So now people on Facebook and other places are saying “Awwww, what’s the big deal? Shouldn’t our intellectual property rights be protected?”
Of course they should, and there are laws already in place for that. But this PIPA and SOPA thing is not about protecting your intellectual property rights. Do you really think Big Government gives a shit if your book is stolen by a Chinese publishing company and pirated there?
No, something much more sinister is at play here. It’s about government itching to regulate, control and put its slimy fingers in the last free and unregulated space on earth: The Internet.
In my book Don’t Joke On The Stairs
I argue that one of the driving forces behind China’s relentless quest for world domination is a deep hatred for the USA while at the same time admiring the country and needing to emulate it in every way. China’s blueprint for infrastructure is visions of 1950′s cartoon The Jetsons, with large highways criss-crossing a landscape devoid of trees and other signs of nature, where people whizz to and from their work and living capsules in little cars while satellites circle overhead.
Now it seems that it’s the US (Congress) that wants to emulate China, with that country’s semi-hard and ever-tightening control of the internet. This is all about controlling what you can and cannot see and read, not about protecting your rights which you already have.
If they’re so concerned about pirates and rogue sites, why don’t they go directly after them? Why involve Google, PayPal and Wikipedia?
One of Obama’s closest advisers is one Cass Sunstein. In his book Republic.com he says this: “A system of limitless individual choices with respect to communications is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government.”
Oh really? Then what is? You are reading this precisely because we currently have ‘limitless choices’. Anyone who’s ever been across the border to China to find they can’t get on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Vimeo and intermittently Wikipedia as well as seeing TV news from Hong Kong mysteriously shut down in mid-sentence will know what I’m talking about.
Last week the website Bare Naked Islam was shut down by its host Word Press because 20-odd Muslims had complained about its content. Ironically Word Press is also very against PIPA and SOPA. Well, Word Press is the host and they have the right to shut down Bare Naked Islam as long as they give the owner of that website his money back. It’s stupid, misguided and cowardly, but it’s their right.Word Press is a company and can decide for itself. But no goverment has the right to tell Word Press to shut down any site. Ever. But that is exactly what will happen if these terrible laws go through.
OK, how about this: Someone steals my online stuff. I sue them, based on my intellectual property rights. I call the police. I beat them up in a dark alleyway when nobody is looking. What I don’t do, and should never do, is get the government to shut down sites that could potentially be linked to these people, stop their PayPal and credit cards and make sure Google is so scared they will take down every word that can possibly be linked to them.
If you want to lose your freedom of expression and make sure you can only access facts that the government has decided are fit for you to see, by all means, support PIPA and SOPA with all your might.
If not: Tell them where to get the fuck off.
I guess your book isn’t available for free download yet? Would you feel differently if it were? Do you really think existing legal channels would be enough to get the illegal copies removed before others followed suit?
Stopping Google from listing illegal download sites is a good way of cutting the problem off at source. No-one is going to close down YouTube. The whole furore is because people are worried about having to pay £3 to download a movie instead of getting it for free.
Yes, Tom, I would argue the same thing. It’s not up to the government to say what we can and cannot see on the internet. And please don’t come up with that tired chestnut child porn. There are laws in place against internet child porn, just as there are intellectual property rights already in place. We can use those laws. What we don’t need is ever more government interference with internet content.
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1. It’s just a provision to enable the government to uphold existing laws.
2. Freedom of Expression is guaranteed by the US constitution, nothing is changing that.
3. Freedom of expression is necessarily not absolute – there are lots of situations where we all benefit from that freedom being sensibly limited round the edges (child porn is a great example).
4. The big fuss is created by big companies (google etc) who have a strong profit motive in listing juicy, free, pirated content, it keeps their users happily consuming the advertising.
“Just a provision” “enable”. Have you read any history books? This is how it begins! This is always how it begins. New laws are put in place to “enable” people to live in safety from what the government du jour deems inappropriate for them to see, and two years later you have government-sponsored book-burning, closing down of newspapers, closing off of certain areas of towns – I am sure you understand to what I allude.
Anyone who uses the internet and benefits from the last barrier of freedom in this political correctness-ridden mire in which we have shackled ourselves MUST fight for its existence. Warts and all. If there is anything on the internet you don’t like, you are SO free to take down, ridicule, spread and obliterate its content with a few elegant swings of your pen. Just DON’T leave it up to government. Let me give you an example. Hong Kong’s government is now planning to build a mega rubbish incinerator right outside Pui O beach, visible and smellable all over Hong Kong. Do you really think such a government knows better than you what should and should not be allowed to be seen online?
Hong Kong’s government is not democratically elected therefore has no moral mandate to rule over the people of HK whatsoever.
The US govt. however has a legal right and moral duty to pass laws which protect its citizens from abuses of their rights. That’s what governments are for! That’s why we have them, so we don’t live in anarchy.
“Moral duty” . Interesting. So you think the US government has a “moral duty” to decide what one can and cannot say? Surely, if you believe in the US Constitution it shouldn’t be up to whatever government of the day to decide what that “moral duty” is? If you want to invoke the US Constitution I’m interested to hear exactly where it supports your views. So it’s about morals now and not the law? Please decide.
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this is a nuanced question yet your responses seem to miss the subtlety.
it is not as clear-cut as you make out. two rights are in conflict, owning property and freedom of expression. you have to agree both are very important, no matter which you consider the more so. any clear cut response to this question is to ignore the importance of one or other of those rights.
i have indeed read certain “history books”, and i question that passing laws (or strengthening them, as in this case) is “how it always begins” (which seems a little melodramatic). could you perhaps be comparing obama’s administration to the nazis? if not, please what do you mean by that statement.
these bills (which have been rejected now anyway) are merely an attempt to protect the rights of the owners of copyright material by allowing them to prevent their property from being stolen and given away for free.
offline, there would be no debate about this at all. online, people are married to the idea of the internet as a big channel for free stuff.
this is not the us government silencing political opposition, destroying the internet or any of these paranoid ravings. the flames of that particular fire have been fanned by enormous corporate interests, such as google, who benefit massively from a ‘free’ (as in beer) internet, teeming with happy punters downloading stolen goods and consuming advertising.
in principal, i support the effort to protect property rights within the strictures of the first amendment. the technical details of how it is to be executed should be finessed a little – and presumably will be before it makes its next appearance.
Isn’t it clear-cut? Copyright laws are already in place. This is another ploy for government to interfere in people’s affairs and stop them from acting freely. It’s like the police going after the crowbar manufacturer instead of the guy who broke into my house.
“Oh, when your book is pirated you’ll change your tune!” No. When my house is broken into I have no interest in punishing the crowbar manufacturer and regulating how many items he can sell each month and to whom.
Without wishing to engage in a last-word competition, I just want to say that your analogy is misleading. Allow me to improve it.
It’s more like a man in selling a specific tool for breaking into domestic windows, and standing on street corners in the rough part of town, pro-actively selling it to crack-addicts – a week before their methadone comes – as a miracle house-breaking device, and then loudly boasting that the pigs can’t do nuffink to stop him because of a legal loophole.
I would want the burglar stopped, indeed, but I would also feel the “enabler” should take some of the responsibility too. Perhaps more of it than the poor old crack-addled burglar, since he was the only one making any meaningful profit out of the wrongdoing he so cynically encouraged.
Oh yes, there we have it. “The poor crack-addled burglar”! Yes, it’s everybody’s fault but his, right?
But you’re right; this competition is going nowhere. Anyway – freedom and justice will win in the end. It always does (they always do) – that’s why we can have this lovely conversation in freedom instead of oh, I don’t know, being burnt at the stake, having our hands chopped off or whatever.
It all begins and ends with freedom of speech/expression. It was the English who “enabled” all the freedoms we now take for granted and which you now will so carelessly throw away, by the way. I have to keep reminding my English friends about this, because they seem to be nothing but embarrassed about their cultural heritage.
I will fight, to the death I would hope, for my freedom of speech and for yours, should it be threatened.
Anyway. It’s been fun.
Keep that thought! Freedom of expression is much, much more important in the long run than some people having their music or books nicked. With freedom of thought, speech and expression we will have ways to deal with pirates through the laws already in place. Without – say that your every utterance here or on facebook or any other forum were to be cut off at source (google etc) if deemed to be controversial or inciting to anything – you would have no venue. Thank you for fighting to the death! The day might come sooner than you think.