SOPA and how it affects the musician

[tpantano]

Ojustaboo- that was a really well thought out post, that I completely agree with.

The problem is, SOPA had very little to do with piracy- it had to do with the media industries gaining a monopoly over the market.

Anyways, the bill has been -temporarily- stopped, and even if it never passes, there will always be another SOPA be it called that or something like the International Copyright Use Protection act (ICUP act) or such.

However, no worries! Lamar Smith is already pushing more anti-internet freedom legislation- he's bringing up something from 2011.
"The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011"
aka
"The Encouragement of Blackmail by Law Enforcement Act"

The act requires that all internet activity for an 18 month period be recorded with your name, IP, your address, bank account numbers, and credit card numbers, by your ISP.

Fun.

[Pastor-of-Muppets]

Anti piracy laws are only that

Draconian laws with vague terms are dangerous, they are always eventually used to lock people up for more than the laws were designed to do.

They'll be abused to restrict more than just piracy. Censorship, even if originally put in place for well-meaning reasons, is not how civilised societies should operate. If big businesses can force ISPs to block access to entire websites that host (or just link) to material they claim they own copyright on, that's only a step away from powerful companies or political groups being allowed to pull the plug on any site that publishes opinions they don't like.

Here's a very brief summary of the problems with the proposed laws (that probably won't convince you to stop frothing at the mouth about thieves and pirates): https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files ... SOPA_0.pdf

I spend literally thousands of pounds a year on recorded music and live music, and buy a few DVDs & blurays and subscribe to lovefilm, I use my computer for writing software and reading email and the web, I download nothing illegally, and think those laws were badly drafted and hugely dangerous.

Don't assume that everyone against laws like SOPA is a pirate or thief or another freetard, maybe they just understand the issues better than you.

Here's one example of someone who makes his living drawing web comics and relies on LEGAL online sharing for his livelihood: http://xkcd.com/1005/

[AFG Music]

http://wordpress.org/

http://www.joomla.org/announcements/gen ... -sopa.html

[MaxStatic]

The internet is the single most important invention in human communication and connectivity that has ever been created. It allows mankind to interact in ways that have never been possible on such a scale with such freedom and creativity ever before.

Attempts to control that, by anyone, results in a big F bomb from me in thier direction. I'm not an advocate of piracy nor am I advocate of slavery. I beleive everyone has the opprotunity to chase the American dream, whether they are American or not. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Any politition, here or abroad, that attempts to control content on the internet under the guise of preventing piracy is a lier and should not be trusted.

I'm sorry for the RIAA not having a product people feel they should pay for anymore but if they would have made customer satifaction a priority instead of consumer control, maybe they wouldn't be in the pickle they are now. Tale old as time, product is sold, price is raised with no added value, quality of product goes down, people find alternative method, product is left in the dirt with the once all powerful company out of business or close to it. Instead of reinvigorating the market with something new they latch on to criminalizing their previous customer base in an effort to extort money they feel is theirs. F them. They would have much more support if they weren't just d-holes about it.

[michelkeijzers]

From the 80s cassette tapes are being illegally copied, mainly because the prices are high but also they did not do anything to create a better business model in all that 30+ years.

Now they want to close everything that would make copying possible. In the Netherlands we have to pay an extra tax for CDs for example, because it can contain illegal content, that is why I never buy CDs in the Netherlands anymore (we still use them sometimes for our demo CD, which is not illegal btw since we made it ourselves).

What RIAA really wants is to forbid computers and any recording devices to prevent their stuff being copied. So no harddiscs, memo records, laptops, notebooks, no internet, no harddisk recorders. Going back to cassete players (without a recording function) and maybe MP3 players.

If bands or studios want to record something they have to go to a RIAA recording studio paying 2 to 10 (100) times the amount of money as normal.

RIAA: make a better business model or make it attractive to buy legal songs/movies whatever instead of being copied.