As a musician and composer, I really do understand the beef that’s behind this, just as I understand how it affects royalties on music, movies, etc. What I also understand is that this legislation also infringes on the rights of the people – it’s being call a violation of the First Amendment.
Even thought I understand it, I am totally against SOPA/PIPA. They don’t call this “the land of the free” for nothing and these pieces of legislation threaten to end that and give the media the right to shut down websites and the like – and because they believe they threaten their business.
There are a lot of bills presented in Congress on a daily basis and a great many of them never even make it to committee unless they’ve got some serious clout behind them, in this case, the media – read that as that section that produces things we love, like music, movies, and the like. In short, people all over the world are stealing from them and, well, they want the US Government to stop it by taking away our First Amendment rights and asking for the power to shut down any website that’s not to their liking.
It’s censorship… and the United States of America resists censorship like no one else on the planet… until now. This is really a continuation of what got Napster shut down back in the day and gave birth to the new Napster and, yep, iTunes. The argument: If you want it, pay for it! The counter-argument: If I already own it, it’s mine to do with as I please and if you don’t want me to sell it to anybody else, okay, no biggie – I’ll just give it away for free… because I can do that and the law says I can!
If this passes into law, you’re gonna see websites being shut down like it’s nobody’s business. And, sure enough, if some group decides that WordPress isn’t making them happy because of all the stuff that gets written here, you might, one day, go to do some blogging and WordPress will be gone… because the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.
I’m protesting it and have already written my representatives to vote “Fuck No!” to this intrusion of our rights. Yep, piracy is a global problem and there’s tons of money being made that, say, Sony isn’t getting their cut of. It is a very real problem and I do understand it… but I’m totally against being violated like this because they can’t come up with some other way to protect themselves and those they represent.
Kdaddy23's Blog 
Lesbian Brooklynite
18 January 2012 at 11:32
I am on board.
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kdaddy23
18 January 2012 at 11:47
Good; this is some bullshit we cannot let happen!
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bellacoils
18 January 2012 at 19:22
Totally agree.Sometimes, it feels like the government comes up with bills such as SOPA/PIPA in the guise of “protecting citizens”, only to infringe more upon our rights and make this nation more of a police state. I would say more, but you can’t really say what’s on your mind about the government on these e-streets without fear of getting a visit from Uncle Sam. lol
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kdaddy23
18 January 2012 at 19:58
Well, Bella, the possibility of such a thing is what’s scary! Methinks the government’s more interested in protecting a multi-billion dollar industry than it is the rights of the people in this.
I remember, a few years ago, someone came up with this “brilliant” idea to stop movie piracy – make the DVDs single-use. You buy the movie, you get to watch it once… and that’s it unless, of course, you want to pay to have your copy unlocked. I think someone actually tried it and realized they shot themselves in the ass because no one’s gonna buy a movie they can only watch once and more so since DVDs were much more expensive back then. Ya paid for it once… and now they were gonna make you pay for it again?
I recall reading a couple of weeks ago (or thereabouts) that the last movie in the “Fast and Furious” series broke some records as being the most pirated movie of all time… or for the moment, anyway. Like I said, I can understand it from their point of view; the studio spends millions of dollars to make the movie and promote it – then someone with a digital camera films the movie, takes it home, waves some magical software fingers over it and – voila – you now have a copy of that movie that’s just as good as the original on DVD and, to make shit even worse, it’s just being given away gratis. If I were running a movie studio, yeah, I’d probably be pissing my pants over this one… but going after the Internet isn’t the answer – it’s just too big and too far-reaching and, of course, it reveals our hypocritical side; we don’t want other countries censoring its people – but we’re willing to do it to our own?
It’s bad enough that ISPs around the country are already “spying” on its subscribers; SOPA/PIPA goes into law and the spying, the intrusion into our privacy, will blow up big time and to the point that if you visit your favor porn site, your ISP will be ratting you out to the feds and cancelling your service because you’re doing something they don’t like and will twist and spin so it’ll appear to be legal and above-board.
I remember when George Orwell wrote, “1984” which was written in 1949, in school – you know, big brother is watching? At the time, I wouldn’t have dreamed that such a thing could be a reality… and here we are, huh?
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mysterycoach
19 January 2012 at 03:58
Another blogger was talking about this the other day. Other than saying it’s “pure crap” … I don’t know what else to say.
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bellacoils
19 January 2012 at 11:44
You read my mind KD!!!! I immediately thought of “1984” when I first read about SOPA/PIPA. It’s one of my favorite books but it’s really scary how he wrote it in 1949 and the themes in the book have become more and more relevant over the years. I remember reading an article where a researcher was in the works of creating technology that can “read” your mind based on recording and interpreting different brain waves…it’s really going to be like 1984 once that technology becomes widespread…and I’m sure it won’t be long before the government starts using technology like that to accuse everyone of thoughtcrimes. The world we live in, I tell ya…smh. I just hope I’m not alive by that time.
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kdaddy23
19 January 2012 at 17:21
I saw a news article where Mega-Uploads, a file sharing site, has been shut down and the site owners charged with piracy violations. This is just the beginning; soon, there will be sites shut down and owners being charged all over the Internet; file sharing sites will be first; then porn sites, and the list will keep growing…
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