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The Stop Online Piracy Act: the blindness continues | | | The Futile Stop Online Piracy Act's discussion
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< | Unfortunately, the U.S. Congress’ actual discussion about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), does not contribute to the Net growth and the society’ development; on the contrary, it distracts the public attention on real matters: copyright is no longer needed under the Net’s conception. In sum, SOPA tries to expand the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders’ power allowing seeking court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. As Representative Lamar Smith, one of the chief sponsors of the bill, said, SOPA is needed because rogue websites are “stealing and selling American innovations”. Moreover, even SOPA’s most important detractors, Google, Facebook, AOL and Twitter, are only talking about Internet censorship or a chilling effect on speech, rather than proposing a radical change from the actual copyright framework in accordance of the new technological trends, which is being proposed by many scholars, such as James Allsworth (Harvard Business School), Kevin Kelly (Wired Magazine), Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) or Mike Masnick (Techdirt). | >
> | U.S. Congress’ discussion about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) does not contribute to the Net’s growth; on the contrary, it distracts public attention to the real issue: copyright is no longer needed in the Internet society where we live in. SOPA tries to expand the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders’ power allowing seeking court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Without understanding our actual technological sharing world without frontiers and different ownership rules, Representative Lamar Smith, one of the chief sponsors of the bill, said, “SOPA is needed because rogue websites are stealing and selling American innovations”. Moreover, even SOPA’s most famous detractors, Google, Facebook, AOL and Twitter, are only arguing about Internet censorship or chilling effects on speech, rather than proposing a radical change to the actual copyright framework in accordance with new technological trends, which is intended by many recognized scholars and scientists, such as Kevin Kelly (Wired Magazine), Richard Stallman (Free Software Foundation), Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures), Mike Masnick (Techdirt) and James Allsworth (Harvard Business School). Unfortunately, this new vision of content industries (film, television, books, software, music and others), with the absence of copyright law has been rejected by content industries monopolies represented by the Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America or Business Software Alliance and the American Government itself as Wired Magazine have revealed recently. Principally, these monopolies feared to loose the annual millionaire earnings they received under the current ownership system and disguise their intentions stating that SOPA will protect artist’s intellectual property, including the resultant revenue and jobs. Moreover, in respect to the music industry, Dr. Robert Levine (former Billboard executive editor), said that the best way to save artists’ jobs is to strengthen copyright law. I disagree with that mistaken idea and will try to prove that without copyright, artists will continue to have incentives to innovate and produce culture. | | | | |
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< | | | | Stop Online Piracy Act
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act | | | - http://americancensorship.org | |
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< | The intellectual property market | >
> | The new legal and economical model | | | | |
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< | SOPA’s proponents, mainly, the Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America, Business Software Alliance and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, say the bill will protect intellectual property market, including the resultant revenue and jobs; however, it is really protecting and preserving the earnings of the content industries monopolies. Once again, as in the wireless telecommunications industry, the Law, in this case Copyright Law, is outdated and lacks of effectiveness, because it does not consider the social changes that advanced technology is generating. For instance, regarding the music industry, SOPA is supposed to protect singers’ intellectual property, enabling them to pursue a profit. Some journalist in SOPA’s favor, such as Dr. Robert Levine (former Billboard executive editor), thinks that the best way to save artists’ jobs is to strengthen copyright laws, by the way also opposing to the idea of a free an open Internet. I disagree with that statement and that opinion current, and consider that the actual copyright policy should change, since there can be incentives and artists can maintain or even improve their jobs quality in a share XXX.
In the particular case of the content industries (film, television, books, music and others), there should be an economical model modification. Ownership idea must be change for access, sharing and selling added value services. The market will identify the right point to pay money to information providers, when they see a real value. In this concern, in 2006 Fred Wilson propose the freemium business model, that is a combination of free and premium, in short words, free gets you to the place where you can get paid. Additionally, Kevin Kelly, other scholar from XXXX, established that in this new model, the idea is not to sell copies, because they must be available to everyone and provide some alternatives to allow money earnings to artists and the industry: immediacy, personalization, authenticity (quality), attention, interpretation, accessibility, embodiment, and findability. Moreover, in 2005 Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, two economists at Washington University, published a book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, where they described that the current patent/copyright system discourages and prevents inventions from entering the marketplace. | >
> | Copyright is outdated and lacks of effectiveness, because it does not consider the social changes that technology has generated. When Copyright was born it was believed that monopolistic financial incentives stimulate artistic production and that it will guarantee artists a decent income and subsidize certain professions. As Ithiel de Sola Pool stated in 1983, with the arrival of electronic reproduction, copyright practices become unworkable. In that sense, some scholars such as Danny Colligan had written about why copyright is detrimental to society nowadays, referring that Copyright enforcement necessarily entails monitoring of all computer communications, and therefore the destruction of online privacy, erodes the public domain and free culture, criminalizes a large percentage of the population and poses large economic costs to society. In this new age, content is information and on a computer, information is anything that can be digitized, that is, encoded in a sequence of zeros and ones. In that order of ideas, information now has two important properties that modify the foundations of Copyright: it is both non-exclusive (any number of people can access and use it simultaneously) and non-rivalrous (the fact that one person has more information does not imply that another person has less). | | | | |
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< | Copyright and Freemium | >
> | New model | | | - Kevin Kelly, Better than Free (January 31, 2008) (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html) |
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