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YR NEW FAVORITE SOPA OPERA
Jan. 24th, 2012 10:32 amEven with SOPA/PIPA off the table, the dithering continues. Some serious, some not so serious.
SERIOUS
1. Who needs SOPA when you have PRO-IP?
Just ask Megaupload, a filesharing site not dissimilar to YouSendIt, which was recently shut down by the FBI, with its assets frozen and its owners arrested (in New Zealand) – all for the mere accusation of intentionally enabling piracy. Which was one of things SOPA/PIPA proposed to do, only on a much wider and frivolous scale.
Glenn Greenwald breaks down the implications here.
2. Piracy is decimating the industry, except when it’s not
One of the long-running memes in this debate is that we MUST pass these laws because piracy is killing the film and music industry. And an under-reported caveat of that meme is: There’s no real evidence to support this.
Which isn’t to say piracy is non-existent. The question is whether it’s as industry-killing a problem as the MPAA/RIAA say it is. And the answer is: not when you take a closer look at the “evidence” they’re presenting.
For example, Chris Dodd – the former Congressman currently heading the Hollywood lobby to push SOPA/PIPA – likes to claim that Avatar was stolen by pirates 21 million times, and that such acts will decimate Hollywood.
The problem with that example is that, of course, despite all that piracy, Avatar has somehow managed to earn over $760 million just in America. Add the overseas gross of over $2 billion, and basically the worst thing you can say here is that if it wasn’t for piracy, Avatar would have made over $3 billion by now instead of only $2.76 billion (assuming you could prove the people who downloaded it illegally would otherwise have actually paid for it). Even when you qualify that with Avatar’s $500 million budget, that’s still a high enough number to question the notion that 20th Century Fox has been forced to lay off people because pirates are preventing it from making money.
I could go on, but there’s no need when I can just link to this long but very good article from Ars Technica on the general lack of evidence that piracy is nearly as devastating as Dodd and the MPAA and RIAA in general claim it is – and why it’s ridiculous to entertain SOPA/PIPA-level solutions based on such flimsy evidence.
NOT SO SERIOUS
1. Big Hollywood to Obama: we’ll take our business elsewhere
Speaking of Chris Dodd, he’s also very unhappy that Presidente Obama thought the bill was the wrong way to deal with piracy is siding with the pirates, and warned that if he doesn’t get with the program, he can forget about Hollywood helping with his re-election campaign.
Which is silly, if only because I’m sure Google, Facebook et al can make up for whatever money Hollywood bigwigs decide not to pony up.
Also, see above.
2. If you thought you were losing money now …
Meanwhile, in the wake of the SOPA/PIPA bill, this has been popping up all over my Facebook:
And I really can’t stress enough what a bad and pointless idea this is.
BAD because a media purchase boycott wouldn’t only hurt Big Evil Corporate Media Companies. It would also hurt the actual artists, as well as local record/video stores, and smaller media companies that actually opposed SOPA/PIPA.
POINTLESS for several reasons – for a start, it depends on how much boycotters typically spend on movies and CDs/downloads every month on average. It also depends on how many boycotters make catch-up purchases of all the stuff they would have bought in March. You can put off buying that new Adam Lambert album for a month, but if you buy it in April, Sony Music still gets yr money, and gets to follow that loss-making quarter with a record year-on-year quarterly jump in sales.
Also, considering that the RIAA/MPAA already live in a fantasy world where they would be making billions more dollars a year if it wasn’t for Megaupload and are therefore already under incredible financial pressure in their own minds, I seriously doubt they’re going to look at their Q1 results and say, “Gee, maybe we’re going about this the wrong way,” instead of what they probably will say: “See? We told you piracy was killing us! Look at these numbers!”
So no, I’ll be skipping Black March.
Also, minor point – if yr going to pick a name for yr movement, try to avoid picking a name whose first Google hit is the autobiography of a Nazi.
Everything went black,
This is dF
SERIOUS
1. Who needs SOPA when you have PRO-IP?
Just ask Megaupload, a filesharing site not dissimilar to YouSendIt, which was recently shut down by the FBI, with its assets frozen and its owners arrested (in New Zealand) – all for the mere accusation of intentionally enabling piracy. Which was one of things SOPA/PIPA proposed to do, only on a much wider and frivolous scale.
Glenn Greenwald breaks down the implications here.
2. Piracy is decimating the industry, except when it’s not
One of the long-running memes in this debate is that we MUST pass these laws because piracy is killing the film and music industry. And an under-reported caveat of that meme is: There’s no real evidence to support this.
Which isn’t to say piracy is non-existent. The question is whether it’s as industry-killing a problem as the MPAA/RIAA say it is. And the answer is: not when you take a closer look at the “evidence” they’re presenting.
For example, Chris Dodd – the former Congressman currently heading the Hollywood lobby to push SOPA/PIPA – likes to claim that Avatar was stolen by pirates 21 million times, and that such acts will decimate Hollywood.
The problem with that example is that, of course, despite all that piracy, Avatar has somehow managed to earn over $760 million just in America. Add the overseas gross of over $2 billion, and basically the worst thing you can say here is that if it wasn’t for piracy, Avatar would have made over $3 billion by now instead of only $2.76 billion (assuming you could prove the people who downloaded it illegally would otherwise have actually paid for it). Even when you qualify that with Avatar’s $500 million budget, that’s still a high enough number to question the notion that 20th Century Fox has been forced to lay off people because pirates are preventing it from making money.
I could go on, but there’s no need when I can just link to this long but very good article from Ars Technica on the general lack of evidence that piracy is nearly as devastating as Dodd and the MPAA and RIAA in general claim it is – and why it’s ridiculous to entertain SOPA/PIPA-level solutions based on such flimsy evidence.
NOT SO SERIOUS
1. Big Hollywood to Obama: we’ll take our business elsewhere
Speaking of Chris Dodd, he’s also very unhappy that Presidente Obama
Which is silly, if only because I’m sure Google, Facebook et al can make up for whatever money Hollywood bigwigs decide not to pony up.
Also, see above.
2. If you thought you were losing money now …
Meanwhile, in the wake of the SOPA/PIPA bill, this has been popping up all over my Facebook:
And I really can’t stress enough what a bad and pointless idea this is.
BAD because a media purchase boycott wouldn’t only hurt Big Evil Corporate Media Companies. It would also hurt the actual artists, as well as local record/video stores, and smaller media companies that actually opposed SOPA/PIPA.
POINTLESS for several reasons – for a start, it depends on how much boycotters typically spend on movies and CDs/downloads every month on average. It also depends on how many boycotters make catch-up purchases of all the stuff they would have bought in March. You can put off buying that new Adam Lambert album for a month, but if you buy it in April, Sony Music still gets yr money, and gets to follow that loss-making quarter with a record year-on-year quarterly jump in sales.
Also, considering that the RIAA/MPAA already live in a fantasy world where they would be making billions more dollars a year if it wasn’t for Megaupload and are therefore already under incredible financial pressure in their own minds, I seriously doubt they’re going to look at their Q1 results and say, “Gee, maybe we’re going about this the wrong way,” instead of what they probably will say: “See? We told you piracy was killing us! Look at these numbers!”
So no, I’ll be skipping Black March.
Also, minor point – if yr going to pick a name for yr movement, try to avoid picking a name whose first Google hit is the autobiography of a Nazi.
Everything went black,
This is dF
