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...

Of course copyright infringement is despicable. The megaupload types are stealing millions. It is difficult to understand the full impact of what SOPA proposes without reading the bill.
(from Wikipedia) Brooklyn Law School professor Jason Mazzone warned, "Much of what will happen under SOPA will occur out of the public eye and without the possibility of holding anyone accountable. For when copyright law is made and enforced privately, it is hard for the public to know the shape that the law takes and harder still to complain about its operation."
I assume this person has read the bill, and think that comments like his are why some people say this is badly written legislation.
My question is, aren't there laws already on the books that aren't being enforced? Throwing Safe Harbor aside (cease and desist warnings) and just shutting sites down seems to sidestep due process.
I hope to find the time to read the actual bills myself.
This smacks of the same sort of selective enforcement that has netted zero accountability for wall streeters, banksters and others who ruined the economy while clearly breaking laws.
Getting money out of politics and the justice system would seem to be a big help in killing these cancers that are running rampant in every sector and segment of our fucked up world.

And yet, they closed down Megaupload without SOPA ... Kinda shows how unneeded this is!

The watermark is the property of the copyright holder and the funds do get distributed directly to him or her out of the tax pool.

My problems with any bill of this type:

1. Sidestepping of Due Process in any area of enforcement is a violation of US Constitutional protection.

2. Enforcement and prosecution of copyright/trademark/patent infringement has always been the responsibility of the owner, not the US Government. Having a government involved is a slippery slope, which can lead to a form of censorship.

3. If the entertainment industry succeeds in having the government prosecute their infringement cases, why shouldn't every other business ask for similar a similar favor? If Congress limits this enforcement to one industry, we now violate equal rights for everyone else.

4. Enforcement of US laws on overseas Internet operators is folly.

As for some type of "transfer tax" on watermarked files, the cost to implement that would be astronomical. Every server in the world would need to comply...and someone will still find a way to avoid compliance. Even if this could be implemented, the administrative costs would be prohibitive.

Not every server in the world, every ISP in the country.

Bingo on all accounts, Rick. Good stuff.
When things like this get passed, they never work as designed.
So what does Uncle Sam do? With a big foothold, he amends, adds to the bill until he's busting down your door for no apparent reason.
I agree... infringement sucks. It's just an area for which, there's no good resolve right now.

On the other hand, there's many creative folks, thankful the net was there as is.

But that doesn't cover server farms that directly rent data lines (e.g. T3). They are their own ISP.

So now it includes all the long-line data-transport companies like AT&T. You rent a T3 and AT&T has to install some type of filtering server to look at every packet? Unmanageable.

And of course I could send a file in little chunks, buried inside of other, "innocent" files. Steganography.

Oh, and how do we update these "tax checker" filters? Every time another copyrighted work is created!

Oh well. It seemed like a good idea.



That I don't agree with. It's conservative.

suggested as the real reason for the megaupload bust:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/111314089359991626869/posts/HQJxDRiwAWq

hmmm...

Thanks Michael. There's only one reason to believe this. It makes too much sense.

Not really.

The MegaBox was nothing new. As Even the Digital Music News article observed:

"Actually, this is technically a relaunch of an earlier concept...

In other words, another entry into the very crowded DIY space.

The rest looks like a combination platter of cloud-based music storage, download sales, and discovery, though the elements may still be coming together."

MegaBox was no groundbreaking idea that was going to gut Universal Music, instantly. Far from anything like that. It might have had some impact but, to suggest that MegaUpload starting an online music service was "the" reason that UMG got the DOJ to go after them is just incredibly uninformed.