Where I stand on SOPA

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

(The following is a very cut-down version of what will be a much longer “But I Digress” in an upcoming issue of “Comic Buyer’s Guide.)

The denizens of the Internet are, for the most part, screaming foul and bloody murder and (of course) shouting for boycotts of any and all who are in support of SOPA and PIPA. Because when you want to show that you’re a firm advocate of free expression and unimpeded distribution of information, naturally the best way to do that is to try and financially punish and shun anyone who disagrees with you.

Now I don’t pretend to understand all the ramifications of SOPA. I’ve read a lot about it. Read position papers on both sides. I’m fairly convinced that, yes, SOPA goes too far in its current language. It should not be passed in its present form, and–if it does go forward–will likely be scaled down to something more manageable.

But oddly enough, I can’t find it within me to work up much outrage over it. I suppose I should. I’m a freedom of expression guy.

And yet, here’s what I keep coming back to…

And I address this not to the corporations on either side, fighting for their personal interests. And not to the congressmen who are punting SOPA around like a political hacky sack.

No, I’m talking to the owners of the various pirate sites who decided it was fine to post my novels for free downloads.

I’m talking to the guy in Florida who decided that he was going to unilaterally create his own online library and was blithely offering copyrighted comic book material to millions of people before the Feds nailed him.

I’m talking to the denizens of a website whose cavalier disregard for restrictions on how much of a comic book one could reproduce caused their entire site to be shut down and their response was—with a complete inability to accept the results of their own actions—to blame me for it.

I’m talking to everyone on the Internet who is the first to download the latest anti-virus ware to protect their own computers and digital property, but have zero trouble feeling a sense of misplaced entitlement that enables them to rationalize swiping other people’s intellectual property or enjoying it at no cost.

And if you’re not among those people…if you are, for instance, one of the fans who writes to me to inform me about pirate sites because you understand that theft is theft…then you’re off the hook, and you can kick back and watch me talk to everyone else.

Ladies…gentlemen…guys…gals…

What the hëll did you think was going to happen?

All you have to do is look at the recent history of advancing technology when it comes to copyrighted material. Every single time something comes along that involves reproduction of intellectual property, the owners of that property seek legal relief.

Now it’s easy to say that IP corporations are simply clueless. Sure, they screamed over, for instance, videotaping programs off televisions…and then they found ways to cash in on it. So what are they whining about now? They should just find ways to make money off the complete disregard for their copyrights, and all will be well.

Here’s the problem with that: they shouldn’t have to. The IP holders are being victimized here. They are in the right, and the pirates are in the wrong, which is what pirates typically are because if they were in the right, they wouldn’t be called pirates, they’d be called the navy.

There are plenty of Internet users who, while screaming loudly in protest, also endorsed the piracy, supported the piracy, enabled the piracy, felt their own actions weren’t piracy, and now refuse to accept the consequences of their own actions. Again.

If Newton’s Third Law of Motion is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, then David’s Third Law of Commotion is that, for every Internet action, there is an unequal and opposition reaction. Which is why Bill Maher can make a fairly mild joke on Twitter about Tim Tebow and the result is that the opposition declares him today’s public enemy number one and starts shouting it’s time to boycott HBO.

All people had to do in order to prevent anything like SOPA from ever coming into existence was respect copyright laws. You don’t bìŧçh that copyright law is outdated. You don’t declare that the rise of the Internet means that everyone, everywhere should have free access to everything. If you felt that strongly that copyright law should be changed, then you do what you’re supposed to do: you go to your elected officials and seek redress of grievances. You don’t just sit on your ášš in front of your computer screen, announce that you can do whatever you want, and declare that anyone who disagrees with you is clueless and should just pìšš øff. Because you know what? Maybe they are clueless. But they’ve also got high-powered lawyers who are going to seek redress of grievances, and suddenly you’re staring down the double cannon of SOPA and PIPA and wondering how it all went wrong.

Here’s how it went wrong: you let it happen. You made it happen. The Internet presented a wonderful power of communication that is unprecedented in the history of mankind. But with that great power comes great responsibility. And you just stood there and watched the bad guys go running past you, and you smiled under your mask of Internet anonymity and said, “Not my problem.” And suddenly Uncle Ben is worm food and you’re bellowing, “Hey! Not fair!” Well, “fair” and “unfair” can be, and often is, disputed. What is indisputable is that it was avoidable. All you had to do was condemn piracy. Instead you supported piracy (and probably still do) and declared that everyone else with a vested interest in copyright, who didn’t appreciate their material being stolen and never seeing any compensation for it, was just a dipshit.

You all think you’re John Connor in Terminator 2, fighting the good fight for the future. No, you’re not. John Connor is the copyright holder, confident in his rightness. The Terminator is his lawyer. And you’re one of the swaggering jocks getting the crap kicked out of him while John stands there smugly, his arms folded, saying, “Are you calling moi a dipshit?”

How can Internet denizens avoid the government trying to clamp down on piracy and, in doing so, threatening the freedom of the Internet? I’m reminded of the moment in the film Liar, Liar, where Jim Carrey’s lawyer character—compelled by his son’s birthday wish always to tell the truth—is informed that a recidivist client is on the phone. The client’s been arrested (this time for knocking over an ATM), and is asking for legal advice. Carrey grabs the receiver and shouts, “Stop breaking the law, áššhølë!”

One has to admire the common sense brevity of that advice.

PAD

313 comments on “Where I stand on SOPA”

  1. Two years ago, we had a similar act trying to get passed in Germany. Its goal: block access to websites. The front: child pornography. It was controversial, and obviously not because people were for child pornography. Nobody was. Everybody was in favour of prosecuting child pornography. But people didn’t like the act because it was not about prosecuting, it was about censoring websites – and on a not transparent basis at that.

    It’s not that there was any big child pornography thing on the web, or that people had to be protected from stumbling on it. That can only have been a front, possibly for protection of intellectual property, possibly for laying the basis for future censorship.

    You don’t need SOPA to prosecute, do you? But I admit I don’t know all that much about SOPA.

  2. .
    I pretty much agree with everything you said.
    .
    But I had issues with the overreach of SOPA it bothered me. It may be a law that needs to be made, but this wasn’t quite what it needed to be made into.

    1. The problem with laws is that they’re written by lawyers. They don’t use ten words when ten thousand will do, and they “What if” it to death. What if this happens, what if that happens. And they try to cover ever possible aspect, and then it gets out of control.
      .
      The core issue is piracy. But instead of going ship to ship to get the pirates, SOPA basically proposes covering the ocean with oil and then lighting it up.
      .
      PAD

      1. And, to continue the metaphor…

        thereby incinerating all the babies taking a bath in the ocean.

      2. Exactly. If the problem is piracy and the reproduction/dissemination of copyrighted material then you focus the law on stopping that.
        .
        SOPA’s approach seems to be “There’s a pickpocket in the back row, let’s kill everyone in the theater.”

    2. The problem here is even more specific: it’s written by lawyers who work for corporations who will do anything to make sure that the world is run according to their preferences.
      .
      This goes far beyond simply protecting IP. IP is already protected by a ton of laws, many of which were already written by these same corporations.
      .
      I’d love to see copyright law updated.
      .
      But I don’t have millions of dollars to pay lobbyists to extend copyright a few more decades as needed. I don’t have millions of dollars to buy off Congresscritters on the notion that we need a Great Firewall of America. I don’t have millions of dollars to guarantee that people who actually know something about technology are heard just as equally as the Old Guard who simply fears all technology.

      1. Extend the law a few decades as needed? They are already decades long. How much longer do they need to be? Perpetual? Look at computer programs – fifty years after the death of the programmer. insane! Who the heck will still be using those programs even thirty years from now, never mind sixty or seventy? Meanwhile, the public domain is vanishing. Not good.

      2. The point is exactly that: a few million dollars in the right pockets, and copyright was extended again beyond what was already too long a length of time.
        .
        And I’ve said it before: Disney is the worst in this regard. They’ve made so much money by taking from the public domain, and then they utterly refuse to allow their own creations to enter PD.
        .
        Copyright law needs to be updated, but the only ‘update’ we see is crap like SOPA from industries who refuse to change with the times, or copyright extensions by companies who don’t want to create anything new.

  3. I haven’t seen a whole lot of facts about these bills, mostly just hyperbole and jumping up and down. I am concerned at handing law enforcement a blank check, though.
    .
    My main questions are these: If existing laws already cover shutting down pirate sites, which they seem to do, why are SOPA and PIPA necessary? Second, are the laws narrow enough so as to only affect ‘outlaw’ sites or will this have a chilling effect on free communication of ideas. Third, are they enforceable or are they just one more example of pretending to do something while not actually accomplishing anything?

    1. I will preface my answers with these caveats:
      .
      1. I am not a lawyer in any way.
      2. I have not read the bills in question, so all of my information is second hand and may, as a result, be faulty.
      3. I mainly paid attention to the state of the bills about a month ago, and from what I understand, some provisions have been changed.
      .
      The reason the provisions of SOPA and PIPA were deemed necessary are because most of the offending servers are not subject to US law, but in countries where it is very hard for the copyright holders to shut them down. The solution envisioned was blocking those adresses at the DNS-level. The DNS-servers basically are the phonebook of the internet – if you type peterdavid.net into your browser, the browser sends a request to a DNS-server to find out the IP of the server – in this case 63.247.139.102. If this address was blocked, your browser would send you an error message, and you couldn’t access the site.
      .
      This, at least, was the theory; unfortunately, there are many ways to circumvent this block, from using a non-US DNS-server to finding out the IP address directly and entering it in your browser bar. Therefore, the laws would do little to stop piracy, as these solutions (and automated versions of these solutions so you do not even have to find the right IP address yourself) are easy to find if you are looking for them. The laws would mildly inconvenience pirates, but nothing more.
      .
      The second question exacerbates the problem, because no, these laws were not written to be narrow, they were basically written by these people:
      .
      http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/youtube-universal-megaupload/
      .
      As has been pointed out in other comments, the laws gave copyright holders (I am not sure how those were defined) the ability to immediately shut down a website, and the site’s owner then had to prove that he was not infringing.
      .
      While this would theoretically allow someone to take down facebook or google with a single email (or probably an actual letter by a lawyer), let’s face it, these are probably to big to actually get shut down – but what about a community like thatguywiththeglasses.com ? They are a community of internet reviewers of almost everything, from movies to comics and music and basically whatever strikes their fancy. They actually had problems because of a DMCA takedown notice because of a review of a movie, even though it was used under fair use guidelines (watch a video of the nostalgia critic, and you’ll see that he only takes a small amount of a work in order to illustrate points in his review). However, this takedown notice was only targeted against this single review; now, the whole site would be taken down, and with it the livelihood of many of the reviewers, and they then would have to try to get their address from the DNS blacklist.
      .
      Now, in the beginning I stated that it was easy to circumvent these protections, surely it would be easy for the fans of this site too? Yes, and many of its existing fans would probably find ways to do so, however, it makes it much harder for people to find it who are not already looking for it, which would drastically reduce the hits their videos get. I believe that these laws would therefore do more to hurt legitimate businesses than to stop the pirates, who are already hard at work to create an infrastructure to circumvent them.
      .
      I have to admit that I am somewhat torn on the concept of piracy. On the one hand, I am of the firm belief that a creator has a right to his work, and that he has the right to set the conditions under which I can consume this work, so if he sets a price (or has a corporation do that for him) and I consider it to high, then I always have the option of walking away and seek other entertainment where I feel the price point is more to my liking, or if a video game for example comes with DRM-measures that go beyond what I am willing to tolerate, I always have the option of not playing this particular game. On the other hand, there is the point made by Neil Gaiman in this video far better than I ever could:
      .
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI
      .
      I myself discovered two of my absolute favourite bands after I was given burned copies of their music, but then went on to go to their concerts and buy all their CDs.
      .
      Unfortunately, I do not see a way to actually stop piracy in any meaningful way as long as there are countries where these servers can be hosted with impunity without the level of control that is exerted by China. But just accepting this as the new societal status quo and telling the creators and distributors that they have to deal with it would be both unfair and giving up. I honestly have no idea what a solution to this situation would be, but I am certain that these laws are not it.

      1. I think Neil’s thoughts are very well put and well considered. I’d expect nothing less.
        .
        However, the key point (for me) is that he convinced his publisher to make “American Gods” free in Russia. HE decided it. In concert with HIS publisher.
        .
        What if *I* had decided to do an experiment by saying, “Let’s see what happens if I make one of Neil’s books available?” And I put up a bit stream version and made it widely available in Russia. Two months later, Neil finds out about it, comes to me and asks me what the hëll I think I’m doing. I say, “I wanted to see if your sales would go up. Did they?” He says, “Yes, by 300%.” So I say, “See? See there? I did you a favor! So you should be pleased with me!”
        .
        No, he shouldn’t. If he is, then he’s being extremely generous, because I don’t get to make that call on his behalf. Only he does. He has that right; I do not.
        .
        That’s why it’s called copyRIGHT.
        .
        PAD

    2. The problem, Jan, is that you and I are Americans and live in a country with a long history of copyright and patent protection. The rest of the world ain’t that way. For example, patent law in Japan is notoriously spongy, sometimes allowing parallel patents for, e.g., making a red one. It all goes to the constitutional grant — as I mentioned, this does NOT create property in any natural way but simply allows Congress to create an incentive for authors and inventors to share their work with society. Isaac Newton did not need protection for inventing the calculus — provided he kept the secret to himself. The constitutional grant is designed to get me to share my discoveries with others, and if the system works the way it should, that’s what it does. That’s why we don’t prosecute people for borrowing library books — that protection is not needed to encourage authors to write.

      Step outside the United States, and you may be entering a region which has no interest in advancing AMERICAN society, so to the extent there is no benefit generally to the world, why not steal? Or, so the thinking goes. Add to that the internet, and suddenly he who stole from Peter in Sweden suddenly is costing him sales in South Carolina. So, that’s the problem, and it has nothing to do with freedom of speech, though those with an interest in rip-offs may say so.

      SOPA appears to be heavy handed; but, it was introduced to redress this problem. And, if it’s to be defeated, some other way of preventing the abuse has to be found.

  4. I actually avoid the debate of copyright holders vs. piracy entirely because it’s a lot more drama than I’m prepared to deal with. 🙂

    However, what concerns me about SOPA and PIPA and bills like it is one word: Liability. As someone who runs a blog that allows comments, you should be worried a little about it too. If the law requires you to assume legal liability for all of the content of peterdavid.net, what if someone posts a comment to this blog containing a quote, a song lyric, or links to a picture without permission from the original author/artist?

    You could take it down, sure. But if there is a law that allows your domain to be disabled without warning, and you have to legally prove this will never, ever happen again to get it resumed again? That means you either need a staff to screen comments, or a full-time lawyer to get you out of trouble if you get busted. And that makes the simplest blog potentially very expensive to run.

    1. I’m not concerned for two reasons:
      .
      First, a quote, a song lyric, whatever, falls under fair use.
      .
      Second, because Glenn, Kathleen and I already patrol this site regularly. You guys have no idea how much stuff already gets screened out even before it gets posted. We’re performing due diligence. I’m pretty comfortable with that.
      .
      PAD

      1. Fair use is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it’s not enough.

        http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/08225217010/breaking-news-feds-falsely-censor-popular-blog-over-year-deny-all-due-process-hide-all-details.shtml

        It sounds like this particular case was more founded in an incompetent government employee than in any sinister attempt to censor and control, but that actually makes it scarier to me; it’s an example of how much the government can illegally censor, without cause, by accident, today.

      2. So what if it’s fair use? So what if you’re performing due diligence? The way SOPA was worded before being shelved, none of what you just said means a bucket load of squat. The rights holder wants your site down just because, and it’s down. Period. At that point the burden falls on the site owner to prove it was fair use, not the other way around and until he or she can – most likely in court unless a big fat settlement is handed over, no website. THAT is the issue we have with SOPA/PIPA.

        I don’t think the vast majority of consumers have any issue with creators wanting the ability to generate income from their IP protected (yes, I know there are people who do, but they’re outliers).

        But that is not the issue and is clouding the real issue, which is the burden of proof for all intents and purposes is shifted from the Plaintiff to the Defendant. THAT is the problem with SOPA/PIPA.

      3. Sounds like a sound approach, PAD. Sounds like you’re doing all that could be reasonably expected.
        .
        And we all know how folks who take reasonable precautions never get overrun by the law. Just as Gordon Lee.
        .
        .
        Point being, yes, pirates and those who support them have brought this on themselves. But SOPA as it is should be opposed anyway because that problem isn’t what it’s crafted to fight.
        .
        I find it ironic that someone who could so clearly (and rightly) point out to folks who fail to oppose the attacks on comic shops will find themselves without comic shops to visit isn’t equally vehement in opposing SOPA as it is.

      4. “Equally vehement,” Sean? I said I opposed it. I said it should not be passed.
        .
        The problem is that I’m not displaying the requisite amount of moral outrage as many others.
        .
        Here’s the thing: I’ve had material stolen from me. They haven’t. I’ve had my rights disrespected. They haven’t. Except now they’re looking at having their material (their websites) taken from them. They’re looking at having their rights (to ready access to the Internet) being disrespected.
        .
        So NOW they’re going batshit over it. Because they’re being put into the exact same position that IP holders have been facing for years.
        .
        To quote John McClane: Welcome to the party, pal.
        .
        PAD

      5. Peter –
        .
        Yeah, I new “vehement” was going to get flagged as a strong choice of words.
        .
        A quick search finds at least two columns where you write forcefully about Planet Comics and/or the unfair/unjust treatment of folks being persecuted for selling comics and make a strong argument for how folks should contribute $10 to CBLDF.
        .
        I’m not failing to recognize at all that you stated your opposition to SOPA as it currently stands. But I do see a difference between what you wrote here for several paragraphs warning of the consequences of folks didn’t stand up an oppose the censorship, and “I’m fairly convinced that, yes, SOPA goes too far in its current language. It should not be passed in its present form,”
        .
        To my eyes, it’s “Guys, I”m convinced this is a really bad thing and if you don’t see that then you’re going to end up paying for it so you have got to fight against this.” vs “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s something that we shouldn’t want to happen.”
        .
        Hence my comment on the “vehemence”. The sentiments seem the same, but the forcefulness with which you make them differs.

      6. I was plenty forceful, Sean. You just don’t like where I aimed that force.
        .
        Because I don’t think that SOPA needs yet another person to say what everyone else is saying. I say “I think SOPA shouldn’t be passed” and people mentally check off, “Peter David agrees with me” and they move on. They don’t give consideration to anything beyond that. In all my reading about the topic, I didn’t notice anyone saying, in effect, “Yeah, this is a dìçk move, but you know what? When a lot of people on one side are acting like dìçkš, dìçk moves from the other side are the inevitable result.”
        .
        So I thought I’d say that instead.
        .
        With vehemence.
        .
        PAD

      7. “Yeah, this is a dìçk move, but you know what? When a lot of people on one side are acting like dìçkš, dìçk moves from the other side are the inevitable result.”

        Why do you choose to think that there are more people being dìçkš than aren’t?

      8. PAD: “You just don’t like where I aimed that force.”
        .
        I don’t think I expressed an opinion on what you were saying, or indicated that I disagreed with it. Only commented on how strongly you seemed to be saying it.

      9. .
        “Why do you choose to think that there are more people being dìçkš than aren’t?”
        .
        He may not be. That’s your assumption. I’ve never gotten that from a reading of any of his discussions about online piracy at least.
        .
        But the fact remains that the few do tend to screw things up for the many. Lots of people drink. Huge populations of people drinking responsibly every weekend doesn’t make the news. What makes the news is the few idiots who get mean and start fights or who kill someone in a DUI incident.
        .
        People react. Laws are written. Not all of them are good and some overreach. When the laws overreach, even the nondrinkers occasionally stand up, take notice and speak out against the stupidity of the overreaching law created in reaction to the acts of the few.
        .
        I think at this point in the thread’s existence I can safely say that Peter is on roughly the same page as I am at this point. I know that there are more people legally purchasing things than pirating them. I know that this minority of “fans” should be dealt with through legal means. I also know that there should be some discretion in the law based on the desires of the artist and publishers. I also know that SOPA was not the law that needed to be put into place.

      10. I don’t think I expressed an opinion on what you were saying, or indicated that I disagreed with it. Only commented on how strongly you seemed to be saying it.
        .
        Fair enough.
        .
        PAD

  5. I’m talking to the guy in Florida who decided that he was going to unilaterally create his own online library and was blithely offering copyrighted comic book material to millions of people before the Feds nailed him.
    .
    I’m talking to the denizens of a website whose cavalier disregard for restrictions on how much of a comic book one could reproduce caused their entire site to be shut down…
    .
    It looks like anti-piracy tools exist right now.
    .
    Because a deSOPA tool already exists for FireFox, I’m not sure how SOPA will provide better anti-piracy tools than what we have now.

    1. .
      Take a peek at the “About this Add-on” bit in your link. This add on is brand spanking new and made by someone in response to SOPA. You then might want to look at the user comments. It’s not really an anti-piracy tool. It’s more of a filter and it seems block people from logging in to their own accounts on various websites.

  6. Beautifully said, sir. I don’t care for SOPA at all, but I care even less for the dipshits you reference. A few people here might remember the huge brouhaha on Usenet when the Generations script was posted in its entirety; I remember how thankless a job it was arguing against that then, and it’s so very much worse now. Sheesh.

  7. The thing is – as written, SOPA will do nothing to curb the Pirates – because they’re tech savvy and know how to enter an IP address. Meanwhile, everyone else will be at the whim of corporations and government deciding which sites should and should not be seen. Yay.

  9. I first learned about SOPA through Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a one-day knowledge blackout of the English Wikipedia that will begin in less than 13 hours (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout) in protest of the bill.
    .
    What I don’t get is, what’s this going to do? How will shutting down one’s site prevent the bill from getting passed?
    .
    I’ve tried looking into this bill, but can’t make heads or tails of it. What aspects of it are far-reaching or restrictive in free expression?

    1. Here’s a company known as Good Old Games who sells older PC games all across the world without DRM (digital rights management); in other words their entire business model is based around good-faith and respect for their customers that they will use their products after they purchase them. Here is their take on SOPA and PIPA: http://www.gog.com/en/news/gog_com_joins_opposition_to_sopa_and_pipa

      The escalation against piracy continues, and it proves the Kang Corollary, itself a critcism of Mutually Assured Destruction: They’ll make bigger boards and bigger nails, and soon, they will make a board with a nail so big, it will destroy them all! Bad legislation is bad legislation, regardless if you agree that the alleged target, “piracy”, needs to be stopped. Similarly: it’s why NDAA is bad legislation even if terrorists need to be stopped.

      If you find yourself agreeing with the worst Congress ever, it is time to stop and reconsider.

      1. Actually, from what I’ve seen, the fight against piracy has been more like, “they build a bigger board, the pirates get bigger termites.” It’s a 21st-century arms race between the protectors and the hackers.

      2. Oh, and the Kang thing was really more of a spoof of the heavy-handed post-nuclear moralizing of ’50s sci-fi.

    2. .
      “What I don’t get is, what’s this going to do? How will shutting down one’s site prevent the bill from getting passed?”
      .
      I think it’s just an awareness thing, Luigi. The vast majority of the people out there who use the various sites that blacked out likely either knew nothing about SOPA or very little. This thing makes people aware and the smart sites linked to information pages to learn what SOPA was about and why people dislike it so.
      .
      It also gave you a look at the future. Under SOPA, you could very easily go to WIKI, Youtube or some other site and, despite the best efforts of the site administrators, find the site shut down due to complaints of copyright violations found on various pages of the site. So it kind of made killed two birds with one stone and, depending on how you view it, made at least one point and maybe both points well.

  10. You know those grannies getting killed by mistaken S.W.A.T. teams? The ones who then have drugs planted on them to retroactively justify the raid?

    All people had to do in order for that not to happen was not take drugs.

    1. .
      You know all those people who make themselves look like complete dim bulbs by posting really dumb posts about things like grannies getting killed and having drugs planted on them because they don’t have the brains to make an intelligent post? All those people needed to do was stay away from the computer to begin with and just not post to avoid the problem of looking like such a complete dim bulb.

  11. If SOPA existed fifteen years ago, the Internet as we know it today would not exist. Seriously. Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, maybe even Facebook… these sites simply would not exist. How many new ideas and innovations would be lost because of those first two, alone?

    I take fundamental issue with the idea of “IP holders”. Because we’re not talking about creators, we’re talking about persons or entities which simply “own” intellectual property and use it to print money.

    Copyright was designed to expire, but that deadline keeps getting pushed back. Superman and Mickey Mouse will never enter the public domain because there’s too much money invested in ideas which were already old in my grandfather’s time, created by men who have been dead for long time.

    Piracy is not a noble endeavor… but neither is perpetual copyright. Ideas are rented, not owned. There’s an essential cultural value to the duration (and expiration) of copyright. SOPA will harm our culture. It serves only corporate interests. Just like with the DMCA, not one “little guy” will benefit from this kind of legislation.

    Sometimes standing against censorship means tolerating some pornography. Sometimes it means piracy, too.

    1. If SOPA existed fifteen years ago, the Internet as we know it today would not exist. Seriously. Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, maybe even Facebook… these sites simply would not exist.
      .
      Oh, the horror! The horror of that prospect. The notion that something that didn’t exist thirty years ago might not exist now!
      .
      How would I look up information? Well, I’d use my reference books, edited by professionals.
      .
      How would I talk to friends far away? It would require the invention of some sort of magical device that I could pick up, dial a number, and transmit my voice through the air.
      .
      How would I talk to people I’ve never met? I, uh…I wouldn’t.
      .
      How would I prevent my books being instantly distributed for free to hundreds of thousands of people? Uhm…I wouldn’t have to.
      .
      How would I possibly get my opinions on topics out to a wide audience? My God, I’d have to get some sort of regular column to do that.
      .
      How would I get comic book scripts to my editors? I’d be reduced to faxing them. How would I get book manuscripts to my publishers? I’d have to mail them.
      .
      HOW WOULD I SURVIVE WITHOUT THE INTERNET?!?
      .
      Oh, wait. I did. For over half my life.
      .
      What Internet companies are calling “blackout” day, I spent decades calling “Wednesday.”
      .
      And I find this statement to be monumentally arrogant:
      .
      Because we’re not talking about creators, we’re talking about persons or entities which simply “own” intellectual property and use it to print money.
      .
      Bûllšhìŧ. I call bûllšhìŧ. I’m a creator, and so are all my fellow writers at http://www.crazy8press.com. I make it clear: I’m not speaking on their behalf. I haven’t even discussed it with them. But we’re putting our own money, sweat and tears into putting our own work out there, and your flat out dismissial of the legal protection of copyright is exactly the sort of high-handed, self-absorbed misplaced sense of entitlement that I’m always railing about. You are neither part of the solution nor part of the problem. You ARE the problem.
      .
      PAD

      1. “How would I prevent my books being instantly distributed for free to hundreds of thousands of people? Uhm…I wouldn’t have to.”
        .
        Bûllšhìŧ. I call bûllšhìŧ. You would have to, actually, because SOPA can’t do a gøddámņ thing about torrents, the main vehicle piracy flourishes thanks to the previous board with a nail in it certain corporations brandished: http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-pipasopa-wont-stop-us120117/
        .
        To be fair, not all corporations are for SOPA (GOG, as I previously mentioned, as well as Valve with its successful Steam client), and have excellent attitudes on how to combat piracy. Gabe Newell of Valve said: “Pirates are underserved customers”. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090219/1124433835.shtml
        .
        Consider Apple, who thanks to iTunes, made BUYING digital music a viable substitute to stealing it: http://www.classicyuppie.com/2011/12/think-apple-supports-sopa-check-your-facts/
        .
        Amazon is rightly against it as well. Considering the successes Amazon is having with the Kindle, and Apple’s iPad with eBooks (including comic books), Newell’s words ring true.
        .
        And your approach with Crazy 8 Press, adding more of your work to the digital realm with fair pricing (as you are doing with Darkness of the Light), succeeds on exactly what Newell said.
        .
        Also interesting how Crazy 8 Press’ website also condemns corporations for exactly what Newell argues causes piracy— what publisher indifference could there be other than a lack of concern of the consumer? That cuts both ways, you know.

      2. “How would I prevent my books being instantly distributed for free to hundreds of thousands of people? Uhm…I wouldn’t have to.”
        .
        Bûllšhìŧ. I call bûllšhìŧ. You would have to, actually, because SOPA can’t do a gøddámņ thing about torrents…
        .
        Chris, you seriously need to work on your reading comprehension. Because both of your posts have mangled everything I’ve said.
        .
        First you say that I “agree” with Congress even though I specifically said I thought SOPA shouldn’t pass. And now you’re saying that if the Internet did not exist (which was the proposition to the comment I was responding to) then I would have to find means of stopping pirates from distributing books through bit torrents. Really? Bit torrents and Internet theft without the Internet. How would that work, exactly?
        .
        “A lack of concern about the consumer?” Okay, Chris, I want you to think about what you just wrote. I want you to see where you’ve gone off the rails. Think hard. Got it yet? No? Okay, here it is:
        .
        Consumers are paying customers.
        .
        Pirates aren’t.
        .
        PAD

      3. You are misdirecting at me. I am not saying that copyright shouldn’t be upheld. I am not saying that I deserve to pirate copyrighted material — in fact, I’m not saying that I pirate at all. Copyright is extremely important. Expiration of copyright is just as important.
        .
        People, generally, would respect copyright much more if it weren’t in such a ridiculous state. I have, personally, written to my congressman. I’ve faxed my state senator. I always receive a form letter in reply, with a trite explanation of how more control means better business, for them and for me (sure). Then I get spammed by their mailing lists. SOPA is not designed to protect Crazy 8 Press. They’re not big enough. It’s designed to protect entrenched media.
        .
        I don’t like the way you’ve dismissed the impact of the Internet. Things like Facebook and quickly looking up information, yes, those are matters of convenience. *Access* to information is meaningful. Being able to access, reference, and contribute to such information without corporate resources is huge. The influence of the Internet has such a greater reach than the online world. It has expanded technological innovation far beyond someone goofing around on Facebook.
        .
        In fact, it’s quite cruel of you to dismiss Facebook or Twitter when they’ve lately been at the hearts of political revolutions. They’re platforms for issues both trivial and important and have empowered people in a way that did not exist in the 90’s. If Occupy Wall Street is in _any_ way impactful, it will be entirely because of the Internet. Are they just self-entitled bums with illegitimate grievances, too?
        .
        Our discourse would not be possible fifteen years ago. I don’t write cool fiction. I’m not a published author. I don’t have a magazine column. Is your opinion more profound than mine, as a result? Are words more meaningful when printed under a price tag?
        .
        Two wrongs don’t make a right, but certain scenarios are better for the majority. If I had to choose, I would choose copyright anarchy over the draconian alternative. The Internet gives us that choice. Or so I think. SOPA would strip even the illusion from me.
        .
        Until I grab it on iTunes for $1.29.

      4. Fair enough, though when it comes to reading comprehension you might should consider the same. The person to whom you responded earlier didn’t say the internet wouldn’t exist, just that it wouldn’t exist as it is today. So, my apologies for not allowing you to move the goal post away from his hypothetical.
        .
        And you said I claim you agree with Congress BUT that was a post directed toward Luigi Novi and the subject of the claim was nebulous— I didn’t say WHO was agreeing with this Congress only that IF you agree with this Congress.
        .
        As for pirates not being consumers, take your argument with Newell and Valve— their successful business model continues to win despite the crap economy for years now: http://lambdageneration.com/posts/2011-a-record-year-for-steam-steam-sales-up-100-since-last-last-year-and-so-on-and-so-forth/

      5. “If I had to choose, I would choose copyright anarchy over the draconian alternative.”
        .
        It’s not a binary choice, and probably the biggest stumbling block to my taking net-heads seriously is their continued willful ignorance of that fact.

      6. For crying out loud, PAD, stop complaining. How much figures in your royalties ? Five, six or have you reached seven already ? I have one number in mine, and its a zero. You’re part of the old-boys-club, I’m a Dutch nobody, who probably will never get published. (Even if somebody accepts my books, as soon as they find out I have PDD-NOS, they are gonna use it to stab me in the back and dump me.)

        Your blog gets followed, but mine is somewhere in the depths of the Internet, uncommented on. Your bosses respect you, mine treat me like I’m a walking, chromed toaster.

      7. And, he added, anarchy isn’t a sustainable state. History has shown us time and again that anarchy is merely a gap between two tyrannies.

      8. My point, Matt, which you again seem to be ignoring, is that the Internet is not the be-all/end-all tool that many seem to think it is. In fact, all you’re doing is reinforcing it. Somehow, at various times, the Russians, the French, the Americans, and countless others have all managed to have revolutions just fine without the existence of either the Internet or any other means electronic dissemination of information. The Internet may have expedited it, yes.
        .
        The bottom line is that you praise the Internet for choice. But you don’t really believe in choice for all; just for yourself. Well, and for those with whom you agree.
        .
        See, I really DO believe in choice, at least when it comes to one’s property. There are plenty of people out there–people whom I respect–who have absolutely no trouble with their material being disseminated for free. They choose to see what they believe are positives. And that’s fine; that’s their choice. I respect that. I, on the other hand, feel differently. I feel that people should not have the right to swipe the material, even if it does benefit me financially.
        .
        Do people who disagree respect THAT choice? Do they acknowledge that someone should have a right to decide what should be done with their body…of work? Hëll no. Instead they proudly wave the flag of “copyright anarchy” as being preferable.
        .
        I find your assumptions curious You suggest that Crazy 8 would be far too small to warrant aid via the government when it comes to material being protected. But on the other hand, every website on the net, no matter how small, would be in imminent danger if SOPA passed.
        .
        It’s just so strange, this notion that my saying SOPA shouldn’t pass is insufficient; I have to elevate Internet rights above all…including an author’s right to choose.
        .
        PAD

      9. Michael: One certainly precludes the other. No, the reality doesn’t fall at those extremes. Yet. With SOPA, it would. SOPA *is* that extreme. It will be more damaging to our culture (the F-word: fascism), if beneficial to certain business models, than if there were no copyright at all. Faced with those two extremes, one is better for the majority. Limited copyright is best of all.
        .
        However, as I said earlier, Superman and Mickey Mouse will never be allowed to enter the public domain.

      10. Consumers are paying customers.
        .
        And corporations treat them like šhìŧ.
        .
        Meanwhile, none of this, including SOPA/PIPA, will actually stop unauthorized copying (calling it piracy is a joke).
        .
        Those making unauthorized copies will often get a better product – one without DRM or FBI notices attached that nobody reads anyways – because the corporations refuse to do so themselves.

      11. David: I don’t disrespect or dismiss your opinion, nor do I not understand your position and where you’re coming from. I empathize entirely, and I disagree for what I believe to be wholly rational reasons. I hate to make this comparison, but I think it’s accurate: I disagree and understand your position in the same way that I understand and disagree with the anti-abortion stance. I think that the end result is more beneficial to the individual and thus to society.
        .
        The Internet is a tool which empowers me. Maybe I (or someone else) am just not smart enough or driven enough or brave enough to make a difference without it. A screwdriver and a diagram help me build a shelf, and the Internet helps me contribute to some kind of discourse.
        .
        Can it be done otherwise? Yes, it can. But MUST it?
        .
        The Internet is not all that there is, but it’s all that some people have. That’s an important distinction, and it’s worth protecting. SOPA is censorship, and the old rhetoric that “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.” is extremely important to me.
        .
        Freedom of anything will come with bad things. I think they’re worth it… because copyright anarchy won’t ever actually happen. Yet the opposite extreme seems within our sights.

      12. What I neglected to add, is that while you recognize that SOPA is extreme, it does seem that you empathize with it in some way, and it seems that you would support a toned-down version of the bill in what I see as a climate that is ALREADY too extreme with copyright protections (opinion, of course). This is where the friction comes from.

      13. So, *any* protection against downloading is too close to fascism (oh, if there’s a more overused word in Internet discussions, I don’t know it) for you? Because if that’s seriously your position, then all I can say is “get a grip.”
        .
        As for the Internet being the only tool allowing you to take part in some kind of discourse, then I suggest (a) investing some time in getting some real-life friends and (b) raising your standards of discourse. 99% of Internet conversations are glorified small talk. And, while protestors may use the Internet to coordinate their activities, real activism is still 100% the province of meatspace.

      14. Michael, that was not my phrasing, and there’s no need to be derisive and assume that I spend my whole life online… or to assume that there’s nothing worthwhile on the Internet if I do. Quite the opposite. I have contributed to more charities/projects which matter on a personal level (Child’s Play and Kickstarter, anyone?) and have been motivated to do many real-world things as a direct result of the Internet. It has offered me a point of view and an exposure that would otherwise be next to impossible.
        .
        Maybe you live in a state or town with a lot of like-minded individuals. Maybe I don’t. And maybe there’s not a lot of value in having your point of view constantly validated (or rejected). I know there’s no value in looking to, say, cable television for worthwhile alternatives.

      15. *Bow*

        A forward-looking individual who remembers there WAS a world before Internet, before Electronic Mail, before Crackberries and the like. In some ways I sort of miss it. Things moved slower and people weren’t as impatient as they often are, njot. “Why haven’t I gotten an answer? It’s been at least five minutes!” just wasn’t a problem where getting a reply to an overseas letter could take a couple of weeks. What of it? And people seemed to pay more attention to each other rather than to the gadgets.

        But maybe it’s just me …

      16. Peter David: Oh, the horror! The horror of that prospect. The notion that something that didn’t exist thirty years ago might not exist now!
        Luigi Novi: Well yeah, it would be horrible, because the Internet has made things like phones, faxes, and snail mail partially or entirely obsolete precisely because it’s better, cheaper and faster than those things, and because not everyone has access to a published column like you do. The Internet has opened up countless opportunities, made our lives far more convenient, and become an invaluable resource, and it’s for that reason going back to not having it would indeed be horrible.

      17. Luigi – Yes, and no. Internet may be usually faster than regular mail, but cheaper? How many letters could you send for the price of that computer? And better? If there is something important or urgent, I’ll use the phone. Electronic mail is not as reliable as people think it is. And I’d rather receive (or send) a real Christmas (or birthday) card than an electronic one any day. And that phone thing? I use a twenty year old plugged in the wall phone. The quality (and reliability) of the sound is better than any I’ve seen through Voice-Over-IP (Internet phone by any other name).

      19. .
        Ruben Hilbers, I’m again somewhat confused by how your points are supposed to actually be taken seriously. Okay, you haven’t made it big and Peter has. Peter has a blog that draws interest from fans and passers-by and your blog doesn’t. You feel that Peter has bosses that respect him while you feel you do not.
        .
        Uhm… Okay… And this all translates into an intelligent and valid point that Peter is meant to just lay down and accept the theft of his work… How?
        .
        Seriously, how is any of what you said a point? I have a blog that gets a fraction of the notice that Peter’s gets. I’ve written some things that have totally failed to get picked up or sold. I’m an American “nobody” who may will never get published unless I self publish through Amazon or something. So how is it that I have no issue at all with Peter and others defending their livelihoods against the threats of internet piracy? How is it that you and I can say the exact same things about ourselves in these matters and say things that are completely opposite from each other on this matter?
        .
        Oh, wait, I know why. It’s because nothing you said is in any way relevant or pertinent to the topic. Let me help you get refocused a bit with some simple questions.
        .
        Do you think that stealing is wrong?
        Do you view theft as a bad thing in general?
        Do you view theft as a bad thing when done to you?
        Do you believe that you yourself should be paid for your hard work?
        .
        If your answers are –
        .
        Yes
        Yes
        Yes
        Yes
        .
        – then you’re on the same page here. If those are your answers and you then twist everything around in your head until you’ve convinced yourself that those are the right answers unless you have determined that someone is too successful to not be able to protest theft of their work or from the source of their livelihood… You really, really need to reevaluate.
        .
        Internet piracy and your stand on it should really break down into one very easy to understand concept. You wouldn’t like it if someone stole from you, so why on Earth would you think that you stealing from someone else is just fine and dandy?
        .
        Pretty simple really.

  12. Copyright holders already have a way to gain legal redress, it’s called the law. SOPA is an end run around the law that declares guilty until proven innocent without judicial involvement.

    SOPA is a knee jerk reaction to prop up corporations and industries that technology is destroying. Should we really shed a tear for the music corporations, who were once the gatekeepers that determined what we would listen to? Anyone who has followed their continued attempts to survive will have seen their despicable attempts to close the new avenues available to creative commons artists or artists who just didn’t want to walk into their world. And you want to put the power of SOPA into the hands of these people? You want to turn every corporation, politician individual into the internet version of Judge Dredd.

    If you want to live in a free society then you have to accept the good with the bad.

  13. PAD did a terrific job critiquing the mindset (“Everything should be available on the Internet! For free! Because we want it! And we’re somehow entitled to it!”) and subsequent actions of people that led to the creation of SOPA. It actually reminds me a lot of the Napster debates, where people argued with a straight face that they should be able to download whatever music they want for free, because they can do so online. (And this is *not* a critique of the Internet. The Internet is a tool, inherently neutral and only as good or bad as what it’s used for. ‘Tis a pity so many people use it to get as much free stuff as they can for themselves.)

    As for SOPA, I don’t know all the intricacies it contains, whether it’ll stop online piracy or start busting bloggers who post a copy of a book cover or movie poster for a review. I suspect, like with most laws, it’ll get challenged and revised over time.

    I’m also amazed at many of the “corporations are evil, they’ll use SOPA for pure profit, and copyright has been used and abused too much” comments here. (“Should we really shed a tear for the music corporations, who were once the gatekeepers that determined what we would listen to?”) It seems to me that many of these folks are fine with stealing — I’m sorry, downloading or viewing without paying for — the products of these evil entities, yet suddenly indignant and offended that the companies might want to be (shudder) paid for the things they produce! Sometimes it reads like a right-wing caricature of the Occupy Wall Street movement, where folks expect something for nothing and object to the big, mean companies daring to make any money from what they do.

    1. Really James, because I won’t shed a tear when the old corrupt music system dies, I’m advocating piracy? You might want to read the whole statement in context!

      I pay for my music, but I don’t pay the evil entities, that is right. I look for artists on iTunes who are distributing their own work. I used to dig through myspace and find unsigned excellent artists and buy their music.

      You really think the music industry likes the fact that today an artist can easily gain in popularity by selling their music on iTunes. The RIAA has spent millions trying to block their avenues of access. Ever wonder why Prince was given a very lucrative contract even though he hasn’t had a real hit since the 90s. You might take notice of the fact that at the same time he signed that contract he quit speaking out how the unsigned artist could still get their music out there. This is only one example of the roadblocks this industry that is going the way of the dodo is fighting to stay in business as it’s business model becomes antiquated and unworkable.

      On top of that how many modern conveniences have we been told by these very same industries are “piracy” when they first appeared? Should we name a few? Audio tape recorders, Beta then VHS, DAT recorders, CD recorders, DVRs all things that were labeled piracy and sued over. Heck if I do buy a label’s work, I go to the used media store and pick the album up there and back in the early 90’s Garth Brooks was making commercials labeling me a thief.

      I remember back in the late 80s watching a recording studio owner, on the news, rant that DAT was evil and should be illegal. Should we cry that technology killed his business model and allowed the average artist to make high quality recordings from the comfort of garage or basement? That owner sure as heck thought the new technology should be outlawed so that he could keep his antiquated business going.

      Libraries have been labeled thievery by some. I listened to an interview with an author once who was calling anyone who shared one of his books with a friend and didn’t make that friend buy a new copy, a thief!

      The thing is technology is disruptive and at some point in the future, even if SOPA passes into law the monetizing models will have to be changed because technology has made them antiquated. These laws only delay the inevitable. I’m not for piracy, I am a photographer and I want paid for my artistic endeavors as much as the next guy. But technology has forced me to change my business model digital cameras, color scanners, high quality inkjet printing destroyed the business model for photography that has existed since the first tin type camera. For years the PPA has tried to champion legislation protecting the old business model, photographers whined, studio’s closed and even today a few still try to hold onto the past…

    2. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve never understood how internet piracy wasn’t simply an easier form of stealing. Well put James and Peter D.

  14. I actually just got off the phone with my senators’ offices letting them know that if they continue to support (they’re co-sponsors even) and ultimately vote for PIPA, I will not be voting for them when next they seek election.

  15. Peter,
    If you don’t like people stealing your works, go after them with the very old laws that make that a crime. Or let your agent or publisher or trade association do it.

    But SOPA breaks the net. As written, it’ll preclude DNS-SEC from working, which is a rather useful security protocol that allows me to know that “peterdavid.net” actually points to your site, and not that of some evildoer who wants to harvest the email addresses of everyone who posts here. SOPA is about turning the internet into television, where only the Big Guys get to create content, and the rest of us only exist to consume it.

    1. Again, Matthew: missing the point completely. I already said I opposed it. Yet you, and other Internet users, aren’t satisfied with that. Opposition isn’t enough. I must be seized with the same moral outrage that others are. Because they feel that the way they live their lives is being threatened. And unless I completely agree and share that same indignation, then the wrongness of how I oppose SOPA, i.e., without the vehemence that they do, must be endlessly explained to me. By people who don’t understand that they’re up in arms for basically the same reason IP owners are: their means of doing business could be crippled.
      .
      It is an example of “irony” in its purest sense.
      .
      PAD

  16. I’m all for stopping theft and I spend WAY to much on comics, books and software .. in fact I think I have only 4 or 5 free programs on my Android Galaxy Nexus … and at last count I had 78 long boxes of comics, 400+ hardcover novels and literally hundreds of paperbacks and now more epubs. But what I won’t stand for is media generating companies full of lawyers breaking the internet which I’ve been a part of building over the last 20 years. And from a technical standpoint this law unless completely rewritten will do just that. I never thought of the internet as a giant mini-mall and I doubt the creators of what make the internet work ever did either.

    Please be aware that I don’t file share and I lecture friends who do on this very subject. It’s wrong. VERY wrong. Now am I a believer in DRM .. NOPE. Every book I buy gets promptly washed by a python script to strip the DRM right off of it. I bought it. I own it. Will I share a book with the world … NO. Will I share a book with a friend as I have with paperbacks for the better part of 37 years … sometimes. Does it irritate me that I can’t sell comics and books that are digital .. a little but not that much. Is a load crap that publishers priced hardcovers and paperbacks differently because of the cost of shipping and producing while the content did not differ .. now they say $15 for a epub is justified just because we the public are paying for content and not format … yes … total CRAP.

    I could go on but the bottom line is … DON’T think that the geeks who built this wondrous thing called the internet will sit back while lawyers from the RIAA, MPAA and other AA’s destroy it with stupidity and a lust for the almighty buck … we won’t. WE wish to reach Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future and a bunch of lawyers won’t stand in the way. It’s simple.

    1. I thought it was government and military scientists who built the Internet, not downloaders.
      .
      And I’m pretty sure they never did a Trek episode where Kirk fights valiantly for the right to get something without paying for it.

      1. “I thought it was government and military scientists who built the Internet, not downloaders.”
        .
        Is like saying New York City is today as the Dutch established it nearly 400 years ago.

      2. And I’m pretty sure they never did a Trek episode where Kirk fights valiantly for the right to get something without paying for it
        .
        Do all the ones where he had sex count?
        .
        PAD

      4. Michael, your argument is weak. You are saying that either someone has to fully support the “final solution” to Media’s issues with piracy or be in favor of piracy. It’s a bull**** statement and you know it.
        Also, no .. DARPA didn’t BUILD the internet but funded a great deal of it. Dennis Rich created C/UNIX but wasn’t a government employee. Vince Cerf started as a DARPA employee but inventing TCP/IP does not mean dude built the internet. It was a huge effort by a lot of people and frankly the Gov. played a very small part after the mid-80’s AND thank God for that or the would have f***** it up really good. 🙂

        So .. remember fighting piracy does not mean burn the house down .. there is no “final solution”. And go back READ 99% of what I wrote. I’m pretty sure that I spend thousands a year on media.

      5. .
        “And I’m pretty sure they never did a Trek episode where Kirk fights valiantly for the right to get something without paying for it”
        .
        Kinda tough to do anyhow. They could never make up their minds on money and the future. Half the time they made out as if they didn’t use money anymore, and then they would turn around and base a plot around a character trying to get rich.
        .
        Consistent and logical continuity; who needs it anyhow? Ðámņëd sure never hurt the X-Men by not having any.

  17. Also, I know quite a few at large tech companies who are planning a very real blackout to protest this. This should be interesting because these people aren’t about the file traders and whatnot … they are about the tech and freedom which a digital police state does not offer.

    1. Yeah, THAT’S a spine-chilling notion. Tomorrow is supposed to be a day without a number of major Internet providers being available. You know what I called that while I was growing up? Wednesday.
      .
      PAD

      1. So gonna walk up hill both ways to get to the store, eh? Not cool to go all old coot and belittle a very important right .. the right to protest the stupidity of others. Care to toss a few OWS people under the bus as well .. maybe invent a time machine and go back to the 60’s an take out a few protestors in Alabama? 😉

        What a nonsensical statement … Wednesday indeed.

      2. Actually, Ben, you missed the point. One doesn’t have to be an old coot to remember a time when there was no Internet. All I’m saying is that I find it not the least bit intimidating to face the prospect of a day without Internet resources. To some people, it’s an absolute essential. To me, it’s simply a convenience. And frankly, I resent the hëll out of your insinuation that I’m somehow opposed to the rise of civil rights. That is a cheap shot and without foundation, and your cute little smiley face cuts no ice with me when you’re tossing around calumnies like that.
        .
        PAD

      3. Your reply to Ben makes sense, but I can tell you don’t work in an IT department, as I do, and whose clients panic when it takes their Crackberries a few seconds more to synch their mail accounts. I am NOT looking forward to tomorrow, even if those outages won’t bother me personally.

  18. And tomorrow, the headlines will all read, “Peter David Supports Censorship Of The Internet!”
    .
    (Incidentally, while I’ve never seen “Liar, Liar,” I was put in mind of the West Wing bit where Bartlet gets a call from a UN ambassador pìššëd about parking tickets and shouts, “You can’t park there! There are big signs! I hope you get towed to Queens!”

    1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWvnRzMAXVM
      .
      Actually I like the reaction of the young female aide in the Oval Office who just kind of gets the hëll out of there, probably because she’s worried she’ll somehow get caught in the fallout.
      .
      Oh, and just in case anyone’s wondering, I’m pretty sure linking to a 48 second clip falls under fair use.
      .
      PAD

      1. Oh, and just in case anyone’s wondering, I’m pretty sure linking to a 48 second clip falls under fair use.
        .
        Ahh, yes: fair use.
        .
        Something else also under attack by the very same corporations who try and buy laws like SOPA.

      2. They can try to attack fair use all they want. And I would hope that the Supreme Court would rule any laws infringing upon Fair Use as being unconstitutional.
        .
        PAD

      3. “Fair use” isn’t safe: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/318017 You would have to wait for it to work itself to SCOTUS while in the mean time seeing it suffer.
        .
        Also, we’re talking about NBC/Universal, who owns and publishes the West Wing. I doubt Youtube user “Kelseyshuan” is affiliated in any way with NBC/Universal. Universal seems so interested in protecting its interests it even goes after things that aren’t even its own interests, such as when it went after Megaupload for Megaupload using Megaupload’s own material: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-57343935-245/in-sopas-shadow-megaupload-strikes-back-against-universal/
        .
        I have a hard time seeing any justification under “fair use” for any of these videos to be on Youtube for you to have the luxury of linking to it. Length of the clip makes no difference.
        .
        And by the time it gets to SCOTUS we have no idea who is sitting in those chairs willing to make as terrible a decision as the Citizens United or Westboro decisions.

      4. Universal seems so interested in protecting its interests it even goes after things that aren’t even its own interests,
        .
        Isn’t that wonderful that Megaupload had to a file a lawsuit under CURRENT law just to get Universal to back off their erroneous claim?
        .
        Yet we expect more laws in the form of SOPA and PIPA to do any of us any favors!?

  19. PAD, you expect people to do the right thing just because it’s the right thing. Forgive me for saying so, but that is hopelessly naive of you.
    .
    What is stopping people from commiting crimes? Three things, basically:
    .
    1.Fear of punishment.
    .
    2.Social condemnation.
    .
    3.Empathy for the victim.
    .
    None of them applies to Internet piracy. You can download music without fearing the police will knock on your door and arrest you or even give you a fine. You can chat with your friends and family, and most of them will think you’re a clever fella for downloading music, they will even ask you to copy the music files for THEM. And you don’t feel empathy for faceless corporations and, I’m sorry to say, even for the creators, when it’s so easy to justify it in your head (“He is still far richer than I am,” “I am just stealing a little, tiny bit.”, “It’s not like he’s starving on the streets.”).
    .
    No, I’m not defending Internet piracy. It’s wrong. You are right. I’m only saying that, for people to respect the law, you have to punish them, get society to make them feel ashamed, or get them to empathize with the pain of the victim.
    .
    Simply appealing to their innate respect for the law won’t work.

    1. I don’t disagree with you, Rene, but here’s the astounding problem: here we have something which is occurring that is indisputably illegal, and yet not only do people NOT want to punish the perpetrators, but instead they: object to the notion that the victims are protesting; want to punish the victims who support further protections through the law; want to change the laws that currently exist so that the victims don’t even have those.
      .
      It’s just kind of amazing to me, and if that makes me naive, then yeah, I guess I’m naive.
      .
      PAD

      1. Well, I want to punish piracy. I think it’s acceptable to punish them. Seriously, most people are passive. They would respect the law as soon as there’s a real treat of punishment looming in the horizon.
        .
        The ones that scream and complain and make complex arguments in defense of online piracy are the vocal minority. If you start to seriously punish pirates, most people would go along.
        .
        But something must be done to punish them. Just appealing to people’s better nature won’t do.

      4. Really? I own a comic shop, and I’m not rich, and I’m a victim of piracy.
        .
        I own and run a local convention, and none of the artists or writers who attend the convention are rich, but they’re victims of piracy.
        .
        I write medical software in my second job. I get paid to do it, buy a fairly small startup. Noone is rich yet, but I’m sure we’d all like to be. But when people steal the software, we’re victims.
        .
        So yes, evidently we’re all a bunch of rich, spoiled brats. Douchebag.

      5. .
        “Ruben Hilbers
        January 18, 2012 at 2:31 pm
        The ‘victims’ are a bunch of rich, spoiled brats, who only see the rest of the world as cows to be milked. So, yes, PAD, your are naive.”
        .
        I know independent filmmakers and television artists (horror hosts) who would disagree with you. Some of them have been making a living off of their work for a while now, some are just breaking that barrier where they might be able to leave their “real job” and do what they love and some still have day jobs because they need them and just see a nice bonus paycheck in what they make off of their creative endeavors that will maybe cover a week’s worth of groceries. Hëll, a few are what you would very easily call “flat broke” most of the time.
        .
        Almost all of them can and will tell you that they either have been hurt by piracy or that they can be. While they post some free content on the web, that’s bait to hook you with. You’re supposed to look at that, see something you like and then buy their actual products. If people pirate their works, and some have had that happen to them, it they don’t make a payday and it hurts them.
        .
        They’re not rich. They’re not spoiled brats. They don’t see the world as something to be milked like cows for their benefit. They’re working stiffs trying to do something that they love and by doing that improve their monetary station in life and, in some cases, take care of their families a little better.
        .
        You? You’re an idiot making idiotic statements on the web.
        .
        Just looking at the facts before me, I’d say that everyone one of them, and guys like Jerry Wall, are far and away better people than you and that you are far more guilty of seeing other people, people your jealous/resentful of due to their success, and the world as something cows to be milked to get you what you want out of it. You declare others to be somehow bad people, so that excuses you or others from having to actually pay for something rather than just taking it as you please.
        .
        Rubin, go in the bathroom, look in the mirror and then wave hello at the spoiled brat you see in it.

      6. Jealous ?….No. Depressed, embittered and angry…yes. I used to play by rules, did everything that was expected of me, played nice…and how was I rewarded ?…I was dumped in a Sheltered Workshop where the management radiates dis stain for its personnel, like the sun radiates heat.

      7. .
        Tough, life’s not fair. I’m 41 and between our last chef and my state’s politicians, my job is running a real risk of becoming a detriment to my being able to comfortably retire down the road instead of the tool to do it with. I’m so far from where I wanted to be at this point in my life that it’s not funny.
        .
        I’ve had a couple of patches that were absolutely horrible. I know several people that went through painfully bad patches in their lives that lasted upwards of four or five years before things got better.
        .
        Not an excuse. You either have core principles and a sense of morals or you don’t. If you have them, then they’re there; period. They’re not just there when it’s convenient and nice for you to have them or for when it’s easy for you to claim that you have them.
        .
        There’s always someone out there worse off than you. If you think your bad luck makes you doing bad things to others excusable then you have no right to protest or complain when someone else does the same to you using the same excuse.

      8. I disagree. The world is not black-and-white. It is shades of gray. (Politics, history – Hëll, even the Trek universe has Section 31 – everywhere, there are balancing acts being performed.)

      9. .
        Of course you disagree. It’s your excuse for bad behavior and you don’t want to give it up. But I can take you to a place near where I work where there are teenagers who think it’s their right to pull out a gun and take what they want from people who look well off simply because the teenagers in question come from broken homes and have decided that all those other people simply got lucky, had all the breaks and were just given the things that they actually worked for.
        .
        They’re wrong and their crappy life does not excuse their bad behavior. Nor does you claiming to have a crappy life excuse anything that you might do.
        .
        Again, you either have core principles and a sense of morals or you don’t. If you have them, then they’re there; period. They’re not just there when it’s convenient and nice for you to have them or for when it’s easy for you to claim that you have them.

  20. The word “consumer” is getting brought up a lot, usually in the context of consumer rights, with the implication that pirates and downloaders are somehow agitating for consumer rights. Which is a cute trick, but doesn’t really work.
    .
    Consumers have rights, certainly. But consumers don’t have the right to everything they want, however they want it, whenever they want it, whether they want to pay for it or not. That’s not consumption, that’s gluttony.
    .
    Economics is compromise. Producers sell what they’re willing and capable of selling; consumers buy what they’re willing and capable of buying. That’s how it was explained to me in school, anyway. Maybe nowadays they teach that stamping your feet and whining when what you want is not available to you is a perfectly normal part of the process, I dunno.

    1. Oh how cute, you can make caricatures of those with whom you disagree so as to belittle them all wholesale. Condescending Wonka much?

      1. .
        “Oh how cute, you can make caricatures of those with whom you disagree so as to belittle them all wholesale. Condescending Wonka much?”
        .
        How is he making caricatures or being condescending? The people who defend as a right their access to and ability to engage in online piracy and theft are exactly what he said they were. If you’re not in that group, then he’s not talking to you. If you are in that group, then he’s right about you.

      2. Jerry Chandler, re-read his post again— his philosophy on economics is discussed and his stance on consumers themselves have no right to ‘gluttony’. The issue on piracy is casually mentioned with “they want to pay for it or not”. And the condescension can easily be seen in the final sentence.

      3. .
        No, you read it again.
        .
        “The word “consumer” is getting brought up a lot, usually in the context of consumer rights, with the implication that pirates and downloaders are somehow agitating for consumer rights. Which is a cute trick, but doesn’t really work.”
        .
        Right there in the first paragraph he covers what this is about. He’s addressing the people that are discussing the actions of internet piracy as if it’s the same as consumer rights and the people downloading pirated things for free as consumers.
        .
        Everything else in the short post states that consumers have certain rights, but that those rights end at certain defined lines. The defined lines get crossed, again, using the first paragraph as a guide, when a “consumer” engages in piracy.
        .
        So, again, he’s not caricatures or being condescending. He’s addressing the pirates and the acts of piracy VS the acts of consumers. And, again, if you’re not in that group, then he’s not talking to you. If you are in that group, then he’s right about you.

  21. What about the infamous “Downfall” parody meme? Do they fall under Fair Use? (I only ask because I’ve enjoyed quite a few of those videos myself, and I want to know if I’m being a hypocrite.)

  22. I don’t know all the details of SOPA, but I favor copyright protections. That doesn’t mean current copyright law can’t be modified, as it has in the past. For example, while there are doubtless items on YouTube that clearly infringe on copyright, I think a short fan-made trailer regarding a favorite TV show (like the one Jerry Chandler referenced in an earlier thread) can and should fall under the category of “fair use.” I’m no expert on copyright law, but if you post a two-minute clip from your favorite show, along with a statement to the effect of “this is an excellent show and everyone should watch it”, wouldn’t that be considered a review?
    .
    As to copyright law itself, I think the current length of life of the author plus 70 years is more than sufficient, and shouldn’t be extended any further. Think about it, if a 20-year-old files for copyright this year, and he lives to 100, the copyright wouldn’t expire until 2162. Whatever the life of the author, that “plus 70 years” part is very generous. That’s a large chunk of a single lifetime. And sufficient time for any heirs to benefit from the author’s work. A friend thinks plus 20 years would be an adequate length. He may have a point.
    .
    Likewise, the work-for-hire term of 95 years from date of publication, or 120 years from date of creation, whichever expires first, shouldn’t be extended. In fact, maybe it should be cut back a bit.
    .
    I have no sympathy for the thieves who blatantly steal copywritten material. Even if we went back to the copyright law of 1790, where the term was 14 years, with an option to renew for another 14, these losers would probably still think they have the right to do what they want with other people’s intellectual property during that time.
    .
    Rick

  23. Unlike some, I do understand that, if I wasn’t spending my money (and piles of other people doing the same) buying PAD’s books/comics, he wouldn’t be doing them and we’d be without the great pleasure they afford us. Ditto the movies whose DVDs and TV series whose DVD season sets I buy.

    BUT …

    In spite of this I’m opposed to SOPA because one of the provisions is the U.S. giving itself power over the I.P. (Internet Protocol, not Intellectual Property) which is considers part of its domain. Problem. All Web sites in North America (from corporate sites to someone’s laptop) have their IP Address given them by a couple of American organizations, thus making them American Domain by default. Some may say I’m overreacting, but as the citizen of a supposedly sovereign country whose name is NOT the United States (Canada, actually), it pìššëš me off that the U.S. feels it can control our Web sites at that level without our having any recourse. You’d think, given the U.S.’ ‘war on terror’, they be bending over backwards to avoid annoying allies. But, unfortunately … Not, I suppose that they have much to worry about given our Republican-style Conservative government’s tendency to roll over and play dead for Washington, they aren’t likely to put up much of a fuss. *sigh* Remind me not to invest in companies making Canadian flags. The rate we’re going it wouldn’t surprise me to see it replaced by a modified Stars & Stripes before I’ve shuffled off.

  24. Thanks for bringing up a lot of points that I agree needed to be clarified, Peter. As you’ve quite correctly noted, we now live in an age where people think they should be able to get whatever they want, when they want it,and generally without compensation, attribution, etc. I remember a few years ago, somebody asked me if I was surprised at how many interviews I had done for various magazines could easily be found on the Internet. I think my reply was, if I had a buck for every one of those interviews that could be found online, I’d own the Internet. Most of the time it doesn’t really make any difference to me; after all the copyright holder is generally whichever publisher I’m working for, so if they want to pursue it, that’s entirely up to them. But I have pointed out to people on more than one occasion that if they download a particular interview for free rather than buying a copy of that particular magazine, it’s quite possible the magazine will eventually go out of business and there will be no interviews to re-post. Sure enough, about 80% of the genre magazines I wrote for have gone under in the last couple of years and I have no doubt more will follow in the future.

  25. I have mixed feeling on SOPA. As a citizen of the United States I find both the House and Senate versions of the bill scary as it gives corporations the ability to shut down any website without going through the courts and or government. I find it the height of hypocrisy when Washington was in an uproar over foreign governments shutting down and censoring the internet and yet SOPA goes beyond those draconic measures as it’s the corporations rather than the government controlling the internet.

    You wouldn’t think it from my first paragraph but I do have mixed feelings. As a consumer I’m terrified about what piracy or rather the justified attempts to combat piracy is doing to the industries I love as well as my level of enjoyment regarding a variety of products. As a video gamer I’m penalized by DRM, an antipiracy measure that really clogs up everything despite the fact that I’m a paying customer. As a person who loves music and books I hate seeing every music and book store in my area closing and being reduced to purchase everything online as these days only big chain stores sell books and records and I’m just not interested in what they sell.

    What I rage against the most is what piracy has done to the publishing industry. Publisher are only going with established authors that sell very genre specific work playing it very safe because sales are so low due to everyone stealing everything. Even published authors with a huge following can’t get their books published if they try something new and I love new stuff rather than reading the some recycled novel over and over again.

    1. Huh? Publishers’ going with established authors is now piracy’s fault? Sales are low due to everyone (excluding me, actually) stealing? I don’t see the connection. With comic books, I stopped reading any non-TPBs after One More Day and never looked back. Crap stories, that’s why. With novels, my tastes have always been eclectic.

  26. I’m also a writer, and I agree that stealing copies of others’ work is wrong. But that’s not what people are protesting. It’s that SOPA/PIPA would limit legitimate freedom of speech and stifle innovation by allowing media companies to accuse and shut down (without due process) anything that threatens them, right or wrong. We already have federal laws on the books to deal with any true infringement, but Big Media wants to control the flow of information and prevent competition. That’s the point of these bills, and the reason that media companies keep pouring money into politicians’ pockets.

    What about Fair Use, which has been under massive attack for years? Remember how many years Big Media spent trying to shut down YouTube and Google (and how much money was spent on both sides)? Do we really need a court case every time anyone uses the internet for something original, just because their idea builds on or incorporates an older idea in some way?

    Here’s what I call Fair Use: taking a sample of another’s work and creating something new out of it. In musical terms: Bob Dylan, Prince, Beastie Boys, Girl Talk – they’re all the same to me. The difference is that Dylan didn’t get sued because he couldn’t use an exact digital sample, while (at the other extreme) Girl Talk can’t get his albums into record stores, because his music is purposely made up entirely of others’ sounds – which violates copyright law. Should Girl Talk have to pay millions of dollars in sample-clearance costs to create new art or risk jail time?

    What about fan edits of Hollywood films? There are fan restorations and re-edits of Star Wars (and other films) that are superior to the official DVDs. I own copies of the real discs: should I not be allowed to create or own a remixed version for personal, non-commercial use?

    The problem isn’t piracy; hardly any pirates (uploaders OR downloaders) would have been paying customers in the first place. The problem is a broken copyright and patent system that stifles innovation. That’s why Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow have advocated for Creative Commons, a reasonable way to go forward while accepting that piracy can never be fully extinguished.

    If you’re really boiling down the SOPA/PIPA protesters to people whining about not being able to steal, you’re missing the point as much as Frank Miller did when he complained about Occupy Wall Street.

    1. SOME people are protesting it for that reason. And as I said (for perhaps the fifth time now) I’m not disagreeing that SOPA shouldn’t pass, so we’re in accord. But many others (including you) are protesting it for the exact reason that I stated: they’re fighting for their right to ignore other people’s rights. They believe that copyright laws are antiquated or don’t apply to them, or should be disposed of entirely. I took great, GREAT pains to specify exactly who I was addressing my comments to, and I’m not entirely sure why you feel compelled to insinuate that I was painting in broad strokes when I could not have been more precise (and comparing my comments to Frank’s reactionary statements as well). I know nothing about music copyright so I can’t give an informed answer to your first comment, but no one has been more supportive of fan endeavors with “Star Wars” than Lucasfilms, so I don’t know why you’re holding that up as an example of anything other than your apparent belief that–since you don’t believe in copyright and thus, presumably, your work shouldn’t have copyright protection, other writers who DO believe in protecting their work shouldn’t be entitled to it.
      .
      PAD

      1. Sorry if I misconstrued your comments, but (sticking with the example) regardless of fan support, Lucasfilm currently has the legal right to shut down any and all fan creations or remixes of its work.

        I certainly believe in copyright – that’s why I said in my first sentence that stealing copies (digital or otherwise) is wrong. But I also believe in Fair Use, and that’s what’s really under attack here (and has been for years, with more and more court rulings limiting any use at all). Regardless of the current uproar, the copyright/patent systems do need to be fixed – and in the meantime, Creative Commons offers a flexible licensing system that puts control back in the hands of the creators by allowing for more kinds of usage (at the creator’s discretion).

        I don’t believe for one second that SOPA/PIPA is a response to piracy, because the U.S. already has more than enough authority to stop infringers through the court system. Sorry if I wasn’t clearer before.

      2. “Sorry if I misconstrued your comments, but (sticking with the example) regardless of fan support, Lucasfilm currently has the legal right to shut down any and all fan creations or remixes of its work.”
        .
        I guess I must be evil, because I don’t see a problem with that.
        .
        Creative Commons is really cool, I agree, but one of the cool things about it is that it’s optional. People can do it if they want, but they don’t have to. It celebrates freedom of choice. You seem to be advocating taking that choice away from people like George Lucas, because they’re not making the choice you would prefer them to make.
        .
        I also disagree with your assertion that the problem isn’t piracy, the problem is a broken IP system. I think they’re both problems.

      3. ““Sorry if I misconstrued your comments, but (sticking with the example) regardless of fan support, Lucasfilm currently has the legal right to shut down any and all fan creations or remixes of its work.”
        .
        I guess I must be evil, because I don’t see a problem with that.”

        Then I guess you don’t believe in the right to Fair Use, Michael. Should Mr. David have to take down all of the images on this page that he doesn’t own (Star Trek, Babylon 5, Spike, Hulk, Creepy, SpyBoy (on which I was an Assistant Editor! Memories…))?

      4. Displaying covers of my books is not remotely copyright infringement. However, if Pocket Books came to me and said, “Dude, you have to take down the covers of the Trek novels,” I would do so without hesitation and not bìŧçh about it.
        .
        And if you’re about to tell me, “But SOPA would allow them to just shutter your entire site without warning!” my response is that you cannot possibly convince me that they wouldn’t simply first drop me a C&D. You just cannot.
        .
        You know: I find this selective prognostication kind of fascinating. On the one hand, people seem to have absolutely no problem coming up with every possible permutation under which SOPA could make their lives hëll. And yet, amazingly, no one looked at Internet piracy before this and said, “Y’know what? Maybe unauthorized duplication could lead to problems. Maybe we should do something about it.”
        .
        PAD

      5. I do believe in the right to fair use. I just don’t think that constitutes fair use.
        .
        Jury’s still out on whether I’m evil.

      7. “And yet, amazingly, no one looked at Internet piracy before this and said, “Y’know what? Maybe unauthorized duplication could lead to problems. Maybe we should do something about it.””

        Like, say, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 2007 PRO-IP Act, and the 2011 Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement?

        The U.S. already has all of the tools it needs to do something about it. It’s just more “Whack-a-Mole” than “Nuke From Orbit.”

        I certainly understand why you’d roll over and take down those covers if told to – why jeopardize the chance to do more work with those rightsholders? – but you shouldn’t have to. You DO have the right under Fair Use to use them on your site, and the owners of the properties DO NOT have the right to make you take them down. But they do have the power to bully you, and are trying to get that as a legal right, too.

        I’m guessing you’re not signing Neil Gaiman’s open letter to Washington about this? http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/01/open-letter-to-washington-from-artists.html

      8. Mike–seriously–what the hëll is wrong with you? Are you just looking to pick fights? Are you simply a twit? What’s going on?
        .
        I said I was opposed to SOPA, and you’re acting as if I said the opposite.
        .
        No, I’m not signing Neil’s letter. There’s nothing TO sign. It’s already BEEN signed by Neil and about nine other people. It’s not a petition; it’s a done deal. It’s like saying, “I’m guessing you’re not signing Magna Carta, eh?” If he’d asked me to do so, I’d have been honored and gladly added my name to it. But he didn’t, so I didn’t. I did, however, praise it on “Bleeding Cool” and also signed Google’s petition because I agreed with the premise: Piracy is a problem that has to be addressed, but this isn’t the way to do it.
        .
        But feel free to ignore those facts since they don’t fit in with your narrative of cowardly PAD, afraid to push back against the corporate status quo. Because that’s been my history for twenty years of writing “But I Digress”–playing it safe against corporate interests.
        .
        PAD

      9. “Mike–seriously–what the hëll is wrong with you? Are you just looking to pick fights? Are you simply a twit? What’s going on?

        No, I’m not signing Neil’s letter. It’s not a petition; it’s a done deal. I did, however, praise it on “Bleeding Cool” and also signed Google’s petition
        .
        But feel free to ignore those facts since they don’t fit in with your narrative of cowardly PAD, afraid to push back against the corporate status quo.”

        My bad about the open letter; I thought it was open to others to sign. I brought it up more as an attempt at a lighthearted joke/aside, not to pick a fight. Sorry if it came across poorly. My mistake entirely.

        Honestly, my intentions were simply to offer my POV as well as info and clarification in response to your column and questions. From your column and your comments, it read to me like you think that SOPA is mainly a reaction to piracy, and I think there’s a lot of other stuff to consider, that’s all. I don’t often read your site’s comments, so if I’ve caused offense or not conformed to expected tone with my word choices, I apologize.

        I’m not name-calling or making assumptions; I’m not trying to ignore any facts or push a narrative – it’s your site, and I’m a guest! – but it’s clear we have very different perspectives and opinions on how copyright has been implemented. Sorry if I’ve wasted your time.

      10. .
        “it read to me like you think that SOPA is mainly a reaction to piracy, and I think there’s a lot of other stuff to consider”
        .
        It is mainly a reaction to piracy. And it is something that contains a lot of other stuff to consider as well. The thing is, the people trying to do more than just fight online piracy and sell SOPA as a good thing wouldn’t be able to package their garbage in it and try to sell it at all if it weren’t for the piracy issue.
        .
        They can point to the millions of illegal downloads in the country and the loss of revenue and declare that SOPA is needed. No one in the general public (vs the relatively few so far who do) would support SOPA at all if it weren’t for the piracy. And it’s easy to convince a lot of the older generation who are not net savvy as well as those who are not net savvy in general that this is bigger than it is and that it’s a problem that’s going to get bigger in large part because they can point to the large number of younger people who actively praise internet piracy and claim that it’s not theft but in fact the future of movie/music/book publication. They can point to the fact that a lot of the next generation don’t see theft for the theft it is and actually see their act of theft as striking a blow against the evil corporations and the rich who are committing the real crime of asking to be paid for what they’re creating.
        .
        Not to open a whole new can of worms in the thread, but it’s not too different than the invasion of Iraq. A lot of the people in Bush’s White House had been publicly advocating invading Iraq, taking Saddam out and putting a government in place that would be more friendly to what we wanted in that area for three or four years before Bush took office. They had even discussed what to do with the oil in the region and the benefits to that industry. No one took them seriously. Iraq was no real threat to us. Iraq was not an urgent, imminent threat that warranted us spending the lives and insane amounts of money getting bogged down in an unnecessary war and a nation building experiment. And no one but the kooks and cranks took their pleas to invade Iraq seriously at all.
        .
        Then 9/11 happened.
        .
        And then the people who wanted to go into Iraq wrapped Iraq up in a bundle with 9/11 and away we went.
        .
        Same thing here in a way. Online piracy is a problem and it’s a problem that seems to be getting worse in at least appearance if not reality. And a very large amount of the people who should have done something to support efforts to fight it either didn’t or outright opposed the measures to fight online piracy. And, as mentioned above, a lot of people embrace it as something other than theft while somehow recasting the artists who create the art and the people who put it out in the public square as the real thieves for daring to require that you pay for their product if you want to own it.
        .
        So now we get SOPA. Now we get some very bad things wrapped up in the threat of a real problem. Fortunately there were enough people keeping up with things this time that it didn’t fly and that there were enough offensive things in it to get the people who were paying attention to act against it.
        .
        But it never would have even been an attempted thing if it weren’t for the piracy and the idiots who want to call it anything and everything but the theft that it is.

  27. Taking no position on the piracy/whatever question – the thing that’ wrong with SOPA is that it tries to impose USAian standards on the Internet as a whole.
    .
    I would be willing to bet that you’d find a Very Large overlap between Congresscritters who’re supporting this thing and ones who screamed bloody murder over the Great Firewall of China.

  28. When people talk about the shameless theft and lack of respect for intellectual property in the internet age, it just reminds me of an old anti-drug ad. The one where the dad confronts a kid about finding vaguely-depicted “drugs” in his things, and demands to know how he even learned to use the stuff. The kid shouts back, “I learned it from watching you!” You can see it on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5XakEKSIaM

    People were recording VHS tapes and making mixtapes and opening libraries that gave away books for free for years. Hëll, I’d bet some of the people coming down hard on copyright infringement see no problem with fast-forwarding past the commercials on a DVR when watching TV, or just straight-up changing the channel or going to the bathroom if they don’t have a Tivo. The internet generation grew up in a world where content was free or heavily subsidized, and sharing was allowed or encouraged, and carried that attitude with them on-line. So why does watching last night’s “30 Rock” become bad when you download it instead of taping it? Why is reading a book for free a crime when you get it from a torrent instead of a library? Well, the real question is, where’s the natural distinction for the consumer?

    It’s not that people were irresponsible with the internet. It’s that they’ve been irresponsible all the way back to the beginning, and they just continued using the internet the same way they used everything else before it. The scale is all that’s changed, and even that’s exaggerated. Go ask Justin Bieber or Louis C.K. about how the internet is making it impossible to make a living as an artist.

    I’m not saying unauthorized distribution is a good thing, a boon to society or whatever. I’m saying that if it’s a bad thing, you have keep in mind that it was a bad thing in 1908 when the Supreme Court said libraries and used bookstores were fine in Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus. It was a problem in 1982 when Congress said there wouldn’t be any real harm from home video tapes. And it’s a problem every time you don’t keep your eyes focused on the screen with laser-like precision when a commercial comes on while you’re watching TV. All that adds up to making it a bad thing that’s been culturally acceptable for a long time.

    And if that unpleasant reality was worth ignoring before, what needs to be explained it shouldn’t be ignored now. I’ve bought books from authors I first read in a library. I’ve bought DVDs of TV shows I first saw on dubbed VHS tapes. I’ve bought CDs of bands I first heard on MP3s traded from friends. One of those, most of you will say, is fine. One, most of you will say, is theft and I should be rightly fined $250,000 and/or subject to five years in prison. I don’t even know how the room will swing on the DVD one, because as I see it, the whole thing is a distinction without a difference.

    1. Libraries don’t give books away for free. They lend them for free. If you don’t give their book back to them, they charge you money. (Libraries also *pay* for the books they’re lending.)
      .
      I have no earthly idea what you’re trying to say regarding fast-forwarding or changing the channel.

      1. Michael P:(Libraries also *pay* for the books they’re lending.)
        .
        Okay, seriously, do you guys think that illegal uploaders use black magic to make digital files appear out of thin air? There is an original purchase by whoever put it on-line, and libraries do not pay any kind of royalty or premium for the books they buy. This is not a point. Either way, it’s one sale that’s spread out over tens or hundreds or thousands of patrons/downloaders.
        .
        Michael P: I have no earthly idea what you’re trying to say regarding fast-forwarding or changing the channel.
        .
        I’ll let TV Executive Jamie Keller explain.
        .
        It’s theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn’t get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you’re actually stealing the programming.
        .
        You pay for free (or subsidized, on cable) TV by giving your attention to their advertisers. If you don’t watch the commercials, you aren’t paying. As far as the TV people are concerned, using fast-forward or otherwise ignoring commercials is just as bad as illegal downloading. You thieves.

      2. Well, Jamie Keller’s an idiot, then. But him being an idiot doesn’t automatically invalidate all accusations of infringement.

      3. .
        David Gian-Cursio: “Okay, seriously, do you guys think that illegal uploaders use black magic to make digital files appear out of thin air? There is an original purchase by whoever put it on-line, and libraries do not pay any kind of royalty or premium for the books they buy. This is not a point. Either way, it’s one sale that’s spread out over tens or hundreds or thousands of patrons/downloaders.”
        .
        And libraries simply lend books out. They do not publish books. When you start making copies, and do pay attention to the word “making” and all that it entails, and distributing them, you are publishing.
        .
        When you turn one copy into two, ten, one hundred or ten thousand, you are now creating new copies of the book and publishing it. You no longer have an equation where there is only one copy of that book. You no longer have the situation where, as a random number example, there are 50 people per copy of a book in a library that want to read it and 49 of those people have to wait to read it and thus might go buy the book. You no longer have a scenario where someone may read the book and decide that they want their own copy. Unlike with the lending library model, you’ve now purchased one book and turned it in to hundreds or thousands of books and each person that gets a copy of your original book gets to keep that copy with no purchase of their own and no one who actually wrote or published the book getting any compensation for the pirated copies that you’ve published.
        .
        Seriously, this isn’t a hard concept to grasp. One scenario is where the legal owners of a book (the writer and/or publisher) says that libraries can with their complete permission have several copies of a book to lend out. The other is where someone takes a book and, without the permission of the writer or the original publisher, takes it upon themselves to start up their own little e-publishing venture and turn one paid for copy into hundreds or thousands of copies that hundreds or thousands of people can all own and own simultaneously.
        .
        One is a legal action done with the permission of the legal owner of the intellectual property and the holder of the copyrights. The other action is theft.
        .
        Why is this so hard to figure out for some of you?

      4. Jerry Chandler: And libraries simply lend books out. They do not publish books. When you start making copies, and do pay attention to the word “making” and all that it entails, and distributing them, you are publishing.
        .
        Your model is broken now. It’s not about selling copies of books, it’s about selling reads of a story. I understand your frustration about communication, I really do, because I feel the exact same thing from the other side.
        .
        The thing an author writes is no longer bound up in a physical artifact of paper and ink. It is impossible to “lend” or “move” an electronic file without making a copy. That’s reality. It is the fact that faces us. By your definition, if you download an album on your computer than copy it to your iPod, you are “publishing” because you’ve made a new copy. Two people can listen to it at once (assuming they have access to your machines and your login credentials). That’s nonsense. It puts me to mind of a copyright notice I saw on a writer’s site that was so broadly written it explicitly disallowed viewing the page it was written on (something about prohibiting “making any form of printed or electronic transfer of this content whatsoever,” IIRC).
        .
        If a library buys a book and loans it out to a hundred people who will now no longer buy a copy, that’s fine. If a person buys a book, scans it into his computer, prints up a hundred copies, and then buries them in a radioactive landfill unread by anyone, that’s “publishing” and despite not costing the publisher any sales, is wrong. There’s a conceptual gap here.

      5. .
        “Your model is broken now. It’s not about selling copies of books, it’s about selling reads of a story.”
        .
        No, it really isn’t broken. It’s still about selling a book, a film or a song. It may not be on paper, a DVD or a CD, but it’s still the same as it was ten years ago. If you want it, you buy it rather than steal it. If you steal it, you’re a thief. Simple concept.
        .
        But from everything else you’ve written, it’s obvious that you’re determined to not understand that concept. You’ll stand on your head, hold your breath and come up with any and every twisted analogy to keep avoiding that fact.
        .
        If you want something, you pay for it. There may be a way for you to get it for free such a s a library, as freebie to hook you for more later or a second hand sale that the intellectual property owner of that material (writer/publisher/etc.) has said that they are fine with. But if you get it in some other way, and a way that both the intellectual property owner, the publisher and the law all say that they disagree with, you’re not in the right.
        .
        You can spin it and stand it on it’s head and claim that the future is now and that the old ways are broken and gone all you want, but you’re just telling lies to yourself. The future is here now. That at least is right. But the model of the future is the same as the model that existed a decade ago.
        .
        If I want one of Peter’s books, I go to a place such as a bookstore, online seller or library where I can legally obtain it and get it there. I know that Peter gets compensated for the work that way and I know that Peter has no issue with my obtaining his books by any of those means. I don’t go and find a website where some jáçkášš has posted his book online and where thousands of others are downloading it.
        .
        One way is proper. One way is theft. Again, how is this a hard concept for you to grasp?

      6. .
        “So why does watching last night’s “30 Rock” become bad when you download it instead of taping it?”
        .
        Missed this one before, but it’s relevant to showing your lack of understanding of how things work.
        .
        If you watch a show or your DVR it, the show still generates money based on ratings and delayed DVR ratings. Whether people are watching the ads for sure or not, the network knows that X amount of people are watching and the ad companies know that it costs Y amount of money for them to put ads up during a show with X number of viewers.
        .
        Downloading from a torrent site is not recognized in the ratings. It both damages the ad revenue and, to a degree, the shows overall viability. Easy answer actually and one most people are aware of fairly early in life from all the noise that networks, studios and ad companies make about ratings.

      7. Jerry Chandler: If you watch a show or your DVR it, the show still generates money based on ratings and delayed DVR ratings. Whether people are watching the ads for sure or not, the network knows that X amount of people are watching and the ad companies know that it costs Y amount of money for them to put ads up during a show with X number of viewers.
        .
        I remember the producers of the Stargate shows begging fans not to DVR episodes, because even once the live-plus-three and live-plus-seven ratings started being taken into account, they didn’t mean jack to the advertisers because, shock of shocks, they’d heard that TiVo had a fast-forward button. Battlestar Galactica started encouraging people to watch live by putting up passwords during the commercials to access time-limited bonus scenes on-line for the same reason. And that TV exec I quoted explicitly said it was a problem.
        .
        Again, I don’t endorse illegal copying. I am not being an apologist for it. My most generous view on this is that it can be a practical evil. I only want to explore how earlier exceptions to and bendings of copyright and IP rights led to a situation where a sizable group of people don’t see it as a bad thing that only bad people do. Shouting about how the old exemptions are legal, while piracy is not and it’s just that simple, misses the point. Please, please just say you can see (not accept, not endorse, see) the chain of logic on the part of a consumer that says, “If I can make a bootleg copy of a TV show on my VCR by taping its broadcast, I can make a bootleg copy of a TV show on my computer by downloading it.”

    2. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think you should be fined a quarter-mil or go to jail for downloading MP3s. But it is theft. Personally, I think the proper thing to do there is to do the same thing you’d do with a shoplifter. Unfortunately, they haven’t yet created a digital version of the burly store security manager who takes you into his office and makes you sit there while he calls the cops/your parents.

      1. It’s safer and the punishments are a lot lower to go into a store and steal a movie, DVD, or book than to copy one. Yet in the actual theft scenario, the original is no longer there to sell. With a copy, the original is still where it was before.

      1. .
        Bladestar, just make things simple for everyone since some of these topics have been brought up in prior threads and dealt with multiple times before. Just declare yourself pro-theft, pro-stealing and pro-ripping creators off and proud of it and get it over with.

  29. Honestly, I’m for the most part with the copyright holders. I only download something if it isn’t available through legal means, and if that item later becomes legally available, I switch over immediately.
    |
    That’s always been my rule. It wouldn’t matter to me if it was a series with 100 episodes that would legally cost me 300 bucks. I’d delete my episodes or destroy my homemade dvds and buy the real one as soon as I could.
    |
    The problem with these laws is that it can’t differenciate between what’s already legally available and what isn’t.

  30. For the reasons I stated, I stand behind my post of being against SOPA but I don’t get why people are getting mad at corporations and various artist lobbying hard for this bill. How would you feel if people were taking money from your paycheck in addition to the government? Now how would you feel if you are only getting paid a fifth for what is rightfully your due? That happened with Witcher 2, the game sold one million copies but was illegally downloaded five million times. The company behind the game wanted to sue the people who did the downloading and were forced to stop because people were protesting. I don’t know about you but if someone was ripping me off for 4/5 of what I earned I’d be pìššëd.

  31. PAD here’s the way I read it.

    You said SOPA was too far reaching and should pass as is. That’s fine, and I agree about the third law of commotion.

    But here’s the thing every time some new technology came out the IP holders said this will cause the end of their product. If you could record the radio onto cassettes then music companies would go out of business. Didn’t happen. same with VCR’s.

    Yes you’re right they shouldn’t have to worry about theft, but it’s never ever gonna happen. So why waste money and time trying to obliterate something that will never be stopped? Isn’t everyone better served by finding better ways to improve distributions so that less and less people will turn to piracy as an option?

    It’s not a perfect analogy, but like community outreach programs instead of just focusing on punishment help find them alternatives to becoming criminals. By all means punish napster for what it it did, but what ultimately helped seal the deal against napster is something like itunes.

    I look at your example with Neil Gaiman and you say how if you were the one who had scanned his work and released it for free without his permission, he would have to be feeling very generous for him to not be upset with you. Well as I watched that video it seems that he isn’t angry with the person who released the book in the first place so I guess he’s feeling generous.

    Say I go to you and say PAD I just lent my copy of Tigerheart to my friend and after she read it she bought her own copy would you be mad at me? I’d like to think you wouldn’t. If I said I lent it to 10 friends and 3 of them bought a copy after reading it, would you be mad? 100 and 30? 1000 and 300? At what point does it become a bad thing?

    In an ideal world everyone would pay for every single thing, but since that’s never going to happen, instead of trying to completely shut everything down and block any potential revenue streams outside the pre existing ones, which has been pointed out will not likely work make a significant dent in piracy they should be spending their money to punish egregious offenders and find ways to make it easier for people to legally purchase items.

    1. One more time:
      .
      We’re not talking about LENDING.
      .
      Copies that are lent by libraries or someone who owns the book were PAID FOR.
      .
      Ones copied were not.
      .
      The two are not analogous.

      1. How can unauthorized copying not be analogous to lending? How about an unauthorized public reading that someone records with their camera phone, to make it more overtly similar? Is that wrong? In all cases, someone is consuming a work without paying for it. Period. Unless you’re arguing that anyone who ever put a book on-line must have shoplifted it, they were paid for, too.
        .
        Let me give you a hypothetical. Somebody buys a copy of The Da Vinci Code and puts it up on his personal website. Ten people find it and download it in the year before his website goes down because he lost interest in maintaining his hosting. Eight actually get around to reading it, and they only do so once. Meanwhile, a Library receives a donated copy of The Da Vinci Code. Thirty people check it out over the same period of time, and the only reason it wasn’t more is the last one keeps renewing it because he’s convinced there’s a secret message telling him where to find the real Robert Langdon in the punctuation. The library hasn’t even paid for their copy, has distributed it to more people and denied at least one guaranteed sale, but that’s not stealing from the author. The website guy is a pirate, though, I guess because more people could’ve gotten the book from him, even if they didn’t in reality.
        .
        Even if someone can theoretically keep a duplicated copy, it doesn’t mean they’re using it any more than if they’d had to give back a physical copy. But no one has ever said, “Well, downloading and reading/watching something only once then deleting it is fine, because in practice it’s the same as borrowing it from a library or friend then giving it back.” No, we have to treat the internet as if it’s some kind of Randian Sunday School where the good little boys and girls never ever share, no matter what they were allowed to do at home in the real world, and it’s a sign of moral depravity if you even thought you could just go and behave on the internet the same way you did before, going around and reading books you didn’t pay for, and watching TV without sitting through the commercials.
        .
        Just to reiterate, I’m not saying internet piracy is right. I’m saying it’s the logical continuation of a long tradition of real-world copyright theft that critics ignore even today because it is convenient.

      2. “How can unauthorized copying not be analogous to lending?”
        .
        Because in lending, no copy is made, unauthorized or otherwise.

      3. David Gian-Cursio: How can unauthorized copying not be analogous to lending?
        Luigi Novi: The lent book was paid for. The copied one was not.
        .
        Is there some reason people like you cannot comprehend this, even when it’s written over and over again right in front of you?

      4. Michael P: Because in lending, no copy is made, unauthorized or otherwise.
        Luigi Novi: The lent book was paid for. The copied one was not.
        .
        Someone bought a book, and gave it to other people who will now not buy a book because they got the one read they were going to enjoy from it for free. The metaphor holds, unless you’re going to insist anyone who ever put up anything for unauthorized download must have shoplifted it, and that everyone who downloads a book will repeatedly read it and/or redistribute it exponentially.
        .
        Besides, libraries and used bookstores are what made it okay to read something without paying for it. Publishers saw this coming a mile away. In 1908 the Supreme Court heard a case, and set up a concept that is the biggest enemy of intellectual property in the internet age. It was a hack, and it worked well for the time, but it’s set a precedent that is biting back today. Doctrine of First Sale says that you buy a book, and you can lend it freely as often as you like, and sell or give it away without paying the original copyright holder. The first part is just old-school DRM, binding the authors’ words to the paper object, but the second is the nightmare you’re still fighting against. That established that what you’re paying for with a book is the paper and ink object, not the story the author made.
        .
        That’s why people complain about eBooks being overpriced, even if they match the price of hardcopies. That’s why people think it’s okay to pass around books to people who would have only read them once whether they bought them or borrowed them. And that’s why people instinctively feel that passing around a digital copy of something isn’t the same as stealing it from a store. After all, the store still has their copy, and all you’re paying for the binding, right? It’s not like the author gets a new royalty if your spouse or friend reads the book you bought.
        .
        People who pirate don’t think of pirating as mass duplication or counterfeiting. In their eyes, it’s no different from taping something off television and fast-forwarding the commercials, or xeroxing a newspaper article, or checking out a book. And while some of those things were legal grey areas or disputed in court, they were all perfectly acceptable parts of everyday life long before high-speed internet came along.
        .
        If we’d been thinking about this from the start, the physical object would be an irrelevancy. You’d buy a single, nontransferable license from the content creator to view a specific piece of content, be it on a book or iPad or read aloud by a text-to-speech program or whatever. Unfortunately, no one anticipated a world where it would be trivially easy to create and distribute unauthorized copies on a mass scale, rather than just individually through loaning, reselling, or, eventually, dubbing. Thus they made exceptions that trained people to think that something was theirs to do with as they pleased just because they bought a copy of it, or a network beamed it on to their TV screen. The “copy” part of copyright isn’t what matters anymore. It’s all about person who’s reading it, not the object they read it off of. “Licenseright”? “Viewerright”? “Audienceright”?

    2. PAD here’s the way I read it. You said SOPA was too far reaching and should pass as is.
      .
      THAT’S how you read it? Because I said it should NOT pass as it is.
      .
      But here’s the thing every time some new technology came out the IP holders said this will cause the end of their product.
      .
      Yes. THAT I said, although you make it sound like it’s a new thought. And I used it to make the point that people who engage in piracy should have seen this coming.
      .
      If you could record the radio onto cassettes then music companies would go out of business. Didn’t happen. same with VCR’s.
      .
      And so the moral of the story is: the people who feel they are being victimized are obligated to find ways to make money off that victimization.
      .
      Yes you’re right they shouldn’t have to worry about theft, but it’s never ever gonna happen. So why waste money and time trying to obliterate something that will never be stopped? Isn’t everyone better served by finding better ways to improve distributions so that less and less people will turn to piracy as an option?
      .
      Yes, and since sexual harassment will never be stopped, women should find ways to make themselves look ugly. Curse those IP holders for just putting it out there, making it look so attractive that you just can’t keep your hands off their bodies…of work.
      .
      I look at your example with Neil Gaiman
      .
      Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wasn’t MY example. Someone else brought up the video. I just responded to it.
      .
      and you say how if you were the one who had scanned his work and released it for free without his permission, he would have to be feeling very generous for him to not be upset with you. Well as I watched that video it seems that he isn’t angry with the person who released the book in the first place so I guess he’s feeling generous.
      .
      Wow, did YOU miss the point of what he said. And what I said. Just because Neil chose to make a silk’s purse out of a sow’s ear doesn’t change the nature of the original beast.
      .
      Say I go to you and say PAD I just lent my copy of Tigerheart to my friend and after she read it she bought her own copy would you be mad at me? I’d like to think you wouldn’t.
      .
      I actually wouldn’t give a dámņ if you lent it to her and she’d didn’t buy her own copy. You bought the book; it’s your property. Legally. I respect that. Just as the actual material therein is my property and people are specifically forbidden to reproduce it. Legally. You don’t respect that. So basically, for you, and all those who have zero problem either reproducing the material or reading it for free through illegal downloads, respect is a one-way street. But if only I can find a way to make money off your disrespect, then it’s all okay.
      .
      At what point does it become a bad thing?
      .
      When you ignore the law and reproduce the book. How difficult is this to understand?
      .
      In an ideal world everyone would pay for every single thing, but since that’s never going to happen
      .
      Wow. That’s the American spirit: When faced with overwhelming odds, give up.
      .
      and find ways to make it easier for people to legally purchase items.
      .
      Easier than one-click shopping on Amazon?
      .
      PAD

      1. Michael P: Because in lending, no copy is made, unauthorized or otherwise.
        .
        Luigi Novi: The lent book was paid for. The copied one was not.
        .
        David Gian-Cursio: Someone bought a book, and gave it to other people who will now not buy a book because they got the one read they were going to enjoy from it for free. The metaphor holds…
        Luigi Novi: The analogy (what I assume you meant by “metaphor”) does not hold, because the book in question was already paid for. Lending that book has nothing to do with copying it, and neither does precluding a future sale of the book (which isn’t even a given, since some of those friends might give the book back before they finish it, and decide to get their own).
        .
        David Gian-Cursio: …unless you’re going to insist anyone who ever put up anything for unauthorized download must have shoplifted it, and that everyone who downloads a book will repeatedly read it and/or redistribute it exponentially.
        Luigi Novi: I have no idea what you’re talking about here. The book lender in your analogy bought the book in the first place, as you yourself explained in your hypothetical. Therefore, there is no “shoplifting”. The crime in question is in producing unauthorized units. Only the copyright holder is allowed to do that. The purchaser/lender is not.
        .
        David Gian-Cursio: Besides, libraries and used bookstores are what made it okay to read something without paying for it.
        Luigi Novi: Um, no, they did not, because the books that are found in libraries are indeed paid for. You’re speaking as if the purchasing cost is based on the reading experience of each person using the unit in question. It isn’t. It’s based on the actual unit sold. Why people like you cannot comprehend this quite simple and self-evident fact, I don’t know.
        .
        David Gian-Cursio: Doctrine of First Sale says that you buy a book, and you can lend it freely as often as you like, and sell or give it away without paying the original copyright holder. The first part is just old-school DRM, binding the authors’ words to the paper object, but the second is the nightmare you’re still fighting against. That established that what you’re paying for with a book is the paper and ink object, not the story the author made.
        Luigi Novi: Yes, you are paying for the book, and not the story. This is because you don’t own the story when you buy the book. Only the owner does. I am not “fighting” against the right of purchasers of books to lend them. I merely acknowledge that copying it does not constitute lending, for the simple reason that I have the ability to spot and articulate a dishonestly-argued bûllšhìŧ analogy when I see one, something pirates and piracy advocates are either too arrogant or too dumb to accept.
        .
        David Gian-Cursio: That’s why people think it’s okay to pass around books to people who would have only read them once whether they bought them or borrowed them…
        Luigi Novi: It is. No one has said otherwise.
        .
        David Gian-Cursio: And that’s why people instinctively feel that passing around a digital copy of something isn’t the same as stealing it from a store. After all, the store still has their copy, and all you’re paying for the binding, right?
        Luigi Novi: Non-sequitur. Unlike theft/shoplifting, copyright infringement is not predicated on the notion of the store no longer having its copy. It’s predicated on the principle you are not unauthorized to create new units of the product. Lending the unit you bought and creating a new one are not the same thing.
        .
        David Gian-Cursio: People who pirate don’t think of pirating as mass duplication or counterfeiting. In their eyes, it’s no different from taping something off television and fast-forwarding the commercials, or xeroxing a newspaper article, or checking out a book.
        Luigi Novi: Yeah, they think this way because they’ve developed a mindset that says that anything they have the physical power to do is something they’re entitled to, or else because they’re just flat-out fûçkìņg stupid. Human beings are hardwired to defend ideas, even if they are wrong, rather than reconsider them in unbiased fashion, even when evidence and reason would seem to require it. All sorts of dumb ideas have been justified throughout history because of this, and continue to be. But it doesn’t mean those ideas are legitimate.
        .
        Copyright infringement holds as a criteria that usage of the content in question should not infringe upon the copyright holder’s ability to profit from that content. Taping TV programs, xeroxing newspaper articles and checking out books does not do this.

      2. Luigi Novi: Copyright infringement holds as a criteria that usage of the content in question should not infringe upon the copyright holder’s ability to profit from that content. Taping TV programs, xeroxing newspaper articles and checking out books does not do this.
        .
        Bûllšhìŧ. Companies sell home videos, newspapers sell reprints, and publishers sell books. How does doing an end-run around them and getting that content for free in whatever manner not prevent the holder from profiting off of it?
        .
        Remember, I’m not arguing that copying is no worse than lending. I’m arguing that lending (and reselling) is no better than copying, and that’s why people don’t think illegal downloading is a big deal. It’s the fetishization of the physical artifact at the expense of the actual content that got us into this mess. The general mental model is that you’re paying for the medium, not the message. You buy a book, not a story. A DVD, not a movie. A CD, not a song.
        .
        (I personally don’t think it’s a big deal because everything I’ve seen indicates that on-line piracy is a scapegoat for problems caused by other, far more influential factors, but I’ve been avoiding that argument because it’s stale and boring. I’ve never seen anyone explore the idea that a history of analogue exemptions to copyright paved the road to digital disregard of intellectual property rights, so that’s what I’m focusing on.)

  32. I was thinking that the Wikipedia blackout would give me an extra incentive to do some reading. Ironically, the book I’m currently reading is Andrew Lih’s The Wikipedia Revolution. (No, I’m not joking, that’s actually what I’m reading right now.) Though I suppose tomorrow I’ll have the weekly comics to go through, since there’s four or five coming out that I intend to buy.
    .
    Interestingly though, I just read a New York Times article that said that if you hit the Escape key just right as a Wikipedia article is loading, you can bypass the blackout page. The Times says that it has to be timed just right, and may require a few tries, but I got it easily on the first and second try. It appears that you just have to press Esc before the blackout screen appears.
    .
    Still, I feel like sitting down with a book right now before going to bed.

    1. I just tried it. It’s absolutely true. Just to prove it, there’s what you see when you actually input:
      .
      Blackout
      From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
      Look up blackout in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
      For the announced blackout of Wikipedia, see 2012 Wikipedia blackout.
      .
      Blackout(s) may refer to:
      Contents
      [hide]
      .
      1 Loss of lighting or communication
      2 Medical
      3 Living persons
      4 Music
      4.1 Bands and record labels
      4.2 Albums
      4.3 Songs
      5 Film, stage and television
      6 Fiction
      7 Games
      8 Other uses
      .
      So Wikipedia…which is protesting actions being taken by IP holders who don’t want things being done with their property despite their wishes…are having their desires thwarted by people doing things with their property despite their wishes.
      .
      You know, “irony” is SUCH an overused word. So is “awesome.” Yet I find the irony of that to be awesome.
      .
      PAD

      1. Wikipedia is run by very smart people who understand how computers work. I truly doubt that it’s an accident that their content is still accessible despite their participation in the protest. Especially since it’d probably be slightly easier to pull the whole site than to let you load whichever page you navigated to and then obscure it with the explanation of blackout-day. Indeed, they’re practically throwing money away by having whole pages of text and pictures be downloaded by a user and then blocking it all with a black screen and a few lines of text, and bandwidth adds up on a site the size of Wikipedia.
        .
        Also, the licensing Wikipedia uses means their content isn’t their, or anyone’s, “property.” Someone could copy, reedit, or redistribute content from Wikipedia without consequence.
        .
        My point is, you may as well crow about people paying for “Steal This Book” as an out-of-nowhere victory for the establishment that taught Abbie Hoffman that no one can fight against The Man. He probably considered that possibility when he put it on the shelves of bookstores.

      2. Wikipedia has a line in their info page about getting around the blackout. They’re fine with it and planned for that to be the case.
        .
        That said, I’m disappointed with Wikipedia. They say they want to spread information about SOPA. That’s partially true. But what they really want to do is spread their OPINION of SOPA.
        .
        I wish Wikipedia stuck to their neutral stance and had a, well, neutral statement.

      3. “which is protesting actions being taken by IP holders who don’t want things being done with their property despite their wishes”

        Now you’re just being deliberately, purposely ignorant. They are NOT protesting actions being taken by rights holders. They are protesting the shift of burden of proof from the plaintiff to the defendant – one of the most fundamental keys to how our system of justice operates.

        So, is there irony in that the only perception of irony is by the one person saying it’s ironic?

    2. Peter David: I just tried it. It’s absolutely true.
      Luigi Novi: Yeah but it turns out that you can only access articles, not edit them. I didn’t notice this when first making my post above.
      .
      Jeff M: I wish Wikipedia stuck to their neutral stance and had a, well, neutral statement.
      Luigi Novi: The Wikimedia Foundation never claimed to be neutral on SOPA. Neutrality is a policy pertaining to article content. Not the Foundation’s public stance on issues that may adversely effect it.
      .
      If neutrality pertained to the Foundation and those who brought Wikipedia into being, then logically, it would mean that Jimmy Wales’ desire to make the sum of all human knowledge available and free to everyone would “violate neutrality”, since that right there is a viewpoint. Taken to its logical extension, this would mean that the very existence of the encyclopedia violates Neutrality:
      .
      Larry: “Hey, Jimmy, wanna create a free online encyclopedia?”
      .
      Jimmy” “Nah.”
      .
      Larry: “Why not?”
      .
      Jimmy: “I dunno. I’m just neutral on the entire idea.”

      1. They also have instructions in their info page about the blackout to remove it entierly by taking out java support.
        .
        Luigi – I know Wikipedia isn’t neutral only on articles (your example did make me think of that neutral Futurama planet), but I feel the spirit of their website would have been better served with a better approach. Just take this statement:
        .
        “Wikipedia is a tremendously useful resource, and its existence depends upon a free, open and uncensored Internet. SOPA and PIPA (and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States) will hurt you, because they will make it impossible for sites you enjoy, and benefit from, to continue to exist.”
        .
        That last part is just declaring certain things to be the case. They may very well be correct (note: I don’t like SOPA), but stating those as fact is just incorrect. I feel like a [citation needed] tag should be put on. At least they provide links to their properly balanced and informative SOPA articles.

  33. PAD, I’m afraid that, being a bear of Very Little Imagination, I work better with metaphor. Please let me know if I’m understanding this situation in a somewhat equivalent way.
    .
    METAPHOR: We’re talking about a standard retail shop – let’s use “Wal-Mart” for the sake of familiarity. But it’s a Wal-Mart without any security, on the assumption that people are going to act morally and pay for anything they want.
    .
    CREATORS: They make the products in Wal-Mart.
    PIRATES: They feel as if it is their right to walk into Wal-Mart, pick up anything they want, and just walk out with it without paying.
    EXTERNAL RESPONSE (SOPA, PIPA, et. al.): To prevent further such actions, armed guards are set up at the entrance of every Wal-Mart, and these guards do a search and ID check of anyone who wants to go in to Wal-Mart – even if they just want to browse.
    INTERNAL RESPONSE: Wal-Mart changes their sales style so that every single item is now in a vending machine type setup; no item can be obtained without putting money into the slot FIRST.
    NEIL GAIMAN/CORY DOCTOROW/etc. ALTERNATIVE: These gentlemen have cartons of one of their books outside the Wal-Mart, and they are giving them away – with the belief that people will examine the product, enjoy it, and purchase other similar properties in the Wal-Mart.
    RATIONAL RESPONSE: STOP SHOPLIFTING, YOU ASSHATS. Shoplifting is ILLEGAL and hurts the retailer and the creators alike. Pirates have to be mentally limited to blatantly and obviously break the law in this way – AND FEEL EMPOWERED TO DO SO, with no consequences.
    .
    Is this close to the situation as you see it?

    1. Like PAD, you’re being naive.
      .
      The reason people don’t shoplift more often is that they can get CAUGHT and sent to JAIL. Another powerful reason is that they can be socially shunned. Despite Hollywood telling us outlaws are sexy, most people don’t want to associate with outlaws. Try telling your girlfriend and your friends that you’re a shoplifter.
      .
      But with digital piracy, there is no threat of jail or physical danger or even much of a social stigma. You can’t get people to respect the law just by appealing to their good natures or rational natures.
      .
      The only solution, IMO, is starting to arrest digital pirates AND get society to support the arrests.

      1. Naive? Wow. I mean, you may be correct that people have no moral sense… but I can’t help but want to think better of humanity than that. Most of humanity anyhow.
        .
        I _have_ seen people who think, as you describe, merely “Gotta get mine, screw the rest of the world.” But I’ve seen a lot more who do the right thing when given a chance… even if no one is watching, even if there is no possibility of retribution.
        .
        Please be sure that I mean no insult or sarcasm here… but it sounds as if your worldview is lonely and bleak. I hope you encounter more of the good folks to change your mind.
        .
        To paraphrase Elliot S! Maggin, “There is a right and a wrong in the universe, and the difference isn’t very hard to see.”

      2. I believe most people do have a moral sense. But in the absence of fear of retribution or social shunning, it’s mostly tied to empathy. To the belief you’re hurting fellow human beings. Digital piracy is complicated by the fact that you’re not immediately seeing the results of your crime in another human being.
        .
        “Moral” people who would never pull a knife and threat to hurt PAD if he didn’t hand his wallet, would have no problem stealing his intelectual property by pushing buttons.
        .
        I don’t consider myself lonely, and I have a lot of faith in human beings, really. But the reality of digital piracy and the millions who practice it seems to support my worldview, friend.

    2. I would say “emotionally limited” rather than “mentally limited.” And you left out the people who think we should just bomb the Wal-Mart and make everybody do what Neil and Cory are doing. But other than that, works for me.

  34. Yes, in fact, not having the internet would make life worse. You got along without for years. That’s great. That’s how inventions work. You live without them until they are around. Antibiotics were not invented, for example, until the 1940’s. The transistor? The 1950’s. The personal computer? 1970’s. Anybody want to go back to when infections from a papercut killed people. How about when computers took up three stories of a building for half the power of my first cell phone?

    I have no problem with the artists getting money for their product, bit the major entertainment companies behind this bill like the record companies and movie companies are blackguards and unhanged scoundrels of the first order. You don’t need me to tell you what thieves the record companies and agents are that sue John Forgarty or kill Peter Hamm. And don’t get me started on the creator rights issues in comics. So that brings me to SOPA.

    Here’s the thing, copyright holders do not have clean hands on this issue any more than they do in dealing with creators. Disney has been extending copyright for years. Sonny Bono, GOP, spent his time in congress getting copyright extended, way beyond what was intended or would have been comprehended by the copyright clause. The Internet works by copyright infringement. My computer screen makes a copy every time it refreshes the screen.

  35. You took the words out of my mouth, PAD. I dislike SOPA, but I hate the righteous, blind protesting even more.

    I do want to know your opinion on this, though: is our concept of Intellectual Property outdated with digital media? Our economy and our laws were never designed to deal with a reality where a valuable commodity could be replicated instantly.

    I feel like SOPA and the piracy that caused it are symptoms of outdated (or at least conflicting) IP concepts. Young people don’t seem to see anything digital as valuable (thus stealing it is a-okay). Congress is basically trying to force the digital reality to resemble the pre-digital one.

    1. Young people don’t seem to see anything digital as valuable (thus stealing it is a-okay).
      .
      Young people also used to have classes in “Civics.” You don’t see that as much anymore. Might be some cause and effect there.
      .
      PAD

  36. Some say random chance is really scrambled info, some sort of magic, like with what Longshot uses.

    I think that peoples right to their lives and their info should be protected too. This law threatens that.
    To have ones self to be exploited by someone else is quite sickening. Like turning someone into a comic book character against their will, almost.

    I doubt that SOPA will go anywhere anytime soon, and if it does, I’m sure the USA wont be around much anymore afterwards. Some wars can’t be won.

  37. The crucial thing you’re missing here, is that SOPA will not stop piracy. Look at the sites blacking out today? Are they the big infringing torrent and download sites? No. They’re not worried, because they know whatever the government do, they can work around it.

    Basically, SOPA doesn’t go far enough. Want to stop online piracy? Nationalise internet provision, monitor everything that everyone access, and starting fining people who download illegal stuff. And ban encryption. That might work. Anything short of that will fall short.

    You seem to think people are protesting this because they’re afraid of no longer being able to get stuff for free. No. They’ll always be able to get stuff for free. The people who will suffer are the ones in the middle. Where cases of fair-use butt up against cases of over-zealous publishers. Someone quoting a large section of your novel without permission as part of a review might get shut down. The guys distributing the whole thing will be just fine.

    I’m glad that SOPA won’t affect you. I’m glad these blackouts don’t bother you personally at all, because you’re not reliant on those sites. Other people are, both personally, and for business reasons. I’m sure you’d be as sanguine about the situation if Amazon decided to shut down for a month because people can always go buy your books from the store. No big deal right? You don’t need the internet right?

    1. I’m glad that SOPA won’t affect you.
      .
      That’s only what the people behind SOPA want you to think.

  38. Please link to a website who is protesting SOPA because they think piracy is A-OK, because that’s not what I see. SOPA (or PROTECT IP a.k.a. PIPA, the Senate version that is getting a bit lost in a mostly SOPA-flavored kerfluffle) would essentially give the government the power to shut down any website anywhere at any time, without any sort of due process. No government should have that power. That’s all that matters. The excuse du jour is piracy, which hits home for you, but that’s not the point; whether your target is pirates, child pornographers, terrorists, or Communists, you need the ability to actually hit the target with high precision, not by aiming a drone in the general direction and saying “screw the collateral damage.”

    1. “Please link to a website who is protesting SOPA because they think piracy is A-OK, because that’s not what I see.”
      .
      That’s easy: the piracy sites! I don’t think PAD would like it if I linked one, but one big one (starts with a “D”) has a big, blacked out STOP SOPA page.
      .
      Sadly, this particular site is probably hosting Peter David’s novels and comics right now.

      1. Well, the only piracy-oriented site I’ve heard of by name is the Pirate Bay, but if this “D” site is protesting SOPA because they’re worried it will actually accomplish the goal in its title, they can probably relax. Sadly, these legal efforts usually cause more inconvenience to the law-abiders than to the criminals.

        My point is that sites like Wikipedia have no vested interest in protecting piracy; on the contrary, Wikimedia has always been very thorough about protecting IP. Just look at all the articles that have no associated picture because the authors couldn’t find one in the public domain, or the history of submitted images being taken down – not by third-party rights holders, but by the regular moderators and admins. If they’re concerned, it’s not because they’re protecting the pirates’ interest.

        Even Reddit, despite its reputation as a bit of a scofflaw site (a reputation due mostly to its nature as a sort of Usenet for the WWW age), has much more to worry about than the law’s effect on any of its more piratical denizens. The owners and administrators of reddit could be prosecuted under these laws because an unaffiliated end user of their site submitted a link to an article on another website that included infringing content. That they could be held legally responsible in such a situation is patently absurd, but that their site could be taken offline entirely due to nothing more than an accusation is beyond absurd.
        Protecting rights holders and persecuting pirates is a necessity, but must not come at the expense of due process of law. This is especially true when it comes to governmental ability to censor the Internet. I, too, was already an adult when the Internet went commercial, and well remember the Before Time, but the ‘net is the modern era’s printing press, and needs to be protected as such.

  39. I was in a profession for over 25 years where I had to protect certain copyrights from being violated on at least a weekly basis – I worked in professional photo labs since the early 80s. A photographer, of course, retains the rights to any image he takes – and can charge whatever he likes for a reprint. Naturally some customers would balk at paying $20, $30 or up for a 5×7 they wanted just to send to grandma. Can’t say I blame them either, but that means squat. Most of the time people bringing in prints to be copied and reprinted were genuinely ignorant of the law I am sure – most would go away disappointed but not mad that I would refuse to copy something that was obviously shot professionally (I always told them if they would get a written release from the photographer I would be happy to do it). There were plenty however, that would get pretty irate – from the elderly to teenagers (the ones that usually gave me the hardest time were the middle-aged soccer-mom type – go figure). I would be boldly lied to about who shot the photo (I could tell some photographers distinct style) a lot of the time. ALL of them always said the same dámņ thing, “But I BOUGHT that photo from him (or her)!” They were entitled to do with it what they wanted as far as they were concerned. I can tell you a sense of entitlement is not anything new that blew in with the internet. Of course digital technology and the scanner was a game changer for photographers – and the photo lab. I won’t complain about it helping to kill my industry – it is what it is, and hëll- I adapted over the years and stretched out my living longer than a lot of the labs. And I honestly don’t feel bad for a lot of photographers either. The ones who were the most vocal about their precious, one-of-a-kind-works-of-art images and how evil it was for someone to try and take money out of their hands – the ones who went digital first and liked to come back into our lobby and crow about how “they didn’t need us anymore” – they were also the ones who would brag about how they never paid for a copy of Photoshop. I gave up trying reason with their thinking – Photoshop cost too much, they were a small business and they were entitled to it.
    I believe any artist should be fairly paid for what he or she creates, and retain those rights for as long as he or she lives. No question. I don’t have any answers on how these rights should be protected in this modern age. I don’t want my internet to be censored, but I’m also weary of the hyperbole – on either side of the argument. I do know it’s not a generational attitude, this “entitlement” way of thinking.

    1. “Naturally some customers would balk at paying $20, $30 or up for a 5×7 they wanted just to send to grandma. Can’t say I blame them either, but that means squat.”

      Sounds more like when people didn’t want to pay taxes to King George on tea, but the government didn’t care or listen, so the people did something about it.

      This is a lot like that, but minus the bloodshed.

      1. Well… I don’t see it like that. One photographer may charge $30 for a 5×7 print from one of his images, another may only charge $10. Either have the right to charge what they think their copyrighted images are worth. And the government has no reason or right to tell them what to charge. Ultimately the market took care of the ones who priced themselves out of their jobs.

  40. I don’t like pirates. In fact I despise them. I do however realise that the vast majority of copyright thieves are magpies at heart, collect things they never plan to use, and wouldn’t have purchased your goods even if the opportunity to pirate hadn’t presented itself. I wouldn’t object to legislation which properly targetted pirates – although I suspect a very small percenbtage of illegal downloads represent lost sales.

    My problem with SOPA though is that its not targetted. I’m an IT professional. My work involves ensuring that my work environment is secure. I spend a lot of my leasure time online. Most of the media I ‘consume’ is downloaded from the internet (legally). SOPA will cause major issues for all of these.

    SOPA’s required DNS changes make the web a very insecure place to live – securing a workplace that uses any remotely hosted services will be a nightmare. In addition SOPA will place an unrealistic burden on social media sites, file hosting sites, web forums and anything else where users get to host their own content. As an example your blog is hosted on a site (wordpress) which would instantly become legally responsible for every single word posted on the site, and could be blocked if even a single blog discussed possible ways of bypassing DNS blocking, contained even a single copyright image, or linked to a site which was blocked. These don’t even have to be illegal acts – a film review site could be blocked for hosting a single frame from a film under review based on the current wording even though they have broken no laws.

    SOPA doesn’t just target pirates. It targets all internet users. Its like saying you were pickpocketted in Central park so you’d like to carpet bomb New York.

    I have a suggestion. Deal with pirates by putting them in jail. Don’t react to them by abusing law abiding internet users.

  41. I don’t agree with everything you say here, but I must applaud you for having a very strong, well-thought opinion on matters that affect you personally when the debate is otherwise MPAA and RIAA vs The Internet. Glad that at least one person is not aping what everyone else is saying.

    Also, I posted a link to this at The AV Club since I think people should see this and think for a second about what’s at stake beyond the SOPA/PIPA bills.

  42. Please note that the following does not match PAD’s carefully constructed blanket painting of anti-SOPA protesters as pro-piracy thieves:

    http://theoatmeal.com/

    http://xkcd.com/

    These are just two I know of. There are others, I’m sure.

    But please feel free to continue with your feel-good disdain and your uninformed opinions, Peter. I’m glad you’re against SOPA, but your characterization of the protests and a majority of the protesters is WAY off base.

  43. .
    I don’t know how it even surprises me at this point, but in scanning over the various posts from the last few days I’ve seen the inevitable appearance of the people who can’t figure out basic concepts and want to act confused as to how certain things aren’t basically just the same.
    .
    .
    .
    For those of you who can’t figure out the difference between “lending” a book and pirating it online –
    .
    You buy a book. You read it. You rave to a friend about how good it is. He says he’d love to get it, but he’s a bit broke right then. You lend him your copy. He reads it and gives it back.
    .
    In this entire exchange, there only exists one copy of the book. Since you purchased that book, you have the right to do with that one copy just about anything you want to with it. You can read it or not as you see fit. You can read it, box it up and stick it in your attic never to be seen again. You can lend it out or you can even give it away. Hëll, you can burn it if you want. It belongs to you.
    .
    But it is only one copy.
    .
    If you lend it out, you get it back. It’s there for you if you want to read it later. If the guy who you lent it to really digs the book (or movie) and can’t borrow it from you again and they don’t know someone else who owns it, they would have to buy it. That’s actually a common business model from way back that businesses have used for years to their advantage. You get something, your friends try it out and like it and some of your friends get their own. In this way, they turn one sale into two, three, four or more.
    .
    You buy the book and cut the pages out, scan them and post them on your website. You get a DVD, rip the film and upload the film to your website. You rip a CD and upload the songs to your site. You then put out the word that your pirate site is open for business and ready for people to start downloading from.
    .
    That’s not lending, that’s publishing. That’s not an equation where you have one copy being circulated out among a small group of people and there’s a high likelihood that some of those people will then go and by copies of their own. Why? because you’ve gone from lending to publishing and turned one copy into hundreds thousands or millions. And given that your illegal publishing venture is competing by using a price point “It’s Free!” that the stores can’t compete with, you’re pretty much guaranteeing that a large percentage of people who would have actually bought the item in question will not do so.
    .
    There’s no concept in this of one copy being passed around and, when returned or lent out to others, the person who last had it no longer having a copy. One copy is purchased, turned into hundreds, thousands or millions and no one has to return or pass along a copy and maybe later buy it because they want a copy themselves.
    .
    And the end result is that money, often a great deal of money, is taken away from the company and the artist who original created and published that original copy. And sometimes the lesser sales get interpreted as that artist or the style of endeavor that the artist chose for that project is seen as not popular and viable enough for follow ups. Congratulations, pirates, you’ve helped make sure something you like doesn’t have the proper follow ups or continuations because you made it look less popular than it was.
    .
    .
    .
    The other thing that seems to be a point of (quite likely deliberate) confusion is how there’s a difference between buying a book/movie/CD and later selling it to someone VS that someone just getting a free pirate copy. The confusion seems to stem from the idea that you’re depriving the publisher/store/artist of a sale either way.
    .
    Well, no, you’re really not.
    .
    You get a copy of a book. You either don’t like it or, as time passes, don’t like it enough to want hold on to it. The book has been bought and payed for. That copy of the book has been legally purchased and the profits have gone to the store, publisher and writer already. You selling it down the road doesn’t change the fact that the one copy of that book has been properly paid for and all parties rewarded financially.
    .
    If you don’t like the book, it does you no good to hold on to it. Why not pass it along to someone who will like it? No issue there. There’s one copy of the book that was paid for and, now being yours, you have the right to sell it to someone in the pursuit of some monetary gain. That’s really no different than what the store does anyhow and it’s long been the backbone concept of what we all call “the collectors’ market.”
    .
    No matter how you spin it or how badly you want to deliberately be confused by the concept, you have only one copy, one copy that’s been legally purchased and is now your own, being resold to someone else. That one copy can only be read by one person at a time at any given point in time. If you suddenly decide that you miss the book or want to reread it later down the road, you have to buy a new copy. If a friend who borrowed it from you once before wants to borrow it from you again and finds out that you no longer have it, they either go without or get their own copy. Either way, the demand for two books by two people still becomes a sale of two books from a store. One sale is your original purchase and the second sale is either you buying a new copy or your friend getting a copy of their own.
    .
    If you free pirate copies to people, then there is really only the need for one sale. You have a copy, anybody and everybody that gets one of your pirated copies has a copy and there is only ever one sale for the hundreds to thousands of copies that now exist. You’ve published copies that will be simultaneously owned and read by many with only one single legal purchase that really pays the people who made the book. Again, you’re not reselling a used copy, you’re publishing; maybe mass publishing. Big, big difference.
    .
    .
    .
    By the way, here’s something that some of you who “embrace the future” are also confused about. It’s not really “piracy.” You’re not a “pirate.” That holds some odd level respect and romanticism as an idea and self image for some. They’re “pirates” who are sticking to the man. They’re cool and hip and they’re pushing the evil corporations out of the way of both the people and the future.
    .
    You’re not pirates. You’re thieves. That guy you hated in school who made you hand over your money to him? You’re that guy. The jerk who comes out of the dark and holds you up and takes your cash? That’s you. The áššhølë who steals your stuff in your workplace or the bigger áššhølë who breaks into your home and robs you while you were out? Look in the mirror, buddy, cause you’re looking at him.
    .
    * Thief *
    .
    That’s all that you are and no level of self delusional rhetoric or pathetic claims of championing the future will ever change that fact.

    1. Apparently you haven’t paid much attention while typing out that screed.

      WE KNOW THE DIFFERENCE. Most of us against SOPA are NOT against protecting a creator’s right to profit from his IP. We are NOT against a copyright infringer having to pay fines and damages for infringing. You and PAD apparently are being deliberately obtuse about this point.

      We ARE against the methods SOPA/PIPA allows the rights holder to use to enforce those rights WITHOUT having to go through standard legal redress (aka a lawsuit). S/P is a “shoot first, ask questions later” law that shifts the burden of proof from the plaintiff, where it has been for the last 230+ years, to the defendant.

      I’m not a thief – I pay for my books, I pay for my comic books, my movies, my cable, everything – but I’m still against SOPA.

      1. critter42: Apparently you haven’t paid much attention while typing out that screed. You and PAD apparently are being deliberately obtuse about this point. We are NOT against a copyright infringer having to pay fines and damages for infringing. We ARE against the methods SOPA/PIPA allows the rights holder to use to enforce those rights WITHOUT having to go through standard legal redress.
        Luigi Novi: Then you need to understand that JERRY WASN’T TALKING TO YOU. He was talking to those who have indeed expressed the ideas he was referencing in his post, which have indeed been expressed on this very thread. If you have not expressed those ideas yourself, then why do you react as if Jerry was talking to you and not them?
        .
        As far as SOPA, well, PAD already said repeatedly that he was against it, several times. How many times does he have to say this?
        .
        So much for being too obtuse to pay attention.
        .
        .
        Jerry, you go, dude. 🙂

      2. .
        “Apparently you haven’t paid much attention while typing out that screed.”
        .
        Apparently you fail massively at reading comprehension.
        .
        If you look at some of the posts in the thread, you will see some people having various conversations where at least one person is presenting the exact POV I addressed in my post. Also, if you had both the ability to read what I wrote and to comprehend what you were reading, I did not say at any time that everyone here who was opposed to SOPA held those ideas as their own. That would be a hëll of a trick since I’m one of the people way up at the top of the thread agreeing with Peter that the various people who loudly proclaim their joy in pirating are in large part to blame for this massive overreaction called SOPA while then point blank stating that SOPA is a huge overreach and not the law that we need in place. You then might notice that Peter, who you claim to be obtuse on this point, reiterates that exact point and says the following about SOPA.
        .
        “The problem with laws is that they’re written by lawyers. They don’t use ten words when ten thousand will do, and they “What if” it to death. What if this happens, what if that happens. And they try to cover ever possible aspect, and then it gets out of control.
        .
        The core issue is piracy. But instead of going ship to ship to get the pirates, SOPA basically proposes covering the ocean with oil and then lighting it up.
        .
        PAD”
        .
        You, had you the ability to comprehend what you were reading, might have also noticed that I addressed my post to very specific people. See here –
        .
        “For those of you who can’t figure out the difference between “lending” a book and pirating it online -“
        .
        Do you see in that statement of who this was being addressed to the idea that it was being addressed to everyone who opposed SOPA? Do you see any deceleration in my post at all where I address it to people who oppose SOPA?
        .
        I can see why you post from anonymity. You accuse others of being “deliberately obtuse” while in actuality they’re not being any such thing and in fact it’s you who are being inadvertently obtuse and making yourself look like a grade-a, first class moron. I wouldn’t sign my real name to my posts if I were you either.

  44. Btw, here’s what the MPAA thinks of the consumer:
    http://www.mpaa.org/resources/c4c3712a-7b9f-4be8-bd70-25527d5dfad8.pdf
    .
    Yep, if you support the blackout today, you’re a “corporate pawn”.
    .
    Wil Wheaton said it best: “Protesting to raise awareness of terrible legislation that will destroy the free and open Internet is an abuse of power, but buying NINETY-FOUR MILLION DOLLARS worth of congressional votes is just fine.”
    .
    In this case, I’d rather be a pawn than a whørë.

    1. From that article:
      “[The entertainment industry] feels it’s a huge expense and smaller companies may not have the resources to press their case”
      .
      Now, let’s fix this to what life would be like with SOPA or PIPA:
      “[The entertainment industry] feels it’s a small expense and easy to shut off smaller companies, companies who won’t have the resources to defend themselves”.
      .
      Yes, it’s easy to see why the corporations are for SOPA/PIPA, and against OPEN: it denies them the power of abuse that they so desperately seek.

      1. Just FYI: OPEN, which is not perfect, doesn’t have that much support. If you like it, spread the word.

    1. I absolutely buy it, Brian (interesting choice of words!). I can live with piracy, because it represents so few actual lost sales that the benefits far outweigh the losses. Cory Doctorow has proven with his books that it’s possible to compete with “free” without resorting to DRM or other extreme measures. And I can think of plenty of bootleg, never-officially-released material that’s led me to pay for official releases. Like most things in life, this isn’t an all-or-nothing, black-or-white issue.

    2. On a somewhat related note (I mentioned in another comment that I thought “illegal downloading” was a scapegoat because the real problems were too much trouble to deal with) I just read this little gem.
      .
      Confessions of a Publisher: “We’re in Amazon’s Sights and They’re Going to Kill Us”
      .
      Oh, to live in a world where the media’s biggest problem was on-line theft. Luckily, there are outside-the-box ideas like Crazy 8 Press that aren’t just holding onto expired models or trying to legislate away minor yet sexy-sounding problems.

  47. I agree with PAD on this one. This is a bad law, but moral outrage over it is hard to come by. I also wonder how many of these companies bemoan the loss of free expression while simply treating censorship as a cost of doing business in China, Pakistan, or anywhere else where free speech isn’t recognized as a right.

    1. As I wrote elsewhere, there’s a difference here. It’s one thing if you have to put up with China’s censorship while doing business in their country, and quite another to have the U.S. reach out and tell other countries how to run their laws. And that’s effectively what’s happening here and why I, for one, am quite upset. Why bother running up the Canadian flag on Parliament Hill every morning when the U.S. can just come waltzing in and give our companies their marching order?

  48. Really Peter?

    What would you prefer?

    Being read by fans?

    -or-

    Getting paid to be read by people?

    The world is changing, and it is better to be read, these days.

    I, for one, will not be buying or reading your works.

    I do support (with money), people who’s projects I respect.

    Best wishes,

    sim

    1. Being read and liked by multitude of fans means a lot to him, I’m sure. But it doesn’t feed his family. Being paid to be read by people does. A difference which may not mean much to you, but one which I suspect matters to them.

    2. And the first “I don’t like what you said so I’m not going to read your books” by someone who may or may not have been reading them in the first place gets tossed my way. Wow. Didn’t see THAT coming.
      .
      Oh. Wait. I did.
      .
      Even though I said that I was opposed to SOPA. Because apparently I wasn’t opposed AND morally indignant.
      .
      Go figure.
      .
      PAD

    4. Really Sim? Which would you prefer? Working at a job, or being PAID to work? Better to have a job than worry about getting paid, right?

    5. .
      “Really Peter?
      What would you prefer?
      Being read by fans?
      -or-
      Getting paid to be read by people?”
      .
      Hmmmm…. Tough call there…
      .
      Is it better to be read by “fans” who are, one presumes, defined here by SimeonV (Simian 5 or Simian V?) as people that like your work, just not enough to actually pay for it, or is it better to be read by “people” who will actually put money in one’s pocket and allow you to then take care of yourself and your family and continue to actually earn a living creating more work that “people” will pay for, read and enjoy?
      .
      Gee… That’s just such a tough choice. By the way, can you start swinging by my place once a week every week during the spring and summer? I want you to cut my lawn, weed my garden and trim my hedges. I won’t pay you for the work mind you, but I will be sure to make it well known that the fine yard work that’s being done is being done by SimeonV.
      .
      Hey, what would you prefer?
      Having your fine work seen and admired by fans?
      -or-
      Getting paid to have you work seen and admired by people?
      .
      See you this spring.
      .
      Or not.

      1. If you want to get more material from the writer / musician / artist you enjoy, then they need to get paid.

        I like Parry Gripp’s music. He makes it available on his website for free, with a donation link. You don’t have to donate; but I donate a dollar for every song I download from it, because I like his songs, and I want him to be able to make more of them.

        I never thought twice about spending money on a book or comic with the name “Peter David” on it, because I know that name is a guarantee of enjoyment for me.

        If you don’t enjoy something enough to be willing to pay for it, then you’re not a fan.

  49. Replying to something I saw upthread: I can’t think of a single used bookstore that ever let me have one of their books for free. At most, I could “pay” with a stack of my own used books instead of with currency.

      1. Yeah, well, they already got paid for that particular copy when it was bought the first time, like Luigi said above. As opposed to downloading it from a torrent site, where nobody gets paid for the copy that now exists on the downloader’s computer.

  50. It costs pennies to deliver an ebook to a consumer. There are few ‘risks’ to epublishing – no print run to estimate, warehouse, ship, and consume shelf space, and ultimately get remaindered or destroyed.

    Yet etailers feel entitled to continue to charge AS MUCH as they did for the physical product.

    And they have the gall to impose such draconian restrictions on YOUR copy of the book, that you can’t lend it, resell it, read it on a different device, or safely ‘shelve’ it without keeping track of accounts and passwords.

    To borrow a phrase:

    What the hëll did you think was going to happen?

    If etailers would sell digital books and (digitally downloaded) movies at a price that was more reflective of costs and REASONABLE profit margins, pirating wouldn’t be worth the effort.

    I’m not calling piracy ‘right’, but the current model is a dinosaur, and encourages it to happen, just as the piracy encourages legislation.

    Hopefully in the near future, authors will discard their publishers, publish their books themselves (on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, etc.), for a few dollars apiece, and still make a greater percentage of royalties.

    1. For what it’s worth, I completely agree with you about eBook pricing.
      .
      That’s why we at http://www.crazy8press.com put “The Camelot Papers” out (via B&N and Amazon) at a low digital price. I asked the fans, “What would you pay?” They told me. That’s what I priced it at. Actually I went at the low end of what people said they’d pay, just to make it even more accessible. “The Hidden Earth, Vol. 1” is even lower since it’s a reprint. The paperbacks run about three times as much, and that’s out of necessity (the profit on a trade is actually, in terms of dollars and cents, almost the same as the ebook.)
      .
      What the hëll was I thinking? I thought, “Fair is fair.”
      .
      Also, my books are completely lendable. I had the choice of whether or not to enable that function. I did, because I wanted it to be as close to the experience of reading a print book as possible. And those you could lend out, so I decided to emulate that with my ebooks.
      .
      Because I thought, “Fair is fair.” Because all of us at Crazy 8, which has been up and running since last summer, looked ahead and said, “How can we, as authors, best serve the readership.”
      .
      Funny how nobody commented on that. Including you.
      .
      PAD

      1. Well, of course no one mentioned it – it’s a drop in an ocean – (your books alone are an ocean – you’re prolific to say the least!) so I never noticed it.

        Part of why I didn’t notice it is, I own a Kindle – and your book, reasonably priced, and ‘lendable’, can only be found at Barnes & Noble – not at Amazon, and not at Kobo, or Sony.

        So I gave up, and googled ‘ “Darkness Of The Light” Peter David epub ‘. And I found a torrent before I found the legit ebook.

        Epublishing is horribly fragmented, with multiple formats, and 4 different DRM schemes (Nook, Adobe, Kindle and iBooks are all different).

        What a PITA!!!!

        You’ve made a good gesture with what you’ve done – but were I to want the book, it would be easier just to download the pirated one! (Actually without the DRM and conversion tools I have it would be impossible for me to buy and read your book right now).

        Suggestion: upload your book to Amazon, Kobobooks, etc.

        It shouldn’t be this hard/complicated to buy a book!

        As I say, I think you hit the sweet spot with pricing, but the whole proprietary stuff is still headache-inducing.

        FYI, my usual process it to purchase (or borrow from the library) an Adobe DRM epub, which I can then strip DRM from so I can
        1. keep it permanently without having to track which DRM account it uses, and
        2. so I can convert it to kindle’s format

        (If there is ever a compelling reason to buy a Nook book I guess I’ll install B&N DRM-removal too. And FYI, before anyone jumps in DRM-removal is still legal here in Canada – for now).

        Hopefully, the big ebook players will get their act together and make things easier/standardized (although I don’t have much faith in this happening). If they started with ‘reasonable’ prices, as you’ve done, that alone would go a long way.

      2. Well, of course no one mentioned it – it’s a drop in an ocean – (your books alone are an ocean – you’re prolific to say the least!) so I never noticed it.
        .
        You didn’t notice it. It’s only been sitting in the upper right side of this website for seven months, not to mention all the separate postings I did about it in December leading up to X-Mas. Because it was drowning in the vast ocean of this site.
        .
        Part of why I didn’t notice it is, I own a Kindle – and your book, reasonably priced, and ‘lendable’, can only be found at Barnes & Noble – not at Amazon, and not at Kobo, or Sony.
        .
        Yeah, uh…no. “Camelot Papers”–the book your eye glossed right over–has been available on Amazon since last summer. “Hidden Earth,” yes, only on B&N for now. On Amazon shortly.
        .
        PAD

      3. .
        “Part of why I didn’t notice it is, I own a Kindle – and your book, reasonably priced, and ‘lendable’, can only be found at Barnes & Noble – not at Amazon, and not at Kobo, or Sony.”
        .
        I have a copy of Camelot Papers. I purchased it before DragonCon 2011 (i.e. before September 2011.) i purchased it through Amazon for the Kindle for PC on my laptop.
        .
        I have a copy of the first Hidden Earth novel in hardback. As such, I haven’t sought to buy the digital copy. If I was going to do so, then I would have waited for the thing to hit Amazon as Peter made it clear a while back that the “exclusive” Barnes & Noble issues was short term, 30 day deal.
        .
        http://www.peterdavid.net/index.php/2011/12/18/darkness-of-the-light-now-available-as-an-ebook/
        .
        And even if you didn’t see that thread from December of last year, one short month ago, you could have asked him about it on this website before pirating a copy.
        .
        Seriously, out of curiosity, why is it that people offer that one up as an excuse (on other issues like this as well) and expect it to sound sane? You couldn’t wait 30 days? You have to do that anyhow when you hear that something is coming out and it isn’t available at all anywhere. It was 30 days. And saying that you didn’t know if it was coming out through Amazon? You took the time and work to find a website that had a complete copy of the book and risked downloading a virus. That had to have taken more time and trouble than coming here and either posting a question to Peter or using the email link and sending him the question about the availability of the book. And you wouldn’t have risked getting a virus or malware by coming here and doing that.
        .
        Almost no time and effort wasted, a 30 day wait at the most depending on when you became aware that the first Hidden Earth novel was up for the Nook, no risk of damaging your computer and getting a quality copy at a nice price. But you wanted to do it the other way.
        .
        Yeah, okay.

    2. Kent,

      The problem with your logic is that the physical cost of books, dvd’s etc is only a small portion of the cost of the movie or book.

      YOu fail to include the other factors such as royalties to the actors/authors, payments to other creative people (editors etc).

      The physical (i.e paper, dvd cover etc) are only a small piece of the overall cost.

      This is part of the reason that albums are only slightly cheaper on iTunes for example

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