Posted on 01/19/2012 7:06:42 PM PST by Halfmanhalfamazing
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (and its Senate alternative, the Protect Intellectual Property Act [PIPA]) have been taking a bipartisan beating. Conservatives have joined with Leftists to savage the bill and thus its chances for passage.
I too am opposed to this iteration of SOPA – it remains too overly broad.
But something similar and more finely, sharply crafted – must become law. And conservatives will need to reorient themselves when a better version of the bill comes along – and support it.
—–
We cannot look at the SOPA debate without putting it into the broader context of the immediately preceding Network Neutrality debate.
Conservatives rightly became highly tuned to Internet censorship as a result of the Left’s drive to impose the truly censorious Net Neutrality by any means necessary.
(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...
Aren’t the same regulations that restrict usage on Free Republic still in effect? It worked for this website, why do we need more laws?
The entertainment venue uses the same technology to make a profit.
Unlike folks who sell products and services they have not yet figured out how to protect their "copies".
I think that is the entertainment industry's problem to fix ~ and I don't think I should have to give up any element of speech to help them out.
www.eff.org has a good article on it. according to EFF, congress went from 80 supporters and 31 opponents to 101 opponents and 65 supporters. In one day.
/johnny
SOPA is a ham- handed attempt by the government (as most govt efforts are) to solve a very real problem. Copyright law is rooted in hundreds of years of common law. At its very heart is the issue of an individual’s right to property and if copyright disappears it is only a matter of time before property rights disappear. It is not a slippery slope. The arguments are the same. In its current form the legislation does pose a threat to all kinds of civil liberties but the article’s author is correct, conservatives must rally behind an improved version.
And that's a #10 can of worms.
It would cross a rabbi's eyes.
Because we live in a very different world than just 20 years ago.
/johnny
Government has been looking for a way to appoint themselves Czar of the Internet since it caught on. The Clintons dreamed of doing it and Obama dreams of doing it as well. Any excuse is a good excuse when that much power is just sitting there inches out of reach.
Once they have established in law that they have authority over who can do what over the net, its a new day and one we aren’t going to like. They just have to establish the precedences and its game, set and match.
LOL. It will definitely cross the rabbi’s eyes. But we have to do it. Not because the concept of ownership has changed in the las twenty years, but because the means of delivery has changed. If we don’t get a solid handle on it, the Occupiers, who believe that anything you have belongs to them, will have won.
MSM and the DNC lost control of the masses because of the web.
They want it back.
MSM and the DNC lost control of the masses because of the web.
They want it back.
________________________________________________
Prezactly!
They can’t stuff toothpaste back into the tube. The way people work, socialize, relate, use and employ media and even THINK has been irrevocably altered for the foreseeable future, and their response to any threat to THEIR status quo as represented by the old-media powers is going to be downright ugly.
Perhaps even Fourth-turning level ugly.
True. And the remedy is the same as 200 years ago. Sue the infringer, win in court, and then take action. Or, purchase a clue, and figure out how to protect IP.
It's a civil matter. Making a civil matter a criminal matter is overstepping.
/johnny
Conservatives rightly became highly tuned to Internet censorship as a result of the Left's drive to impose the truly censorious Net Neutrality by any means necessary.Advocacy of "Fairness Doctrine" by an elected official should result in immediate removal from office.
“True. And the remedy is the same as 200 years ago. Sue the infringer, win in court, and then take action. Or, purchase a clue, and figure out how to protect IP.
It’s a civil matter. Making a civil matter a criminal matter is overstepping.”
Well said. Bottom line-we don’t need any more laws governing the internet. There are already means in place to go after pirates. It’s Hollywood’s job to make use of them.
On the debate tonight, I’m glad 3 of 4 candidates unequivocally oppose SOPA/PIPA, but Santorum’s answer concerns me. He seemed to be saying that this particular legislation was wrong, but that something needed to be done. It seems to me Santorum does not have a good understanding of how the internet works, which is unfortunate.
He doesn't understand that freedom comes with responsibility. Media needs to go after the infringers and sue them. I would, if my IP was being stolen.
Then, after winning in court, in a legitimate adversarial contest, take action, and if they can't, then and only then, ask for government help to enforce the court's decree.
But that cuts into the margin, and it's cheaper to pay congresscritters a few bucks to use other people's money to hire storm troopers.
/johnny
Years ago I worked in a recording studio and one of the older guys who worked there explained to me about and effect known as the noise wall or barrier. Basically what he was telling me was my eventually you couldn't make an acceptable copy of an analog recording after a number of generations ( a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy and so on...) because each time you recorded you added background noise and eventually the background noise overwhelms the original signal. He told me the noise barrier will never be broken.
And as always when someone makes a pronouncement that basically sez Man can't change something (Like Fly or go to the moon etc.) Someone takes up the challenge and whamo that old Barrier all the flat earthers put their faith in is destroyed forever.
The digital Revolution is aptly named because it changed the world so fundamentally (yet subtly) that we could have had a magnetic pole shift and such would not have one tenth of the massive change such has wrought on our world. To be more precise digital did not break the "noise barrier" and noise barrier applies to all things copyable including hard copy text. (ever see a tenth generation copy of a printed document? There is "noise" all over the page in the form of black marks and dots and such) What digital did was just go around the "noise barrier". Digital changed information (be it text, music, pictures or movies)into ones and zeros and as such we basically get a nearly flawless copy each time because we use the original code of ones and zeros when we make a new copy.
The Big Media made a business plan based on analog. Now instead of adapting to the digital world and while allowing people to retain property rights to media goods they purchase yet protect their copyrights too. Big Media wants to make Digital Media Un-ownable by the consumer. Meaning you will have no rights to media once you pay for it. You can't sell it, trade it, or loan it and if they have their way you will only be able to play it on one device and if you get a new device you will need to re-buy all your media again.
They are trying to force this crap through congress by filling campaign coffers to overflowing. Literally Hundreds of TRILLIONS (that is Trillion with a "T") are at stake here. I am afraid its BOHICA time folks they will get this through in dribs and drabs until they sew up DIgital NO-rights and retain their strangle hold on Media!
Some history on how ‘copyright’ got started.
http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cgi-bin/kleioc/0010/exec/ausgabe/%22uk_1637%22
Star Chamber Decree, Westminster (1637)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_Order_of_1643
Licensing Order of 1643
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_1662
Licensing of the Press Act 1662
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worshipful_Company_of_Stationers_and_Newspaper_Makers
Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers
In 1403, the Corporation of London approved the formation of a Guild of stationers. At this time, stationers were either text writers, lymners (illuminators), bookbinders or booksellers who worked at fixed positions (stationarius) round the walls of St Paul’s Cathedral.[1] Booksellers sold manuscript books that they or their employees had copied. They also sold the writing materials that they used. Illuminators illustrated and decorated manuscripts.
Printing gradually displaced manuscript production and, by the time that the Guild received a royal charter of incorporation on May 4, 1557, it was in effect a Printers’ Guild. In 1559, it became the 47th livery company. It was based in Peter College, which it bought from St Paul’s Cathedral. During the Tudor and Stuart periods, the Stationers were legally empowered to seize “offending books” that violated the standards of content set by the Church and State; its officers could bring “offenders” before ecclesiastical authorities, including the Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury. Thus the Stationers played an important role in the culture of England as it evolved through the intensely turbulent decades of the Protestant Reformation and toward the English Civil War.
The Stationers’ charter, establishing a monopoly on book production, ensured that once a member had asserted ownership of a text (or “copy”) no other member would publish it. This is the origin of the term “copyright”. Members asserted such ownership by entering it in the “entry book of copies” or the Stationers’ Company Register. The Register of the Stationers’ Company became one of the most essential documentary records in the later study of English Renaissance theatre.[2] (In 1606 the Master of the Revels, who was responsible for licensing the performance of plays rather than their publication, acquired some overlapping authority over publication as well; but the Stationers Register remained a crucial source of information after that date too.) To be sure, enforcement of the rules was always a challenge, in this area as in other aspects of the Tudor/Stuart regime; and plays and other works were sometimes printed surreptitiously and illegally.
As of the early 2000's the USPS was still banning Hectographic Reproductions from the mail.
There are "historians" who still attempt to justify the ban on the grounds that it was made to protect sodbusters in the MidWest from fraudulent land brokers.
Actually, the ban was to make it lawful to arrest any Abolitionist caught with copies of Abolitionist literature in the South who might have been distributing such news to slaves.
We see the same forces at work in this attempt to "ban" digital materials ~ first, it's to protect people from being fooled by "fake stuff" (news, politics, copies of copyrighted materials), and then to "protect American industry" (slavery, plantations, music producers, movie producers).
These guys don't even change their story line, and then there are the politicians supporting it ~ same old same old.
I think the requirement here has to be that if you use DIGITAL MEDIA you must arrange your own methods for protection ~ that NO ONE CAN HELP YOU and particularly NOT THE GOVERNMENT. When it comes to DIGITAL the term "copy" is meaningless.
Turn this one over to the mathematicians, not the FBI!
If Chris Dodd wants it, I don’t.
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.