Let me be frank

[yendi]

If you, as an artist I genuinely like, whose works I've raved about for years, who I've gone out of my way to support, truly feel that the reason I (and so many others) are upset about SOPA/PIPA is because I'm a thief, then I have nothing more to say to, or about, you.

Comments

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

Even if the law goes through, the internets so big its impossible to enforce it fairly. And only the big guys are gonna have the clout to GET it enforced.

I think its just a shakedown, it's just a way for Hollywood (or whoever) to shakedown Youtube or Google for a cut.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Thing is, you don't have to be a big "guy" to get it enforced. The very fact that yendi's icon is someone else's intellectual property means any individual could report it and have all of LJ shut down, no questions asked, no due process.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

I dont know if itd be that fast, or easy. Theres probably gonna be a glut of those charges, citizen #546 isnt gonna be a priority.

I have a feeling the president of Fox or Sony's gonna have his private congressman on speed dial.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"fast" and "easy" are not the problem. "That is what the law says must happen" is the problem.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

The company needs to get a court order to shut down a site. Most companies won't do it because they can handle it with the existing laws. But that doesn't mean that Megavideo and the like aren't out there operating with impunity.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

Well yeah. But the bigger problem is that the law isnt going to be equally enforced-thats a fact. The only reason this law exists (or is going to)-is that greedy corporations want their cut. Thats the biggest thing behind this. Of course theres other things, too-im sure theres a bunch of asshole republucans salivating over the prospect of getting some power over the internet and clamping down on it. But the corporations are the ones who spent 94 million to lobbyists for this bullshit.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

There are several reasons why this doomsday scenario is not plausible including the fair use clause and the fact that most companies know that these technical violations are better out there in the world as free publicity rather than shut down.

Furthermore, few judges would even sign off on that kind of a court order EVEN IF a company was dumb and busy enough to go after the use of an icon. And how much of livejournal would be shut down regardless?

I agree that SOPA is way too general and lesser versions of your doomsday scenario could happen (Disney is notorious for ignoring the differences between fair use and copyright violations) but there is a large contingent of anti-SOPA people who seem to assume that the MPAA is pushing the bill for nefarious reasons (either a Big Brother mentality or "greed" - the latter is hilarious considering that a motion picture company spends millions of dollars on a making a movie and it's not like they were putting out in the world because they support the arts) and there is an underlying current in SOME of the arguments that DOES point to the person making the argument simply wanting to steal.

I even had a friend send me a youtube clip of some horrible song entitled "Copying is not theft" in which the main point is that copyright shouldn't exist in the first place.

I don't believe that yendi is a thief, but I am not going to give the same benefit of the doubt to everyone else that is anti-SOPA.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the onus of proving fair use is on the user, as you note in regards to the mouse. The power over whether a site is shut down is in the sole hands of the Attorney General, and there is no judicial involvement, let alone judges having to sign off on court orders.

As a creator who has work published on websites and all that is seeing those very, very few avenues put in jeopardy by this legislation. I'll cite the recent plagiarism dustup at Niteblade, which, fortunately, was caught and corrected. If not caught immediately, the copyright holder for that poem could have, and I'm not going to say they would have, but could is close enough for me, instead of contacting the editor about the infringement, simply reported it, which is a lot easier under SOPA and in a potentially very short time, poof - no more Niteblade, because someone plagiarized a poem and someone didn't catch it in time.

Another example is Stone Telling, which, correct me if I'm wrong, uses art by an artist in the public domain. Here's the thing about the Public Domain, there are a lot of powerful interests (the mouse springs back to mind, since the mouse is the clock on which what is and is not Public Domain is set) who would like to make the Public Domain not exist. You can say that will never work, but seeing as how the Magna Carta no longer holds force, I'm going to remain skeptical on that matter. Should Public Domain ever be dismantled or narrowed to no longer protect STs use of that art, someone who thinks they have some claim on that art can have ST removed from the internet, yes, just like that.

Any loss of any SF market is personally catastrophic.

And, to address the logic behind the original post, the fact that people are not currently being gunned down by predator drones in the street does not somehow make the National Defense Atrocity any less than the destruction of the republic for which it stands.

[yendi]

Furthermore, few judges would even sign off on that kind of a court order EVEN IF a company was dumb and busy enough to go after the use of an icon.

Consider how easy it was for a barely-sentient former SFWA officer to get takedown notices applied against books that the authors had given permission to be shared. And that was under the current DMCA setup, which is theoretically a tougher test.

Now imagine an organization with the vast number of lawyers and paralegals at their disposal like the MPAA.

We're already seeing it with the Hitler Meme thing on Youtube (a clear cut case of fair use and transformative works, but with thousands of takedown notices files), and with Righthaven.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

And oh look... comments to that post are "closed." Oh, the hilarity of that.

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

"I'm curious about something, but I'm going to close comments so there is less of a chance I might actually learn that my initial assumption is widely wrong"...

[yendi]

Yeah, I lost a lot of respect for him there. I'm not so much ragequitting him as disappointquitting.