Wired.com: The rhetoric on both sides of the debate concerning the Stop Online Piracy Act almost peaked when Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said the House proposal “would mean the end of the internet as we know it.”
Weeks after the Silicon Valley representative’s comments, the vitriol reached a crescendo Wednesday during the measure’s first hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, when Registrar of Copyrights Maria Pallante testified the U.S. copyright system would “fail” if Congress does not take action.
“The rhetoric around this bill is over the top,” said Rep. Howard Berman, the California Democrat whose district includes Hollywood.
Lofgren’s statements, however, aren’t that farfetched. Not if you actually read the bill.
5 comments:
The Stop Online Piracy Act (or SOPA) bill is scary. There are no if, ands, or buts about that. We are talking about a bill that is, as the title states, going to end the Internet as we know it if it passes. The idea of being able to shut down sites, specifically these so-called rogue sites, which can range from truly pirate sites, to the innocent YouTube posting of someone who has done a cover of their favorite artist, is something that is not widespread in the Internet, but it will become that, because instead of federal officials having the authority to do that, it will be corporations who will have the ability to shut down these sites if they feel their copyrights are being infringed upon without going to any kind of court, without much of discretion over what they can and can't shut down and the definition is so vague on what these rogue sites will be that the possibilities are endless, in the worst way. The examples of these various corporations and their abuses listed in the article worries me enough. This is not the solution to piracy on the Internet, this is a just a way to give corporation everything they want, and while it would probably do some good in terms of stopping piracy on the Internet, it would also stifle some of the great creativity that exists on the Internet as well, and right now especially, that is to great a cost to pay.
To provide a little more explanation about the SOPA bill, here's another article and some video for you to watch:
http://lifehacker.com/5860205/all-about-sopa-the-bill-thats-going-to-cripple-your-internet
The SOPA bill is a step away from digital concentration camps.
Hey, remember when the US declared a War on Drugs and then there were no drugs anymore? I can't wait for this Stop Online Piracy Act to become a law and there will be no piracy anymore.
AJ's right. This bill's heart is in the right place but THIS isn't the way to stop piracy. If people out there don't want to pay for something, they will be resourceful enough to get it, no matter if it's illegal or not.
I happily quote Dr Cox from Scrubs, "If you took away all the porn from the internet, there would be one website left and it would be called, 'Bring Back the Porn Dot Com.'"
You can't MAKE people stop taking things, you have to make them want to stop taking things. Like this author pointed out, Netflix, Pandora and their ilk have proven people are willing to pay for protected content. But finding ways to do that is harder than trying to lock them up for it and so we have SOPA.
This bill won't stop piracy, it'll only force it to evolve into its next level. And by then we'll be too busy shaving with 30 day-old razors, concentrating on our Two-Minute Hates and screaming, "War is peace! Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength!!"
I didn’t realize until reading this article all that the SOPA contains. Of course I have seen advertisements protesting it all over sites like Reddit, but I thought that all of the “This site could be shut down” postings were too ridiculous to be true. It is quite frankly terrifying to contemplate what the enactment of this bill would mean. It would be the end of so much cooperation and creativity that was enabled by media sharing. The most terrifying part is that corporations would be allowed to do this without going through due process of law first. Our political system is already censored enough by candidates who must support the values of those corporations funding their campaigns, do we really need to give them the power to shut down sites that foster free speech on the grounds that they promote piracy? Representative Zoe Lofgren is right, this bill would lead to an end of the free speaking internet that we know and replace it with something censored and tainted by corporate goals.
This bill is really scary. If it's passed, the government will just get more and more control over the internet. We look at other countries which control the internet heavily and shake out heads, yet this bill is just going to put our country on the path to the same government control. Piracy is something that is an issue, but it has been going on in some form or another for a long time. Remember when people used to buy bootleg movies and CDs? That wasn't really any different than piracy. There also needs to be some sort of acceptance that we are moving more of an open source society.
This bill is frighting, but there are a lot of bills that are this terrifying. I am really glad this one is getting a lot of media attention because I think it’s obvious that it was written by a lobbyist for a record label or other large rights holder company and not by a democratically elected official. I am more concerned by that. The fact that corporate companies have more say in our public policy than the general public is outrageous. What’s even more upsetting is this specific bill is designed to give corporations similar amounts of control over the Internet which is in my opinion one of the few things that is truly global.
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