The Danger of an Attack on Piracy Online - David Carr, NYT columnist

[Bozita]

THE MEDIA EQUATION
The Danger of an Attack on Piracy Online
By DAVID CARR
Published: January 1, 2012

By invoking the acronym SOPA right at the get-go, I may be daring many of you to check the next column over for something a little less chewy. After all, SOPA, which stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, sounds like a piece of arcane Internet government regulation — legislation that entertainment companies desperately care about and that leaves Web nation and free-speech crusaders frothing at the mouth. The rest of us? What were we talking about again?

Stay with me here.

SOPA deals with technical digital issues that may seem to be a sideshow but could become crucial to American media and technology businesses and the people who consume their products. The legislation is the rare broadly bipartisan piece of apple pie. The House Judiciary Committee is expected to resume hearings on it this month and all indications are that it will approve the measure, setting up a vote in the full chamber. The Senate is also expected to vote on its own version of the bill when it returns from the holiday break.

Virtually every traditional media company in the United States loudly and enthusiastically supports SOPA, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for the rest of us. The open consumer Web has been a motor of American innovation and the attempt to curtail some of its excesses could throw sand in the works of a big machine on which we have all come to rely.

Rather than launch into a long-winded argument about why the legislation is a bad idea — it is, as currently written — I thought it might be worthwhile to boil SOPA down into a series of questions.

more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/business/media/the-danger-of-an-attack-on-piracy-online.html?pagewanted=all

[msongs]

1. the something for nothing crowd could always create its own movies, tv, and music

but they want what someone else has funded, without sharing any of the expense themselves.

[Confusious]

3. You really think this is the way to go?

Bringing down an industry that is worth 20x-50x times more then the movie and music industry?

Maybe we should protect the wagon wheel makers?

I have doubts about ANY and ALL claims made by the movie and music industry.

Against the VCR. Said it would kill their business.
Against the tape player. Said it would kill their business.

Always complaining about piracy, and then having record profits. Complaining about profits being down, blaming it on piracy, ignoring the fact that the entire country was in recession.

They've been full of shit so often, I don't believe them anymore. Boy who cried wolf and all.

If they told me the sky was blue, I would check it for myself.

[shraby]

2. Rule of thumb..if you don't want it pirated, don't put it online.