At 11/17/2011 05:12 PM, Butch Evans wrote: >On Wed, 2011-11-16 at 21:08 -0800, John Thomas wrote: > > What is everyone's take on this? > > > http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2011/11/sopa-internet-piracy-bill-criticized-as-internet-censorship/ > >My take is that piracy should be punishable by jail time. We have laws >against such things already. The technology is there to detect the IP >of the offending party, there are laws in place that permit law >enforcement to request end user information from ISPs and there is no >need for yet another law to do what is already in place. I think that >if enough people go to jail for theft, it will grow MUCH less common. >As for the censorship idea...I think people need to get a life. Theft >is illegal and those crying censorship should focus on THAT.
Some of these proposals create a presumption of guilt, the burden of proof to prove one's innocence. And some put more onus on the ISP than before, no small issue. The copyright lobby does not like the Internet at all. It breaks their artifact-based business model. There's also a question of what constitutes "theft", vs. other copyright violations. Literal theft refers to rivalrous goods: If I steal the dish off of your tower, I have the dish, you don't. So-called theft of so-called intellectual property -- more accurately, simply the violation of copyright -- does not deprive the legitimate owner of their property, it merely deprives the seller of the *opportunity cost* of the sale that was not made. Which in most cases, frankly, would not have been made. Interestingly, back in the Napster days, studies showed that people who used Napster (the real one, not the Roxio rebrand) were likely to purchase more CDs than others. Likewise, I listen to a fair amount of music on YouTube. It's how I find out about stuff. (My taste is not what Clear Channel finds profitable.) When I was a kid, I listened to the radio (and was a DJ, before that meant a nightclub d00d), and there was a wide variety of stuff played there. Radio today is crappier, much less variety and more payola. The Internet has taken its place as the way people learn about music. And who buys what they haven't tried? So there's a real spread between true piracy and some of the casual copyright violations that are being called piracy. True piracy is the crook who counterfeits a CD and sells it as real, or sells a counterfeit software DVD-ROM as the real thing. That's a major gangland activity in China and elsewhere. And bulk posting of movies or albums on the web is also genuinely harmful, as it really could substitute for legitimate sales (such as DVD rentals or paid cable PPV views). But some of these copyright extremists want to put you in jail for having the radio on in a YouTube home movie (they've issued takedowns to "look at our toddler dance, isn't she cute" videos). Just to give an example, my son just had a college class (TV production) assignment to make a music video. So he had to take a copyrighted record and use it. (Hey, I was the star! We filmed at Occupy Boston.) In class, it's no doubt Fair Use, though I suspect the RIAA wishes that weren't the case. Is he a pirate if he posts it on YouTube? I think not, but the RIAA probably does. But somehow I don't equate that to the guys selling fake CDs to record store owners. And I certainly don't want ISPs being forced to make that decision. How could they, after all? And if they have to police everything posted, then that would lead to censorship. There's already a court ruling that if a BBS-type web site edits posts, it's responsible for allegedly-libelous ones, but it isn't if they don't exercise any editorial control. In other words, intellectual property law is a confused mess already, and the proposals on the table just make it worse, and won't actualy help the industries they're trying to help. They're like ILECs, who harm ISPs because it's what they do, even if it costs them. The scorpion and the frog comes to mind. -- Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ +1 617 795 2701 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
