Open Your Mind...

wtfusa:

We don’t need more of these badges on the internet!

Relevant Links:
~ Google : End Piracy not Liberty >READ HERE<
~ Full Text of Bill H.R.3261.IH aka. SOPA >READ HERE<
~How Microsoft Conquered the Chinese market via Piracy >READ HERE<

Stop SOPA and PIPA

The stated intent of these bills is to stop online piracy. Some of this bills supporters are the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) which includes Walt Disney Studios, Universal Studios, Paramount Studios, Warner Brothers, Twentyith Centurty Fox Film Corporation and Sony Pictures, and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The MPAA and RIAA are lobbying agents for the film and recording giants [caution opinion: who bring you your mainstream bs and want it to become harder for you to find independent or underground content so you have to consume their garbage.] Among websites that supporters of SOPA & PIPA claim facilitate piracy are 

Sponsor Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said, “Millions of American jobs hang in the balance, and our efforts to protect America’s intellectual property are critical to our economy’s long-term success.”^[15] Smith added, “The Stop Online Piracy Act helps stop the flow of revenue to rogue websites and ensures that the profits from American innovations go to American innovators.”^[15]

However Senator Conyers is dead wrong. First off i’m pretty sure that “rogue websites” don’t make huge profits, rarely do they make more than the operating costs for their sites. Furthermore what this bill refers to as “piracy” actually HELPS the spread of innovation. In my own life I know that I got my start with a pirated version of Adobe Photoshop when I was 12 years old. For me there was no way to obtain the program at full price, therefore I was not “robbing” Adobe of a full-price sale. What it did do was introduce me to computer graphics, I went on to study art & design and engineering at college. I may not have even entered this field because of the high cost of entry, piracy allowed access to an inaccessible innovation, got me started in the industry that their products operate in and led to the purchase of full copies of Adobe software later. This is extremely similar to a case where Windows software was and is widely pirated in China, that lead to widespread adoption of Microsoft software all over China. Read more about >How Microsoft Conquered China here<. 

Lastly this bill puts the burden of checking for piracy on the website owner, that is totally ridiculous. Are you familiar with Vimeo? It is a website like YouTube however it urges it’s users to submit only content that they created and the majority of it’s content is just that, original. How could a small company which hosts thousands of videos accurately determine whether there is any pirated content in any of them? This burden is not what I would like to see placed on a company that does it’s best to host original videos by creative people.