WhiteWidow wrote:
Jacoby wrote:
Intellectual property doesn't exist. It is a state created monopoly.
Artists do this by producing their own work in the most literal sense. For years we've felt entitled to a safe and unregulated form of stealing called "Torrenting". It's time to crack down on this crime and create the jobs we've lost in retail and through start ups and get the economy moving. Seeing as how this will put capital back in the pockets of everybody, and consumer spending accounts for 70% of the GDP - wouldn't you say that SOPA is a positive thing?
This is a horrendously flawed argument, particularly because you completely ignore the enormous COSTS SOPA would impose on the Internet industry, both by shutting down startups that can't afford to rigorously police their sites and by ensuring a plethora of lawsuits (ever rising legal expenses) over whether given sites were practicing due diligence. The Entertainment Industry contributes A LOT LESS to the economy than Internet companies.
Dean Baker wrote:
The question that serious people would ask is what problem is the SOPA intended to address? There is still plenty of money being made by online distributors of music, movies, books and software. The problem seen by the top executives at Disney and the other promoters of the SOPA is that they want to make more.
A substantial amount of copyright-protected material does slip through the system, as does an even larger amount of material with ambiguous copyright status such as a home-made video with parts of a copyrighted song or material whose copyright may have expired. The big entertainment companies want to impose large costs on web intermediaries (which will be passed on to consumers) and make it more difficult for people to gain access to totally open material, in order to make them pay more money for their copyright-protected material.
Although the SOPA strategy of reducing access while raising prices could fit the dictionary definition of "job-killing regulation," its advocates have the incredible audacity to be touting the 19 million jobs at stake. People really should take a moment to look at the industry's website to see what might well rank as the most outrageous misrepresentation of economic reality ever to appear in a Washington policy debate.
The basic story is that if an industry is in any way directly or indirectly dependent on the output of a copyright-protected industry, then the jobs in that industry will be put at risk if Congress doesn't approve the SOPA. By this methodology, all the jobs in the shipping industry will be at risk if we end the tax credit for solar power, since some of the materials used in solar panels is imported. This is patently absurd, but if you work for the 1 percent, you can get such arguments taken seriously in Washington policy circles.
In reality, the higher costs that the SOPA will impose on consumers both directly, and indirectly by raising costs to intermediaries, are money out of their pocket. The additional money that will be collected by the entertainment industry is money that will not be spent in local stores or restaurants.
It's true that some of the money earned by entertainment industry will get back to writers, musicians and other creative workers, but this will be a very small amount compared with the additional cost to consumers. If we had forward thinking politicians in Washington, or economists who didn't sell their services to the highest bidder, policy would be focused on devising more efficient mechanisms for supporting creative work.
Copyright is an incredibly inefficient mechanism dating back from the 16th century. The costs of enforcement are soaring as the Internet makes it ever more difficult. This is a situation where we are relying on toll booths to pay for our roads, but it is becoming ever easier for travelers to evade the toll booths. Rather looking for alternative ways to finance road construction, we are building bigger more expensive toll booths and increasing the penalties for not paying tolls.
www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/congr ... 29805.htmlThank you for informing me that I'm among the 1%. I never knew. I do know, however, that I'm a working writer and piracy affects my bottom line. Despite your words, my income isn't anywhere near the 1% level - your lips to readers' ears.
This article is really wrong on so many levels, and I hope people do a little more research on the topic.
As the copyright owner of over thirty books, I won't be able to go to anyone and demand a site be taken down.
I'm not trying to rig anything. I just don't want to be stolen from - where is the harm in that? You would lock your doors, right? If a burglar broke in, wouldn't you want someone to stop them? Or try to get your stuff back? Or prevent it from happening again.
Rigged? Please. That's as silly as believing I'm a 1%er.
18 Jan 2012, 2:19 pm
