34 replies to this topic

[Pasidon]

I just read an article about the blackout... Craig's List when dark? I honestly don't have a clue why Craig's List would need to black-out since it itself has no risk of being effected by the fat congress twins... maybe people selling mixed tapes or Micky Mouse cakes? I dunno... maybe I just need to research that a bit more. The entire point of the black-out (which this article stated) was to show people what it would be like to have your favorite things censored on the web / removed. Craig's List blacking out just seemed unnecessary... I don't use that crap, but people spend a lot of time on there every day doing business, so I'd imagine they would be upset. Well... they were actually. Some people protested outside of NBC studios because they needed to use Craig's List. NBC... No idea why they chose the best lowest rank broadcasting station in America to protest, but whatever floats their cabobs...

Sometimes, Pas, I wonder why you bother posting. I swear I can't remember when you last posted something constructive, or even coherent...

I wish... I always state constructive comments and end them with a joke or reference to Back to the Future, and it always ruins my previous statement. If I put my mind to it, I can accomplish anything... just like Marty McFly.

[Elvenlord]

Craig's List could be taken down by, say, someone selling a dvd and putting a picture or screenshot of it up. Especially if it's Disney.

[Pasidon]

Isn't copy righted material like that already prohibited on these market sites? I really don't know... I don't use them that much. I guess SOPA would extra prohibit the stuff, or something.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

Craig's list would have the kind of position Wikipedia is going with.
Even though they aren't really a target Wikipedia want to keep the internet open.

It sucks about Megaupload.
Every so often the feds will try and take down the biggest provider to make it look like they earn their pay.
Just like Napster, Kazaa and Limewire.
I don't get how the US feels the right to push it's laws outside it's own borders, from what I gather they are charging under US copyright law.
They are far overstepping their bounds and I think they'll get bitten for it.
Does the US government really want to fight a war against an invisible and elusive enemy that they could never hope to pin.
The War on Terror and Drugs has more or less failed and now they're trying their hand at the internet.

I didn't check but did 4chan blackout?
I'd imagine they'd be a possible target of SOPA and PIPA.

[Pasidon]

I think 4chan is more about being noticed than being blacked out... I doubt it.

[Ganon]

I don't get how the US feels the right to push it's laws outside it's own borders, from what I gather they are charging under US copyright law.

I think US copyright law is global, as is copyright law from any country.
I think anyway. I haven't actually done any research, but isn't there some kind of agreement between members of the UN that these types of laws are global?

...Hell, I don't know.

Edited by Ganon, 20 January 2012 - 02:45 PM.

[Pasidon]

When it involves money, yes. If you have a company in Germany suing a person in America... it's not quite the same as a traditional lawsuit, but both nations must allow the suit to continue. Loads of sites out there have been causing lawsuits, and the Feds apparently have the right to stop the source of lawsuits and shut down the sites. That's the part I don't get.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

It all seems odd to me.

I was going to talk about Kazaa and Napster but as I was looking at wikipedia entry for Kazaa I found this.
Could this be the future if SOPA passes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa

Most recently, in Duluth, Minnesota, the recording industry sued Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old single mother. On October 5, 2007, Thomas was ordered to pay the six record companies (Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.) $9,250 for each of the 24 songs they had focused on in this case. She was accused of sharing a total of 1,702 songs through her Kazaa account. Along with attorney fees, Thomas may be responsible for owing as much as a half a million dollars. Thomas testified that she does not have a Kazaa account, but her testimony was complicated by the fact that she had replaced her computer's hard drive after the alleged downloading took place, and later than she originally said in a deposition before the trial.[9]

Ms. Thomas-Rasset appealed the verdict and was given a new trial. In June 2009 that jury awarded the recording industry plaintiffs a judgment of $80,000 per song, or $1.92 million.[10] This is less than half of the $150,000 amount authorized by statute.[11]

The federal court found the award "monstrous and shocking" and reduced it to $54,000. The recording industry offered to accept a settlement of $25,000, with the money going to charities that support musicians. Apparently undaunted, Ms. Thomas-Rasset was able to obtain a third trial on the issue of damages. In November 2010 she was again ordered to pay for her violation, this time $62,500 per song, for a total of $1.5 million. At last word, her attorneys were examining a challenge to the Constitutional validity of massive statutory damages, where actual damages would have been $24.[12]

[Pasidon]

That isn't the future of SOPA... that is SOPA, just offline. Big name companies want a random amount of money (usually a lot of it) for normal people using their """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""intellectual property"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""". This is sort of what happened to Megaupload. Loads of different companies continued to sue people who used Megaupload since they were uploading stuff they didn't own the rights too. It is against Megaupload policy to upload copyrighted stuff, but regardless, the FBI found the founders of the site guilty for... that part I can't find, but they were guilty of an already existing law apparently. But why are they just now shutting down Megauplaod of all days? To prove a point.

By the way... how the **** did they come up with that dollar amount in Rad's example? Like how much a song would have cost times the number of people who were exposed to it?

Edited by {IP}Pasidon, 20 January 2012 - 10:21 PM.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

When think about it too, odds are the majority of people who download random stuff would be downloading it simply because it's there.
If they didn't download it they probably wouldn't have bought it anyway so it's hard to see the loss.
Despite the apparent damage to the Film industry they still seem to have the money to throw around making lackluster blockbusters and filing frivolous law suits.

Another part of "piracy" are legitimate potential customers if they enjoy something like a TV show chances are they'll go out and buy the box set (which is much more impressive to own then data on a hard drive) and probably buy merch as well.
People aren't as ill informed as they were and don't have to buy blind any more, quality matters more if you want to be successful or at least it's starting to.
I'll download an album before I go out and spend my pittance on it.
By potentially at best alienating at worse penalising their customer base it can only do harm to themselves not to mention the bad PR that comes from suing average people who have probably already invested a lot of money in their content already.

The great pity is that Viacom are a major supporter of SOPA and have tried to take down Youtube own Nickelodeon and thus quite a few shows that I'd actually buy the DVDs.
If I could I'd cut out their profit from my Avatar boxsets and give the profits to the people who did the work.

[Pasidon]

I'll disregard your extensive Avatar collection, but Viacom is the devil of lawsuits. Sure, it was one of the original media companies, but that don't mean crap. After all this is over, Viacom will be as popular as spit in a desert. GoDaddy was also a supporter of SOPA, and have you seen what people are doing to them? Let's just say GoDaddy won't be making anymore commercials anytime soon.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

Apparently Nintendo were also an early supporter but dropped their support because of the negative PR.

[Pasidon]

Har... right. Like Nintendo could even afford to look bad at their current place. Well when the WiiU goes down the potty, we'll see how much they'll need to make in lawsuits to sustain their company.

I have a very elegant solution to all of this, but I know it won't be happening anytime soon. One prime issue is TV shows. When you're posting a show online, viewers cannot be counted / subjected to the desired ads. Hulu would be a great platform to act as the first online TV Network, but it does not give viewer counts to the original networks, as it doesn't need too. Hulu pays for the shows and makes their own income based on their own ads and advanced members. But, what if Hulu was used as a platform for showing TV shows like a network rather than an individual company? Shows could be live-streamed to this online network and then later viewed like an ordinary Hulu show, but with the TV network's sponsors and ads so they are gaining revenue based on a viewer count while Hulu also takes a cut and without the need to have advanced members. Any show can be viewed by anyone, so pirating videos would be useless when you can watch them for free in a legal setting. You can apply the same technique to music, and render these media upload companies useless for pirating. The same goes for government paid programming, so Hulu would be getting as much money it needed from the government while making profit from the networks. It would be a very complex web of legal binds and marketing, as I'm sure, but it's a far better solution than SOPA. If I was in congress, I would be promoting solutions to establish online super networks to render pirating useless rather than destroying organizations that earned their reputation fairly, which just forces pirating to advance behind the scenes rather than disappear like business giants would like.

This solution also prevents shows like Stargate Universe from being canceled... but a bit too late for that.

Edited by {IP}Pasidon, 21 January 2012 - 01:33 AM.

[Ganon]

I found some really good songs about all this BS.
I posted one in another thread, but I decided it would be better here.

[Pasidon]

Erm... rap. But yea, I agree... SOPA is bad.