I think there should be copyright laws, what with this set of laws, under SOPA, what exactly is stopping the govt and businesses lobbying the govt from abusing the copyright laqws from shutting down sites they dont like ? What is stopping them from eliminating FR, any websites that praise Christianity, any sites espousing genuine conservative or libertarian or classical liberal (as opposed to modern liberal) ideals ?
That is what posters here seem to be terrified of, and perhaps legimiately so. I have heard that only sites that flagrantly violate copyright laws, like MP3 tunes or blinxtv or Pirate Bay are in any real danger and also that everything except wikipedia could get shut down. So it is hard to tell what it’s gonna do, but where are the checks to stop the govt from trying to shut down any internet sites that interfere with their support ? Where are the checks on the power of the entertainemnt industry ?
I don’t know how many here have read this entire bill. I haven’t, but what I’ve read indicates that it is primarily aimed at foreign sites that make copyrighted material available in the US.
But the desires of copyright holders concerning the internet are probably very different. Most copyright holders for written material desire that traffic be directed to their sites. The fondest dream of many is a link from Drudge because he drives so much traffic. FR has its posting guidelines based on what use copyright holders have indicated can be made of their copyrighted material. Most writing on the net seeks to attract ads and/or donations to earn money, and the more traffic they have the more they should earn.
It’s very different for the owners of movies and music, to a lesser extent TV networks, whose copyrighted work is offered illegally on the net with no compensation going back to the copyright owners. When people download music and movies illegally that’s just simple theft. When people watch illegally rebroadcast TV they aren’t breaking the law, but those who rebroadcast TV are breaking the law.
Then there are the aggregators of the rebroadcasts where the internet user actually goes to watch a TV rebroadcast. The loss to the TV networks is mostly whatever cable and dish subscriptions they might not receive because of the illegal rebroadcasts on the net. Of course the cable and dish folks object to the internet rebroadcasts that cut them out.
It seems people are lumping all these uses of copyrighted material on the net together when things actually seem very different for copyrighted writing, movies, music and TV rebroadcasts. And the written part seems the least affected by this particular law since most owners of copyrights for written material want traffic and readers.
(Of course, ebooks of novels and book length non-fiction is more like music or movies than newspaper and magazine writing.)