Please defeat SOPA

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Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

Image

A few undeniably good points made here too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

ScottL
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Post by ScottL »

I'm shocked I'm on the same side as Diogenes for a change.

SOPA creates a problem where one does not exist. Online piracy is just the market determining a reasonable price.I contend that IP holders are charging too great a cost which detours legitimate purchasing by consumers. A great example of an effective model is Netflix as noted above. Not only did Netflix make major media obtainable, but it did so at a rate the consumer could swallow.

Piracy at its root form will never disappear, but the majority will look for the best product at the least price. Part of that product is ease of use, accessibility, and quality, which do not go hand in hand within the piracy world. You either get a high quality DVDRip months down the line or you get a terrible cam rip immediately. Until the major media organizations recognize the failure on their part, the already low amount of piracy that occurres will continue.

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

ScottL wrote:Online piracy is just the market determining a reasonable price.
Sorry, I can't read past that. Online piracy is theft from those who work for a living. If one can't see that, one shouldn't offer opines to the contrary.

People who value patents over and against copyrights, don't understand what IP is all about.

Without protections for creative property, creative people will all go do something different.

Anyone here actually listen to contemporary music, watch movies or enjoy fine art?

You think its okay to steal from the creators of these things?
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

ScottL
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Post by ScottL »

GIThruster wrote:
ScottL wrote:Online piracy is just the market determining a reasonable price.
Sorry, I can't read past that. Online piracy is theft from those who work for a living. If one can't see that, one shouldn't offer opines to the contrary.

People who value patents over and against copyrights, don't understand what IP is all about.

Without protections for creative property, creative people will all go do something different.

Anyone here actually listen to contemporary music, watch movies or enjoy fine art?

You think its okay to steal from the creators of these things?
You're fooling yourself if you don't believe what I wrote isn't true. Netflix, prime example, you simply can't argue with the statistics. Since online music, movie, and book distribution has upticked, online piracy has significantly dropped. Now it's just a red herring proliferated by these large conglomerates to get greater policing power over the future (the internet).

I understand your confused belief that somehow the "artist" is hurt, but you do realize that the artist gets 0% of online sales of their work right? In a few rare cases, the artists were smart enough to contract for a portion, but the majority before ~2000 had no such clause.Furthermore, in the last 5 years CD sales have been plummetting while online sales have been sky-rocketing. So boo fricking hoo if we don't care that the RIAA and the MPAA don't get an extra few million a year and can't lord over the internet for a while longer. I'm more scared of what the internet would become with such laws than I'll ever be of what it can become without said governance.

As a side note, I lived and grew up in a Radio Station and Movie Theater. The real crime of piracy is that both the RIAA and MPAA under the guise of major profit loss, have raised the prices to near unthinkable levels just to play their IP on the air or in the theater. This is the real reason why theaters go out of business, raise their prices, or that all the stations are owned by Clear Channel anymore.

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

Online piracy is the result of the failure of an industry to adapt. Some adaption is slowly happening anyway. Look at Youtube! Those artists that have arranged themselves with Youtube are making a fair profit from it. Also, dont forget that most artists make more money from secondary revenue streams such as live concerts, merchandize etc and less from CD- sales, where the largest part goes to the publishers retailers and the middle men.
Amazon also is going to make big inroads with their system. Things will change and illegal downloads will give way to legal downloads of all kinds, be they add driven or paid by the user and there is no need for a SOPA to enforce that. Diogenes is showing that very well with his statistics there.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

GIThruster wrote:
ScottL wrote:Online piracy is just the market determining a reasonable price.
Sorry, I can't read past that. Online piracy is theft from those who work for a living. If one can't see that, one shouldn't offer opines to the contrary.

People who value patents over and against copyrights, don't understand what IP is all about.

Without protections for creative property, creative people will all go do something different.

Anyone here actually listen to contemporary music, watch movies or enjoy fine art?

You think its okay to steal from the creators of these things?


Hmmm... I would very much like to clarify my position on this issue, but I have no simple catch phrase that sums it all up in one sentence. As Jefferson said, I apologize for the length of my response but I lacked the time to make it shorter.

Here's a bit of musing.

In 1994, David McCurdy was running for the U.S. Senate from Oklahoma. He was the congressman for the 4th district, and decided he wanted to be a Senator. Unfortunately for him, he aroused the ire of Gun Owners by voting for Bill Clinton's ban on semi-automatic rifles, misleadingly called by the media "the Assault weapon ban." McCurdy had been a congressman for a long time and had a known track record which was very much out of sync with his constituency, but as his constituency didn't pay attention to it, he got away with it.

His opponent was Jim Inhofe (now Senator Inhofe) and in an effort to demonstrate how out of touch David McCurdy was relative to the people of his district, the Inhofe campaign released an advertisement pointing out how he was a "big spender." The political commercial featured music from a broadway play called "Sweet Charity"and it portrayed David McCurdy as a "big spender." It was perfect for getting the right message conveyed.

This commercial was highly successful and quite entertaining and then it was stopped completely. Apparently the Writers of the music didn't like the fact that a Republican was using their music to make a point, and threatened to sue. The Inhofe campaign suspended use of the music.



This has happened many times since. Another recent example was the case of the video "Burning Down the House" which demonstrated how the Democrats created the housing crises with their stupid good intentions and unintended consequences. The video used several pieces of music, one of which was "burning down the house" by "Talking Heads". Of COURSE they objected, and You Tube pulled the video repeatedly. Eventually it was redone with some non-descript music, and most of it's effectiveness was lost.

When I was campaigning against Dave McCurdy (by showing up at his Rallies and Campaign events with my "show") We would play two songs over our public address system. We would play "Hit the road Jack" by Ray Charles, and "Your'e no good" by Linda Rohnstadt. No doubt had they known what we were doing, they would have objected. Linda Rohnstadt is already well known to be a liberal kook. The issue from my perspective is that this stuff which they put into the culture has BECOME part of the culture, and it is unreasonable that they should be able to dictate it's usage as it suits their political preferences, especially when no money is being lost by them, or made for anyone else.

The above anecdotes simply explains some of my personal bias against a rigid interpretation of intellectual property rights, but I have a much more well thought out theoretical bias against the idea that someone should come up with something and then own it for more than a lifetime. As I have mentioned, we don't extend this kind of treatment to Patents, and they are far more beneficial to society than are whatever melody or story or such someone has come up with.

It seems completely unreasonable to me that copyrights have far greater protection than patents, and I perceive it as nothing more than the results of political lobbying efforts by those rent-seeking Media companies intent on keeping their gravy train running without regard to the interest of the public.

I think everything should go into the public domain within a reasonable time, just as Patents do. More on this later.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

ScottL wrote:. . .you do realize that the artist gets 0% of online sales of their work right? In a few rare cases, the artists were smart enough to contract for a portion, but the majority before ~2000 had no such clause.Furthermore, in the last 5 years CD sales have been plummetting while online sales have been sky-rocketing.
You're making a specious argument, saying artists don't get profits from online sales, then referencing the state of affairs in that regard 12 years ago and then talking about CD and online sale in the last 5 years. Besides, it'a ll red herring--theft is theft is theft. How is it otherwise decent people can't remember this? Are you all thieves? You're supporting the notion of STEALING by saying you're only stealing from large corps.

IT STEALING!!!

Until you get that, you don't qualify for adult conversation of the subject.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

ScottL
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Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:26 pm

Post by ScottL »

GIThruster wrote:
ScottL wrote:. . .you do realize that the artist gets 0% of online sales of their work right? In a few rare cases, the artists were smart enough to contract for a portion, but the majority before ~2000 had no such clause.Furthermore, in the last 5 years CD sales have been plummetting while online sales have been sky-rocketing.
You're making a specious argument, saying artists don't get profits from online sales, then referencing the state of affairs in that regard 12 years ago and then talking about CD and online sale in the last 5 years. Besides, it'a ll red herring--theft is theft is theft. How is it otherwise decent people can't remember this? Are you all thieves? You're supporting the notion of STEALING by saying you're only stealing from large corps.

IT STEALING!!!

Until you get that, you don't qualify for adult conversation of the subject.
GTIThruster, you talk of not qualifying as an adult in this conversation, why don't you take your fingers out of your ears and stop singing "I can't hear you" the whole time. What I have said is true. I have not condoned piracy, but have said it's an obvious result of consumer frustration with the product. I've been proven right by iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, and the list goes on. If you make the media reasonable obtainable via price, quality, and distribution, you'll find piracy becomes small enough to be white noise.

So I dare you to find the line "I think piracy is good" in any of my posts, until then you probably shouldn't be allowed in this adult conversation.

ScottL
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Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:26 pm

Post by ScottL »

I'd also like to add that my attacks on media organizations for not adjusting artists contracts appropriately, the rising costs on theaters and radio stations, and their lack of any factual data on piracy call into question their motivations. I contend that SOPA is not at all a mechanism to stop piracy, but a mechanism of power that allows them unprecedented policing rights on the internet. This power will be abused just as the mass lawsuits the RIAA conducted (really, suing dead people and old women for gangster rap?), the same for the MPAA. Nothing more than a power grab on the internet.

http://themovieblog.com/2007/10/economi ... us-so-much
5) Why Not Going To The Theaters Won’t Fix The Problem
Some people will say “Well then let’s not go to the movie theaters until we force them to change”. That will NEVER work, because as I’ve demonstrated above, when there are financial losses, the current industry system just takes back those loses from those who are buying the tickets. They’ll blame piracy for the dip in thater attendance and raise prices even more. It’s a systemic problem.
Funny there was a dip this year in movie-going. It was blamed on piracy, yet if you look at the movie selection out this year, it has been absolutely lackluster, but of course it couldn't be because the movies sucked could it?! Why wouldn't someone want to see a quality gem like "Jack and Jill" ???? </sarcasm>

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Scott, you're misrepresenting the situation. I am not supporting SOPA for the reasons I have already explained, but just saying, this nonsense about how SOPA grants vast power to media organizations is poppycock. All the policing functions go through DoJ. There are no "unprecedented policing rights" being distributed to hateful big-business media corps whom we demonize with arguments of theater prices.

Theater prices are determined by the market--by what people are willing to pay. If they stop going to the theater, the prices will come down. Theaters are not made or broken by such prices. They don't get a piece of the ticket sales. All their income is generated by selling shit food at outrageous prices to the audience, so as long as the theaters are full, arguments the prices ought to be cheaper are just nonsense.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

ladajo
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Location: North East Coast

Post by ladajo »

The primary reason I do not frequent the movie theaters is the price. It is a rare movie that I will consider attending in a theater, and if I do, I do it using a discount or equivilent. Most of our movie watching is done via Netflix or Redbox. I am very happy with that.

The entire industry is out of hand with the money. Until they get reality checked by consumers writ large, they will continue the silliness. I feel the same way about professional sports.

ScottL
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Post by ScottL »

GIThruster wrote:Scott, you're misrepresenting the situation. I am not supporting SOPA for the reasons I have already explained, but just saying, this nonsense about how SOPA grants vast power to media organizations is poppycock. All the policing functions go through DoJ. There are no "unprecedented policing rights" being distributed to hateful big-business media corps whom we demonize with arguments of theater prices.

Theater prices are determined by the market--by what people are willing to pay. If they stop going to the theater, the prices will come down. Theaters are not made or broken by such prices. They don't get a piece of the ticket sales. All their income is generated by selling shit food at outrageous prices to the audience, so as long as the theaters are full, arguments the prices ought to be cheaper are just nonsense.
I think you may be slightly misinformed on the bill. Without a doubt, SOPA allows the DoJ to obtain a court order to shut down DNS of a domain, but it also allows any business to seek a court order to shut down the DNS of a domain (or subdomain of course).
(i) IN GENERAL- A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.
The DoJ is not the courts and the courts are not the DoJ. The rights are granted by the courts, the same courts which have granted the RIAA and MPAA lawsuits against elderly women for downloading movies and gangster rap.We also get this tidbit on Search Engines:
(B) INTERNET SEARCH ENGINES- A provider of an Internet search engine shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order, designed to prevent the foreign infringing site that is subject to the order, or a portion of such site specified in the order, from being served as a direct hypertext link.
Payment sites and Advertisers must also cut ties to said sites within 5 days of the order. If a company claims that a site is infringing upon their copyright or IP, by U.S. law, the site must be blocked from access, removed from search engines, and be completely unknowable. There is no requirement that the alleged site be informed of said action. This is the most poorly worded piece of garbage next to the DMCA.

Theater prices are determined by the studios, not the market. This is a common misconception and I speak from experience as the son of a former theater owner. We take the cost of leasing a film, divided by the likely number of consumers and then we add an additional $2 to that price. To remain profitable we have to either get more people in the seats (the movie is suppose to do that, not the theater necessarily) or raise the price of the ticket even further. Most of the time, the calculation comes down to $8 per person (studio cost) + $2 to cover our costs and all our profit is made off of concessions. We've found that if we raise the price an additional $1-2, we see a significant drop in seating, so we're stuck between a rock (studios pricing) and a hard place (market forces). Few regional theaters are very profitable, and most State Theaters have long since gone out of business.

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

Can't really see why you'd repeat what I said and consider it a correction. SOPA does not grant any authority to anyone to close down DSN's other than the DoJ. The responsibility and liability for that action is completely DOJ's. Private businesses aren't given any authority whatsoever, so saying the first and then the second and pretending they're the same doesn't wash.

Likewise, you're obfuscating as regards the market setting the price for tickets. The owners of the IP have a right to charge whatever they can get for their product. Doesn't matter you don't like it. That's the way capitalism works.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

krenshala
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Post by krenshala »

GIThruster wrote:Likewise, you're obfuscating as regards the market setting the price for tickets. The owners of the IP have a right to charge whatever they can get for their product. Doesn't matter you don't like it. That's the way capitalism works.
So you don't have a problem with the movie distributors charging higher prices than the majority of the market cares to spend, and then blaming the lack of theater attendance on online piracy instead of high prices?

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

They can charge whatever they like. I don't know what gets blamed on online piracy, but its obvious such theft is a very serious matter. Mostly because people think their theft of music and movies is justified, by whatever bullshit story they have.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

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