“Wikipedia and other Websites [Reddit and Boing Boing] are reportedly considering a one-day shutdown in protest of SOPA and PIPA, anti-piracy legislation they argue goes too far,” Nicholas Kolakowski reports for eWeek.
“Wikipedia plans on undergoing a self-imposed blackout Jan. 18, in protest of proposed legislation that it says would harm a free and open Internet,” Kolakowski reports. “The legislation in question includes the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) before the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as PROTECTIP (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. The bills are intended to curb online piracy by allowing copyright holders to block access to domestic and foreign Websites allegedly distributing illegal content. However, critics contend that blacklisting those Websites — and preventing advertisers from doing business with them — is nothing short of censorship.”
Kolakowski reports, “Google has already pushed back against the legislation, which would potentially force it into a more police-style role with regard to Internet content. In turn, that provoked News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch, whose companies produce a significant percentage of the content pillaged by Web pirates, to fire off a Jan. 14 Tweet: ‘Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The best way to prevent rampant piracy is to make your content (TV shows, movies) readily available everywhere, without restrictions (DRM), and price it reasonably. You’ll have more paying customers and, at the same time, the pirated materials will diminish in value. It seems counterintuitive to free the very thing you’re trying to protect, but it’s working for music.
There’s a point where, if you make it convenient enough and price it right, piracy isn’t worth the effort:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Related article:
On red-hot online piracy debate, Obama walks a thin line – January 14, 2012
Love the .38 Special lyric reference, MDN. Ah, it takes me back to the early-eighties!
I have no love for piracy or the “information wants to be free” crap, but more corporate-sponsored government regulation won’t fix anything, and will just serve to create more problems.
More like “tax payer sponsored regulation” to protect the interest of big corporations
Not just big corporations but to individuals works as well. What if I was a self published author…sometimes people wont take down my work overseas and I have no way of fighting it because my US Copyrights do not extend offshore. A DMCA takedown notice only works in USA. Thieves just want to take my work and make money before my work goes abroad…claiming to be me. I lose money…that is rightfully mine. It was work I put into it and I cannot license my work for a good contract if it has been floating around on the net before a publisher picks it up. Same thing with images. People can steal my images and post it on microstock agencies and claim to be me…and I cannot license it for what I normally license it for if this happened. Piracy is damaging not to just corporations but to individuals as well. Intellectual property is just as valuable to individuals as well.
Please don’t be a piracy apologist. This has nothing to do with pricing either.
There are safeguards put in place in order for this to be enforced and acted upon. Read below.
http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat111611.html
While it does suck that you’re not getting as much compensation as you feel you should get, helping to destroy the very foundation of the Internet will not make you any more money.
You are small fish. It is far more likely a larger organization will claim your work as their own, then file a SOPA takedown against YOUR website or pages and take you offline. There is little to no accountability with DMCA takedown notices, it will get 100x worse with SOPA/PIPA.
@Michael G
I like how you obliquely concede that big media corporations are so hated that the idea of them being harmed isn’t sympathetic, so you have to make a hypothetical sob-story about the individual getting hurt.
Which, ironically, is exactly what will happen if SOPA/PIPA succeed.
Here, this will explain it further. As dishonest and slimy as Google is, they’re actually telling the truth in this case.
There is a good article on WIRED.com for joining in ‘safely’ to protect your Google ranking.
I also found a wordpress plugin for those interested
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sopa-strike/
The MDN take is spot on, Cheers
Agree with theMDN take … Make it easily available without BS restraints at a reasonable cost and it’ll sell BIGTIME!
Did you see where the Lamar Smith, the author of the SOPA legislation, has copyright infringing material on his official Congressional website?
http://www.geekosystem.com/sopa-author-copyright-violator/
Worth reading.
IMHO, with the proposed legislation, the US are heading the same way as the Hungarian government with is recent legislative proposals.
Nice take, MDN. Couldn’t agree more!
MDN’s take is entirely correct. Real-world example: comedian Louis CK is selling his latest comedy special on his website for $5 with no DRM. People could have stolen it, but he got over $1 million in sales within weeks.
Make it available, make it convenient, and price it fair. Piracy will decrease dramatically.
I agree.
Piracy IS a problem, but these laws are not the solution.
When Rupert Murdoch vehemently supports SOPA, you know the legislation is meant to protect the old guard.
Imagine if the horse and buggy industry had a lobby 100 years ago to write legislation to prevent cars from taking hold
Who would take notice of that scumbag Murdoch.
Whatever Murdoch does, look the opposite direction for the honest people.
He’s dangerous, and must be watched, to control the spread of more of his evil.
Hmmmm. Maybe he’d be right at home at Google. Privacy, who needs that when there is “news” to be sold.
Elliot Carver, anyone?
I would like to see Google join the protest too, they should turn off the search results (just the search engine, not Google Docs or Gmail). In fact, if every Software as a Service and Content rich website closed down for one day, perhaps the U.S. government would see just how crippled we would be without the internet and that if they gave the power to close these things down, then they would think twice.
Better yet, have all Google Serivces, Wikipedia, Youtube, Vimeo, Redit, WordPress, (sorry MDN) and any other content based website close down completely all services for 48 hours (give notice) so that congress can see what happens if they give too much control to copyright owners to blanket shut down services that have copyrighted content. That would send a serious message.
We•would•have•to•go (rubbing eyes) outside!
Great idea. It would be like the movie, “A Day Without a Mexican.”
There is more to the proposed laws than what is stated in the summary above. There is the potential for the legislation to give wealthy content producers the legal right to seek all kinds of frivolous lawsuits against “stolen IP” which does not have any monetary value. In other words, it gives a significant monetary value (in the form of lawsuits) to “stolen IP” that otherwise would be valueless. For example, if you posted a video of yourself on YouTube in Times Square, and it just so happened that some music was playing in the background that was not even part of what your video was about, you could be liable for copyright infringement. That is the kind of nonsense that has social networks up in arms, because as content hosts this legislation would make them liable for all those kinds of things as well.
Wasn’t it Murdoch’s “news” companies that were hacking phones illegally? And he wants to talk ethics to Google? That is laughable.
The Dude abides.
back in the 90’s I remember using lime wire and etc for downloading my music. sometimes you’d have to re-download stuff because there was crappy quality copies out there, as well as copies that were decoys and didn’t work. but it was sure better than paying 20-30CAD for an album that was mostly fluffy crap with one or two good songs ( like back in the days when vinyl was the standard media for regular consumers. Then iTunes came with songs for 0.99CAD. These days its all in 256k and for the convenience, speed, and fair pricing I, of rthe most part, buy my music from iTunes.
In the 80’s i owned 3 VHS movies. They were over $80 each ( those of us who remember that era, remembered how most no one owned movies, just stacks and stacks of recordable tapes hahah i wonder why?? )
i agree with how make media available and priced fairly and people will buy. There will always be some who steal things that are almost free anyways, but thats life.
An artist is not an artist for the financial glory. They do it for recognition, and because they’re so talented at what they do. Real ones I mean. Sadly the Industry has created monsters out of some people with half a talent. Especially true for the hollywood types where you’re paid for your name more than your “worth”.
Why the HELL isn’t Murdoch in jail?
Even the least educated people know that inbreeding is not good. Below a diagram of the anti-SOPA/PROTECT-IP major players.
http://www.copyhype.com/cdtsopalist/index.html
Still Need Wikipedia During the Blackout?
Find the Wikipedia page you are looking for in Google (for example) and then clicked on the (Google) cashed page.
My wikipanion app still works.
I was actually hoping that the protests would have more teeth. Google simply blacked out their logo, Wikipedia only stopped updates for the day, and Mozilla has a new homepage with a message, but that’s it.
For this to really show strength, Google should have stopped providing search results, Wikipedia should have just gone black (with a message), and Firefox should not be available for download on their page today.
I understand why this would be difficult to do (especially for Google to lose a full day of ad revenue), but as it stands this is really just a symbolic thing, with no real effect felt.
The cynic in me is starting to wonder if some of these “participants” aren’t simply using this as nothing more than a publicity stunt.
Ah, nevermind about my Wikipedia comment – I just went back to the site and it is showing the SOPA page now. Good for them! Odd that it was working for me right before I posted.