I'm surprised that this subject hasn't popped up here sooner...Seeing as how we're basically content creators, what is/are your feelings and/or knowledge/understanding of these bills and how they'll affect the future of the internet?

Badly written bills.

Well, I'm glad that Nick has me on ignore so that he can't see this response.

I really don't know anything about copyright, law, the internet, websites/digital services or the legislative process, in general and I haven't really been following these Bills, in particular, either.


I have to defer to Nick's expertise on this...

Ahhh, ok... Would you care to expand on that declaration? Why are they bad? How can they be improved? I understand that there is somewhat of a concensus in at least the political community that the language is overly broad and therefore needs refining (what else is new...). My initial question was aimed more at the "artistic" community that I assumed (perhaps wrongly?) was represented here on this forum.

Knife,
I know that you're involved in this side of the music/entetainment/content biz, as well as being a latent musician/songwriter... Have you been directly involved in drafting any of this legislation? What are your personal feelings on the efficacy of the bill(s)? Do they go too far in limiting access to content/information? Will they actually have a real effect on piracy? Obviously this is a very deep trough, but maybe you can expand a LITTLE more than Nick did...

What's typically disgusting... lawmakers can find time to spend countless man hours creating piddly bills like this in the first place. This doesn't attempt to solve major, pressing issues that lawmaker's refuse to tackle. Issues that take guts and political risk.
These bills do smell of money and control, however.
This isn't protecting small fish, creative people. It's about money in the pockets of those at the top of the food chain {who's to figure}. And the tip of the iceberg in controlling the last vestige of freedom. Where people can communicate ideas, organize and polarize. Where one can discuss freely without fear of government intervention.
Wild, wild west? Yes. And everyone should realize how important it is to keep it that way.

" And the tip of the iceberg in controlling the last vestige of freedom."

Brent,
I appreciate your input and I agree that there are more pressing issues that our elected officials should be dealing with. That being said, I don't think SOPA/PIPA is about controlling (the last vestige of) freedom or freedom of speach at all though...I think that's just a diversion to cloud the real issue(s)(ie. piracy of digital content). I think you're right on when you say it's about money (which btw would protect ALL copywrite holders) but we all know that already don't we?

kNick-speak = bumper sticker blurt.

He has no idea... he's just repeating some blogspeak from a loony website.

kNick actually thinks that these are types of breads.

They are types of breads.

Actually this is the first issue I've ever seen Republicans be on the right side of. Now, the only reason is that they're rats leaving a sinking ship, of course, but the Democrats should be following them.

Copyright protection is an extremely important issue - and not just for music, of course, but for everything that can be digitized. How will anyone working in film, TV, music, journalism, and so on survive? But this is just thrashing about in the dark. It won't work.

The only solution I've heard is for there to be a tax (probably on internet service), and then royalties get distributed every time a watermark crosses a server. I'm not sure how you'd get around file encryption, but other than that I haven't been able to poke any holes in it.

Wow Nick, that's actually a somewhat coherent response almost absent of any venom or vitriol (couldn't help but mention the political parties eh?)! FWIW, I think "tax" is the wrong way to go... Why not just make the "watermark" the property of the copywrite holder and distribute funds directly? Isn't that the beauty of the internet - cutting out the middleman? Why let some agaency collect and then redistribute royalties? I'm sure the conglomerates and perhaps the government would love the scheme you speak of (can you say new revenue stream?) but it seems ponderous and silly to me...