The Internet Needs Innovation Not New Legislation!
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What if Homeland Security finds out about your secret stash of Bollywood movies stored on your hard drive, and what if they confuse this as not one but two prosecutable offenses? Or worse, what would happen if they accidentally came across your surprisingly large collection of Justin Bieber music? By now you have already heard that fortunately just good old ignorance has already helped squash SOPA, one of the the two recent bills that are being proposed in Congress to combat online piracy. But I bet you are wondering what the final outcome will be.
The current protest is in response to the Stop Online Piracy Act legislation. But before we all start running outside yelling the Mayans were right, we should probably calm down and stay focused on the larger issue at hand. If your blood is still boiling over this issue be sure to Google SOPA, as the front page findings displayed below I think help put things in a less than threatening perspective.
For heavens sake, how threatening is soup? Kidding aside, it is safe to assume that this issue is not going to be going away any time soon. As the wolves are more than likely already at the door. Take for example my home state Senator of MN, Mr. Al Franken. He will clearly be supporting any bill that favors protecting an artists royalties, as this is a personal crusade for him having been an actor and writer himself. But as for myself, I am still a little bit on the fence with regard to this issue. Recently I heard a gentlemen on CNN explaining to the news moderator that piracy was the act of illegally downloading a movie that was just released in the theater. My ten year old nephew knows that is not an accurate description.
Most believe that Piracy is the theft of intellectual property – in other words, stealing what does not belong to you. But from here things can get a bit blurry. As several might argue that as long as someone does not profit from an illegal download, they themselves are somehow not really breaking the law. Meanwhile you have big corporate media conglomerates that are strongly opposed to piracy, and are voicing their displeasure of this through of all things…our politicians.
I for one think the last thing this country needs is Hollywood and Washington working together. I mean shouldn’t we really be keeping these two groups focused on their specific tasks at hand? In my opinion, Hollywood studios should be spending their time concentrating on producing better films, rather than the time they are spending forcing lobbyists to go strong arm our politicians over how they feel they need to make more than the $10 Billion Dollars that they have made for the last three years running. (see link http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/) As we all know, there are several other smaller businesses that had to close their doors this year, and would have much rather stayed open with a much smaller amount of profit in their bank accounts.
Not to confuse things, but now we are being told that the second of the two bills PIPA is also being dismissed as a solution. As it is clear that both SOPA and PIPA were more than likely just a quick attempt by lobbyists to force these new bills on all of us, in hopes that we the people would not have time to react. And now it would appear that there will be a revision, which will more than likely be the OPEN ACT, which all of us should clearly be researching more in the days ahead.
What really matters at the end of the day, is that each of us should really be researching for ourselves, and ultimately getting involved in this matter. As I can promise you that ultimately this is going to be about much more than just illegally downloaded movies. It is about our personal freedom, and how it can be taken from us if we do not pay close attention and get involved. If you search online, assuming that is that the Internet is still open for business, you will find several additional updates, links, videos (like the one offered below), or ways for you to contact a government official should you want to voice an already existing concern you may have on this issue.