My thoughts on the Stop Online Piracy Act

[reichmarshall]

As a musician, I accept the fact that only about half of the folks who listen to our music have actually paid for it. That's the cost of doing business on the internet. I counter it as best I can by using equal portions of vigilance and guilt, and LPN has netted a pretty penny in album sales over the years. At the same time I realize that we're

Comments

[youngwilliam]

I like the idea of theft of physical goods working so that if Bob steals Carol's things and sells them to Ted & Alice (with T & A not knowing the things are Carol's), Bob basically has to get the things back to Carol, repay T & A, and then have some punishment layered on top of that. So, Ted and Alice don't have any "buying stolen goods" unwittingly laid upon them; even if they know the things were stolen, neither should be hit anywhere near as hard as Bob.

Now, with E-goods, I wouldn't mind something similar, but I don't know what. Obviously, my aforementioned example would favor hitting the original pirate more than any downloaders down the road, but that gets iffy with an example of me burning an album to CD so I can listen to it at work, then a co-worker copies it for a few of his pals, who each copy it for a few more pals. I'm the original pirate, but my only motive was being a bonehead and leaving a CD lying around at work.

My CD example seems to work on, "Ok, there wasn't any profit involved", but Random UK Mick uploading an

[youngwilliam]

Only if BBC decides to make those available, sometimes they don't. Also, I know people who simply don't watch conventional TV. They watch episodes of shows on Youtube and what they like they buy the season in DVD.

[smappdooda]

I think this image sums up my feelings on this nicely

[cakoluchiam]

I love that quote: "Imagine your car gets stolen, but it's still there in the morning."

... on the other hand, technically that's not "Piracy" as piracy was originally just a coined term for theft or hijacking at sea. A more accurate shortquote would be "Piracy is not theft, it's Sharing." ("... and sharing is caring.").