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Are SOPA Sponsors Violating SOPA Rules? Not So Fast, Says Ars Technica
TheNextCorner writes "Remember how the Stop Online Piracy Act would make streaming of copyrighted material a felony? Many of these lawmakers actually stream copyrighted videos on their websites." However, that's not the whole story. according to a followup at Ars Technica to the tweeted claims about streaming and SOPA. From which:
"The Electronic Frontier Foundation tweeted the post, and it was re-tweeted more than 100 times. So are the sponsors of SOPA hypocrites? We're not fans of SOPA, so we'd love to have this story check out. But we're also a news site, so we contacted James Grimmelmann, a copyright scholar at New York Law School, (and judging from his tweets, not a SOPA supporter) to get his expert opinion."
The same people who sued to stop the Camp Fire Girls from singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in the woods around a fire as a "public performance" will be making accusations and shutting down web sites en mass. Because all it takes is for a site to be a suspected offender.
Did you never wonder why restaurant staff sing their own made up birthday songs?
Bimbo Newton Crosby, what this does is gives the big boys a really nice weapon to shut down the indies. If you'll remember one of the big corps (I think it was Sony, not sure as its early here) finally admitted all the stinks they've been throwing wasn't over IP but over control and as more and more people spend more and more time on the net they are feeling their grip on what the masses see and hear slipping away.
For the first time in history we are seeing artists bypass the gatekeepers completely, going from 'viral sensation' to nationally known artist and this scares the living fuck out of them. They know in the age of YouTube and Twitter and a bazillion other non controlled communication circuits their ability to force artists into assraping contracts where they are basically nothing but cogs and "all your IP belong to us" is becoming a thing of the past.
So all this will do is exactly what you have surmised and allow them to bury anyone who doesn't "play ball" to be crushed by endless trolling. While the big boys have their own law firms the little guys simply won't be able to survive endless lawsuits and will either cave in or go under.
Sadly the only way we have to fight back anymore is massive piracy, there simply is nothing else. Any drops in their revenue they will blame on piracy anyway so boycotts do nothing, as the petitions which have gotten to the point there is actually a petition that says "Please quit ignoring us" prove if you don't have the money to bribe your congressman he sure as fuck isn't going to listen to you, so all that is left is the geeks.
So please geeks, please keep working on anonymous distributed P2P and continue to work to make it so damned simple that Limewire looks like compiling your own kernel. The ONLY way we are gonna get rid of these bastards is to bleed them to death, there is simply no other choices left now. If all your IP laws are unjust and the people no longer have a say at the table the only just thing to do is completely ignore those unjust laws. Does anyone truly believe that if We, The People had any say anymore we would have crap like SOPA or "forever minus a single day" copyright laws?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.