Companies Opposed To SOPA Are Acting Like Spoilt Children
TMV are utterly disgusted with the antics of the anti SOPA camp. What is so wrong with legislation that’s core aim is to eradicate piracy and in effect protect producers of art and culture? Businesses such as Wikipedia and Google have been acting like a bunch of spoilt children throwing a tantrum and chucking the toys out of the pram when they do not get their own way.
Turning off access to millions of customers, and twisting the truth for your own dubious political ends whilst masquerading it as an attack on free speech is akin to the propaganda machine of Gobbels during the Nazi Germany era.
What is wrong with content creators being able to demand the closing down of sites that steal their IP? I’m sure if individuals or businesses stole Google algorithms, Google would expect the authorities to shut those businesses down?
The reason Google is chucking such a tantrum is because it is crystal clear that they knowingly link to illegal torrent sites let alone the money they make from serving advertisements to such sites. Essentially, Google have been playing a double game and it seems pretty damn clear that they have decided to side with the companies that rip off content producers from the music, film, software, games and news businesses.
All these claims of a breach of freedom is total and utter rubbish that has been used as propaganda to build up support for these companies campaign to profit from illegal conduct in relation to file sharing. Once you read the research it is clear that search engines such as Google make immense profits from serving advertisements to file sharing sites. Reinforcing this is the fact that ISP’s make squillions by refusing to police customer subscribing to their businesses to access the Internet and conduct illegal activity.
In TMV’s view companies like Google and organisations like Wikipedia are scaremongering making false accusations that SOPA equals an attack on free speech to build support for their own businesses at the expense of businesses in the arts and culture sector.
Both ISPs and search engines are profiting from the raping and pillaging of the content creation businesses. Yes there is a lot wrong with the music business and how it rips of its own original creators, yet that does not make profiting from enabling and in some cases actively profiting from stealing creative businesses IP right in any way whatsoever.
It is no surprise businesses lobbying against SOPA have leveraged their political donations to discourage dissent from their own interests. Instead of trying to negotiate what are fair and equitable terms regarding the fact their businesses make money from stealing content creators works, they try to prevent any form of legislation being passed.
The whole point of SOPA is to deliver a balance between both ISP’s and search engine rights and those of content creators. For the last decade content creators have borne the brunt of the worse side of illegal file sharing, whilst these gateways providing access to content have made immense profits by enabling and turning a blind eye to the illegal activity their businesses actively profit from.
It is time for some balance to be provided that protects content creators. That is exactly what SOPA is attempting to do. I’m also sure the legislation is not perfect. When is legislation ever perfect? SOPA may require some changes but negotiation is required – not child like behaviour from some of the worlds largest companies.
On a final note, numerous industry sources have continually noted to TMV that Google and ISP’s never ever like to negotiate and prefer to dictate terms. Yes this does also sound exactly like the music business. However, for the good of each business sector it is critical that negotiation is begun – as without it anarchy, raping and pillaging becomes the norm and hence law. Would we allow that in our physical world? I very much doubt it…
Here at TMV we would love to hear you our readers thoughts on this raging debate. Please do feel free to leave your views below in the comments section.
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- UN Report States Disconnecting Repeat File Sharers Is A Breach Of Human Rights
- Lifestyle Programming Strategist, Fashion and Music, YouTube Next Lab – New York
Posted by Jakomi Mathews
on Jan 19 2012. Filed under Digital, featured.
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Everything relevant has already been said below, but I just wanted to mention that by Godwin’s law you already lost the argument when you brought in the Nazis already in your second paragraph.
I’m not an industry. I’m a songwriter who has had moderate success. I want to be paid for working hard everyday for the last 40 years.Goggle/youtube plays my songs 100s of millions of times without permission profits big time and pays almost nothing.People who make salaries collect free songs as if its a sport and deprive me of a working living. A candy bar costs more than a song. People buy candy bars but they are not paying for music. We are not beggars. Time to get paid our fair share or make big trouble. Policing the internet is the only way. And down with spotify and the like. In 1965 when someone wanted to listen to a song they put a dime in the jukebox and the writers got a fair share. No more wild west web. Time to send in the law. Songwriters and other Art creators: Time to remind everyone that you always have to pay the piper.
http://theoatmeal.com/sopa
Even over here at TMV, he raises a fair point! Now where’s that koala…
Chris,
Of course labels et al are not the at source content creators. Excluding majors a lot of indie labels do treat artist signed to their labels with respect and do 50/50 profit share deals which are what I would term fair and equitable deals with artists and so should they and artists on their labels suffer income losses due to ISP’s refusal to negotiate?
I suggest you read this comment on Helienne Lindvall’s Guardian post in the Guardian earlier this week…http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/23/sopa-shelved-music-industry).
“Lamar Smith has a royal flush and few people know it.
SOPA may pass. It may not. He doesn’t care, and it doesn’t matter. The MPAA and RIAA started working on their legislative strategy to pass a new anti-piracy bill in late 2010. SOPA was designed to raise the noise. Everyone is playing right into the entertainment industries hand. The lobbyists are laughing manically at the ignorance of the mob. Even Wikipedia and reddit have played into it.
What people don’t know about is the ace: H.R.1981, the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 which is lying in wait. It’s not complete. You see, PCIP is not contestable because it’s about protecting children. They can, and very well might, copy and paste the full text of SOPA to the end of PCIP. That’s the backup. That’s the deal that was struck with entertainment industry lobbyists. We will try to push this anti-piracy bill. It probably won’t work. Don’t worry, we can pass it under an anti-child pornography bill.
There are two things which no Congressman will risk supporting: terrorism and child pornography. There can be no opposition, no discussion. Any anti-piracy law can ALWAYS be reframed as an anti-child pornography bill and it will pass, without even discussion. It will have the full support of the House (minus Ron Paul), the full support of the Senate, and most importantly the full support of the American people. NO ONE wants to risk being called a pedophile.
The entertainment industry has finally caught up with technology. They understand how it works. It took them 15 years, but they know what DNS is. They are going to exploit a fundamental problem with the way DNS is centralized and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. They have found an error in the very architecture of the Internet. The solution, from a free speech standpoint is not to fight it politically. The solution is the fix the error.
We must move to a decentralized system of DNS. It is not impossible. It requires some new thinking and a re-architecture of some web services, but it must be done if we want the Internet, as we know it today, to exist in 5 or 10 years.”
And just for the record, as clearly stated numerous times both in this post and others I do not think SOPA is the panacea or a good piece of legislation, but I do see it as a stick that needed to be wielded to get the ISPs and search engines to begin some serious negotiations with the content industries. The comment above outlines the manner in which these internet businesses have seriously under estimated what the real play was and it was not to get the SOPA legislation through as a separate piece of legislation. However as outlined above It may get through in a much more insidious manner where it will be hard for anyone to argue against it and I do not agree with that…
Chris,
Of course labels et al are not the at source content creators. Excluding majors a lot of indie labels do treat artist signed to their labels with respect and do 50/50 profit share deals which are what I would term fair and equitable deals with artists and so should they and artists on their labels suffer income losses due to ISP’s refusal to negotiate?
I suggest you read this comment on Helienne Lindvall’s Guardian post in the Guardian earlier this week…http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/23/sopa-shelved-music-industry).
“Lamar Smith has a royal flush and few people know it.
SOPA may pass. It may not. He doesn’t care, and it doesn’t matter. The MPAA and RIAA started working on their legislative strategy to pass a new anti-piracy bill in late 2010. SOPA was designed to raise the noise. Everyone is playing right into the entertainment industries hand. The lobbyists are laughing manically at the ignorance of the mob. Even Wikipedia and reddit have played into it.
What people don’t know about is the ace: H.R.1981, the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 which is lying in wait. It’s not complete. You see, PCIP is not contestable because it’s about protecting children. They can, and very well might, copy and paste the full text of SOPA to the end of PCIP. That’s the backup. That’s the deal that was struck with entertainment industry lobbyists. We will try to push this anti-piracy bill. It probably won’t work. Don’t worry, we can pass it under an anti-child pornography bill.
There are two things which no Congressman will risk supporting: terrorism and child pornography. There can be no opposition, no discussion. Any anti-piracy law can ALWAYS be reframed as an anti-child pornography bill and it will pass, without even discussion. It will have the full support of the House (minus Ron Paul), the full support of the Senate, and most importantly the full support of the American people. NO ONE wants to risk being called a pedophile.
The entertainment industry has finally caught up with technology. They understand how it works. It took them 15 years, but they know what DNS is. They are going to exploit a fundamental problem with the way DNS is centralized and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. They have found an error in the very architecture of the Internet. The solution, from a free speech standpoint is not to fight it politically. The solution is the fix the error.
We must move to a decentralized system of DNS. It is not impossible. It requires some new thinking and a re-architecture of some web services, but it must be done if we want the Internet, as we know it today, to exist in 5 or 10 years.”
And just for the record, as clearly stated numerous times both in this post and others I do not think SOPA is the panacea or a good piece of legislation, but I do see it as a stick that needed to be wielded to get the ISPs and search engines to begin some serious negotiations with the content industries. The comment above outlines the manner in which these internet businesses have seriously under estimated what the real play was and it was not to get the SOPA legislation through as a separate piece of legislation – of course they knew that would never occur. However as outlined above It may get through in a much more insidious manner where it will be hard for anyone to argue against it and I do not agree with that…
Jakomi
I could take you to task on a lot of things in your piece. But I will just pick one: “What is wrong with content creators being able to demand the closing down of sites that steal their IP?”
The fact is that the parties who created and led SOPA are not creators. They are publishers (as in owners of rights). These are the same owners who have successfully fought to have copyright extended to 70 years past the life of the original creator. Why? So that they can maintain control.
This is not about piracy. Its about control. And you have just trashed the trust that you built in the brand that you have been building over the last how many years…. Tragic.
Okay, nail in the coffin. This is a repulsive article and I am ashamed to have ever subscribed to your drivel. Goodbye.
Hi Matt,
You are WAY off the mark with your allegation!!! The article is a statement of fact…just a pity people who are supposedly for free speech do not seem to support free speech which speaks out against what they want…
Jakomi,
With respect, making the ISP’s and sites responsible for policing themselves and their users is impossible and puts an unfair burden on them. This is like when the recording industry went after NAPSTER after file sharing music became too popular and common to stop. You can’t roll back time. As an artist manager, I completely understand why content providers want these protections. I just think that sharing is an important part of the discovery process – and what we all should be after is transparency and a level playing field. These proposed laws don’t provide that. The record companies (for example) have never been transparent and honest. Their deals with artists are userous and very one sided in their favor. This is that old guard trying to protect their old unfair system. It’s not a step forward, it’s a step back. We can all admit things are broken and need fixing. That stealing is bad for everyone’s business (except groovshark and others) and unethical. Your position may be well meaning (giving you that benefit of the doubt), but it isn’t well thought out. Hoping you, the congressmen/puppets, and the companies pulling their strings all realize that what’s been presented isn’t the answer. Everyone needs to go back to the drawing board and pick smaller battles – be more thoughtful and MORE FAIR. That will be hard for corporate think in this war. The leaders of the 1% that like their rules and wealth and who never want a level playing field. They fight for every advantage. You know what should win – quality. Artists can’t be creative quarterly. They can be brilliant only occassionally. But they need our understanding and support 24/7 or nothing we build around them works. There needs to be balance. These attempts at legislation are so one sided – so un-balanced that society would LOSE if they were implimented. That’s my overwelming objection. Hope you come around and come to understand this…
Wow, a post filled with “childish” ad hominem attacks based on, apparently, minimal knowledge about the legislation at hand.
It is you, dear author, who is chronically misinformed.
So much so that I wonder whether this ‘article’ is intended to be controversial so it boosts your page views – and hence revenue/notoriety – by provoking what has recently been termed ‘nerd rage’. Guess what? It’s not just the nerds this time.
Folks,
Just for some clarification. I’m not 100% pro SOPA in its current form.
However, to those who say SOPA is not the way. What is your solution? Countless solutions have been put to Google et al over the years, and they just ignore them and refuse to negotiate. Whether we like it or not these gateways to either links and / or the Internet in general do facilitate piracy whether that is intentional or not is not what is being discussed.
The fact is SOPA has been the largest wake-up call for these internet businesses which help facilitate piracy. So how about some negotiation between all parties to develop a piece of legislation that is equitable for all. Responsibility needs to be taken from all sides not just the content creating industries. That has been the general thrust of my argument to date.
Yes sections of the legislation need to be changed, but its general thrust is in the right direction. But to make it fair and equitable to all concerned parties negotiation needs to occur. In my view for right or wrong SOPA is the end result of these businesses which facilitate piracy refusing to come to the negotiating table and that is perhaps why it is a little too one sided. If they come to the negotiating table I’m sure it can be changed to be a more fair piece of legislation.
However some type of legislation is required to help in the fight against piracy. The unwillingness of these businesses which profit from enabling piracy to negotiate has necessitated legislation. Even the music business has been pretty clear legislation would be the worst outcome for all parties concerned. Yet they have been left with no option but to push for the ‘Nuclear option’ due to the refusal of businesses like Google to actually step up to the negotiating table.
I suppose my greatest confusion, and thus the question I would love to have answered is, To what purpose do the supporters of SOPA want it implemented? Looking strictly at the law, and nothing else, the facts that are clear are that:
-It would NOT stop piracy. It would be hard pressed to so much as slow piracy down. If anything, it’s already just pulled more attention to the sites it claims to be targeting.
-It WOULD open up any website that has any type of user-generated content (comments, videos, links, messages, etc) to legal ramifications.
-It WOULD give large corporations the ability to stop start ups, especially those not based in the US
-It WOULD give the power of internet censorship on the level of some of the most repressive global institutions around.
From what I’ve seen from major supporters, be it NBCUniversal’s VP, people representing the Copyright Alliance, or the members of congress who sponsor the bill, is that they are all saying different things, very few (if any) of the points even being relevant to the argument. Instead of attacking Google’s credibility, or saying that WikiMedia is acting childlike, lets discuss the bill itself. So far, everyone whose tried to do that in support of the bill has made a fool of themselves. =/
If this is the way the founder and editor of TMV feels about SOPA and PIPA then it is time boycott the site. That is the only thing that works. We are not against stopping piracy, that is not the issue on the table. We are against this measure to stop piracy because it is far too drastic, damaging and debilitating to the Internet we’ve all come to love. As for me, I’ll never be caught on this website again. Out…
The music industry is starting a war it doesn’t want to start. I pray to God Google doesn’t cooperate. It’s not they’re fucking job to be forced to police the internet. Jakomi, I’m sure you’re nice enough in reality, but you sound like a dumbass on here. The government has essentially offered Google a shit sandwich. It doesn’t really matter what else you put on it, it’s still a shit sandwich. I applaud the protests, and truly hope they succeed.
Cant believe people and companies are actually for SOPA. It must be the worst thing ive read in my life, this company wants to stop piracy by shutting down websites what steal IP ‘s? If thats the case then the whole internet is gone. Mans best invention will be lost because of some stupid people who dont want us to watch movies online. Might aswell go back to the ice age with no internet.
Stephen,
It is a two way street, whilst yes to a degree the music business has failed to innovate many startups in the space have actually innovated.
Furthermore, it is the likes of Google and ISP’s that have up until this point refused to negotiate. It’s about time they started acting like adults and actually negotiate in good faith – the music industry are more than willing to negotiate, but it has been the bad faith on the side of search engines like Google and ISP’s that have led to SOPA. Google and ISP’s have had years to conduct meaningful negotiations yet have refused to do so. Just look at Carphone Warehouse and BT in the UK as prime examples.
Hopefully, the tide is now turning and ISPs and Google will finally begin serious negotiations with the content creating industries? Its just sad that yes it took the threat of implementation of legislation like SOPA. Google et al only have themselves to blame for the current situation.
Lex I do not get paid to write anything! Nobody at TMV does just for the record.
Well, Jakomi, I hope you’ve been educated on this matter further.
The problem with the industry is that it refuses to innovate. It fears changing its business model. As a result, they try to stamp out innovation the only way they know how; by trying to sue those who are headed for the future.
This is how many videos have already been removed from YouTube for “infringement” and more extreme measures will be taken if SOPA and PIPA are passed.
Spoiled children my ASS. Did you hear any major news networks covering on EITHER of these abominations we call bills prior to yesterday’s internet blackout? The supporters were trying to quietly pass this legislation without even letting the people know what was happening. Now the people know…and they are PISSED.
How much did mpaa pay you for writing this crap?
i don’t like the negative connotation you put on anarchy. read a fucking book. anarchy is not synonymous with crime it’s closer to true communism. here ar ethe basics asshole http://libcom.org/files/intro%20pamphlet%20reading.pdf
your view on people protesting agaist sopa being likened to nazis is ironic becuase this legeslation view on stoping internet is closer to nazi germany view
and acting like spoilt children you must not use the internet becuase then you how this sopa and pipa would destoy it and freespeach
@M:
YOU DONT HAVE PERMISSION TO POST THAT YOUTUBE VIDEO!!!!!
*shuts down entire site*
this is a joke right? you demand the anti-SOPA camp negotiate, but fail to look back into history. the tech industry did try to negotiate, but the first few hearings, they were completely denied. the hearing only allowed for Google to voice its opposition, a company that was already under scrutiny for a totally unrelated issue. so no, they aren’t acting like “spoilt” children, they are attempting to make congress listen to them while spreading awareness of this draconian, borderline censorship, bill. if you want there to be “negotiations” i suggest you ask congress to start talking with the tech industry instead of writing them off and denying to listen to them.
If SOPA and PIPA are so great for art, where are the artists in favor of it? I’ve seen no support for SOPA from anyone other than media executives and their bought-out, lobbied Congressmen. Where are the musicians and the directors and the actors?
On the flip side, I’ve seen not just tech corporations, but non-profit Internet based organizations like WIkipedia, PLUS some artists. MC Hammer has been very vocal of his opposition to SOPA and PIPA. But why? Wouldn’t those bills help him, as a musician? Nope. They don’t work. If passed, they will be DOA. There is already a mechanism by which the bills can be circumvented. Piracy will be just as strong, but censorship will run rampant. It’s not even a trade-off. You have everything to lose and nothing to gain. So if you’re happy spending federal money on job-killing censorship, go forth.
Speaking of job creation, isn’t that what SOPA supporters claim will come out of the bill? After all, billions of dollars are lost to piracy every year and all. They’re dead wrong. Media revenues have increased, and jobs have been lost in the industry. All the while, executive pay has been increasing. So sacrifice the largest growth engine America has, one that has been consistently creating jobs, for an industry who is only going to take its extra money and throw it at the CEOs. If there is even much extra money to be gained. I’d guess that pirates, after losing the choice of piracy, will either go around the bill (using the handy Firefox extension which broke the security-killing DNS blocking), or just not obtain any of the media.
Piracy is near impossible to be killed through legistlation and it’s definitely not going to be done without tearing the first amendment to shreds. Piracy can only be killed through smart business. It’s been said numerous times: Piracy is a service issue. If companies want to avoid piracy, they’re going to have to step up and provide better services. Support programs like Spotify, which legally provide free music. Technology is always going to be one step ahead of law.
You’re kidding right? Does the author of this article not understand how the internet works? The problem isn’t about piracy anymore. It’s about free speech. And guess what? There will still be piracy with more security risks. You have very little support from the people. I didn’t even know a site like Music Void existed until a few minutes ago.
There are other ways to fight piracy and policing the general public by saying everyone is guilty and proven innocent is not the way. We can’t even counter sue if a website is blocked but found to not have done anything wrong.
Watch this TED video, then maybe you will understand
The problem is that when the internet giants, the first main voice of the opposition, tried to work with politicians in order to come to some sort of compromised, they were dismissed. If you go back and read about some of the comments of the chairing congressmen for the bills comments such as ‘vocal minority’ and ‘unimportant’ show up a lot. The truth of the matter is that, despite the protests, the people on Capital Hill paid more attention to the lobbyists, of which there is FAR more experience and money on the side of the pro-SOPA/PIPA group.
What wiki did managed to break the major news blockade on the whole issue. Aside from Chris Hayes finally doing a segment on it (in which he comments on the fact that no major news groups had done anything about it), most people were unaware of the legislation. With more people aware, hopefully now the politicians (and we’ve seen some already) will wait on passing legislation until we have a bill that:
A) Protects the freedom and innovation of the internet
B) Will actually stop piracy (of which these bills will do VERY little, if any)
C) Doesn’t leave the internet policies in hands of people who are unfamiliar with it (For a shortened version of congressional ineptitude about the bill, watch The Daily Show’s clip about the whole issue.
No one on either side denies that piracy is a problem. It is a major issue that needs to be addressed. Stifling innovation and freedom on the internet is not the way to do that. There’s already a much better bill, the OPEN act, on the table. If it’s a matter of compromise, the OPEN act is much closer to being a middle ground between the two parties, yet the pro-SOPA people refuse to consider it (I’ve yet to see reasons as to why, though I am sure they are out there.)
TMV what SOPA is trying to do is take away the free speech,you send millions in lobbying,just so that you can earn billions and now when you know you have lost this battle because what you were trying to do is morally wrong and you are trying to threaten the people trying to innovate,you should just realize if you curb their freedom you go down because you might have the content but you would never have the channel to reach millions of people,
Stop spending millions lobbying people and trying to get laws passed,I am sure if you were right people would have supported you and wouldn’t have gone against you.Don’t try to RIP people of the freedom which is theirs ,or else once they start abandoning you,you will soon be a forgotten story
When did it become that artists need to be paid large ammount of money for their work and they cannot have that worked shared.
I thought it would be more important to a musician to be reconized by the mases for what they have created than have a small group that paid every peny they had for your songs.
Shakespare never made his plays for large ammounts of money infact it was a passtime that wasnt paid well. And look what he created.
Now we have a music industry that puts out abosulte mainstram POS’s because they just want to make some money for their next album
Piracy is better for the music industry than Letting justin beiber prance around im glamour
Maybe if “artists” could be more innovative and fix their broken business model they could compete in this new industry rather than buying legislations to keep competitors from starting businesses. Overall you guys are obsolete no one wants to pay $15 for garbage music anymore
I honestly can’t see how anyone could actually, really believe that SOPA / PIPA isn’t a ridiculous, asinine piece of shit. I mean that, I’m completely intrigued. Removing due process from any legal action is far, far more egregious than piracy or copyright infringement. That aspect alone is far more akin to the Nazi Germany to which you ludicrously alluded.
Not to mention the maximum penalty in SOPA’s current form is 5 years in prison. To put it into perspective of how fucking ridiculous this is: I could do more time in prison by uploading MJ’s ‘Man in the Mirror’ to Facebook than being the doctor who was held responsible for MJ’s death. He got 4 years, and that was the MAXIMUM penalty…for involuntary MANSLAUGHTER. Sharing his music to the world without proper permission is somehow worse than essentially helping him OD.
I have my doubts that piracy hurts the entertainment industry as much as it leads on due to several accredited studies I’ve read. But even if I concede that it’s the worst thing since the Holocaust, SOPA / PIPA are simply fundamentally the wrong way to go about it. It’s quixotic at best. All the negative attention it’s being afforded is certainly warranted.
What Lee, Not so sure, and Terry all said.
The companies opposing SOPA/PIPA weren’t acting like spoilt children, they were raising awareness in the best way they knew how…by making the people feel what could potentially happen should these two bills pass.
I’m a content creator (though on a much smaller scale than the media conglomerates backing SOPA/PIPA) and have been pirated before so I agree there needs to be some protection for artists, however, SOPA/PIPA would do more harm than good.
While they may claim to target only foreign websites and cut off the American arm of their income, there is wording in there that would allow that reach to extend to American websites and business…to include legitimate ones. There is way too much room in those bills for them to be wildly abused, especially by the people and companies who have enough money to squash their smaller competition out of existence.
To me, that’s what it boils down to: It has very little to do with curbing piracy or protecting intellectual property rights and has more to do with controlling the media in general.
If you can name one crime we’ve managed to eradicate through legislation, aside from making it legal (ie prohibition ending), I’ll agree with you. Every artists complaint about current laws sounds like an issue with the current framework and procedures we have to work within the current laws. Content providers and creators should be coming together and fix that problem instead of trying to accomplish the impossible.
You can’t be serious man… spoilt children?
This bill will destroy the internet. SOPA and PIPA can only be successful if the fixes for last years DNS poisoning attacks are reversed. That’s the ONLY way they can start updating the DNS tables…
So you pass this bill and INSTANTLY the internet becomes millions of times less secure. Websites can’t even be guaranteed to be hosted by who you think they are because at a moment’s notice, someone can poison a DNS table and start spawning updates to others…. switching one site’s valid IP address for one… say… under their control.
I think what should happen is people in the music and video industry who support a bill which they don’t understand the implications of should CLEARLY not try to make decisions or comments on it.
This is idiotic drivel. Go back into your gave you moron.
If SOPA / PIPA were ONLY to be used against sites dedicated to distributing copyrighted material ( ie – torrents ) then there would not be so much backlash from the internet community.
( I love the way, supporters say ‘ ITS ONLY FOR USE AGAINST FOREIGN CRIMINALS ! )
What a load of bullshit !
The problem is, NOBODY trusts the copyright owners to behave in a sensible
fashion . What they expect is, they will lash out at ANY site that hosts any of their content or links to, social networking ,sites for example . and the result will be fear and chaos.
Yes copyright owners / content creators need some more protection, but they do not deserve ghastly weapons like PIPA or SOPA to wield against whoever they feel like for any motive that suits their agendas.
The fact is , in the digital internet age, it is impossible to eradicate sharing by ordinary users of content.
The only way, would be to close the internet down., which is exactly what SOPA / PIPA is designed for when used as a blunt instrument by rights owners.
Hi Jakomi,
Thanks for the additional insight, and I’m glad that you read the full legislation.
For what it’s worth, I think Bieber is terrible for music, culture and the intelligence of the general population too, so in this respect the bill wouldn’t be bad, although I would hope that some of those millions earned would have funnelled down to decent, genuine hard-working artists? (sorry, bit off topic here).
For you to argue that SOPA protestors are akin to the Nazi propaganda machine is beyond ridiculous. The Nazi’s sought to stamp out anything that did not fit there view of an ideal world. It is a fair enough statement for me to say that is just like SOPA is doing today.
SOPA if passed through congress will stifle the out put of every website on the internet. With the power that SOPA could possess these websites (Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google, Craigslist, Youtube) would all be affected and the creativity from these sites would be gone.
Hi Terry,
I agree it is not perfect, however negotiation is the key and the manner in which the anti-SOPA lobby are playing is against any negotiation whatsoever. Yes their needs to be a balance for both sides of the debate, however balance cannot be achieved by non-negotiation.
In terms of culture yes Justin Beiber has been very bad for the industry – perhaps not in money terms but in terms of building some culture Beiber is a monstrosity.
I did actually read the legislation. No legislation is perfect and that is where negotiation comes into the equation…but negotiation like adults not spoilt children!
“What is so wrong with legislation that’s core aim is to eradicate piracy and in effect protect producers of art and culture?”
I believe there is a common saying in the United States that goes ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’. While piracy needs to be dealt with, I encourage everyone to go and read the actual bill. In it, you would realize that myself and my friends or other groups that you compete with could open you up to legal action, along with many other problems.
“In TMV’s view companies like Google and organisations like Wikipedia are scaremongering making false accusations that SOPA equals an attack on free speech to build support for their own businesses at the expense of businesses in the arts and culture sector.”
I’ll ask you the same question that was asked to NBCUniversal’s VP. If this bill is clear, and doesn’t actually limit free speech, doesn’t affect American websites, etc…then to what end is there so much opposition? What do groups like reddit, wiki, and the like stand to gain from pouring time, effort, and money into fighting this legislation?
“Here at TMV we would love to hear you our readers thoughts on this raging debate. Please do feel free to leave your views below in the comments section.”
And, just to confirm you are aware, if SOPA/PIPA pass, you will have to constantly police and delete every single comment, article, link, etc. that gets posted to your site that could possibly be a copyright infringement. If you do not, you open both yourself and your members up to legal charges due to your “enabling IP theft”.
Read this article on Mashable from yesterday:
http://mashable.com/2012/01/17/sopa-dangerous-opinion/
Essentially, under the bill every site that allows people to post their own content can potentially be shut down. That includes yours for featuring a Comments box.
If I post a link to a video of me singing a well-known song without seeking permission from the artist first, TMV could potentially be shut down for failing to screen the content first. If you had hundreds of comments being made across your site each day, do you think you’d honestly be able to read every word to check for links that lead to illegal content, even content that appears harmless?
Has Justin Bieber been bad for the music industry, in your opinion? If this bill goes through, there will be no more cute child stars of the future singing covers on YouTube to make the music industry millions.
Also, take a look at the large and increasing number of musicians who are AGAINST the bill.
I suggest you read into the bill further before wrtiting such reactionary, headline-grabbing articles. You say that “I’m also sure the legislation is not perfect.” Well, read the legislation first, then decide.