As anyone who has been paying attention knows the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its senate counterpart Protect IP present a real and significant threat to our free internet in the name of protecting intellectual property. Although some of the intellectual property in need of all this protection is proprietary software the impetus for this odious regulation comes from Hollywood and the music industry. Hey, it's not like the pirates are downloading Doctor Zhivago or Hey Jude but I suppose one could. Think about it! We are supposed to give up a great degree of freedom to protect property that is anything but intellectual unless that term is devalued to the absurd. Sorry but the motion picture and the music industries produce very little worth stealing. If for the sake of argument we concede that there might actually be some value in Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. or Fox's The Sitter is shutting down the internet the best way to protect this intellectual mediocrity?
I am aware of an offshore torrent site that regularly ignores cease and desist court orders from US district courts but has anyone ever tried offering them money to shutdown? These people don't make a fortune facilitating peer to peer file sharing for free. How much would it cost the entertainment and software industries to bribe them into submission? But are bit torrents the real source of this supposed loss of wealth? What about all the easily copied DVD's out there and don't tell me they can't be ripped and copied. Music cd's that can be cloned are available at your local public library and grade school kids know how to get them loaded onto their IPOD's. The point is restricting internet freedom to protect a moribund industry that can't protect itself is not worth the price the public will have to pay.
Moribund industry? Well, bbbut, Hoosierman, POTUS is trying to save jobs! Are you saying the middlemen who sell CDs and DVDs, Hollywood's sex perverted directors and agents need to LOSE THEIR JOBS????
ReplyDeleteThis is just the kind of thing POTUS was talking about! We gotta save those Video Galleries, bank tellers and elevator jockeys from losing their jobs!
As I said it ain't Dr. Zhivago and Hey Jude. I got a pirated copy of Gran Torino right in front of me. My niece goes to the library to check out cd's and they are happy to order the ones she wants if they don't have them. Then she converts them to mp4 format and puts them on her IPOD. I think she's 13 now but she's been doing this for a couple of years.
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