White House Responds To SOPA, PIPA, and OPEN

eefsee writes "The White House today responded to two petitions with a statement titled 'Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet.' They note that 'We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet.' In particular, they cite manipulation of DNS as problematic. But overall the statement is clearly supportive of anti-piracy efforts and lays down this challenge: 'So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don't limit your opinion to what's the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what's right.' So, what's right?"

Comments

Re:Protecting rights

[Anonymous Coward]

But in an article on the Pirate Bay, suddenly it's all about demonizing the evil RIAA and MPAA, and piracy is just a cultural revolution that sticks it to the evil corporations--the artists who aren't getting paid don't even enter into the discussion, probably because of the guilty feelings it would inspire to be reminded of the reality of the situation.

I think you will find that if the artists were getting paid properly for their efforts and so much of the money wasn't going to line the pockets of middlemen, there wouldn't be nearly as much "demonizing".

It also doesn't help that those middlemen are stretching the law to its limits in an attempt to extort even more money from people (private copying levy, law suits, threats, paying off governments for new laws, etc).

The media world is changing and a lot of new artists are now finding that having their work copied is actually helping them in the long run. The artists get better and cheaper publicity (word of mouth) and more money (by bypassing the media companies that try and dictate what the customers should buy) and we all get a richer experience and greater variety in entertainment.

Re:Protecting rights

[wonkavader]

Given past positions, it will be interesting to see how Slashdotters respond to the question in the submission.

How about "stop making excuses and lead you do-nothing poser?" He could trivially bring in tech leaders and ask them. He could guide some legislation. He could take a stronger hand in the FCC. He could denounce this for what it is, as a massive example of corruption in politics. He could take the advice of any number of well-regarded pundits on the topic and do something, and instead his staff says, "Golly, what should we do? You tell us! Send us 100,000 emails, and we'll read EACH ONE!"

Instead of bread and circuses, we just get circuses.

Re:Protecting rights

[Dunbal]

Also, if you look at the sales of top albums now vs. 10-20 years ago they have decreased significantly.

Surely this is 100% due to piracy and not due to a completely different phenomenon called "the internet" giving people a choice of something else to do with their time other than a) watch TV or b) listen to music or c) hang out with friends.

Re:Solutions

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

The RIAA doesn't prosecute people. The RIAA sues people. The massive statutory penalties are a different issue than the criminalization, although both speak to disproportionate severity of the judicially sanctioned response.