Last night after writing my daily I got somewhat politically motivated as a result of Hollywood taking money away from Obama and his re-election campaign in reaction to the position of the Obama administration on SOPA / PIPA. This really bothers me because it highlights almost all of the things I see as being wrong with the American government and it’s electoral system. SOPA and PIPA are terrible pieces of legislation which threaten the fabric of the internet. The lobbyists of big media put these pieces of legislation together because they want absolute control over how their content is distributed and if they can’t have it their way on the internet they would apparently rather there wasn’t a medium for the distribution of content which of course means no medium for the easy distribution of information either.
SOPA / PIPA legislation would be giving the powers of censorship, not to the American government, but to the lawyers of big media companies. Now SOPA and PIPA both seem to have met their end in their current form and so people are celebrating, but they are also talking about what comes next and the fundamental mis-understandings allowing the legislation to get as far as it did.
There has been some great writing about these issues today. Notably:
- Pick up the pitchforks: David Pogue underestimates Hollywood by @cshirky who talks about just how extreme the SOPA and PIPA legislation is and how much power it would give big media
- MegaUpload where @jonathancoulton questions the real impact of piracy.
- The next SOPA in which @marcoarment talks about the root of SOPA and the views media companies must have of their consumers in order to believe SOPA/PIPA are good ideas.
- Vigilance and Victory is @meyerweb reminding all of us that just because SOPA / PIPA is down for now does not mean it won’t be back. Because the same ideas will be back.
Of all of the words written on the issue the Jonathan Coulton wrote the ones which resonate the most for me.
Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan.1