WARNING: SHITLOADS OF TEXT AHEAD
I have 2 rules for writing my blog that I try to adhere to: no articles about politics, and no articles about religion. Well, today I'm going to break one of my rules and talk about the 2 current largest threats to the internet as we know it, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act.
What are these bills currently winding their way through the US House of Representatives and Senate? They are legislation crafted by congressional numbskulls who have been sucking the giant money-jizzing dick of Old Media and Hollywood. The bills are designed to bring internet users under the controlling, dominatrix-like stiletto heels of major media conglomerates and content providers by essentially censoring the internet. OM&H are absolutely scared shitless of the internet, as it is merely the latest iteration in the thing they have traditionally been scared shitless by: technology itself.
OM&H were founded on media that was nearly completely and totally under their control. Back in the day, if you wanted news or entertainment, you either had to be at the place the news happened and see it firsthand, read about it later in a newspaper, or go to a live performance of a play, opera, or ragtime hootenanny.
Then somebody invented the radio, and holy dick, you could listen to that shit at home! Predictably, newspapers, theaters and operas freaked the fuck out, because they were afraid people would just stay home and never go anywhere to get their news or entertainment. Of course, this didn't happen and the economy trundled along its merry way.
Then came moving pictures, and if you wanted to experience all the aforementioned stuff, you could do all the previous things AND you had the option of seeing them when local theaters ran the daily news shorts before screenings of those brand new Charlie Chaplin films. Again, the old media at the time went absolutely berserk because they were afraid nobody would buy newspapers or go to see plays anymore. This, of course, didn't happen.
The same general reaction happened with the advent of widespread TV broadcasts, 8mm home movie projectors, 8-tracks, cassettes, floppy disks, VHS players, CDs, and DVDs. Each iteration allowed people to have more freedom to choose when they wanted to see or hear something, and even though there were always doomsayers in old media trying to stamp out the latest thing to protect their vested interests, in the end, common sense prevailed, either in congress or (usually) in the general public and OM&H actually made more money than they did before due to more people having access to their stuff.
Now, things are different. In the past, OM&H could move along with new technology, begrudgingly, because they still had some kind of control over the physical media it was distributed on. Want to watch a movie in your car? Buy a clunky in-car monitor and video player. Want to listen to Madonna's new hit single? Buy a Walkman cassette player. But now people can just take a rip of a movie they own, stick it on their phone or tablet, and watch it whenever they want without having to buy extra hardware. Only OM&H don't like the idea of transferring media among devices because it fucks with their entire "we control when you can do something with our stuff" business model.
The major Hollywood movie studios, the RIAA and MPAA, major labor unions, major game distributors, and major media conglomerates want you to have to buy a new copy of the same thing, whether it is a song or movie or whatever, for each type of viewing/listening/gaming experience you want to have. Want to watch a movie at home? Buy a DVD. Want to see that same movie in high-def? Buy a Blu-ray disc. How about watching it on your computer? Subscribe to a proprietary content service that only has stuff owned by that company available for viewing. Maybe you want to see it while you're waiting for a flight? Buy it from your phone or tablet's content stores.
At the end of the day, nobody wants to buy 5 copies of the same thing. It's a patently stupid idea. Of course outright copying of something you don't own in ANY format is frowned upon by generally everybody, but not many people do that. In fact, the majority of people, given the chance, will eventually choose to support the media they are consuming by purchasing it in some format. Just look at iTunes, or Netflix, or even videos on YouTube that have targeted ads on them. The media isn't expensive, but customers are still supporting it.
Most people want to buy stuff. But OM&H would have you believe that anybody who just wants viewing and listening flexibility is a dirty thief who is no better than a bank robber or burglar. You have to buy multiple copies of the same thing! If you don't, you're a pirate and deserve to be chemically castrated, beaten, stripped of your belongings, then locked up in a dungeon for the rest of your days.
The real issue with piracy isn't theft, it's an issue of OM&H not listening to what their customers want. Customers want to see movies as fast as possible now, and with digital technology there is no reason not to allow them to do so. People want to hear music on all their devices, not just the ones that have licenses attached to them. But OM&H are still desperately clinging to the idea that they can totally control where and when people watch and listen to things.
In a digital world, when it takes a half-second to access information across the world, this business model no longer makes senses. Instead of fighting consumers and looking over their shoulder, telling them "nope, you can't watch that movie now, the streaming license expired yesterday," OM&H should be saying "OK, you want to watch this movie, right? How can we make that happen for you so that you will have a good experience and give us some money in return?"
But they don't want to do that. They still want to own the digital experience, down to the last bit of information. They want to lock up all content behind paywalls, and keep it there indefinitely. If the company goes bankrupt or the service no longer exists, tough shit, consumer. At least they got your money. The one consolation about the days when physical media dominated was that when something went out of print, you could still find it on the secondhand marketplace. With digital stuff, even if you pay for it, unless you can back it up you are shit out of luck if the company decides to take it from you.
That isn't right, and it's why many people make their own fully-usable copies of stuff they already own, or download copies from the web. OM&H would sooner have these people shot than lose the extra cash they would make if people had to buy a new copy of Transformers: Michael Bay Blows Everything Up every time they wanted to see it on a new device.
Getting back to SOPA and PIPA, these pieces of legislation would basically allow any media conglomerate or content maker to accuse any website of posting links to infringing content, even if they didn't have any proof, and the US government would step in and put the banhammer down on the whole site. Potentially any site that re-posts content available elsewhere on the web would be within the crosshairs of this legislation. It's like trying to swat the piracy flies with a tactical nuclear bomb. Everything gets fucked because of a few bad actors.
The worst thing is that the legislation would reduce security on websites and break the entire concept of DNS, or domain name service, by forcing re-directs away from accused websites. That's right, the government would be able to force ISPs to prevent people from getting to any website the MPAA or RIAA doesn't like, and the only people who could get around it are the same people the legislation would ostensibly stop: pirates and hackers.
So the legislation is open to abuse, is technically unsound, and wouldn't stop piracy in the long run at all. But it WOULD cripple the openness of the internet and create a "Great Firewall of the USA" that OM&H could attempt to prop themselves up on, like a dictator clinging desperately to power to the bitter end.
This is why so many people are freaking out about SOPA and PIPA. It's an example of OM&H colluding with big government to keep their business models on life support at the expense of freedom of expression.
It's bad legislation, a bad idea, and bad for the global internet.
Go HERE to automatically find your state's senators and your area's House representatives. Scroll down the page a bit and you should see a list on the left side that has auto-located you and provided you with contact info for them.
Call your representatives and tell them to kill these bills. We've almost broken the back of this monster, and with just a little more force we can kill it for good.
