Sopa
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So I guess I'm a little undecided on this issue.
In the first place I have a lot of fun with you tube have posted a few songs that I didn't write.
I guess promotion has value so there certainly is that aspect to it. I mean, I am getting value for posting someone else's stuff, right?
I also like to watch and or listen to other copyrighted things that someone has posted.
I think that by doing so whoever the copyright owner is gets a benefit from a wider audience for his work. But to be sure he's not making any money right now.
On the other hand, just to be anecdotal, I write music record cds and sell them. I remember a while back I had sold one to one of my customers and his buddy was saying well you have cds?!
The purchaser look at his pal and said yeah the first one was great! I'll make you a copy!
At that point it dawned on him.
In the old days when this started being a problem there was an added tax put on every blank tape that I assume went to some sort of publishing pool.
BTW I wouldn't be at all surprised if every dime collected went to the bureaucrats who collected.
Still I understand that guy wanting to be paid for his art.
WSS
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The whole fact that the internet is being censored scares the hell out of me. Images are being blocked by sopa and it HAS NOT BEEN PASSED YET. I saw 4 blocked images today... its a terrifying time in our country and I don't see any way off this slippery slope if we begin censoring the internet.
This won't just deal with anti-piracy. This allows censorship of ANYTHING. They already have the right to kick in our doors and detain us forever without cause. Just because it is legal doesn't make it right. "We must always remember that everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal." -Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.
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The scariest part to me is that I am currently dating a girl from Moscow. She is here in America with me.
America may attack Iran, or Iran may attack America. Russia has warned against an American attack on Iran, and so has China. With the recently adapted NDAA all it would take is the government to declare Russians enemy of the state once an attack is made, and my girl could be taken from me forever... and there is hardly dick I can do about it. Granted this is extreme, but its the fact that the door has even been opened to the possibility that scares me.
I am so disappointed in my country.
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Dude. Chill out. Relax. Breathe. Those censored images were just people protesting SOPA. I think at least 25 of my fb friends did the same thing. I blocked out the faces in my profile picture. Nothing's censored yet. Sort of. I guess the asshole RIAA and Viacom did censor that fucking youtube video that Jay-Z, Diddy, and others made of that song that was rallying support against the legislation. So yeah. Things are being censored already and there's not even a law for it. Keep the internet free. Fuck the RIAA. Fuck the MPAA. Fuck Viacom.
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Take a chill pill dude. Your Russian girl is fine.
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Dodd's Disgrace: Shilling For SOPA
Colin McEnroe To Wit January 22, 2012
We plain people of Connecticut would be well advised to limit the activities of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, simply because we cannot afford to have another current or former senator join the ranks of the intensely disliked.
The Lieberman Problem has been lavishly chronicled in this space. Last week, it was former Sen. Chris Dodd's turn to ooze, Jabba-like, into the spotlight and croak unpalatable nonsense while decent people looked on, horrified.
Dodd now pulls down $1.2 million as the front man for the lobbying arm of the movie industry. As Salon's Glenn Greenwald pointed out last week, this would seem to fly in the face of his 2010 avowal that he would do no lobbying.
As most people know, Dodd has devoted his recent hours — when not swanning around at the Golden Globes — to seeking the passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, legislation that inspires such widespread revulsion that a whole bunch of major and minor websites went dark Wednesday in protest.
Dodd called the blackout a "dangerous" tactic and an "an abuse of power." To see this as anything more than the disgraceful posturing of a well-paid shill, you'd have to believe that society was somehow endangered by the absence of reddit.com. The biggest hole punched in the Internet was the blackout of Wikipedia, but how was that dangerous? Because people had to go look up things from original sources?
What's more, Wikipedia is offered to all without charge, mostly though volunteer efforts. Somehow, according to Dodd, shutting it down for a day violates some unspoken social covenant.
SOPA shuddered to a stop late Wednesday as key senators pulled out their support, despite having been co-sponsors. Their comments suggested they hadn't quite understood the bill they were co-sponsoring.
I won't pretend to understand it either, despite quite a lot of time spent trying. Here is what I will say. Almost since the dawn of the Internet, big entertainment companies have understandably resented the way their content flows up onto sites like YouTube. They also don't like the current model for dealing with this, which requires them to catch it and complain about it.
Hence Viacom's billion-dollar lawsuit against YouTube, even though the latter was obediently scrubbing off Paramount movies and Sponge Bob episodes whenever the former asked them to.
Not good enough. The entertainment industry is in a protracted battle — bigger than any single piece of legislation — to make Internet companies afraid of what would happen if copyright-infringing content turned up on their sites. Forty-eight hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Making sure that info-typhoon includes no episodes of Viacom's TV show"I Just Want My Pants Back"is a daunting problem.
SOPA men like Dodd claim the legislation is aimed only at offshore sites, but the language of the bill makes it seem easier for a company like Viacom to prevail against YouTube or — even more likely — against whatever the next YouTube is.
Meanwhile Dodd took his case to the airwaves on television's single most overrated "news" program "Morning Joe," a daily bazaar of Beltway harlotry unconvincingly dressed up as journalism.
None of his repulsively chummy questioners challenged his dubious claim that movie piracy costs jobs. I challenge it now. Dodd cited the 21 million illegal downloads of "Avatar." Does he think for a second that James Cameron will stop making movies because of it? Piracy hurts profits, not jobs.
Dodd continued to babble about counterfeited "brake pads, hand bags and bulletproof vests," as though this had anything to do with SOPA. At the end of five minutes, co-host Mika Brzezinski chirped, "Say hi to Jackie [Dodd's wife] for me!" Apparently this is in lieu of waving an actual flag that says "I am not a real journalist. This was not a real interview."
Meanwhile, Greenwald spoke for many in calling Dodd's SOPA pony show "base, corrupted subservience to industry."
So we must keep Blumenthal from acting like a Connecticut senator. Fortunately, his signature moment of last week was a stern lecture to shoe retailer Zappos on behalf of its customers, a not-isolated sign that he still thinks he's attorney general.
Colin McEnroe appears from 1 to 2 p.m. weekdays on WNPR-FM (90.5) and blogs at http://blogs.courant.com/to_wit. He can be reached at [email protected].
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Listen to some of the congressmen and women talk about SOPA too. None of them know anything about the internet or technology in general and they are the ones voting on this...
stupid politics
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Old people who don't understand how the internet works should not be passing legislation on it. The RIAA and MPAA need to drop dead, already.
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Did you see a bunch of congressman just saying they need to bring in some nerds to explain this too them.... that is out Congress. They don't feel like they need to call them experts, instead they call the people that now 20 times more about this situation than them nerds...
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