Posted on 01/17/2012 2:04:11 PM PST by transducer
For all the talk from some that SOPA was "dead," it appears it's alive and well and getting ready for its big re-entrance. Lamar Smith has just sent out a press release saying that he intends to resume the markup in February...
(Excerpt) Read more at techdirt.com ...
I oppose SOPA, but have to object to your attack of people asking for their songs to not be used in YouTube videos. People who write songs have an absolute right to control their public use. Nobody have a “right” to other people’s property.
And the YouTube system, as it is, isn’t a bad way to handle it. Pretty much anybody can post anything, although YouTube does go after some things aggressively, mostly it takes down things only with objection. If I write a song, I can ask to have others not use it. That is how it should be.
THe problem with YouTube is straight-up censorship.
It’s the modern lack of ethics, people who think they have a right to free downloads of songs and movies, that gives teh government an excuse for SOPA. If people would behave, if they would be civil, and not be stealing intellectual property and acting like it’s their right, we wouldn’t be fighting SOPA now.
Yep. We can never get a rest. Just like with amnesty: beat it back with your dying breath, and then it comes back again. They figure one of these times, they’ll prevail. If not, they’ll get it piece by piece in other legislation.
Do the musicians really own the songs? Or is it the music companies?
That said, the big music companies, or at least some of them, are fools. Most YouTube posters of music are fans trying to promote music they like. And much of the material is that which you are not going to generally find on the airwaves, in the CD racks @ Wal-Mart, etc. I’ve seen great stuff taken down, and then who knows it exists? Certainly not any potential new fans / customers.
Even if a tune is popular, YouTube postings can help promote it. Further, YouTube’s audio and video quality is quite limited. Posters should be encouraged to opine on why viewers should buy the CD or DVD, audio and video quality being a good reason; supporting the artist another.
I have inquiries on YouTube right now, asking if posted tunes / vids are available on CD / DVD, and am tracking such inquiries by others, too. In other cases I’ve encouraged viewers to “get that DVD” or posted “you should hear this CD on a good stereo system!” And I’m not even the poster.
Do some people make compilations of YouTube vids? Maybe so, but it’s probably a losing money / time proposition, unless either the material is not available elsewhere, OR they are mass copying and distributing it, which is another matter entirely. And, as I said, either way the quality stinks.
The “reasons” Congress said they are passing these bills are just lies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more
I'm glad wikipedia is blacking out to protest SOPA and PIPA. And even Google has a message on their website.People don't even know about this SOPA and PIPA as the mainstream media has not covered this. Need any more proof to see that the mainstream media is the worst enemy of the American people , the worst enemy of freedom?
Seems even representative democracy has gone in the trash, if nobody in his district even has a monetary dog in the fight. Might be different if it was a big music publisher.
Craigslist is also darked out.
Not to mention the takedown rules were never abolished... almost all of these songs on You Tube don’t exactly hide, you can find them by searching from its home page. If it’s yours and you do not consent to it being there, you alert You Tube and poof it’s gone. This was not good enough?
TV/Movies Music
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00001811&type=I&newmem=N
Hope they do it for more than one day.
The media has hidden this. Congress and the mainstream media are corrupt,socialist, statist, evil, criminal bastards. They are the enemy of freedom.
I agree that it is stupid to go after your fan base like that. But people can legally do stupid things. I think it’s stupid for McDonalds to charge more money for 2 6-piece McNuggets than for 3 4-piece McNuggets, but they have every right to do so, and I don’t get to arbitrarily decide that I should only pay $1.50 for a 6-piece nugget.
I assume in many cases the music companies own the songs, because they have paid for the rights. If there is something immoral about how they get the rights to the songs, we should target that with legislation, but that’s a different issue. More artists are self-publishing these days, so they own their own songs.
Most songs cost 99 cents now, if you just want an MP3. I don’t know how much ITunes charges for WMA. On the other hand, even with the poorer-quality youtube video sound, there is a huge number of people using online tools to strip audio from youtube for their own collection. Sometimes the artist encourages this, other times it’s just taking something for free when it’s easy to buy it.
BTW, I understand the idea of downloading a song you want when there is no way to buy it anymore, because it’s out-of-print and nobody has ripped it. But if the song is on Amazon for 99 cents, you shouldn’t decide “I like that song, but I think 99 cents is too much to pay, so therefore I am justified in stealing it”.
My daughter, whom I’ve given enough lectures about this for her to understand the concept, was wondering what the problem was with SOPA, and why I didn’t support it given my disdain for people taking music for free. I explained that the biggest problem is it makes every content provided personally liable for what users do — like YouTube being able to be sued if a random video is posted and has a song in it that wasn’t properly sourced.
I think so long as a provider offers a way for content owners to get their property removed on request, we are good. I think that’s how things are today. I think some sort of new law is needed to protect from foreign theft, but SOPA as currently defined isn’t it.
BTW, It’s amazing how many MP3s are online now. I’ve been picking up MP3 albums from my college years, as part of my conversion of my old albums/tapes to MP3 so I can retire my oversized stereo system before it breaks for good. And sometimes I get entire albums for $4.99 (Amazon just had a sale) — I even bought a couple MP3 albums when I still had a perfectly good record, just because it was worth the $5 to not have to record each song on the album in my MP3 recorder and then enter the information for the file.
A lot of so-called American conservatives make the mistake of assuming whatever is good for corporations is conservative, and it looks like Smith is one of those. There is something conservative in a European, old Tory, sort of way about propping up antiquated business models through government action, fighting against the law of supply and demand (that drives the price of goods that can be produced in arbitrary quantities at no marginal cost toward zero) on behalf of monied interests. Unfortunately, it is not what American conservatives, who should be conserving the American Founding, and thus be pro-market rather than pro-business, should be doing.
This is actually one of the reasons the theft of the word “liberal” by the left was a truly inspired act of evil (and you know what spirit inspires evil). In its original meaning — supportive of liberty, esp. of free markets — we who want to conserve the American Founding were the liberals (cf. party names in Australia), and the notion that we ought to be supporting status quo in commerce against innovation (in this case Hollywood and dead-tree publishing houses against the internet) would have been anathema to us almost reflexively.
bump!
This Lamar Smith is so obviously bought out it is sad!
Human innovation is based on free ideas. Imagine if mathematical concepts were copyrightable, or language. The internet either remains a free exchange of ideas or all sites that may accidentally reprint copyrighted material, including this one, would get shut off the internet.
Ah, but some mathematical concepts — algorithms — aren’t just copyrightable, they’re patentable! And subject to export control as munitions in some cases! (As if enemy countries have no competent number theorists.) That alone is enough to show that the corrupt concept of “intellectual property” is a detriment to progress even without the problems it creates for derivative works in the arts and incremental advances in technology.
Well put, and I agree.
“Smith got bought and paid for, that’s what happened, and he went cheap too, less than $100,000 in political donations from the industry benefiting most from the so-called ‘SOPA’ legislation.”
Most of Congress gets bought on the cheap too. They are bought with what most of the lobbies and big donors consider mere chump change.
The fact of matter is that SOPA and PIPA are 100% about adding regulations to the operation of the internet FTBO entertainment and Hollywood. I called my guys today and suggested we don’t need more regulations, and asked them not to support it.
Well Lamar Smith is one of the chief culprits in the House, which is why his corrupt RINO-ass should be bounced out of office at the earliest opportunity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.