SOPA - PIPA. What you think?

Mei Lewis · January 23, 2012

The purpose of law in a democratic, non religion-controlled society is to allow that society to function in a way that reflects its peoples' ideas of right and wrong.

The large number of people who themselves violate copyright law leads me to think that current laws are out of line with the will of the people and will probably be changed soon.

Bigger shifts in law have happened before.

Phil Rhodes · January 23, 2012

Someone reasonably important once said that the only reason copyright law is tolerated is because it is so poorly enforced.

If we picture a world in which, by some sort of near-magical technology, copyright could be enforced to the letter of the law in all possible cases, we can see how absurdly restrictive it could become even under current law. Imagine a world in which you can't watch TV with your friends, because you've only paid for the content for you to watch. Imagine not being able to lend someone a book, or pick up a newspaper on a train. Imagine every photograph ever taken which contained an image of a manmade item, being considered as infringing the rights in the unique design of that item. That would be most photos taken by anyone. Ever.

Copyright is not routinely enforced, cannot be fully enforced, and it is not desirable that it should be when you think about it that way. And yes, it is possible to construct from this an argument that copyright law is out of step with public opinion and should be changed, because it relies on the good graces of rights holders and the good sense of the courts to prevent misuse of the legislation from getting completely out of hand. To date this has been sort of OK and the amount of infringement, and the number of spurious, timewasting copyright cases, has been kept down to a level that's tolerable for people on both sides of the issue.

SOPA and PIPA are scary in the same way as many current laws: not because of what they aim to do, but because of the enormously far-reaching powers they give people. As with current law, I don't think it's very likely that the worst case scenario outlined by a lot of the hardline detractors would ever come to pass, because like most law, it wouldn't be very well enforced.

Regardless, my position remains that this is a very poor justification for bad laws. It might, after all, be you who becomes one of the rare victims of this, and if it's you whose business is ruined and you whose life is destroyed, I suspect you might start taking the issue rather seriously.

P

January 23, 2012

Regardless, my position remains that this is a very poor justification for bad laws. It might, after all, be you who becomes one of the rare victims of this, and if it's you whose business is ruined and you whose life is destroyed, I suspect you might start taking the issue rather seriously.

P

Or, people could simply choose to not illegally download copyrighted content via the internet. And avoid the issue all together.

R,

Phil Rhodes · January 23, 2012

You misunderstand my point.

Under the proposed rules, if you run any of a fairly wide variety of online services you would be at extreme risk of being pursued, and having your business and your life destroyed, by copyright owners, on the basis that "you" (that is, your service) was used to infringe their rights.

Now, I'm not for a second defending people like Megaupload, who, it seems likely, were making a huge amount of money out of a service that in my view was successful chiefly because of piracy. Vimeo is a great counterexample because it is mainly used for entirely honest purposes - but it could be used to much the same ends.

What I'm talking about - and what alarms people about this stuff - is rules aimed at MegaUpload (for whom few would speak up) being used against people like Vimeo (who in my view do not encourage or profit by the misue of their service).

It is not OK for the job of distinguishing these two situations to be left in the hands of big corporations.

P

Chris Millar · January 23, 2012

Or, people could simply choose to not illegally download copyrighted content via the internet. And avoid the issue all together.

R,

As I see it the law doesn't have any disincentive for people downloading material - its a disincentive for people to facilitate it, unknowingly or not.

Using the same approach the best way to avoid the issue altogether is to simply not supply any online services.

This very website could go down - there have been people come on here asking for pirated copies of software.

Where does that leave this discussion ? (literally, as well as figuratively)

Maybe I'm taking this to extremes that aren't realistic ? Someone with more knowledge please tell me if so.

Rex Orwell · February 7, 2012

The purpose of law in a democratic, non religion-controlled society is to allow that society to function in a way that reflects its peoples' ideas of right and wrong.

The large number of people who themselves violate copyright law leads me to think that current laws are out of line with the will of the people and will probably be changed soon.

Good post.

Negative change is promoted though, not positive.

My stance - The day I pay money for a data file that can be wiped from the face of existence should a wrong button be pressed then I must be earning far too much money and so deserve to be robbed for being so stupid. I've constantly got in the region of 6 feature films downloading from torrent sites. I've got a massive physical library of thousands of DVDs, but the days of me taking a punt on a film having never seen it are long gone, it's about refinement now and it's a privilege to get a place on my wall, earn it. In the past decade I've downloaded so much music in better rip-quality than you'd get on iTunes or other download sites for free, that I'd have to have iTunes on constantly for five years just to listen to everything.

In terms of any media, all they're going to do is keep playing with the formats so that you have to keep going out and replacing your old format with the new, ad infinitum, until you die.

The reason these bills exist is because they think they're losing money. They're not interested in you or the artist; it's their own pockets they'd prefer to line more.

Megaupload was important in more reasons than people realise. It was about to launch a new site that artists would upload their music to directly. The artist would divide the cost of that download with Mupload something like 90% to 10% in favour of the artist. In comparison to what they get currently after the giant media corporations have robbed the respective art form this is a massive step forward.

In December of 2011, just weeks before the takedown, Digital Music News reported on something new that the creators of #Megaupload were about to unroll. Something that would rock the music industry to its core. (http://goo.gl/A7wUZ)

I present to you... MegaBox. MegaBox was going to be an alternative music store that was entirely cloud-based and offered artists a better money-making opportunity than they would get with any record label.

"UMG knows that we are going to compete with them via our own music venture called Megabox.com, a site that will soon allow artists to sell their creations directly to consumers while allowing artists to keep 90 percent of earnings," MegaUpload founder Kim 'Dotcom' Schmitz told Torrentfreak

Not only did they plan on allowing artists to keep 90% of their earnings on songs that they sold, they wanted to pay them for songs they let users download for free.

"We have a solution called the Megakey that will allow artists to earn income from users who download music for free," Dotcom outlined. "Yes that's right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works."

This was about to revolutionise not just the music industry, but the world.

They couldn't allow it. Which is why they raided this guys house in New Zealand and took all his Cadillac off him. They're desperate to try and rally public and industry support for these bills so that they can protect their cash cow - our art.

There is a whole bunch of disgusting people clinging desperately to their bloated and protected methods of cashing in on everything we do.

Just imagine how much more income you'd generate as a filmmaker or cinematographer if you were able to get a cut of 95% of the cost, each time a film was downloaded. The people in this thread in favour of these bills could unwittingly be destroying the industry and their own futures.

Adapt or die.