I thought this was a good summary of some of what is wrong with the mindset behind SOPA. Of course, none of this even mentions other problems with SOPA, such as a lack of due process, but I think it well explains the illogical attack on “pirating”.
But first, a VERY IMPORTANT NOTE. I am not advocating illegal behavior. I am not advocating pirating. I am not advocating illegal downloading of videos.
However, I do believe that copyrights on digital media are a little silly and ineffective and that something will change in the industry. Ask me about that in real life for a somewhat rough and unformed spiel on what I think could be the future of media industries.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in arguments for a change in copyrights, go read just about anything Seth Godin’s written on copyrights and any of Cory Doctorow’s essays on copyright, particularly this one.
And, finally, here is the Pirate Bay’s SOPA Press Release:
INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012.
PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.
Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.
So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations – it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.
The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).
It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition. We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.
And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.
The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe – but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the
rest of us obedient consumers.
The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.
SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.
To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.
In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world – because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.
Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.
THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012
The store Partners and Spades (whom I know next to nothing about) will, if one of their items is too expensive, take a photo of the item — a polaroid! — and send it to you in a box, which you could gift to someone. Apparently, it really is the thought that counts…
Of course we had a chance, he’d say, and anyway, it didn’t matter if this venture failed. In his view, we were already a success, because we were doing something hard and it was something that mattered to us. You don’t measure things like that with words like “success” or “failure”, he said. Satisfaction comes from trying hard things and then going on to the next hard thing, regardless of the outcome. What mattered was whether or not you were moving in a direction you thought was right.
– Kristin Kimball, quoting husband Mark
page 77 of “The Dirty Life”
The full text of the law reads…
20.003. Weather Modification and Control Grant Program
The department shall develop and administer a program awarding matching grants to political subdivisions of this state for weather modification and control.Added by Acts 2001, 77th Leg., ch. 376, 2.01, eff. Sept. 1, 2001.
via dumb laws
Apparently, Morbid Curiosity Leading Many Voters To Support Palin. Should you be scared by the methods Americans employ to select decision makers?
It’s that freedom to fail that’s helped make America as prosperous as she is, because it frees people to do more productive things.
life is way bigger than my myopic little American dream. Life is bigger than being a wandering adventurer. Life is bigger than training police forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Life is bigger than all of these, and the challenge for us is to escape our small stories and embrace the big story of what God is doing.
I love that phrase, “myopic little american dream”. That’s really been the biggest culture shock since we’ve gotten back. That American culture is so bound up in the Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
. But life is bigger. So much bigger than our green yards & our three million activities & our big life plan that we need to figure out & our need for security & comfort & safety in our choices & actions.
Another timely read I picked up is Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road by Donald Miller. It’s about a road trip he takes (set before he becomes a serious believer), & he’s asking those same questions about the American reality & focus.
—-
First quote from Airport Stories by Samuel Kordik.
Second quote from the Deceleration of Independence.
This shiny new incentive won’t be so shiny or new or in existence after September 1st.
Advertisement from the Austin area describing the fact that the offer is only available for a limited time.
American’s all speak with tons of emotion, energy, eye movement. It’s almost creepy how outgoing and non-reserved they are.
The first people I saw here were my speech & debate club friends, so I assumed the over-expressive communication was a result of speaking in front of large audiences.
But today, at church, everyone everyone who said hello also spoke with an unusually (for me, since I’m used to South African’s) large amount of movement, so it’s definitely not just speakers — it’s Americans.
I guess I’ve gotten so used to the more reserved & reticent culture of South Africa.
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