SOPA, PIPA, Frenzied Masses

Appalled Citizen: So we know the problem with PIPA and SOPA. The committees should fix them. There is a huge problem with online piracy, it’s killed industries and turned the media consumer experience upside-down. Goes back to YouTube/Viacom decision. But you’ve all drunken the Kool-Aid though folks, poured by silicon firms you think are benevolent do-gooders. I am more disturbed by the reaction, which demonstrates a very troublesome tendency to backlash.

Passerby: Finally some reason on the matter.

Engaged Pal: Sounds like you’ve been sipping a bit of that Capitol Hill Kool-Aid yourself. Observe them, but do not become one of them. You are way, way too good for that.

Appalled Citizen: Not even close. I started by recognizing as I do that the bills are flawed. There is wild, rampant piracy online. Think Chinese counterfeit, hurts this country’s manufacturers. So fix the bills, but fix the problem. So you and too many I can keep up with are whipped up in a frenzy. Anyone read the bills? I saw the same thing over domestic terrorist detention provisions in the Defense Authorization. It is precisely my proximity that affords me informed views and frankly, I’ve found in these two instances, the loudest are the least knowledgeable.

Another Engaged Pal: Are there not better ways to shut down pirate websites than asking U.S. companies to censor the web?

Engaged Pal: Not that I agreed with them either, but the domestic terrorist defense stuff was about protecting people. This is about protecting the interests of big business. If they have the resources to lobby Congress, than they have the resources to protect themselves without asking the government to censor our free speech.

Appalled Citizen: Of course there are, which is my point. What is copyright, what is intellectual property but protecting your output and ensuring compensation for your content? It’s the wild west out there and content providers – big and small – are mortally bleeding. Fix the bills, fix the problem

Engaged Pal: And the idea of protecting our manufacturing base is a joke. It’s already gone, having outsourced to foreign countries in the name of profits by the same types of folks who are bankrolling this legislation. America is now a service-based economy, and that’s where it will continue to head. The Chinese are counterfeiting themselves.

Appalled Citizen: I just used the example because the scope and magnitude and effect. nearly fatal. and the detention example because of the comparable uninformed frenzy. so on this thinking, we should sound the horns for silicon as their flock and enjoy all the Chinese counterfeit music and videos sloshing around the net.

Another Engaged Pal: Would we be talking right now if these bills had been in effect say, when Facebook or Twitter were launched? How would these bills affect social media sites?

Engaged Pal: Yes entire industries have been wiped out by the digital revolution, just like the horse-drawn carriage industry was probably wiped out by the Model T. The protection of intellectual property and copyrights will for ever remained changed, just as the intrinsic nature of how we use and share all information has. Welcome to the future folks, adapt now or remain forever irrelevant.

Appalled Citizen: Agreed on advancement and industry. However it’s a vicious circle and it’s regressive, because if musicians, filmmakers and television people, content folks, are not compensated and their works just slosh around, they close down and there is no original content to even slosh around. The problem with bills is their remedies, there is a problem to be solved.

Engaged Pal: For every one of those content folks who got burned by pirates, there are two more who got their break by posting their creation on YouTube or Photobucket. The internet giveth as well, not just taketh away. And really what is what is a bill without a remedy anyway? Its a bunch of old rich men in expensive suits sitting around arguing in an even older building, while you watch from above.

Thoughtful Participant: I don’t know so I am asking but is are their studies out there that content makers themselves are not compensated for their work? If so is their evidence that 100% of the reason for not being compensated is because of piracy?

Maybe I am not fully understanding the problem. Is the problem content makers are not getting paid? or not getting paid as much as they once were?

‎Status Quo Proponent: “It’s killed industries and turned the media consumer experience upside-down”

What industries have been killed? And how has my “media consumer experience” been changed? and the entire point of these bills is to go after effectively one site, and that site is not worried. When even the biggest target isn’t worried at all, why put the future of the Internet at risk?

Thoughtful Participant: The tricky thing about ‘piracy’ of copyrighted content is that everyone knows it has been going on since the birth of copyrighted content, it is just now with the age of information that we know how much max ‘potential’ money was unclaimed. We have factual proof that 100,000 copies of the latest hotness from Third Eye Blind for example. For math sake lets say the song cost $1 on iTunes. Apple can claim that they lost $100,000 due to piracy. Is that really true? For that to be true they also have to claim and assume that 100% of those 100,000 people who downloaded the song illegally when given no other choice will have the desire or even want to buy it for $1.00 that day when it was valued at $1.00. That isn’t reality Have you ever shopped for something and internally looked at the price and thought ‘hmmm nah it is not worth that’ I will wait a couple months until it is cheaper’.

Appalled Citizen: These bills’ mechanism is way too strong, yes. But again, the frenzy is my problem. That’s a good question, it’s a safe bet that the sloshing has cut compensation drastically. On a separate thread, a rockstar friend smartly noted the industry’s lag or resistance to adapt. David, our media consumption is as different as hitting YouTube (instantaneous free buffet) rather than heading to Tower Records, now dead. As above, this is YouTube/Viacom repeated.

‎Status Quo Proponent: That’s because going to a record store sucks. I’m not going to buy a CD to find out all but one song is total shit. The internet has made us better consumers for consumers, not for industries that don’t deserve to exist. The industries that have and are disappearing were not capable of adapting as fast as they should have. They don’t deserve to exist and the jobs and money will go to those that can adapt. Free market is a bitch. YouTube takes down videos with songs that they have been notified to do so with, so that’s over. The songs you can hear on YouTube are primarily independent artists making good music that don’t have big name record contracts. You like it, you can buy it. No middle man in between, good for them, good for me, and good for YouTube.

Thoughtful Participant: Tower Records failed because….well…. Records are dead the supply was more then the demand. Record companies tend to point fingers and put the reason for lack of demand on ‘piracy’ but really I tend to think it was just a bunch of things. Industries ‘crash’ all the time because of this unknown, people in mass is a tricky thing to calculate. Some industries rise up again stronger and different. In 1983 the video game industry crashed. Landfills were filled with Atari E.T cartridges. Now look at it. It is estimate to earn $61.8 billion globally. They adopted, they changed. The problem isn’t ‘piracy’ the problem is that some industry are falling while others are raising. Some that are falling are just louder.

Engaged Pal: So I won that one, right?

Appalled Citizen: No, because my problem to begin with is the masses of We the Googlers, the activist blackouts today. David, you know I’m all free markets, and I’ve chatted with a libertarian economist friend today who pointed to piracy as a good force in markets. I question that, I don’t quibble with the necessity to adapt, but I guess it boils down to free lunch..we all love it online, we ridicule pay walls, etc. As far as YouTube, it should be their responsibility as a host to keep tabs on, wait for it, the content they host, which is over insofar as YouTube/Viacom judge punted to them. It was wrong then and the hacktivism that despises paying for things is wrong now. Of course josh, firms should evolve to answer demands. However, the problem in this instance IS piracy, just as counterfeit is in the material world. Do we condone counterfeits? Cheap or free, inferior or even superior, we have completely deluded ourselves online. This, the whiplash blackouts and feverish public on the punch bowl as evidenced today, is mighty disappointing to yours truly.

Another Engaged Pal: Is there an overall theme to all of this? What’s the umbrella concern over the whole shebang? What’s down the road in ten words or less if these bills pass. Are they trying to ‘go China’ on us, or not?

Appalled Citizen: In fact, no one is out to replicate Chinese censorship. Rather, (ten words) both bills would strike “safe harbor” for online content hosts.