BAR SOPA
Speaking as someone who’s made a living for the past 20 years producing content that is often pirated, I am strongly opposed to SOPA/PIPA. They are the wrong answer to the wrong question. They are an attempt to finish the work started by the repugnant DMCA.
The lobbyists of SOPA/PIPA are making a statement: “We’re not making enough money by overcharging for movie tickets. We’re not making enough money by weakening and circumventing the First Sale Doctrine. We’re not making enough money by making you pay for the same content multiple times. The DMCA didn’t increase our profits by a large enough amount. Our business model is based on avarice and greed, and not on integrity and creativity. So now we’re going to lobby to enact legislation which allows law enforcement to act in our business and financial interests.”
As the producers of intellectual property it is up to us to make sure that our businesses can survive the inevitable piracy of our product. A good way to do this is to make a product for which more people want to pay a fair price than who are willing to steal it. Another important step is to realize that the people who are stealing your product would, in all likelihood, not have paid for it in any event. (Obviously this applies to end users; and not to the criminals who are reselling pirated material. There are already laws in place that apply to criminal piracy.)
Take the money you would have spent on fighting piracy and use it to make a better product and/or service. Making more laws is not the answer.
