SOPA Blackout and why the internet is angry

[Andy]

To view the article that these comments correspond to, please visit http://thisismyjoystick.com/editorial/s ... t-is-angry

[Neil]

Wikipedia is joining the Sopa Blackout.
http://blogs.ft.com/fttechhub/2012/01/w ... z1jemm5Mo1

On an even better note Rupert Murdoch isn't happy.
http://rt.com/usa/news/murdoch-obama-twitter-sopa-927/

[Trent]

I'm in two minds about this. My problem with it is that there'll be no grey areas, just black and white. So a game trailer from EA will land you the same jail term as a full episode of a TV show, despite the fact that the EA trailer is advertising and you'd actually be doing them a favour.

I'm hoping to get into the television industry, specifically TV drama. Most of TV is funded by advertising, the value of which will dwindle the more people are uploading TV series without adverts. If a company knows that the show it's advertising within will be likely watched by people on the internet they will be less likely to take out that ad. That's all well and good though, less money for the greedy corporate fat cats right? Wrong.

It means less money for the entire company or channel, about 90% of the staff of which are not greedy or fat but just regular people earning a half-decent wage. My fear is that companies will begin to make so little money from broadcast television that they can barely keep their own jobs let alone hire anyone else and the industry will be even more impenetrable. Then the internet will be flooded with the usual video trash and Youtube will be our sole source of visual entertainment, made entirely by lazy students and people with Flip HD cameras and Windows Movie Maker.

I'm all for internet freedom of course and this is where my other fear comes in. Governments, especially the US government, are notorious for passing sweeping laws that fail to distinguish between genuinely harmful stuff that needs to be stopped and petty bollocks that really doesn't matter. If they pass the bill everything from a screeny given to IGN to a full episode of Family Guy will be considered copyright and without crossing the t's and dotting the i's you go to prison for using either on your blog. Which sucks. If they don't, piracy continues to cut income from the film and TV industries until there's none left coming in and everyone loses their jobs, at which point the IT people and the coffee shop workers and the admin guys will whoop and holler with glee as they imagine fat men in suits crying when in reality it's people like me who will be the ones weeping. Of course the solution would be to prevent certain high-value content being pirated and assess whether other content should be allowed based on losses incurred to avoid both banning everything and ruining the media industry for good. But that won't happen and we all know it, either because we don't trust them to get it right or they can't be bothered in the first place.

Someone has to make the content and that person has to be paid because we all need money to live. If everything becomes available for free on the internet then how does anyone make any money? To me this isn't Activision charging extra to make more money despite the fact they know they'll make billions without charging extra. It's TV channels trying to justify the outlay to small production companies to make quality content for us to watch because they can't guarantee that half their audience won't pirate it for free off the net and their advertising partners will get even more vexed.

I don't think I'm supporting the bill I just thought I'd lodge my view from where I'm standing. All I'm saying is it's all well and good banding together and calling for free this and free that but when what you do for a living becomes unsellable and impossible to make money from then what the fuck do you do?

[Neil]

I agree mate, something does need to be done but there is currently a complete lack of distinction between a fan uploading something on Tumblr, You Tube, Facebook etc and someone downloading endless movies and TV Series on a daily basis. The lack of understanding shows when Lamar Smith himself has been proven to break his own rules by using somebody’s picture.

There is a story doing the rounds at the moment where you cannot legally view the famous Martin Luther King "I Have a Dream" speach without paying $10 which is just insane and proves how out of date the copyright laws are. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics ... rum/47460/

I do fear for the future of television, and with the increase of “Smart TVs” bringing You Tube to the living rooms, the only thing that will suffer is quality programme making and the decline is already plain to see when looking at the TV Schedules.

It’s a very complex problem that requires a sensible debate and lots of thought, I just hope that this is what is eventually used to manage the massive changes that are coming their way.