[Vomephems]

As is society's wont, SOPA would only address the symptoms of the problem and not cause if, indeed, it actually achieved anything at all.

If all the supporters of SOPA were to clear their eyes of dollar signs, they may see the light.

As I posted on Twitter:

Hear! Hear! http://on.mash.to/wEist6 "Stop looking at infringers as pirates or criminals and instead look at them as potential customers." #SOPA

Who's really responsible? Well, it ain't the pirates.

\/ Key words:

new business model



SOPA: Who's really responsible?


By Stewart Wolpin

Over the New Year's weekend, I was reminded of an old comedy record called The First Family, a hilarious and enormously popular spoof of the Kennedy administration from the early 1960s, pulled from circulation after JFK's assassination in 1963.

A friend in my age demographic had never heard of it. So I attached an MP3 file of one of the tracks I had made from my CD copy and emailed it to him.

In the wake of all the SOPA brouhaha, I got to thinking about this exchange. I wasn't selling the track or album to him; I didn't send him the entire album; I didn't post it anywhere where someone else might listen to it for nothing (though someone has, but I'm not telling you where).

But I felt dirty nonetheless.

And suddenly I understood the urge that led lawmakers to create the Frankenstein monster that is SOPA and its evil spawn PIPA.

While my First Family transgressions were relatively innocent, the interwebs are filled with files uploaded and downloaded with no regard to their copyrighted origins. Rich superstars comprise only a tiny fraction of media creators out there, and all the others involved, who eke out a living selling their creations, are already getting screwed by their Big Media corporate overlords.
Whether we like it or not, uploading or downloading a movie or a record album or a video game or software without paying for it is stealing just as much as strolling into a Wal-Mart, stuffing DVDs and CDs into your pants and strolling out without paying is.

The Age of Innocence

Back in the day, record companies and artists sort of shrugged their shoulders at the whole High Fidelity idea of mix tape phenomena. They figured the person receiving said mix tape was never going to buy the album or CD in question anyway and, now exposed to the artist's music, they might be a customer at some point.

Plus, the frequency of this mix-tape making wasn't high enough to seriously impact record sales. Making a mix tape, or even a tape copy of an entire album, required some technical legerdemain, several pieces of expensive equipment and serious spare time — the creation time of a mix tape was longer than the time of the music copied (cuing up a record to the right spot to create only a one- or two-second gap between tracks on a mix tape was an art).

And in the CD era, the aural quality of the analog mix tape wasn't exactly stellar. If those at the mix-tape-receiving-end liked the music contained therein, they ended up buying the CD.

Flash forward to the age of Napster and the Internet. No longer were we making mix tapes only occasionally for that special someone. No longer did copying require some technical legerdemain, several pieces of equipment and real time. And no longer were copies inferior to the originals.

And so it is no wonder movie studios and record companies stopped simply shrugging their shoulders. Occasional copying of music, movies, games and software had morphed into industrialized mass production on a massive international scale and billions of dollars in losses to not only Big Media (boo hoo!) but to struggling artists and anyone associated with the creation of a copyrighted work.

I Am A Content Creator

Let me assert my opposition to SOPA and PIPA. Both acts were clearly written by nincompoops who wouldn't know a domain from lo mein. News Corp ogre Rupert Murdoch clearly missed the irony as he tweeted on how President Obama was in the sway of his Silicon Valley paymasters when supporters of SOPA and PIPA are so obviously in the sway of his and other Big Media paymasters.

On the other hand, I also am a book author, and I'd be really REALLY REALLY pissed off if I found someone had posted my modest opus online and made it available for free.

And there are a lot more minor content creators like me out there than there are Lady Gagas and Drakes.

Now that I think on it, forget my aforementioned Wal-Mart shoplifting analogy. Uploading and downloading copyrighted content for free access and making money on advertising revenue is akin to you walking into my home, stealing my book, then selling copies of it.

It's just that simple.

Rules of The Road

But I also recognize most of us don't know what is legal (or moral) behavior — often called "fair usage" — and what is illegal (or immoral) behavior. Plus, the Web and digital technology makes copying copyrighted content so damned easy that we all do it without thinking.

For instance, in one of the really great ironies of this whole SOPA/PIPA brouhaha, SOPA's author, Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Tex), apparently was in violation of his own law. As a background for his Web site, he used a copyrighted photo from one DJ Schulte — without permission or attribution. (It's been changed to a plain gray background once this ironic story broke.)

Some of this copyright copying is taken to the ridiculous extreme, especially by content crooks operating sites and servers in China and Russia beyond the reach of American jurisprudence (hence the uselessness of current intellectual property laws).

SOPA and PIPA are ham-fisted attempts to stem this flaunting foreign tide. While SOPA's solutions are insane, it is clear something needs to be done.

So Congress will go back and try again. The Consumer Electronics Association (the folks who run CES) urge support and passage of the shockingly bi-partisan Digital Trade (OPEN) Act, which purports to more surgically target rogue foreign Web sites than employ the blunt punitive instruments wielded by SOPA or PIPA.

But at the same time, all interested parties — Silicon Valley, Congress, Big Media, artists, the Justice Department — need to change hearts and minds, to help us understand what behaviors are legal and illegal or even just hurtful to struggling artists and authors, to help us recognize infringing sites, and to make stealing digital content as socially unacceptable as pissing on the carpet (unless possessed).

So, yes, it's easy and fun to blame stupid Congress and the over-reaching Justice Department and greedy movie studios and record companies for SOPA and PIPA. But first we better look in the mirror. As Pogo used to say, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."


From the Comments:

xdeathknightx on Jan 21, 2012 04:20 PM

I read this article and was immediately reminded of something Neil Gaiman said in a video about a year ago (before the whole SOPA/PIPA thing). Here he tells how he used to get grumpy about having his work pirated. Until he noticed that in the areas that the piracy was most prevalent, he was starting to sell more books. And that after giving out American Gods for free on his publisher's website he sold a lot more books in the months after that.
He also talks about how he believes that you aren't losing sales because your book is out there. Look for Gaiman on Copyright Piracy and the Web

And this is also evident with music and to some degree even games. It has enabled bands to get a bigger audience and maybe get a record deal or in some cases even get rid of the record companies and do it all themselves.

Same goes for indie developers, in the past few years you've really seen a rise of indie developers again because they have more platforms they can reach and through the internet a bigger audience they can reach.

I can understand that it feels bad when you see your work out there but the thing is with piracy that it can either get you new sales because people become familiar with your work or want a real copy, or it most likely wouldn't have mattered anyway. A lot of people who pirate it weren't interested in buying your product anyway. Fans of your work would go through the trouble of buying it.

It is funny you are trying to keep the emphasis on the "minor content creator" while SOPA/PIPA was mostly for the big corporations that are quickly losing power and don't want to give it up. These are exciting times for the "minor content creator" because they can get their work out there without having to rely on one of these institutions that want a large part of the profit. They can reach crowds they couldn't before.

I am not saying all piracy is good, but I am saying that instead of trying to stop it with blunt force it would be a better idea to look how you can get it to work for you. Itunes has shown that people are not against paying for music. They just don't want to pay like 15 bucks for a cd with only one or two songs that they like and for which the artist sees little to no money. I see more and more initiatives sprouting up where you can buy indie games for a small amount of money that are a huge success. They might not get the amount they would normally get but with a cheap bundle they are reaching a lot of people who might just buy more of their stuff or their future games. And that is my problem with the legislations and this article. Don't fight it but see how it might work for you. It has worked out for quite a few people.


Gyakusetsu on Jan 21, 2012 05:49 PM

Exactly. Artists and multimedia creators cannot be stuck in the past with an obsolete business model in a new era of freely traded data. The fact that people still cling to the past so much is almost humorous to me. If you truly deserve to make money off something that can be distributed online, you will.... there are still countless individuals that can make their livings doing nothing but posting comics online and selling shirts about 'em or something.

The ubiquity of digital media has devalued it significantly. Physical goods are the only real money making entities in the world, and all those big-name corporations just need to figure out how they can market off it. Offer free digital music and get your revinue form ads. If iTunes did this, they wouldn't lose money, they would gain exposure and make everyone happier for not having to pay with their wallets but with their time and monitor space.

GET A NEW BUSINESS MODEL, GUYS!


http://dvice.com/archives/2012/01/sopa-whos-reall.php