SOPA, Free Speech and The Firing Line?

While on I do understand the concerns about members and owners of forums like this as well as other networking sites and the folk who decide to use them. The more that I read into this, it gets more into a contest between 2 conflicting ideals. The one side is who thinks that a persons work, whether it be a movie they made, book or article they wrote, etc, should be their own property, as well as having the rights to profit from it. The flip side seems to be that the others want free access to it, and dont want any exceptions. I see it only as 2 different sides competing for money. Bascially should I go to the store and buy the book/DVD so the producer, etc, profits from it? Or do I go to the internet, and get a pirated copy, and only pay my internet bill?

How do I think this will affect TFL? Beyond the minimum effect of maybe paying closer attention to policing any quotes from the media, etc, I dont think it will have a huge long term effect. The first ammendment IS there, and will protect the free speech. It will not and should not protect pirated material used without the owners permission or payment to the owner.

More to the point, lets say I take 2 years of my free time and write a novel on gun owners. I am offered and sign an agreement with a publisher for "MY" work to be published in print. Once published, it gets pirated online, so I basically get a very tiny amount of money in return for my 2 years of labor to support my second ammendment rights. The internet providers, etc, make alot of money without having to reimburse me for my 2 years of labor, they take their profit and support anti-second ammendment causes.

The internet isnt the "free" kingdom people proclaim. There are those that make tons of money, and other people that have money stolen from them on the internet.

I know others will disagree with my views, and you are more then welcome to. I respect where the other side is coming from as well. There is no "perfect" solution to this.
 
Part of what Big Media[tm] wants to do is...well, break down basic internet security upgrades that are in the planning stages now.

They want the US government to be able to mess with some core basics of how the internet works, which in turn makes the security upgrades known as DNSSEC impossible.

Years of effort on making various scams (such as phishing) much harder all go "poof".
 
There are two main reasons why people pirate.

1) Because they can. These people don't really care about the item they're downloading, they do it mainly because it's there. They would never buy the item simply because they don't care if they have/see/hear it. Stopping these people is pointless in a sense because even if they can't pirate something, they still won't buy it.

2) Because it's more convenient. These are the people you can win over as customers. These people want your product in a digital form. Make your product easily available, such as in the Kindle store, Google Music, Amazon digital, etc. If they can buy it and download it instantly, they will. If they can't, then they'll pirate.

The people that don't fall into these two categories, in general, will get around any attempted preventative measures anyway. What they're doing is already illegal, so destroying the internet in an attempt to stop them is somewhat akin to an assault weapon ban, or magazine capacity limits. It only hurts the honest people.
 
There is no "perfect" solution to this.
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There is no perfect solution perhaps; but I think we can agree that allowing a website to be shut down even for an unsubstantiated allegation of copyright infringement is such a bad solution that it is worse than the disease. As written, SOPA and PIPA place the burden of copyright enforcement on the website owners and ISPs. If they receive a complaint, they have almost no way to evaluate the merit of it; but they will bear the brunt of penalties for not deleting it if it is an infringement - the default setting in that environment is that any speech that receives a complaint will get deleted in order to protect the website owner/ISP.

That is a system that cannot coexist with free speech.
 
Bartholomew Roberts Quote said:
There is no "perfect" solution to this.

There is no perfect solution perhaps; but I think we can agree that allowing a website to be shut down even for an unsubstantiated allegation of copyright infringement is such a bad solution that it is worse than the disease.
That is a system that cannot coexist with free speech.
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I do agree that it is wrong, and and at least in my mind unconstitutional to allow a website, etc to be shut down due to an unsubstantiated allegation. This would violate due process.

As currently stands, there isnt a huge amount of enforcement of pirated material. A few huge cases to try to prove a point, but no real, long term, regular enforcement action is there currently. At some point there will "need" to be at some level. What level? I am conflicted on this.

This fight has been fought for years on different levels, even before there was the internet. It comes down to a individualism vs collectivism.

I dont see how pirating knowledge, and a persons work should a proud stance and fight to take on. Perhaps instead those writers, actors, designers, etc, should stop producing so there is nothing new left to pirate? After all, if the person doing the work isnt allowed to profit from their labor, why should others?
 
Here's a bit of law to ponder on. First, Copyrights:

The law automatically protects a work that is created and fixed in a tangible medium of expression on or after January 1, 1978, from the moment of its creation and gives it a term lasting for the author’s life plus an additional 70 years. For a “joint work prepared by two or more authors who did not work for hire,” the term lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author’s death. For works made for hire and anonymous and pseudonymous works, the duration of copyright is 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter (unless the author’s identity is later revealed in Copyright Office records, in which case the term becomes the author’s life plus 70 years). For more information about works made for hire, see Circular 9, Works Made for Hire under the 1976 Copyright Act. For details about pseudonymous works, see fl 101, Pseudonyms.1
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The Constitutional authority for the above rests with Art. I section 8, clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

It can be argued that Congress has exceeded its authority, the life of an author +70 years is hardly a limited time. The same can be said of the life of "Works Made For Hire."

But that is a layman's argument and hardly a legal argument.

Regardless, contrast those IP (Intellectual Property) rights with patent rights (another form of IP):

A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor. Patents are granted for new, useful and non-obvious inventions for a period of 20 years from the filing date of a patent application, and provide the right to exclude others from exploiting the invention during that period.2
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This seeming disparity of limited time (between copyrights and patents) has been an ongoing thorn in the side of technology and its creators (read, Big Business). Most of the original push for longer times, has come from the recording industry and Hollywood. As have the more recent laws comprising the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

In order to quash SOPA and PIPA, it must come from a genuine ground swell movement. In the face of such a large lobby group however, it may not be possible to derail.

I urge everyone to contact their federal representatives by phone, mail and email. The more the better.








1 http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf
2 http://www.uspto.gov/smallbusiness/patents/
 
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