SOPA: Over The Top

You can’t go to Wikipedia today. It’s not up.

Google?
It’s there, but there is a black “censor” banner across the logo today.

It’s all in protest of the legislation now pending in Congress that would affect virtually everything we do in our internet-focused, facebook-centered technological world.

SOPA—or the Stop Online Piracy Act—is meant to protect copyrighted material from being infringed upon—a reasonable outcome one would think.

Unfortunately, there are far-reaching unintended consequences. Check out this video, which explains the issue from the perspective of those who oppose the legislation:



http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea.html

So, who’s for SOPA—and it’s related bill? It’s the content providers, the big media companies. While I’m not sure that they are somehow missing out, they've spent millions to lobby that they have in fact, been victims.

True, copying and sharing may cost the originator revenue in the short term, but who’s to say that legitimate SALES haven’t been positively affected by exposure that occurred via (illegal?) sharing? Those doing the sharing in most cases are not “selling” the content—and thus are not making a profit, but huge sites like YouTube and Google are making it hand over fist.

Of course, the distinction here is that these massive sites are merely aggregators—this simple function justifies the traffic—and the dollars earned from it.

A cassette copy of analog audio or a Xeroxed book is inferior in quality - and that fact alone mitigated the rush to create pirating legislation. However, in the digital age, there is no loss of quality from the first to the millionth copy.

Hence, there is a school of thought that says this boldly:

“Anything that can be copied infinitely-indistinguishable from the original---is inherently worthless”.

Think about it.

If you’d like my blog in your box, just let me know: tim.moore@cumulus.com