SOPA is dead, but we’re not done.
This has nothing to do with mobile devices, but it has everything to do with our primarily digital way of life. SOPA, the deranged bill from the House, has been shelved. It is, for now, dead… But its spirit lives on. In the future another bill like SOPA may appear, less crazy and snaggle-toothed, but make no mistake: We can’t quit, because the social conservatives looking to legislate morality, the entertainment industry looking to grasp this imaginary money out of the air as they try and find something else to blame for their failures, and every mook in Washington who ever accepted a donation from the are clever and persistent. I would say that they’ll try again, but they already are with the cutie-pie sounding PIPA.
We as internet denziens need to ensure it fails. Big business needs to learn that they can’t control everything, and the Internet in all its glorious capabilities and profitabilities are due to the people, and to the people it should stay.
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The freedom to rip artists off? This isnt just about big corporations. I’t’s about the independent artists as well. What does freedom have to do with copyright infringment? Don’t confuse the issue with the constitution and person freedoms. We are free because were are bound by certain laws that utlimately must define what is right and wrong.
You seem to be confusing the issue completely. IP is not copyright, and copyright infringement would be using someone elses music in your own and not giving them credit or getting permission.
Most independent artists price their albums so that they can cover cost, but they make their money selling merch. Once you get to the big labels, it’s even moreso… selling a t-shirt is tantamount to selling 100 cd’s. Bands want word-of-mouth, show attendance, and to see people wearing their hoodies. Selling CD’s is a damn hassle and unprofitable as all hell, which is why a lot of bands are going to online sales and making fewer and fewer albums.
The people who rip artists off are the labels. Trust me.
And SOPA/PIPA goes beyond “protecting” art and into the realm of tyrannical information control. Read up on it, all it does is give more power to the haves to flex their muscle on existing IP laws. Imagine, instead of all these companies simply going to court with Apple or Microsoft, that they were able to completely shut down their websites for the duration of the litigation.
Unfair as hell, and the winners here would be the people with the money.
SOPA/PIPA was never about saving the little guys efforts, it was about taking the only space left that regular people have some control over and using it to fit their bottom line. Yes, it would protect artists and their works, but the processes outlined there was like taking a sledgehammer to a walnut.
So, for you to be for this legislation means you’re for a closed-off, walled-up Internet like we see in China.