Regardless of how you feel about online piracy, this bill will do very little to stop it anyhow. I mean, the Chinese have been circumventing their government's Great Firewall for years, no problem.
EDIT: <I need to hurry since the closing episode of the new Dexter season is <strike>upl</strike> aired in some hours>
Dexter (all 6 seasons)
Warehouse 13 (all 3 seasons)
Battlestar Galactica (all 4 seasons)
ALL of the Star Treks - TOS, TNG, VOY, DS9, ENT - too many seasons to count
Spartacus
Just for some examples of things that it is vaguely conceivable or possible that may exist ... on an external HDD around here...
(11-21-2013, 12:53 PM)Jihadjoe Wrote: Oh god... The end of days... Agmen agreed with me.
' Wrote:I'm sorry, but that's terrible reasoning. If you put three years into writing a manuscript for a story and finally manage to get it published, you'd sure as hell want to get paid for it. If the agency/publisher turned around and told you that they weren't going to give you a penny because you shouldn't be looking for payment, you'd flip the hell out.
For profession artists, their work is their livelihood. I'm dead set against this SOPA bill, but that line of argument is horrid.
Real artists publish their works themselves today. It's called internet.
Sure they might also publish it in paper format and sell it too, but the money is not end in itself.
That's quite a sloppy idealistic and impractical assumption that there should be no commercial element to artist work at all. There are hobbies and there is work. Both can be artistic. Say if I illustrate books then publishers pay for commissioned work, which in turn is payed by customers who purchase said books. That's a work. Say if I draw concept art and publish it freely under some non-restrictive license, such as creative commons variation, that's more of a hobby, and if you're going to make it your work then it's a marketing tool that may or may not yield commercial proposal. Internet is great for marketing, but let's not assume that every artist is just a hobbyist and stays so.
Let's not just assume that, let's work towards it.
Sure work can be artistic, if that's, say, architect creating a building, but drawing pictures for books that don't require pictures to begin with? Well, go ahead if you really like that, mister painter.
Nu-uh. I don't favor idealism and don't hold ivory tower acolytes in high regard either.
Internet provides something else: it's a self-publishing platform where you can publish your work and/or use varying payment methods and schemes, effectively you're directly interacting with your customers, your fan base, providing an opportunity to build a community around your works and products. Be that digital distribution where you entirely bypass brick and mortar retail chain, or physical distribution through mail order. Many postal services are reporting tremendous increase in parcel shipping, so much some of them are having hard time adapting to the volumes being sent all across the globe, and they are directly attributing this increase to the rise of Internet-based merchandise platforms and I'm not even counting eBay. So I think that's what scares off big media industry - they've been the middle-man between creators and consumers for decades and they're treating their position as if they're entitled to it, they are protecting that position, not the artists. Internet, as a whole, is a foe to them, because in Internet they're in same position as anyone else really and don't have that much of advantage they have in classic retail distribution chain where they practically control almost every aspect, from prices to regional differences, marketing and promotion. So they don't want to play on same terms as others do, they want exclusive rights and laws for themselves, and this will provide them exactly that, it'll give them significant advantage and they'll be held above the law, it's guilty until proven innocent. They wouldn't need court order at all to push you out, but you'll need to get through the court to prove your innocence, and by that time your business will be damaged significantly as not only DNS block will be put on you but also your payment accounts will be frozen too. There is no competition between the big media that would be beneficial to customers, they're long been playing along, effectively establishing monopoly. I believe the roots for those insane bills are within these reasons, perceiving alternate solutions as a threat to their business, evidenced by their actions, such as attempting to outlaw creative commons. Piracy is mostly an instrument, it's largely a scapegoat, just like terrorism was used effectively to push other laws. In the end it's about gaining unprecedented control, securing and maintaining market domination by trampling over the freedoms and innovations as they're slowly taken away one by one, be that in the name of state security or protecting intellectual property as both are not the ends and purpose but means to artificially maintain the state. I guess it's where money is speech, corporations are people and governments are small, subsidized and occupied by lobbyists, got to ask: are their elected representatives also corporate employees on a payroll and campaign sponsorship? Pretty much sounds like a legalized bribery to me.
1) Google, which owns Youtube, estimates that 57% of DMCA takedown notices were sent by businesses targeting competitors.
2) The House author of SOPA received $65,000.00 from the Entertainment Industry
3) 1/3rd of all copyright claims are not valid. One Third. But even a claim can shut down a whole business. Something about due process...
And we want to give the copyright trolls more power.
' Wrote:Real artists publish their works themselves today. It's called internet.
Sure they might also publish it in paper format and sell it too, but the money is not end in itself.
Professional artist is an oxymoron.
Does igiss get paid?
Professional artist is most definitely not an oxymoron. The vast majority of "art" - movies, music, games, whatever - is made with the expectation that people will pay for it.
And no, Igiss does not get paid. But you know who did? The developers who made Freelancer in the first place.
You're using the oldest excuse in the book when it comes to defending piracy. Let's face it - you're not an artist, you don't know how much work goes into it, but you like getting things for free. I understand, I pirated for many years until I started to feel guilty about it and while I still download something occasionally, I will make every effort to purchase it if I like the product.
I'm still 100% against this bill. But opponents of this bill can't be taken seriously as long as there's people like Vlad among our ranks.
![[Image: 158aufs.jpg]](http://oi49.tinypic.com/158aufs.jpg)
