Viacom's SOPA/PIPA Pitch Video, Annotated

Lauren Weinstein writes "Viacom has just released a video calling for support of global Internet censorship via SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). A truth annotated version of this approximately seven-minute video is now available." Reader quantumplacet writes with word that the Business Software Alliance (probably for reasons other than this video) has withdrawn its support for SOPA, claiming that "Valid and important questions have been raised about the bill." Writes quantumplacet: "While the BSA has a long history of focusing on the worst offenders and mostly ignoring casual piracy, this still represents a dramatic turnaround as the organization has been a SOPA supporter since the act's inception. BSA President Robert Hollyman posted on the company blog that 'Due process, free speech, and privacy are rights that cannot be compromised. ....Some observers have raised reasonable questions about whether certain SOPA provisions might have unintended consequences in these areas.'"

Comments

Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it

[elrous0]

How many times now have similar bills died, only to be reintroduced under more and more bizarrely inaccurate names? Next time I suspect they'll call it the "Stop Online Pedophiles Act" and use the argument that it can be used to combat child predators. After all, you don't want to support pedophiles *DO YOU*?

I propose a law that mandates that laws introduced in the future can only be called by their official Congressional letter-number designation. I'm calling it the "Super-Patriot I-Love-America Act."

Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it

[Anarchduke]

I think the Stop Online Pedophiles Act would face stiff opposition from the American Football Coaches Association

Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it

[Jason Levine]

Either that, or they'll use the "feed the dog a pill" approach. First, they'll chop SOPA up into component parts. Next, they'll hide pieces of it into must-pass legislation. "We need to pass this emergency bill to help those poor flood victims. [mumbled tone]and require ISPs to block whatever websites we tell them to[/mumble]. You don't hate flood victims, do you?" This will keep us from noticing it until much or all of it is already law. Or, at least, that's what the SOPA proponents would hope to achieve. Hopefully, enough eyes will be on those non-related riders to sniff out these hidden pills.

Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm proposing House Resolution HR.6669 which makes Media Lobbyists illegal and being found to be one punishable by summary execution. I'm going to call it the "Hyper-Patriot I-Give-Uncle-Sam-a-Aloe-Vera-lotion-handjob every morning Save the Orphaned Baby Fetuses Act of 2011"

Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it

[TWX]

Heh. I'm no supporter of Herman Cain, but there is some merit in wanting bills to be shorter and plainer in their language. I would support requiring the entire text of a bill to be read out loud either in committee or on the main chamber floor with a quorum present before a vote on it can be called. That might shorten the bills a bit...

Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it

[Lumpy]

"You don't hate flood victims, do you?"

Well, looking at what happened with Katrina... Yes, the Congress does in fact hate flood victims.

Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it

[squidflakes]

Done.

http://www.opencongress.org/

Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it

[phorm]

Or disallow riders that are not related to the primary bill being passed.

Re:Even if SOPA dies, they'll just reintroduce it

[Digital Vomit]

Too bad people would rather sit on the street and whine than they would make a change and vote.

I think it's even worse that people think voting, at this point, even matters anymore.

If you want change, you're going to have to attack the sources of the problem: political parties, lobbyists, and the media. Voting is for suckers.

I don't think it matters...

[AngryDeuce]

This is probably going to get rammed through one way or another. After all, these guys all spend billions of dollars every year buying off our representatives, they're not going to let a pesky thing like the outrage of us plebeians get in the way of clamping down on their Intellectual Property and any other IP they can make an even unreasonable claim to.

I would hope SOPA would get challenged in court and rejected on First Amendment grounds (online censorship of web sites seems an awful lot like an attack on Freedom of Speech, to me, but IANAL or judge) but given some of the other rulings we've seen out of the SCOTUS I'm not so sure it would even get overturned, there. Our court, as it sits, seems to be a lot less concerned about the rights of people and a lot more concerned about the rights of "people", i.e., corporations.

How long till

[Dyinobal]

So how long until the corporate masters send a take down notice to youtube for that "obviously" infringing video.

Annotations...

[Jahava]

So for those who haven't watched the "annotated" version, allow me to summarize. The production presents a series of film industry professionals talking about how they think things "should" be, why piracy is "not right", and dropping some of the classic inflated statistics that we all know and love. Each annotation is overlayed on top its respective scene to act in shallow rebuttal. The annotations present very few (if any) actual facts in rebuttal, rather relying on the same appeal to emotion and common sense that the original production pursued.

I hope I'm not the only one who was gravely disappointed with these "nuh-uh!"-style counterpoints. Rather than "and yet the film industry made record profits", let's drop some actual numbers. If our premise - that these guys have failed to make their case to support SOPA - is correct, then all of the world's facts should back us up.

If you're going to rebut a video, have something more inspiring and concrete than "and yet you want to censor the Internet."

Re:Annotations...

[TheRaven64]

I hope I'm not the only one who was gravely disappointed with these "nuh-uh!"-style counterpoints

The video was very disappointing. It alternated between 'truth annotation' and commentary at random, so it was difficult to tell which things were meant to be translations of what the person was saying and which were comments on what the person was saying.

Re:Annotations...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thin as it may be, did you see a single "reference" or "fact" to back up any of the Film Industries claims? No, you didn't, because there are no facts to back up their claims.

Heck, up until a few years ago they were still using CASSETTE TAPE sales declines as "proof" piracy was killing the music industry.

I agree, they should have provided the facts, which anyone can get by googling "box office records" the more piracy becomes rampant, the more money they make opening weekend.

The fact remains, they are attempting to control and restrict a GLOBAL network based on US laws. It's a load of crap, based on a load of crap, sprinkled with sugar coated pieces of crap, served on a coal fired piece of crap platter.

My favorite part is how it goes from "downloading" to stopping counterfeit goods. How exactly is restricting MY internet access going to stop companies in China from making fake dora toys? It isn't.

An illegal download is NOT a lost sale, it's a potential lost sale.

If you don't want your business to fail, LEARN TO ADAPT. you can't pull a Steve Jobs and tell the market what they want, that only works for inferior applie iProducts. You have to cater to your target market, and adapt as it changes.

Radio will kill the industry
VHS and BETAMAX will kill the industry
Cassette audio tapes will kill the industry
CDs will kill the industry
DVDs will kill the industry
The internet will kill the industry.

fool me once.........

Re:Annotations...

[spidercoz]

You can't counter emotive appeals with facts. While it may be logically sound and correct, people don't care about logic and correctness. Shit like this Viacom propaganda has to be squashed with withering counter-emoting taking into account the bigger picture, which this annotation does, although a little half-assed.

Re:Annotations...

[LordLimecat]

You can't counter emotive appeals with facts. While it may be logically sound and correct, people don't care about logic and correctness.

The only proper way to expose half-truths and emotional BS is to clearly show why theyre half-truths and BS. Responding with your own BS just makes people realize that noone is capable of rational discussion anymore, and causes both sides to lose credibility.

What's with the funny names?

[TuringTest]

As a native Spanish slashdotter, I'm amused by the funny names your lawmakers assign to your acts. For reference:

SOPA -> soup
PIPA -> sunflower pipe
ACTA -> proceedings (at least this one is about a formalized document written on paper)

Or is it because any combination of two consonants with two vowels is a valid word in Spanish?

South Park

[Gideon Wells]

Anyone else find all that South Park stuff being on there is somewhat ironic? Maybe they just need to pitch more that all the episodes save some of the more recent ones (after the first week and then they pop back on) and two taken down for censorship are online for free?

I say Ironic was Trey and Matt stated they pushed for all the episodes being online for free because they were tired of having to pirate their own series whenever they easily wanted to rewatch an episode easily?

Re:I almost started to cry...

[TheRaven64]

And Viacom, you allow to watch me Colbert Report for free on your own damn website. With ads.

They don't allow me to watch it, because I'm not in the USA. But if I watched it on some other site then I would still count towards their however-many-billion statistic of people watching it illegally. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are both things I'd probably pay to be able to stream / download (without ads or DRM), but Viacom would rather bitch about piracy and try to get laws passed to make it even more illegal than it already is than sell me what I want. Their video made the point that content is a product - perhaps someone should point out that you only make money from products if you're willing to sell it to potential customers...

Who cares.

[digitalsushi]

I hope SOPA passes. We'll just fix our geek software even better. Encrypted everything, out of band non-deterministic port hopping.. the only hope they'll have is million dollar stat boxes that make lots of wrong guesses and snip VIP VPNs. Our skin will grow over their bandaid.

A little one-sided, no?

[a_nonamiss]

I hate to defend the MAFIAA, but they really should post a link to the original video in the summary. We should watch what they put out before biasing ourselves with a (probably very accurate) edited version of the video. I'm a believe that more information is better than less. We can't form good opinions of ignorance.

That being said, the original video is crap. You can watch it here.

SOPA Unintended Consequences?

[rnturn]

Yeah, right. Like the corporate drafters of SOPA didn't consider how it would make virtually anything done beyond passively viewing their content a felony. They'll deny it , of course, but they know full well that a prosecutor would be able twist the provisions of SOPA to fit anything they want to nail someone.

"Ah, puny citizen... you are charged with violating section 27.1.14 of the EULA that was updated on the vendor's website six months after you last read it. How do you plead?"

Think that won't happen?