EconomistDuNort: Take a look at what Louis CK was able to do https://buy.louisck.net/statement . SOPA will exist because that model (direct artist to fan contact) cuts out the media distribution & production companies. It also cuts down on the number of union members needed to “produce” content.
Apple sells a ton of music digitally without DRM and no need for “takedown notices”. They are successful because they provide an excellent shopping experience and reasonable prices.
NetworkAdmin said:
“You can’t tell me they won’t abuse SOPA if they are already abusing DMCA.”
Fine, go after the abuses. Just because the police occasionally abuse their power doesn’t mean you give up trying to stop murderes.
“I AM an network admin. I know all about how the internet works and SOPA WON’T SOLVE THE PROBLEM. ”
That has nothing to do with it. It’s a step, it’s an attempt, it can be made better, but at least it’s leaning in the right direction. Your “just give up and let me steal whatever I want” argument ignore the bigger picture. Something needs to be done to protect creators. You’d make the same argument whatever solution they came along with.
“Finally, the entire tech business, from the 70s to today, is based off someone else’s idea being taken and then improved. Almost everything out there is from something that came before it. Microsoft’s Windows came out of MS-DOS, which itself was a program made by another company that MS took and improved. Same with Mac OS X.”
Exactly. So apparently you believe creators should have no rights.
Your attitude is the whole problem in a nutshell.
k9quaint said:
“Apple sells a ton of music digitally without DRM and no need for “takedown notices”. They are successful because they provide an excellent shopping experience and reasonable prices.”
Only 5% of music is paid for. 95% is stolen.
Apple makes a few bits, and pays a couple paltry crumbs to creators.
But this is statistically nothing compared to the volume of stolen material.
Creative America is a grassroots organization of over 80,000 members united in the fight against content theft who support SOPA. Many of our members felt strongly enough that they took the time to videotape messages to Congress asking them to support this legislation. If you want to hear and see real people who support SOPA, go to the Creative America YouTube Channel and you can see hundreds of them.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_29p 780ShXM&feature=relmfu
@EconomistDuNort
Us creators need protection from the writers & promoters of SOPA, not the so called “pirates”. The SOPA folks want to lock everything up for perpetuity then regulate access to all intellectual content through lawyers and contracts instead of browsers & readers.
I can make money just fine without the “protection” racket they are proposing.
@EconomistDuNort
I respect your assertion that creators have rights, but ALL of technology and science moves forward by improving and building on preexisting ideas.
Another thing that you, and the SOPA supporters, seem to miss is that tech and the internet follow very specific protocols which HAVE to be adhered to for it to function – simply doing “the work to innovate” doesn’t work here as new ideas/protocols take YEARS to adopt, if at all. Many of the same protocols that governed Networks in the 60s and 70s still govern them today.
And again, there is no possible way to force STOP piracy entirely – the internet, by definition, is decentralized – there is NO governing entity to it. The only true way to cut it down heavily would be to restrict all internet use by country (which would be a step backwards) or for owners to offer goods in a way that pirates wouldn’t want to pirate. Even then, you will still have pirates.
Another thing everyone is forgetting is that most of the tech professionals and Network engineers are AGAINST the bill and the know and understand the internet FAR BETTER that you EVER WILL. No congressman or MPAA suit is going to know more about how the internet works than the actual engineers that keep it running. Don’t you find it strange that not once has Rep. Smith invited an IT Professional or Network Engineer to testify on how this bill may affect the internet as it exists?
One thing we are taught in college is to ALWAYS give the least amount of access, then slowly increase it as needed. Here is an example of the opposite, they are potentially taking away access that has been there for years, this will anger more than it will please – this is supposed to be a Democracy – where the Majority, NOT minority, that decides the outcome
Here’s what SOPA does: It cuts away more due process. It’s DMCA on steroids.
And anyway, there are existing laws on the books that address IP in both patent, copyright and trademark infringement.
This is just more of the 1% trying to control the 99%.
FYI, Creative America is an (astroturf) group formed by former Disney piracy lawyer Mike Nugent who also used to be general counsel for Citibank. Craig Hoffman is the communications director for Creative America. He used to be an “Executive Consultant” at the Motion Picture Association of America.
Clearly, both of these folks have important things to say about SOPA. ;)
@CraigHoffman
That’s great that 80,000 members of your organization support the bill. 87,000 people called (not counting the additional people that emailed in) into congress last month against the bill. The way things are supposed to work, you would already lose the fight there.
k9quaint said:
“Take a look at what Louis CK was able to do https://buy.louisck.net/statement.”
If he made enough money for him, good for him. I love LouisCK and wish him nothing but success.
But what one guy did is irrelevant. This is about society coming together and trying to protect creator rights. And that’s a very, very good thing.
The method may be flawed, complicated, problematic. But the attempt is a sure piece better than all you theft apologists out there like Felix.
You could care less about creators. You just want to steal anything you want whenever you want it. So you make up silly arguments like “well this guy made a little money”, and “censorship!!!!”
The latter is the most pathetic ridiculous thing I’ve seen on this whole issue. Censorship means freedom of expression is taken away. Nothing about this law takes away anyone’s right to say anything. You wanna say something, put it on a website and say it. No one’s stopping you.
To claim your inability to torrent movies is “censorship” is an abhorrent disrespect to people throughout history who actually WERE censored.
GRRR said,
“And anyway, there are existing laws on the books that address IP in both patent, copyright and trademark infringement.”
Yeah, and how’s that working out?
The entire explanation for this political corruption is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56Ft Vc – the US Congress does not represent voters interests any more. The Republic is over. Gone. It will take major effort to get it back.
EconomistDuNort: this stuff isn’t a step towards combating piracy. It is a step towards corporate-controlled censorship of the internet. It won’t have any effect on piracy, because – if you are a actually an economist – that is driven by supply and demand. There is a demand for low friction ways to access good content. There is very little low-friction supply, however, outside of things like torrents. But iTunes, Spotify, and even Louis CK’s experiment show that when you reduce the friction, people open their wallets. But this bill is an attempt to defeat the iron rule of economics. The result will be what it always is in these situations: black markets.
k9quaint said:
“The SOPA folks want to lock everything up for perpetuity then regulate access to all intellectual content through lawyers and contracts instead of browsers & readers. ”
This is complete and utter nonsense.
BarryKelly said:
“the US Congress does not represent voters interests any more. The Republic is over. Gone. It will take major effort to get it back.”
I certainly agree with you there.
“when you reduce the friction, people open their wallets”
What a load of garbage. When you reduce friction, people steal.
@EconomistDuNort
Another thing that stands to lose with SOPA is what we call Open Source Software. Open Source is a type of software that freely distributes the code out to users by the original creators. This can be done with free software or paid software.
the problem that shows up is that for years Apple and Microsoft have claimed that Linux Distributions have “stolen” ideas from them for use in operating systems such as Red Hat and Ubuntu. Most of these Distributions are offered up entirely free and as such have no money to give them the patents or copyrights to “protect” their content (nor do they want to as their software is offered free of charge and for anyone to modify). Yet, in our current system, people can come up with ideas, then have it stolen by large companies simply because the companies have the money to “buy” the patents, copyrights and trademarks.
Take the music industry that SOPA is supposed to protect. Did you know that on average a music artist or band get’s only $1 or less of a record sale? The rest goes entirely to the Record labels. How is that fair. Because of that, you now have independent artists who use iTunes, Blogs, Megaupload, and torrents to distribute their music and are tending to be MORE successful than popular artists (not to mention that not a single record label gets a cut).
So my question is: Are we trying to protect the artists or the companies that control the artists – all in the name of jobs?
Don’t you find it strange that you can’t find ANY information on SOPA from the big media giants? You must go to independent firms, such as Reuters, or online blogs to find it. Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS aren’t mentioning it at all – not even in support. It’s like they want us to be ignorant.
If that doesn’t throw up red flags, that I don’t know what to tell you
EconomistDoNort: Are you seriously suggesting that reducing the cost of something reduces its sales, and increases theft? I put it to you that your statement is the garbage.
This bill cannot even increase the friction of piracy, because we’re dealing with two things: software, and general acceptance in the population of a moral right to share culture. No matter how high a technological mechanism you introduce, because it’s software, the evasion of the technological mechanisms can itself be automated. So the height of the wall doesn’t matter; software can be written to scale any wall.
And the software will be written and distributed because too many people agree with its aims. It’s not like child pornography, which is genuinely hard to stumble into, and the laws have popular support. People don’t freely collaborate to get around those kinds of blocks. The democratic will orients towards sharing of cultural objects. Congress’s paymasters don’t agree, but the masses do. And this gap increases the lack of faith in government.
26% of American Internet users would support surveillance of their own Internet activity to stop copyright infringement.
33% support “government censorship” to stop infringement.
That’s your SOPA constituency. And it tracks old and poor. In other words, people who aren’t buying much recorded media anyway.
http://piracy.ssrc.org/the-copy-culture- survey-infringement-and-enforcement-in-t he-us/
I love how EconomistDuNort keeps spluttering about how ridiculous opposition to it is (without giving any data or basis for his claims), and “wahwahwahing” about those meaniepantses who want to “steal” from the poor starving creators.
Funniest part: Claiming that SOPA won’t be used to violate free speech. Really? Heard Megaupload’s video lately? Are you really naive enough to think that if a politician doesn’t like what a site says, he won’t just file a false allegation that the site violates copyright? Because he CAN. Therefore he will.
Another thing I despise about this bill is that it uses the Domain Name System (the backbone of the internet) to redirect users to other websites away from the “infringing” sites.
The problem with this is – that’s the EXACT same thing that hackers and thieves do to steal people’s personal information and from a Security standpoint has always been a cardinal sin in networking to do that.
If it’s implemented as law, how are administrators or DNS systems supposed to tell the difference between true court mandated redirects and fake ones using forged documents (that are very easy to make)?
I am a real person, a long time professional songwriter who supports this bill. Wanna know why the bill is moving? Try this. Google, any hit song followed by the either ‘mp3′, ‘download’ and you’ll get you answer in full color. Foreign rogue web sites. In the case of any of my songs, they are there by the 100′s of thousands, everyone making $ with every click of the mouse except those of us who brought the song to life. Movies, TV, same thing. Big tech has had a free ride for a decade and it’s coming to and end, hence the howling and hyperbole.
@write_em
Big Tech is also the entity that understands how the internet works more than your average person and if we (a Network Administrator) are against it for technical reasons, then you ought to listen – we know what we’re talking about.
Additionally, this bill only really protects “Big Media” interests, not the little guys. And, as I stated above, music artists don’t get anything for their work when they contract with Big Media. Nor do they own it (this goes for music, TV, movies). Is that anymore fair and just than the pirates are?
write_em said:
“I am a real person, a long time professional songwriter who supports this bill. Wanna know why the bill is moving? Try this. Google, any hit song followed by the either ‘mp3′, ‘download’ and you’ll get you answer in full color. Foreign rogue web sites. In the case of any of my songs, they are there by the 100′s of thousands, everyone making $ with every click of the mouse except those of us who brought the song to life. Movies, TV, same thing. Big tech has had a free ride for a decade and it’s coming to and end, hence the howling and hyperbole.”
Exactly. Very well said.
Unfortunately I suspect big tech’s free ride is not coming to an end, and you and creators like you will continue to get the shaft while all these freeloaders like Felix rejoice and make bogus arguments for theft.
Satireknight said:
“I love how EconomistDuNort keeps spluttering about how ridiculous opposition to it is (without giving any data or basis for his claims), and “wahwahwahing” about those meaniepantses who want to “steal” from the poor starving creators.”
This is exactly the attitude. I’ll bet $1000 this guy’s hard drive is nothing but stolen media.
Let’s all work hard to create great stuff so that people like this guy can just steal it and insult people who want to protect creators’ rights.
What a world.
BarryKelly said:
“EconomistDoNort: Are you seriously suggesting that reducing the cost of something reduces its sales, and increases theft?”
No, I’m not suggesting anything about prices. In a hypothetical world where there were no free options, reducing prices increases demand.
This hypothetical world is irrelevant to the world we actually live in, where all you happily unrepentant thieves live, with all your free options.
You said reducing “friction” makes people open their wallets.
Napster, Limewire, Bittorrent, et al prove your claim to be ridiculous.
EconomistDuNort:
I’m not in anyway advocating for theft. You have to understand topics like these are addressed when learning about internet/network security and core functionality.
You can’t have what SOPA offers AND have the privacy and security you want on the internet. It’s not possible. To combat piracy the way SOPA advocates could require my company to expose our SSL/IPSec Certs to people for “packet inspection”, but then those same people could end up selling our secrets to competitors, because we now have no security on our systems? How does that protect content.
I hear about far more problems and money lost from identity theft and corporate theft than money lost from piracy (Jobs and Profits have actually increased for the MPAA in the last couple years). Yet, the actions to prevent piracy uses the EXACT same mechanism that thieves use to commit identity and corporate theft and that’s OK? All in the name of protecting Big Media, oops I mean “content creators”?
NetworkAdmin said:
“Big Tech is also the entity that understands how the internet works more than your average person and if we (a Network Administrator) are against it for technical reasons, then you ought to listen – we know what we’re talking about.”
Congratulate yourself all you want for your perceived technical superiority (newsflash, pretty much everyone understands how p2p works and why it’s very hard to stop), but your point is in any case irrelevant.
Just cause someone knows easy ways to break into someone’s house doesn’t mean society should not try stop it.
EconomistDuNort:
BitTorrent isn’t by any means a technology like Napster. Napster, I would argue, was created to pirate. BitTorrent is a communications protocol that is used by many legitimate companies (Microsoft, Canonical, Apple, Blizzard, etc) to more quickly distribute their software by using their customers peer-to-peer connections. Don’t make accusations about something you clearly don’t understand
NetworkAdmin said:
“You can’t have what SOPA offers AND have the privacy and security you want on the internet. It’s not possible. ”
When compared to Facebook, spyware, botnets, Chinese distributed hacking, etc, SOPA is of completely negligible concern as far as privacy and security.
So pretending privacy and security are your worry is just silly. If that were true, you’ve got MUCH bigger fish to fry.
EconomistDuNort:
“Congratulate yourself all you want for your perceived technical superiority (newsflash, pretty much everyone understands how p2p works and why it’s very hard to stop), but your point is in any case irrelevant.”
I said nothing about P2P, I was talking about the freaking BACKBONE of the INTERNET. Where did you get P2P from?
DNS is the backbone of the internet, screwing with it is a very bad idea and always has been. If someone so much as screws up a DNS redirect once, they could damage a company beyond recovery. Is stopping piracy really worth that?
Is the entertainment industry really more important than any other in this country, or even world?
I have over 20 years of professional content creation, mostly writing, but also presentations, videos, and webcasts. I’ve made a consistently good living at it. I am rather flattered with the notion that anyone would find it worthwhile enough to consider using without attribution or payment.
No one would accuse me of being a Felix cheerleader, but I sincerely doubt that he has a hard drive full of stolen content. I think what we have is rapidly changing ideas concerning the place of owned content in a larger discourse. I’ll also say that in such circumstances, it is foolish to bet on the status quo winning out.
NetworkAdmin said:
“BitTorrent is a communications protocol that is used by many legitimate companies (Microsoft, Canonical, Apple, Blizzard, etc) to more quickly distribute their software by using their customers peer-to-peer connections. Don’t make accusations about something you clearly don’t understand”
Oh, NetworkAdmin, you truly are a comedian, aren’t you? You should see if LouisCK needs a warm up on his next tour.
“BitTorrent traffic is estimated to account for 17.9% of all internet traffic. Nearly two-thirds of this traffic is estimated to be non-pornographic copyrighted content shared illegitimately such as films, television episodes, music, and computer games and software.”
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=& esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url =http%3A%2F%2Fdocuments.envisional.com%2 Fdocs%2FEnvisional-Internet_Usage-Jan201 1.pdf&ei=sT_qToy3FYW4tweOi_H0Cg&usg=AFQj CNGt-oqIRoc_sQfc3ts5M_I-KH9AGg
EconomistDuNort:
I never said it WASN’T used for piracy, but that’s not the reason it was created. Should we take down the FTP (file transfer protocol) and it’s sister SFPT (Secure FTP) simply because they can be abused?
Curmudgeon said:
“I think what we have is rapidly changing ideas concerning the place of owned content in a larger discourse. I’ll also say that in such circumstances, it is foolish to bet on the status quo winning out.”
Exactly. Very well said.
My argument is limited to:
1) If we want good creative content to consume, we need to as a society somehow protect the creators’ ability to generate a living from it.
2) A huge part of society and the Felixes of the world don’t care about creators. Fine, that’s their right, but let’s at least be honest enough to admit that.
3) A huge part of society and the Felixes of this world and most of the commentators here make up BS arguments to justify their own stealing. They make up silly stuff like “the tech is too complicated for you to understand”, and “well LouisCK made a little money, so there!”
4) How we protect incentives to create great content, I don’t know. I agree SOPA probably won’t do it, because society doesn’t care a whole lot, and all these self-justifying thieves will just some other way. We all know this.
5) So I’m honest about the world we’re living in. I’m just glad to see someone trying to do something about it, whether or not it will ultimately succeed.
NetworkAdmin said:
“I never said it WASN’T used for piracy, but that’s not the reason it was created. Should we take down the FTP (file transfer protocol) and it’s sister SFPT (Secure FTP) simply because they can be abused?”
Geez, your argument is supersilly: A stick in my front lawn can be abused. No one’s talking about “taking down” bittorrent or anything else.
The point is not technology, it’s society’s desire or nondesire to protect incentives to create.
Earlier in the comments, Satireknight claimed that SOPA supporters fall into one of two categories (and I quote):
A. Trolls
B. Clueless, naive doofs who think that the bill will only be used against Evil Foreign Pirates and nobody else
Thanks to EconomistDuNort, I think we can add a third category to SOPA supporters. “C. All of the Above” ;)
k9quaint said:
“Earlier in the comments, Satireknight claimed that SOPA supporters fall into one of two categories (and I quote):
A. Trolls
B. Clueless, naive doofs who think that the bill will only be used against Evil Foreign Pirates and nobody else
Thanks to EconomistDuNort, I think we can add a third category to SOPA supporters. “C. All of the Above” ;)”
Wow, did you think up that brilliant statement up all by yourself?!
Truly an intellect like yours is a rare thing.
That’s the point though, SOPA won’t solve anything – the pirates will still pirate. From a tech standpoint, here’s where SOPA fails:
It relies on DNS and IP blocking to block piracy website abroad (that’s where a lot of them are), but here’s the problems:
1. The US only has control of DNS servers (DNS translates names like http://www.google.com into IP addresses the internet understands) in the US – all a pirate in the US would have to do is point their DNS to a DNS server outside the US
2. ISPs issues what are called Dynamic IP addresses (they change every time the connection is lost) to most customers, only Businesses and Hosting providers get Static Addresses that never change.
3. With the above two facts taken into account a pirate hosting material would only need to do 2 things – unplug and replug in the modem to the wall to get a new IP address (that’s not blocked) and register for a new domain name – then they’re back up.
Finally, a huge issue to take into account with IP/DNS blocking. From the outside an ISP or Gov’t oversight can ONLY see the external IP address, not the internal. Many times one IP on the internet (especially in business) is actually associated with several users on private addresses behind that public address – who’s responsible?
Read this article about piracy found in the MPAA’s own studios by tracking the public IP of users pirating material: http://torrentfreak.com/busted-bittorren t-pirates-at-sony-universal-and-fox-1112 13/
What happens now – does sony sue themselves for infringement?
Another study from earlier this year, done by NBC Universal, shows that a large majority of piracy is their own fault – should the Gov’t pass laws to bail them out of the consequences of their own actions?
Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/2011020 2/12013712931/nbc-universal-study-shows- that-its-hollywoods-own-damn-fault-so-mu ch-content-is-pirated.shtml
NetworkAdmin wrote: (a whole long lecture on internet tech).
You persist on missing the point.
Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we should give up trying to make the playing field fairer.
EconomistDuNort might even be a real lay person instead of a communications director for the MPAA. Google says his account has only ever commented today on this particular topic. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Still, it is curious that such a rabid supporter of SOPA should suddenly appear in response to a member of the media commenting on the subject.
I do wonder if the EconomistDuNort account was created this morning by our friends over at Creative America. ;)
Forget about all the tech-geek-everything-wants-wants-to-be-f ree stuff, or who can have what kinda-sorta pirated content on their hard drive. SOPA is a battle between two business models: Hollywood v. Silicon Valley. They don’t get along. They may never get along. My take:
http://www.scpr.org/blogs/economy/2011/1 2/14/4005/why-cant-hollywood-and-silicon -valley-get-along/#disqus_thread
EconomistDuNort:
I agree that piracy needs to be stopped. But you can’t take a sledgehammer to this kind of problem. That’s my point – you’ll end up missing the actual pirates and end up hitting innocents simply because there was “alleged copyright infringement”. Sorry, not worth it. find a better method. Better yet, instead of writing the bill only with the MPAA, RIAA, etc. Include the Tech Giants as well. Get the technical side involved. At this point, SOPA has failed to do just that. Right now the MPAA, RIAA, etc want it their way or no way.
There’s something to be said about the rise of Netflix, Hulu, Hulu+, Indie Music, Indie Gaming and Open Source Software. People just aren’t willing the pay the prices that are set anymore.
People would rather pay $9 a month for streaming movies/TV shows from Hulu+ than pay between $25-60 for every DVD movie they want.
People would rather pay $1-20 for games like Bastion and Angry Birds than $45-70 for a computer console game
Businesses (like mine) would rather learn and set up their own Open Source Solution for their needs than pay $20,000 a year for a service
Then there are the pirates, who should be stopped, but not at the expense of the average person or business.