Posted on 01/09/2012 12:13:27 PM PST by SeekAndFind
At a campaign stop this weekend, in-the-spotlight GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said he supports increased Internet regulation. According to Santorum, our rights aren’t “absolute” and stop at whatever point their exercise begins to infringe on the rights of others. Piracy represents an abuse of intellectual property rights — and that abuse should have consequences, Santorum says.
So far, so good. Everybody agrees that piracy is a problem.
But Santorum seems too ready to look to regulation for the solution to the piracy problem, suggesting that government interference might be an effective way to thwart piraters. That, to me, seems short-sighted, given that rampant piracy is at its core an indication of inferior service from legal sellers. Let actors, musicians and others whose intellectual property is routinely ripped off come up with a more effective way to serve customers and, suddenly, piracy won’t be such a problem. Take a look at the example of comedian Louis C.K. whose faith in his fan base and willingness to offer his product in an innovative manner has been richly rewarded.
Thankfully, Santorum stopped short of a full-throated endorsement of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act. (He isn’t familiar enough with provisions of that bill to have an opinion about it one way or the other, he said.) But that the first solution to piracy he can fathom involves more regulation is still troubling.
View video of Santorum’s comments here.
“Rick Santorum”, DEFINATLY NOT ready for a Seat @ the Big People’s Table.
Rick Santorum would be proud to sign such legislation if it landed on his desk. The man’s openly declared himself as a ‘culture warrior’ and sees it as the government’s duty to help enforce what he sees as desirable culture. Ergo, he’d be more than happy to use stuff like SOPA as a means to this end.
Rick Santorum is no friend of limited government and in his own words is opposed to so-called “radical individualism.” In his worldview, liberty is just a gateway to libertinism.
I am now withdrawing my support for Rick Santorum.
If he supports this, he is a dangerous man.
I think he’s looking for one at the Big Government Table.
Im an extremist on this. NO SOPA,,,period. If someone pirates, fine, prosecute them. But the only bastion of pure free speech is as 100% important as guns.
We do not support gun control in ANY effort to reduce crime, even if it did. It’s civil liberty value outweighs any gain that they left claims could occur.
Likewise, supporting the government shadow over such a critical thing as the internet is not worth it,, even if it helped stop a few pirated movies.
No to Santorum.
This is very dangerous. I read posts from some Freepers who like Santorum and seemed to think the law was just fine, and on top of that believed it was directed at things like on-line stalking, fraud, crime, etc.
It has nothing to do with that; there are already existing laws that deal with all forms of Internet crime and abuse.
SOPA gets its initial push from copyright law (although anti-piracy laws already exist to protect intellectual property) and will end up suppressing the free exchange of information and ideas and give the government enormous power.
Isn't there anyone running for president of this country who actually, really and truly understands and believes in the concepts of personal freedom and individual self determination?
Al Frank,Barbara Boxer,Diane Fienstein and Lindsey Graham are supporters of this bill , enough said
No.
Next question?
"Stopped short" equates to his candidacy with this near-endorsement.
Thanks for this post. I have been watching Santorum, this is a complete turnoff.
Since when is the law (and thus “regulation”) NOT supposed to be concerned with theft (of which “piracy” is nothing other than a means to theft)???
In fact piracy IS THEFT and property rights are at the core of Conservative principals.
A “pirate” is one who attempts to take something while avoiding the costs-to-market-entry that had to be paid by the producers/owners of what the pirate takes, for nothing.
The idea that piracy is justified because technology makes it so much easier, and therefor it is the fault of the owners of the pirated goods, not the pirates, for not adopting a different business plan IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE OR FREE MARKET THEORY SOLUTION.
By the logic of the “its-not-the-pirates-fault” theory, piracy in the Mediterranean in the early 1800s was not the fault of folks like the “Barbary pirates”, but the fault of merchants who failed to build or man ships that could out run the pirates at sea.
Exactly.
Truthfully, online piracy is a direct result of the insanity of pricing out there. You can go to a Red Box and rent a movie for a buck and a quarter. If you digitally rent it, odds are you're going to end up paying at least three times that amount. Consider it - one requires a physical copy to be made, distributed, stocked in a machine, and then handle all the credit card transaction fees. The other simply requires clicking on a link and credit card transaction fees.
The digital copy gives no better production quality, offers far less features than the physical discs, yet costs more. It is encouraging piracy, just like they did when they distributed peer sharing software and told us which was best to steal music and movies with by comparing copyrighted content over multiple pieces of software. Forbid price fixing by media companies (the so called ‘licensing’), or commission sales (another form of price fixing.) If a physical DVD can be rented on a nightly basis for under a buck fifty, then no digital movie should ever cost more than a buck fifty, even less if provided by a cable provider for on-demand watching.
O.K.
Where do the OTHER two conservatives stand on this subject?
Huh? There are already scads of anti-piracy laws. SOPA would deal with the problem ultimately by shutting down whole sectors of industry, regulating others to a stand-still, and would spill over into paralyzing even simple information exchange.
Gingrich is opposed to it and already discussed it at one debate (don’t recall which one). I think Ron Paul is also opposed, although he’s not on my list of possible candidates.
I don’t know what Perry thinks.
You are 100% correct. It is amazing how so many who view themselves as honest, free market loving conservatives come up with the most convoluted nonsense to justify departing from any real recognition of the property rights of others when it comes to copyrighted material, particularly music and movies./
It's simple, if someone doesn't like the product offered, and the form in which it is offered, just do without that product. But, no, when it comes to copyrights, large numbers of folks say if the product if not offered exactly as they want it, in the exact form they want it, they'll just steal it.
It's weird, some seem to think music and movies are a human right, the same as the air we breath.
Thanks Livius.
Now I’ll be pulling for Gingrich - for what that is worth at this point.
There's another factor too. I bought a collection of Clint Eastwood movies and found that several of the DVDs got stuck - rendering them unwatchable - on the first play. That's not the only story I have. I still have VHSs that have been played as much as vinyls and still work.
I've never used Torrent, and actually have went out of my way to pay for digital content - e.g., by deleting a music file I sent to someone else and paying up again to get a new copy. But I can see why someone would be ticked off enough to pirate DVDs. Had DVDs lasted as long as video tapes, I think piracy would have been contained. Getting a DVD that siezes up after three, two or even one play(s) says the seller don't really care about the customer. As a result, enough customers get irked into not caring about the sellers.
“It’s weird, some seem to think music and movies are a human right, the same as the air we breath.”
Yes, and it’s weird that many so-called Conservatives have adopted the Liberal, Leftist and populist new-age philosophy that the intellectual property of this age (music, movies, TV, books, art) “belong” to “the world” and “property rights” to any of it are simply roadblocks to human progress - when history shows the opposite to be true.
SOPA would deal with the problem ultimately by shutting down whole sectors of industry [the pirates] , regulating others to a stand-still> [them out of existence], would spill over into paralyzing even [while protecting] simple information exchange.
Very naive position. At minimum, SOPA is redundant since there are already enforceable copyright laws on the books. We don’t need another layer of it, and it needs to remain beholden to copyright holders to enforce their claims—this is not a duty that the taxpayer should be footing the bill for, which is what SOPA does.
SOPA will more than likely establish an abusive precedent for expansion of government powers to simply regulate content they dislike out of the internet.
Yeah, you go ahead.
I saw the clip, and he never said that they had to be *governmental* regulations.
Try doing some research next time.
I’ve just drawn a line through his name. I could easily imagine Newt supporting this as well, and I wonder where he actually stands on the issue. Now this would be a question worth asking at one of these mostly worthless debates.
I think could trust either Paul or Perry to leave the internet alone.
Gingrich and Paul were both opposed to SOPA at one of the debates (I don’t know about Perry).
No, not at all. There are already laws to deal with piracy and adding more wouldn’t help, particularly since in some cases this will amount to government pre-restraint on free expression.
I stand corrected on Gingrich re. SOPA. I’m happy to have the facts, thanks.
B.S. No it is not. It is no different than “capital” property, such as an Ipad, with Apples right to determine the sale and licensing of the use of that device.
Intellectual property is not the idea, but the medium into which it is announced - the book or medium of artistic presentation such as a record, a movie, a TV production. etc.
The dissemination of the “ideas” represented therein are not PREVENTED by the ownership rights thereto; it is only standards of either attribution (recognition of ownership) and or just compensation, in lieu of their use, that must be applied, and only for a limited time. In the "marketplace" those costs are minimal and not destructive of "the sharing of ideas" = witness the explosion of knowledge, technology and innovation that has accompanied the human era when the recognition of intellectual property rights has been more the norm than ever before.
“If SOPA passes, Obama could shut down Freerepublic.com the next day,”
Nonsense. Ain’t gonna happen.
If it’s possible to fine those guilty of stealing intellectual property without monitoring speech, I have no problem. I don’t know if you can limit government regulation of it. Bob
How to shutdown freerepublic under sopa
Post a link to a site that has a link to another site that has “pirated stuff” is enough to shutdown a site down a site under sopa,
Just going trough the vast amount of messages that are in free republic archive it would be no problem finding something.
Go Newt!
If that is really truly in SOPA, such chain-of-dependence, and the citing of such a chain-of-evidence would, in my view be easily challenged in the courts, including, in my view, easily obtained stay-of-enforcements granted by the courts while the decision was appealed, and I would anticipate even the current SCOTUS would not support such a chain-of-evidence as a definition of “guilt”.
“I saw the clip, and he never said that they had to be *governmental* regulations.
Try doing some research next time.”
Thanks for your post.
The knee-jerk reactions from so-called conservatives are going to kill us.
We already have tons of laws and regulations regarding piracy.
SOPA has nothing to do with piracy.
We don’t need government in every damned aspect of our lives.
“It absolutely will. Under SOPA, the Attorney General can take down sites without a court order.”
“Can” is the operative word there, and it is not any Attorney General that I am trusting, but the courts, which will, in my opinion, provide injunctions and appeals against an Attorney General’s action when they agree that there is a good argument against the “chain of evidence” rationale where the “pirates” are not the site being shut down and the site that is has simply unknowingly allowed a link to the “pirates” to be placed, by a user onto their web pages some where. The SOPA law may have allowed such an extreme circumstance but I do not think the courts will accept it. The fact that the law allows certain actions without a court order will not stop the courts from weighing in against it, and there are plenty of judges who will chose to do just that.
Expect there is no trial,court order or anything before shutting down the website, send a dmca claim and valla freerepublic gone in a day
Yes trust the government what a great idea!
I had decided it was either Gingrich or Santorum. Any candidate that finds SOPA or any similar regimen acceptable is not acceptable to me.
So a guy running for POTUS is advocating regulations--just not government ones. What do you think he means?
Websites dealing with creative content could be self regulatory. A significant part of Santorum’s message is to have less government involvement by getting it out of the way of the private sector.
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