Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

The piracy and console vs PC discussions are probably better suited for another thread.

Firstdown. The problem with this bill is it doesn't actually do anything to combat piracy. People that want to pirate can easily get around this and still get all of the content they want. What it kills is forums, help sites, youtube, etc.

What we're suffering from is ignorance from our elected official. Most of these people are the age of our grandparents... Anyone elses grandparents have trouble checking their e-mail, let alone writing legislation for something they can't comprehend?

What it comes down to is this bill is about censorship. I don't have a problem in taking strides to reduce actual piracy. However, people posting videos while doing a review of a product can get taken down for trademark issues. That, to me, is a huge problem.

lol too true

hell some can't even understand how to use voicemail let alone e-mail, and don't even get them near a smart phone.

Again apples to oranges. You're comparing outright fraud that results in actual shrinkage to copying a file. If I take a fake $100 bill to Best Buy and buy $100 of merchandise, Best Buy has lost a $100 of inventory that they can never sell again. Any college student thats taken Business 101 understands the value of physical inventory and the significance of someone actually stealing it.



Also remember if you've ever recorded a song off the radio, you've engaged in piracy. TV companies tried to get time shifting technology like VCR's to be marked as a violation of copyright law. So it's all right to record a show on DVR and skip the commercials but if someone downloads it off bittorrent they should be sued or thrown in jail?

Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_I nc).

So when you illegally down load a song and the song writer does not get paid for the sale he is not loosing anything? Then times this by the millions of people down loading music and its adds up to allot more then $100.

The piracy and console vs PC discussions are probably better suited for another thread.

Firstdown. The problem with this bill is it doesn't actually do anything to combat piracy. People that want to pirate can easily get around this and still get all of the content they want. What it kills is forums, help sites, youtube, etc.

What we're suffering from is ignorance from our elected official. Most of these people are the age of our grandparents... Anyone elses grandparents have trouble checking their e-mail, let alone writing legislation for something they can't comprehend?

What it comes down to is this bill is about censorship. I don't have a problem in taking strides to reduce actual piracy. However, people posting videos while doing a review of a product can get taken down for trademark issues. That, to me, is a huge problem.

Well said, Daseal!

However, people posting videos while doing a review of a product can get taken down for trademark issues. That, to me, is a huge problem.

well, it's not as long as every review is nothing less than shameless corporate shilling. see? this really isn't a problem after all ;) if they're only going to remove negative reviews, all you've got to do is never say anything negative.

so simple.

So when you illegally down load a song and the song writer does not get paid for the sale he is not loosing anything? Then times this by the millions of people down loading music and its adds up to allot more then $100.

Artist are barely loosing anything to begin with. They're better off getting their music out there and encouraging people to see them live then they are getting $23 (divided 4 or 5 ways) for every $1,000 sold (assuming they won't get deducted for their "advance") It's widely accepted that touring is where the money is for musicians. Not record sales. Before they needed record companies to get their name out there so people would play to see them live.

So by supporting the record industry and going against piracy you are effectively taking money out of the musicians pocket and putting it back into the pockets of the suits that like to sue 12 year old kids for downloading songs.
RIAA Accounting: Why Even Major Label Musicians Rarely Make Money From Album Sales | Techdirt (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml)

Of course, it's actually even more ridiculous than this report makes it out to be. Going back ten years ago, Courtney Love famously laid out the details of recording economics, where the label can make $11 million... and the actual artists make absolutely nothing. It starts off with a band getting a massive $1 million advance, and then you follow the money:

And that explains why huge megastars like Lyle Lovett have pointed out that he sold 4.6 million records and never made a dime from album sales. It's why the band 30 Seconds to Mars went platinum and sold 2 million records and never made a dime from album sales. You hear these stories quite often.


Concert Tours Are Where the Real Money Is - ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=86535&page=1#.TwPI6tRAY-A)

Performers frequently moan about never seeing a royalty check from their record label, no matter how many discs they sell. But a top concert draw can take home 35 percent of the night's gate and up to 50 percent of the dollar flow from merchandise sold at the show. The labels get none of it.

And of course the RIAA, the cartel that benefits from the sale of music isn't exactly innocent in all this. Remember when I told you that they brought this on themselves.
BBC NEWS | Business | Music groups settle on CD price-fixing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2289224.stm)
The world's five largest music companies and three biggest music retailers have agreed to pay $143m (£91m) to settle a two year CD price-fixing case, although they would not admit any wrong-doing.

The case was launched in the US in August 2000 as a lawsuit supported by most US states alleging that the music industry had artificially inflated CD prices between 1995 and 2000.

So it's alright for Record companies to engage in collusion and violate anti-trust laws to make money (before Napster mind you) but if some high school kid downloads music he's a criminal?

Anti-Piracy Movie Ads Caught Using Pirated Music - Entertainment News - Pedestrian TV (http://www.pedestrian.tv/entertainment/news/anti-piracy-movie-ads-caught-using-pirated-music/60075.htm)

We all know how the rest goes, because thanks to the Motion Picture Association Of America and their foreign associates, every time you hire a DVD, you have to sit through this ad before you get to the main menu. But in what must be the most delicious slice of irony served this year, it has just been discovered that that the music used to soundtrack this 50-second pain in the ass is actually stolen.

The ironic thing about all of this though is the fact that I still support artist by actually buying their music on Itunes. I'm always sure to buy a gift card every month to buy songs and download TV shows like How I Met Your Mother. On top of that I have a Netflix account.

a lot of bands are now renting out the venues they play in so they can take the concession money too... and a lot of them are also dumping their lighting rigs and just hiring it out to a random contractor from whatever city there in and renting equipment. they can tour two weeks a year and make more than you or I would in 3 years, so I'm not sure piracy is a huge personal concern economically.

that said - my parent's have cable - I don't (and haven't since 2003) - yet I have a slingbox in their home and can watch their cable 24/7 365 anywhere in the world for free (well, the box was $60) - is that pirating TV, cause it's perfectly legal (and good luck finding another way to watch a skins game in kyrgyzstan). I skip the commercials too... evil.

I don't think either of those points is really on topic :/ but piracy and unlimited free duplication is kind of a weird concept to a legal system built on physical ownership of things. and being responsible for real time managment of a million concurrent users is beyond feasible. Someone can anonymously post nazi propaganda on youtube and their held to the same legal responsibility as if they posted and endorsed it (as proposed and interpreted) - the current system is to notify them and then they'll have it removed, which seems much more fair than blacking out the site or forcing us to keep a running list of ip addresses (then everyone could just go to ://you.tube/ and get redirected - stupidity averted!.

If you want to stop piracy, start with education. if you blanket block piratebay, people will just proxy around it. our own government has created a program called triangle specifically designed to share files past firewalls (to spread propaganda into china), and of course, a tool being a tool, kids use it at school to pass mp3s around their schools firewall.

and if you want a copy of that program, email VoA.

Best part though of the RIAA's argument against piracy and how it's ruining music is this.

Artists Make More Money in File Sharing Age Than Before It (http://torrentfreak.com/artists-make-more-money-in-file-sharing-age-than-before-100914/)

An extensive study into the effect of digitalization on the music industry in Norway has shed an interesting light on the position of artists today, compared to 1999. While the music industry often talks about artists being on the brink of bankruptcy due to illicit file-sharing, the study found that the number of artists as well as their average income has seen a major increase in the last decade.

After crunching the music industry’s numbers the researchers found that total industry revenue grew from 1.4 billion Norwegian kronor in 1999 to 1.9 billion in 2009. After adjusting this figure for inflation this comes down to a 4% increase in revenues for the music industry in this time period. Admittedly, this is not much of a growth, but things get more interesting when the research zooms in on artist revenue.

In the same period when the overall revenues of the industry grew by only 4%, the revenue for artists alone more than doubled with an increase of 114%. After an inflation adjustment, artist revenue went up from 255 million in 1999 to 545 million kronor in 2009.

Some of the growth can be attributed to the fact that the number of artists increased by 28% in the same time period. However, per artist the yearly income still saw a 66% increase from 80,000 to 133,000 kronor between 1999 and 2009. In conclusion, one could say that artists are far better off now than they were before the digitization of music started.

Dirtbag you seem to really know all about this. Do you have a site this could affect?LOL

Dirtbag you seem to really know all about this. Do you have a site this could affect?LOL

Just a site called the Pirate Bay. No big deal. Small site, no one ever goes there. Lol.

Anyway, regardless of how people on all three sides of the piracy debate feel, we should all agree that this bill is a terrible idea. Not only is it unconstitutional but it has the potential to stunt the growth of the internet like a bodybuilding kid on a diet of cigarettes and caffeine. Sites that we love like YouTube would become reduced by as much as 80%. Heck even the Warpath can be punished for us linking to a video with copy-written content, in spite of fair use.

And again the ironic part in all of this is that it barely puts a dent in online piracy.

Wikipedia to blackout all 3,847,673 English-language pages to protest PIPA - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/wikipedia-blackout-3-847-673-english-language-pages-190506843.html)