On 17/01/12 21:02, Peter Merchant wrote:
I see in the technical news that Obama doesn't like Sopa and Pipa as currently prepared. It seems like a lot of other people (Wikipedia) don't either and are taking attempts to block it/them totally by closing down aspects of the Internet for a short time. I always feel in these circumstances that negotiation/evolution is better than revolution, and rather than taking revolutionary action to just make a point, these intelligent people should be suggesting alternates or modifications to make it workable in what Sopa wants to achieve, without the negative aspects, such as the possible effect on open-source software.
From what I can see SOPA is primarily aimed at creating some sort of panopticon for American business interests, where providers everywhere in the world suddenly become responsible for policing themselves and others, ensuring that revenue continues to flow back to the approved recipients in the USA with the minimum of inconvenience.
This is not a sensible piece of legislation for ending software piracy, but a licence to print money backed up with some nasty summary punishments for those that /allegedly/ dare to interupt the revenue stream.
As such it needs to be kicked into touch until someone has given some serious thought to it, and without positive action from big players like Wikipedia this simply will not happen.
Aside from this it appears to be the sort of broad-ranging and ill-defined legislation that favours big companies with expensive lawyers and tramples all over little people for precisely that reason.
Sean -- music, film, comics, books, rants and drivel: www.funkygibbins.me.uk -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, second Tuesday 2012-02-07 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:[email protected] How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
