Sebastian Anthony, Extreme Tech:
"Why is the United States Congress trying to enact SOPA and PIPA? Because I am a pirate.
That’s the simple fact of the matter: If piracy wasn’t such an issue for American rights holders (publishers, broadcasters, content creators), lobbies such as the RIAA and MPAA wouldn’t have donated millions of dollars to morally bankrupt Representatives and Senators and the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act would still be swimming in the ether."
US music and movie industry companies helped to get pirate sites blocked in many countries but on their home turf, legal action is surprisingly absent. For years we have wondered why local ISPs are being left alone and we now have an answer. Former RIAA executive Neil Turkewitz says that SOPA's ghosts have been a major stumbling block.
Allowing private entities the power to censor the internet is never a good idea. If pirates can get blocked, so can unpopular bloggers and political groups. There are good reasons why SOPA failed, and if that failure is still bearing fruit, I applaud it.
Warnings from the EFF this week that Hollywood is making renewed efforts to obtain SOPA-like powers over Internet companies has touched a nerve, with filmmakers and anti-piracy activists attacking from all angles. The EFF should stop talking about the past, its critics say, and admit that the Internet won't get broken by Hollywood.
TorrentFreak has the exceptionally troubling story of a federal district court in Oregon issuing an incredibly broad and questionable order, effectively wiping a bunch of websites out, without ever letting the websites in question know that they were being "tried" in court. The request came from ABS-CBN, a giant Filipino entertainment company arguing infringement, of course. But the argument against these sites is somewhat questionable already, made worse by the demand that the whole thing be done under seal (without alerting the site operators). Then Judge Anna Brown granted the temporary restraining order, basically deleting these sites from the internet, without even a sniff of an adversarial hearing.
movies are expensive i rather get it for free rather than give my money away to those that worked really hard on it. also why would i pay if my money only helps hollywood bring out more movies. who cares about those that worked behind the camera and stuff like that. who cares if the author doesnt get any money and starves to death cause we are not paying for his work.
-this is why i pirate :D
The stupid thing about this is they actually think that if you couldn't get it for free you would buy it.
This is not the case, can't get it for free? Won't get it at all.
Correct....90% of the movies coming out are all crap. Wouldn't even pirate it.
What I find interesting about the whole anti piracy thing is that everyone seems to think that piracy is hurting the actual creators of stuff.
I can't say I understand how the supposed "creative" industries work but I bet that if piracy stopped completely tomorrow, 99% of the extra revenue would go to the people who already have more money than they could ever possibly need. Or invested into making them even more money. Royalties would probably make the creators more money but I bet they wouldn't get paid more all of a sudden.
Not to say that justifies piracy but it would be interesting to see what would actually change if piracy did come to an end.. I'd bet with almost 100% certainty that it wouldn't lower the cost of products for us as consumers that's for sure.
As a PC gamer, I can say that I often pirate games to see how well they run on my rig. Demos are rare these days. And when a demo for a game is released, its a preorder bonus. More times that not though, I will end up buying the game afterwards.
There's also the time in between paychecks, where I will download an album so I can listen listen to my favorite artists until I am able to go out and buy the album.
Publishers need to rethink these kind of things before they come up with bullshit bills like SOPA and PIPA. Of course they won't though if they think they can squeeze as much money out of people as possible. Even if it means taking certain rights away from people.