Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

If everything is free then no one will make anything, innovate anything, do anything.

It's impossible for everything to be free (roads come to mind). And it would be even more dangerous for physical objects to be downloaded. If you could replicate food you could also replicate drugs. If you could replicate precious metals then you could also replicate guns. Also regulation of food, air pollution, drugs, medicine. I don't know maybe we're in a time where we can't even think of something like that.

However lack of profit motive doesn't necessarily mean that innovation would stop. People need something do and what once would have been a job in this hypothetical scenario would become a hobby. Windows becomes Linux so to speak.

By the way I'm not totally endorsing it. It would be way to much for the world to handle. However it is interesting to think about.

So apparently we have to hold the old guys off until they croak.

Y Combinator’s Short-sighted and Irresponsible Declaration of War Against Hollywood (http://benparr.com/2012/01/lets-work-together/)
War is rarely the solution. Yes, Hollywood attacked us, but there better solutions that retaliation. Some execs in Hollywood are indeed trying to kill the web, but I have also met a new generation of rising execs that understand that embracing digital is the future. Attacking them will hurt the progress that has been made with products like Hulu and Vevo.


Also another example of how extravagant prices and restrictions (like reigon locking and unskipable PSA's and trailers) are the main factors that drive people to piracy. And how people are still more then willing to pay and support talent.

Louis CK’s digital distribution experiment clears $1M in 12 days | VentureBeat (http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/22/louis-cks-special-1-million/)

https://buy.louisck.net/news
The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

Do Pirate Sites Really Make That Much Money? Um... No | Techdirt (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120124/04532617525/do-pirate-sites-really-make-that-much-money-um-no.shtml)
One of the key refrains from the supporters of PIPA and SOPA in pushing for those bills was about how "foreign pirates" were profiting off of American industry. However, as we've suggested plenty of times in the past, there's little evidence that there's really that much money to be made running such sites. Even more amusing, of course, is that the MPAA/RIAA folks have to both argue that "people just want stuff for free," and that these sites are raking in money from subscription fees at the same time -- an internal contradiction they never explain. I've asked MPAA officials directly (including on stage at the Filmmaker's Forum event last year) that if these lockers are really making so much money, why doesn't Hollywood just set up their own and rake in all that cash. The only answer they give, which doesn't actually answer the question, is that it's cheaper for cyberlockers since they don't pay royalties. But that's got nothing to do with why the Hollywood studios don't get this money for themselves. Of course, the real reason -- somewhat implicit from the MPAA's comments -- is that it knows these sites don't make that much money.


Meganomics | Media Piracy | The American Assembly (http://piracy.ssrc.org/meganomics/)
The Swedish trial of The Pirate Bay trial in 2009 became an occasion for all sorts of competing estimates of revenues. Record industry group IFPI estimated the site’s revenues at $3 million per year. The MPAA described $5 million in revenues. But prosecutors endorsed a much lower number: $170,000 from advertising (against what the defense characterized as $112,000/year in server/bandwidth costs and $100,000 per year in revenue). This is for a site that appears consistently among the top 100 visited sites in the world.

"The Swedish trial of The Pirate Bay trial in 2009 became an occasion for all sorts of competing estimates of revenues. Record industry group IFPI estimated the site’s revenues at $3 million per year. The MPAA described $5 million in revenues. But prosecutors endorsed a much lower number: $170,000 from advertising (against what the defense characterized as $112,000/year in server/bandwidth costs and $100,000 per year in revenue). This is for a site that appears consistently among the top 100 visited sites in the world."

Meganomics | Media Piracy | The American Assembly (http://piracy.ssrc.org/meganomics/)

Hollywood: They're making almost 5 mil a year in revenue!
The Court: What are they selling?
Hollywood: Nothing! It's all free!

An entire industry built on dishonesty.

BBC News - Thousands march in Poland over Acta internet treaty (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16735219)


http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/58106000/jpg/_58106139_013804712-1.jpg

If everything is free then no one will make anything, innovate anything, do anything.

I will say this. I used file sharing programs in the past to download music, because I didn't think it was worth $15 to purchase an entire CD's worth of music for just three songs. This was pre iTunes days. Whatever I did think was worth a purchase of the entire album, I already had. Back in those days, I said that if they were willing to build a site in which I could purchase individual songs that were at a high CD quality for a low price, I'd support that! But, the site would have to provide everything I would ever want to find.

However, I will say this as well. Almost every single time I downloaded music, I wound up purchasing the CD on half.com or Amazon for like $ 0.75 to $3. I was a stickler for sound quality and I'm still that way today. MP3s that were at a 128 bit rate back then sounded horrible, and not many people ripped their songs at 320 back then. Anyways, it was more or less for me to preview the music and to see if it was something I'd listen to on a regular basis. Often times if it was something I had grown to really like, I'd just buy the CD (assuming I could get it cheaper on those above mentioned sites.) What I wound up not not listening to or just not liking, I deleted the files.

So basically, the point I'm making that in my experience, I wound up buying more music because I previewed it prior to purchasing it. I'm sure that's not true for everybody who has ever used a file sharing program to get music. Now since iTunes and other download stores have been established, pretty much anything I have ever downloaded without paying for first, I have either went back and purchased the CD (or vinyl since I'm into vinyl) or I have purchased the tracks off of iTunes. This is just an example of why these companies like the RIAA are missing the point with the technology.

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/407240_289820071072802_234525306602279_759877_1165 796219_n.jpg

Polish members of Parliment wear makeshift Guy Fawkes to protest ACTA.


Poland signs copyright treaty that drew protests - KRLA 870 (http://www.krla870.com/article.aspx?id=e2605c0d-e2bf-4d5b-9f05-2183c371f5b3&catid=0)

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/407240_289820071072802_234525306602279_759877_1165 796219_n.jpg

Polish members of Parliment wear makeshift Guy Fawkes to protest ACTA.


Poland signs copyright treaty that drew protests - KRLA 870 (http://www.krla870.com/article.aspx?id=e2605c0d-e2bf-4d5b-9f05-2183c371f5b3&catid=0)

If I understand correctly ACTA has already been signed by the US. However it obviously hasn't been passed fully. I think June is when the stuff is going to start to hit the fan and the protest are going to come out in full force seeing as how thats when the EU parliament will vote on ratification.

The 14 Most Ridiculous Lawsuits Filed by the RIAA and the MPAA (http://brainz.org/14-most-ridiculous-lawsuits-filed-riaa-and-mpaa/)

Do Pirate Sites Really Make That Much Money? Um... No | Techdirt (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120124/04532617525/do-pirate-sites-really-make-that-much-money-um-no.shtml)


Meganomics | Media Piracy | The American Assembly (http://piracy.ssrc.org/meganomics/)

Well duh, most illegal downloaders (and uploaders) are looking for free, not shelling out their personal income on a subscription, even if the free service is limited servicce. But the MPAA's culture doesn't care about such little details.

It's one thing to say that pirating can cut into sales thus profits. It's another to say that the sites themselves are profitable, especially those torrent sites of a smaller scale who use "Donate to PayPal" rather than charge their userbase for access.