The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has been getting a lot of attention recently. It is basically a bill that is said to help curb online piracy. Unfortunately, the bill is very ambiguous and open-ended. It would be the first ever bill that would allow the government to censor websites from being accessible to us. It holds website owners responsible for ANY copyright infringement determined by the copyright holder that is being "victimized." This includes links to infringing material. It also makes it much easier for individuals to be charged as FELONS! It is ridiculous to charge someone for a felony when they didn't steal something, they copied it. There are an unlimited amount of copies of a movie, digitally. Not saying it's great to "commit" piracy, but it's definitely not worse than a traffic ticket. This act has the jurisdiction to shut down sites like YouTube if the happen to have ONE copyrighted video. Some people say, "The movie industry won't take advantage of the bill." Well, then why did a movie company sue a family who made a YouTube video with copyrighted music playing in the background, even thought the video wasn't focused on the music AT ALL!? Congress needs to pay their attention to real crimes, NOT things that don't hurt anybody but a big corrupt corporation. This bill would be the first ever time the government would violate our Internet rights. I sure hope the members of congress will come to their senses and vote down this anti-1st amendment legislation.
Digital Piracy is unstoppable. Passing a bill like this is little more than tightening your grip to ensure the thing you seek to hold on to will slip through your fingers. Copyright law in this country is ridiculous and deserves no respect in its current form.
SOPA is definitely an over-reach by government. I really don't think it was inspired by piracy as much as it is just a power grab for both corporations and the government.
Exactly. It's the corporations trying to get themselves into the government that they don't belong in.
As a writer and one who has at time made his living with both the written and spoken word I find the copyright laws as they exist to be absolutely stupid. The laws provide little or no protection for the individual, like myself. Anyone can copy my material as many times as they like and distribute it wholesale, and unless I have the resources to launch suit, there is nothing I can do. However, if you use a still image of a film in any fashion you can be taken to court by the studio and be stripped of everything you own. It us particularly frightening for a friend of mine who some years ago had an image of spider man tattooed on his shoulder. Now, the United States Congress is about to pass a law that will allow film studios to block ANY sight that MIGHT be perceived to possibly contain copyrighted material or any sight that might have a pro-piracy stance, which would include PO because of this thread. Don't anyone ever try to tell me the Democratic party is not corporate friendly.. http://lifehacker.com/5860205/all-about-sopa-the-bill-thats-going-to-cripple-your-internet We can only hope that such corporations as Google, Facebook et all will be able to challenge it in the supreme court.... And that the Alzheimer's patients on said court can stay awake long enough to realize this is the greatest threat to freedom of speech in the history of the United States constitution.
It's pretty much, is an overreach. I am curious, would PF be considered a site where copyrighted material infringing I'd say, happens very often.
I do not know the details of SOPA, but I do believe that the online piracy problems are a little damaging, and something should be done. The internet makes that difficult, though.
Crap. Voted the wrong one. I say Yes. I think piracy is a part of life. I think they have more to worry about. I'd rather have people guarding borders better, and not worrying about a guy stealing music online.
We have to stop this rampant free speech. With this legislation and with the anti-bullying legislation and with the drive out outlaw hate speech, we're making a good start but President Obama desperately needs another term in office to finish the job.
I would like to know where you "heard" that. I have searched the entire net six ways from Sunday and found noting. This is a sop to the film and music industry which lays out a lot of cash to the Democrats and a fair amount to the Republicans as well. There is only one way he would veto it and that is if it hit his desk after the 2012 election. Nope. There is no way in hell any Democrat will stand in the way of this; it is financial suicide. Again, the only legal hope is for the likes of Google or Face Book to it take to the Supreme court...and win. What these fools do not realize is that the piracy movement is actually growing because of this crap. And if this goes ahead they will simply go deeper underground. It is too late to stop piracy. This bill we be less effective than the "war on drugs."
SOPA Will DEFINITELY reduce free speech drastically. Anyone who supports SOPA who does not stand to benefit from it financially, (corporations) is an ignorant fool. (If they do stand to gain financially from it, they are scum and should die) A lot of people are defending SOPA out of ignorance. People seem to think the only reason why people are fighting it, is because they want to pirate stuff. When in actuality, people are against SOPA, because it will give the US Government a foothold on the internet, which could easily grow from SOPA into outright censorship. Which could potentially turn the US into a China of sorts. I'm not saying any of this will happen, but it is more than plausible. I just think the MPAA and others should let bygones be bygones. They probably spend more money fighting/preventing piracy than they lose to piracy. Not to mention the society they are consistently hurting with their crusade. I believe they are misguided, in the sense that they look at stuff in the worst case scenario. They see that a movie was downloaded 1,000 times, that has a retail of $20.00 per copy. And they assume that all 1,000 people would have bought the movie if not for piracy. Leading them to believe they just lost $20,000.00. When in actuality, many people already bought the movie, and just want a more versatile copy (for htpc's, ipods, etc), and many other people simply would not watch the movie if they had to pay. Obviously the MPAA is a victim, and they definitely lose money to piracy, but I doubt its enough to justify their crusade. It will be a sad day for the MPAA when they somehow eliminate piracy, only to find that after billions of dollars spent winning the war on piracy, they only see a 4% boost in profits. And on top of that, the American people will have lost that much more freedom. Thats what we call a lose, lose scenario.
While I understand and slightly agree with the general concept of SOPA, I believe that the bill went way too far. The legislation is simply overkill compared to the issue it's trying to address. I think current copyright laws are enough and simply need to be reanalyzed and applied differently (not made to be more strict or different, just applied differently).
Blatant attack on free speech. The irony of the whole thing is the author Lamar Smith had copyrighted material on his own page. Hypocrite and authoritarian.
Intellectual property rights are too (*)(*)(*)(*)ing ill defined and too (*)(*)(*)(*)ing destructive to freedom to be useful except in very limited situations such as an invention.
They also destroy innovation and allow a first mover to reap economics rents thanks to illegitimate privilege provided by government. Copyright and patent laws are some of the most monumental barriers to progress.
Depending on the kind innovation, IP laws encourage progress if the time which said IP laws apply to said innovation, are allowed to expire at some point in time. I wouldn't design an invention that could help everyone if my idea wouldn't be protected, out of well, greed, honestly. That's the way (*)(*)(*)(*)head humans are: greedy, selfish, and you need to give them an incentive to be productive and helpful (to strangers) or else they won't be. However, IP protection for an idea should expire after a certain amount of time that way a monopoly over the idea doesn't exist forever.
I hear that argument a lot, but I'm not sure I believe it to be true. Folks often produce things that they have no idea what the return on their investment will be and yet do it anyway even without the promise of their property rights being protected. The point being that their are incentives other than monetary ones for innovating and that removing the ability to rent seek won't necessarily destroy those incentives. In some cases I do agree they serve a purpose, pharma is one case where the costs to develop these drugs would vastly out weigh the ROI if they weren't allowed to extract rents. Copyright laws are also entirely too long, it should end at life, but nope we extend that another 70 years! And no need to be cautious with the word greed, it's a virtue in a disconnected system where there isn't any other incentives to assist anyone.
