Why SOPA and Net Neutrality Must Be Stopped

NS ^ | December 19th | Nephew Sam

[Will88]

I don’t know how many here have read this entire bill. I haven’t, but what I’ve read indicates that it is primarily aimed at foreign sites that make copyrighted material available in the US.

But the desires of copyright holders concerning the internet are probably very different. Most copyright holders for written material desire that traffic be directed to their sites. The fondest dream of many is a link from Drudge because he drives so much traffic. FR has its posting guidelines based on what use copyright holders have indicated can be made of their copyrighted material. Most writing on the net seeks to attract ads and/or donations to earn money, and the more traffic they have the more they should earn.

It’s very different for the owners of movies and music, to a lesser extent TV networks, whose copyrighted work is offered illegally on the net with no compensation going back to the copyright owners. When people download music and movies illegally that’s just simple theft. When people watch illegally rebroadcast TV they aren’t breaking the law, but those who rebroadcast TV are breaking the law.

Then there are the aggregators of the rebroadcasts where the internet user actually goes to watch a TV rebroadcast. The loss to the TV networks is mostly whatever cable and dish subscriptions they might not receive because of the illegal rebroadcasts on the net. Of course the cable and dish folks object to the internet rebroadcasts that cut them out.

It seems people are lumping all these uses of copyrighted material on the net together when things actually seem very different for copyrighted writing, movies, music and TV rebroadcasts. And the written part seems the least affected by this particular law since most owners of copyrights for written material want traffic and readers.

(Of course, ebooks of novels and book length non-fiction is more like music or movies than newspaper and magazine writing.)

[emax]

Thanks for that. I would have to read all of it and understand the meaning behind the various phrases and clauses before i could truly form an opinion. There is so much fear that SOPA, in conjunction with NDAA, could lead to closing down of all discussion forums and massive imprisonment of people for simply posting something online. There is that fear that we are becoming a Maoist nation where over half of freepers could suddenly disappear and never be heard from again. Which makes it more interesting that there are liberals and genuine conservatives, for instance, that support NDAA. But I would have to understand it first, remembering how easy it is to whip up hysteria over what you dont understand. Many of those who think NDAA and SOPA are designed to make us a police state also probably think sb 1070 would be used to arrest anyone for simply looking Hispanic.