Fight to Stop SOPA and PIPA Grows
On Wednesday, more than 7,000 websites went black to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and its sister legislation, the Protect IP Act. Several congressional sites went dark as well, though not for the same reason: congressional sources said House and Senate staffs were fielding a volume of phone calls not seen since the passage of Obamacare. Government web servers groaned and gave way under the onslaught of roughly three times the average traffic.
Supporters say the two bills would give the U.S. the power to shut down — or at least seriously hamper — online piracy by foreign sites. The two bills are heavily backed by the Motion Picture Association of America, which claims it has lost $250 billion and 750,000 jobs to piracy — claims critics say are wildly inflated.
Critics such as Google and Microsoft say the bills would essentially break the internet, giving the Justice Department the power to shut down sites which allegedly infringe on copyrighted content simply on the accusation, without due process.
The bills have not just corporate titans such as Google and Microsoft up in arms, but groups as disparate as Republican legislators and the ACLU, not to mention the Huffington Post and Glenn Beck, in agreement for what may be the first and last time in history. The non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation, which lobbies for online freedoms, has been amazed at the response. Said EFF Attorney Corynne McSherry:
It’s been pretty interesting to see the wide coalition of people who are against it. They see these bills for what they are — an attempt at Internet regulation which will interfere with our basic freedoms.
McSherry noted that the legislation simply will not put the dent in piracy the lobbyists are saying it will:
The major groups which are lobbying for this are selling their memberships a bill of goods. It’s not going to solve the problem. This is a business problem. When you have a business problem you talk to your business people, you don’t resort to legislation. EFF has long argued that the right answer is a new business model, not legislation.
She also noted the inflated numbers companies use to push for legislation like this:
They count every use that’s not paid for as a lost sale. That’s not accurate.
McSherry noted that individuals who “pirate” music or video games often do so simply to try it out and later buy the album or game. She also said it can hardly be counted as a lost sale, as those who do not later buy the title likely wouldn’t have purchased it anyway.
Google, Wikipedia, and others argue SOPA would censor the internet and kill jobs in one of the few sectors of the economy which is growing:
The U.S. Government could order the blocking of sites using methods similar to those employed by China. Among other things, search engines could be forced to delete entire websites from their search results. That’s why 41 human rights organizations and 110 prominent law professors have expressed grave concerns about the bills.
Law-abiding U.S. internet companies would have to monitor everything users link to or upload or face the risk of time-consuming litigation. That’s why AOL, EBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo and Zynga wrote a letter to Congress saying these bills “pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation.” It’s also why 55 of America’s most successful venture capitalists expressed concern that PIPA “would stifle investment in Internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness.” More than 204 entrepreneurs told Congress that PIPA and SOPA would “hurt economic growth and chill innovation.”
Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said on Fox News this week that is exactly what the bills would do:
You can argue that foreign piracy needs to be shut down … and shut down for good. At the same time you can recognize that the innovation and wealth that has come out of the Internet far exceeds that of the Motion Picture Association and many of these other groups combined.
Issa has sponsored the competing Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade or OPEN Act, which is much less broad and seeks to deny funding to infringing sites through the International Trade Commission, which already enforces laws against counterfeit goods such as fake designer handbags. Issa says that currently the ITC intercepts and seizes far more fake goods than actually make it to the shelves of bodegas in New York City. Issa also noted the OPEN Act has been available for public markup on the Web for four weeks now.
It must be noted that Issa personally has a stake in this fight as the holder of more patents than any other member of Congress.
Congressional sources noted that when Issa and several others came to the House markup session of the SOPA bill with technical questions, the supporters mostly glossed over them or simply didn’t understand the questions.
McSherry said the OPEN Act is flawed, but is a better option than the two bills currently in front of Congress — but that EFF is focusing on stopping them right now:
These two bills need to be killed. OPEN is better; it’s still flawed but can be fixed.
Currently SOPA is dead in the House, but its Senate counterpart PIPA is alive and well, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is vowing to pass it — even though Senate Republicans, including Jerry Moran, (R-KS) have vowed a filibuster.
McSherry said that should either bill be signed into law, a constitutional challenge is waiting:
What we have learned over the last decade is that legislation is not the answer. We have a First Amendment right to access this information. If SOPA passes there will be a constitutional challenge. I’ll be happy to lead that charge.
SOPA and PIPA need to be killed. The movie and music industry say piracy is hurting their business but, in my case anyway, what is killing their business is the nearly 100% lack of quality and I don’t think I am alone. In my opinion 80% of the music and movies put out these days are not even worth the effort to pirate them. Put that together with the radical left political stances of most of the entertainment community and why should any average American buy any of their stuff?
My advice to the all the young people out there that are protesting the industry’s stance against a free internet, stop buying their products. Do like previous generations did, make your own music, read books and use the internet. In fact, using the internet is what really has the “powers that be” upset. They no longer have a monopoly.
If the quality is so bad, why are people using such massive energy to procure the produce? And this isn’t just film.
I know of a site overseas; a new movie is up within hours, almost always in a cam version and almost always from Russia. The site itself is in the middle east.
Within a few days a high quality version is out and this is followed by blue-ray. This is besides the giant library of TV shows and music available and also Adobe software and the whole nine yards.
Another site I know is only music. Like the first, there is no registration. They have everything from the ’30s on and hits are up instantly.
Face it, people who defend this are on the consuming end and not the producing end. Since when does wrong become right simply because you wish it enough?
The best defense against SOPA is the way they go after lawbreakers and not their right to do so. Theft as promotion and theft as a right and theft as an actual good thing and theft as revenge against corporations and on and on are nonsensical arguments. If you’re against SOPA you’re shooting yourself in the foot defending and rationalizing theft.
Spend a fortune and a year making a film and see how protective you become of it.
Problem is, the movies being produced now are almost without exception nihilistic and pernicious left-wing crap that aren’t worth watching even if they can be obtained free of charge.
Excuse me but, people against SOPA aren’t against punishing thieves, they are against a law so widespread that it allows the government to effectively censor the internet. If someone is a thief punish them, after justice runs it’s course, don’t shut down a basically law abiding group because someone accused one of them of doing wrong.
250 billion dollars? 750,000 jobs? Christ, if those are their losses to online piracy, how big is the movie industry as a whole? Sounds to me it could be equal to the entire rest of the economy, Who knew?
…giving the Justice Department the power to shut down sites which allegedly infringe on copyrighted content simply on the accusation, without due process.
There’s a scary phrase right there.
We all know how rational, fair and balanced this DOJ has shown itself to be under Eric Holder, what with dropping a clear cut case of voter intimidation against the new black panthers, insanely working for a civil show trial for KSM & friends, hiring only ideologues at DOJ like Holder himself, going after states trying to run their own internal affairs, lying to Congress about his knowledge in Fast & Furious (currently looking for an appropriate fall guy in AZ to take the hit for not properly informing Holder of his own department’s doings…)
That’s the ticket, give the crowd at DOJ even more power to screw things up.
But guys, look how similar laws in Iran and Syria are working! Just think, if they didn’t have the ability to shut down the internet those pesky demonstrators might have been able to spread nasty rumors about the wonderful government they are living under! I mean those pests are trying to say they are being beaten, raped, and killed just for speaking out. Why I saw on Iranian and Syrian regime outlets that they are only fighting terrorists, they would never suppress their loyal citizens.
Oops, forgot the /sarc tag.
The recording industry spent decades screwing the consumer. In the 80s when they stopped making vinyl, the price of an album went from $8 to $15 overnight. They claimed they were recouping the CD tech investment, but the price stayed the same years after the investments were paid off.
Likewise, the movie industry has been working in cahoots with electronics companies forcing new formats on the consumer such as wide screen and Blu-ray which force people to buy new hardware and rebuy media. I’ve bought Dark Side of the Moon three times already.
When they had all the chips, the entertainment industry had no problem fleecing the consumer. But now that they have refused to accommodate the new technology (that they don’t own the monopoly on), they go running to the government for protection.
I commend to your attention this post over here: http://accordingtohoyt.com/2012/01/18/the-pushback-has-come/
Sarah nailed it right on the head:
You know what that means – it means that before you put anything up, you’d have to have it “certified” as not infringing copyright by some sort of gatekeeper – say, publishers. Who could also, of course, “ensure” that you had the “right” quality and opinions and … everything they’ve been doing for decades. This would give them the chance to “educate” the reading public again – and aren’t you readers looking forward to this?
Come on now Tom..I like Widescreen format. Love it actually. Outside of that one though…yeah the rest is just a scheme.
I’m not sure I agree the response against SOPA is all that wide ranging in truth: you have bloggers who use work that is copyrighted as do news aggragators and then those against it on principle like Beck and the ACLU and then people who make money from having lots of websites.
As for music, in what world do people steal a perfectly good MP3 and then buy a perfectly good MP3? Why buy the album instead of getting the rest of that album the same way?
In a sense musicians and music companies are dumb for allowing work on sites like YouTube since it then becomes a free flea market but there is no doubt the copyright holders of films and music deserve compensation.
I agree that sites that steal photos don’t always represent a “buy” but neither are all those sites going to go out of business because they suddenly have to make sure they pay for their photos so the sales of stock photographers will be enhanced instead of having to helplessly stand by and watch one of their photos lifted and used 150 times without a penny; they do hold copyright and deserve to be paid for usage.
The internet has allowed easy and unchallenged theft of artistic writing, photos and other media simply because people who produce nothing other than buying a computer feel the world’s their oyster and copyright means nothing.
John Byter,
You are welcome to your opinion. However you are sadly misinformed about the facts. Please allow me to enlighten you.
First: most people are not thieves. If they were there would not be well documented research (google “music pirates buy more music” for an idea). The usual pattern is to use the free pirated material to try something new, then buy that artist’s output. This pattern gets circumvented when the intermediary (the music company, the publisher, the movie company) makes it difficult or impossible to buy what you desire for a reasonable price – and “more expensive than hardcopy” is not reasonable for digital media.
Second: Obscurity is a bigger threat than piracy. This is why YouTube has millions of videos, and why many musicians have their own channels. If ArtistX can’t be found in stores, can’t be previewed in some way – and previews matter because the cover information is not always accurate – or can’t be purchased legally except at ObscurePlace in the back end of nowhere, ArtistX is not going to make any kind of return on their time and work. This is the state of affairs for the fast majority of musicians and authors, absent Amazon.com. Allowing works on YouTube means that ArtistX has another way for people to find their works.
Third: If stock photos were being pirated at the level you described, the stock photo sites wouldn’t be viable. They’re viable because people buy their images under their licensing (which is pretty generous).
Fourth: What is the evidence behind your assertion that the internet has enabled “unchallenged theft” of anything? Mass photocopying has been around since the first photocopiers, mass video copying since the first VCRs, and so forth. All of these technologies were fought by the big content providers as “causing piracy”.
Fifth: I suggest you research into how much of the purchase price of any media actually reaches the creators. Note also that the creators are largely opposed to SOPA/PIPA and its ilk. The large multinational conglomerates that make fortunes off that content while paying the creators pennies on the dollar (if they’re generous) and lock out anything they don’t like are universally for SOPA/PIPA and the like.
Sixth: It’s not just where the money is going, it’s where the power is going. Concentrating even more power in the hands of organizations with a long record of abuse of power strikes me as a bad idea (if you doubt that power is abused here, I refer you to the funny accounting whereby massive hit movies like Star Wars have never made a penny of net income).
Before enlightening me, please point out where I said most people were thieves? You’re telling me that honest people log on to pirates sites, steal the material rather than being satisfied with 30 second song previews or movie trailers and then, if they like it, proceed to buy the material even though they already have it on their computer?
And “reasonable price” is the morality of to steal or not to steal? If only Dolce and Gabbana weren’t so expensive people wouldn’t pirate it so in effect D&G are stealing from themselves.
I also wasn’t arguing against YouTube being used by nobodies. Writers on Amazon are practically and literally giving their work away cuz it’s junk; they spam the Amazon forums non-stop with their stupid synopsis from the back of a ’60s paperback.
Stock photos are being stolen at the level I describe. Just go to Alamy forum for one and see. Right now, today, one guy is lamenting the use of his photo 150 times without renumeration. Saying a lot of people pay isn’t the same thing as saying a lot of people don’t steal. They are thieving stock photos in record numbers. On top of that the agencies orphan the IPTC metadata that includes copyright notification although any fool knows if they’re using a photo and haven’t paid for it they are stealing.
“Unchallenged theft” means exactly that: it’s a big leap from photocopying, which is limited in scope, to a world wide audience at your fingertips needing nothing but you, your computer and the internet. You go to a site, no registration required, and download software, songs, movies. And me copying a TV show for my own amusement is not a copyright violation: selling or giving it away by the thousands and making a profit by ad and direct revenue is.
As for how much money goes to the creators legally: that is no ones’ business, certainly not a third party not a part of the original contract. If musicians are getting screwed by record companies it is because this is the nature of business – no one forces musicians to sign contracts; each side operates from a power position. You are not allowed to interfere. Welcome to capitalism which is at least not naked theft.
And lastly, what gives you or anybody the legal jurisdiction to intervene in film accounting that seems funny but which you in fact know nothing about? You never figured out the reason film budgets ballooned is because they are lying for tax purposes? Unless you work for the IRS it would be called none of you business and certainly doesn’t give you the right to start pirating Star Wars.
Each of you arguments are worthless.
I commend this article to your attention.
http://www.otherwheregazette.com/2012/01/20/on-the-stupidity-of-drm/
You’re wrong on so many levels sir, I’m not certain I have time, nor patience to deal with you.
Well Mr. Richardson, I recommend finding both that patience and time rather than refer me to absurd articles that cozen theft by deciding an “inflated” price is permission for thievery. While the cyberpunk world is all cutesy and rebelly in fiction in reality it is a world of endemic theft. But to you that thievery is only in a “technical” sense.
I understand the old argument about cassette and video tapes but now one has the ability to instantly send out copies of books, software and music by the millions and they do and then make money from that act. That is not “technical” but outright theft.
I do not agree with comparing this to lending a dead tree book since one obviously will not lend a book in such massive amounts, even given libraries, to ultimately compromise the product of an artist by lowering their income tens times what it was in the past. Do you consider the age of pre-recording vinyl a form of slavery or monopoly? Of course not – you simply want a lot of stuff for free simply because you’re used to it and think it should be free because rich people are evil and unfair. Well guess what, people more often than not get rich because they produce something rather than figure out how to grift people like MegaUpload does. That new George R.R. Martin book was 50 dollars on iTunes the day after it was released and available for free as a PDF on the net at the same time. How is that cool or right?
But even worse is responding to my comment with something about DRM which I have said nothing about and then saying I’m “wrong.” Wrong about what?
Using the Gaiman argument that theft is promotion then gives total strangers the “credit” for actually doing good by theft when it’s more like thank god they didn’t steal my toilet. I have been long aware of what BAEN does but they do it because they are overwhelmed by thievery not because they are bold visionaries. That’s like saying 700 shanty towns in Rio de Janeiro are not The Fox and the Grapes. “Well, actually we decided we really like these shanty towns cuz they give a certain tone to the city plus we can’t do anything about it.
And that’s really it isn’t – can’t do anything about it and now that rights holders are standing up for themselves and doing something about it you don’t like it.
You are trying to sell this as dumb rich people but who create original product as dinosaurs who don’t understand the new digital “business model” while trying to depict this theft as something other than theft and making it some kind of rights issue. If you want free stuff go to Gutenberg and let people who are not dead control the rights to their work and the right to make a living, yes even a very handsome living, off of it.
Considering your attitude of how “wrong” I am you’d think it wouldn’t be so easy to shoot down everything you say. This is a false argument to enable bloggers to use whatever they want whenever they want. Bloggers produce nothing original but are remoras and hide that by extensive “borrowing” whenever they want.
A thief is one thing but a person who doesn’t even know it another and a person who turns it into a Bill of Rights issue even worse.
John Byter,
Apologies for the length of this. Material I’m quoting is in italics. The extensive quotes are needed to maintain coherence on the multiple points being discussed here.
Before enlightening me, please point out where I said most people were thieves? You’re telling me that honest people log on to pirates sites, steal the material rather than being satisfied with 30 second song previews or movie trailers and then, if they like it, proceed to buy the material even though they already have it on their computer?
This is exactly what happens. And this is precisely why you saying most people are thieves. This study is one of the many that have found that the majority of people will do this. Then there is the simple fact that as of the DMCA, it is technically “piracy” for anyone using a Linux operating system to watch the DVD they legally purchased on their computer. Laws that treat illicit copying as a worse crime than unlawful killing (5 years for illegally sharing a Michael Jackson song. The doctor who killed him got 4) and impose insane penalties (thousands of dollars for a song that you can buy legally for 99c? That’s not exactly proportional damage) are the kind of laws guaranteed to be ignored in the detail while the spirit – that the people who create the work deserve to be paid for it – gets remembered (which is why people buy the music after they’ve decided they like it. Remember, they can’t preview it anywhere else, and 30 seconds is not enough to know if you’re going to enjoy it.)
And “reasonable price” is the morality of to steal or not to steal? If only Dolce and Gabbana weren’t so expensive people wouldn’t pirate it so in effect D&G are stealing from themselves.
Invalid comparison. A clothing brand gains a big chunk of its value from the brand name. The brand name of an art work is – strange as that might seem to you – not the content aggregator (publishers, music companies) but the artist. People don’t go looking for Universal Studios movies, Penguin Putnam books, or EMI albums. Furthermore should the clothing brand start producing crap, there are any number of other clothing brands to choose from. There are maybe half a dozen music labels, fewer publishers, and all of them are in each others’ pockets to the extent that they have had effective monopoly power for years.
I also wasn’t arguing against YouTube being used by nobodies. Writers on Amazon are practically and literally giving their work away cuz it’s junk; they spam the Amazon forums non-stop with their stupid synopsis from the back of a ’60s paperback.
You might like to try telling Sarah A. Hoyt, the Prometheus Award winning author, that her work is junk. Or the previously unknown authors who are now bestsellers because they have been able to publish their work without it going through the publishing industry. Or the indie musicians who can make a living from their albums by using YouTube and Amazon.com to make their work available. I’m sure they’d have a few things to tell you.
Stock photos are being stolen at the level I describe. Just go to Alamy forum for one and see. Right now, today, one guy is lamenting the use of his photo 150 times without renumeration. Saying a lot of people pay isn’t the same thing as saying a lot of people don’t steal. They are thieving stock photos in record numbers. On top of that the agencies orphan the IPTC metadata that includes copyright notification although any fool knows if they’re using a photo and haven’t paid for it they are stealing.
I’m saying that the majority of people don’t steal. Oh, and to quote you “that is no ones’ business, certainly not a third party not a part of the original contract.” Do try to be consistent. By your own words if this photographer put his artwork on a stock photo site (every one that I’ve seen credits the owner of the image), then what happened after that isn’t anyone’s business but his and the site, right?
“Unchallenged theft” means exactly that: it’s a big leap from photocopying, which is limited in scope, to a world wide audience at your fingertips needing nothing but you, your computer and the internet. You go to a site, no registration required, and download software, songs, movies. And me copying a TV show for my own amusement is not a copyright violation: selling or giving it away by the thousands and making a profit by ad and direct revenue is.
Sorry dude, but the DMCA made copying a TV show for your own amusement a copyright violation, by banning the ability to access material that would constitute fair use. SOPA and PIPA would take it even further. If you watched that illegally copied TV show with anyone else, you also “broadcast” it, making you subject felony charges. (This, incidentally, is why all those restaurants have their dopey birthday chants. “Happy Birthday” is copyrighted and restaurant staff singing it is a “performance” requiring license fees to be paid. The person who wrote the song gets nothing: they’re long dead. The license got purchased at auction, if I recall correctly. And that is the most recognizable song in the Western world, possibly the entire world. Any kid can sing it – but if they do so in a public place, they’re “performing” without a license and they/their parents are liable.)
As for how much money goes to the creators legally: that is no ones’ business, certainly not a third party not a part of the original contract. If musicians are getting screwed by record companies it is because this is the nature of business – no one forces musicians to sign contracts; each side operates from a power position. You are not allowed to interfere. Welcome to capitalism which is at least not naked theft.
I take it you’ve never heard of racketeering regulations, or antitrust provisions? When the “choice” is take what you’re offered and hope your master will give you those pennies on the dollar, or get nothing at all and if you walk you’re blacklisted by the rest, a reasonable person would call that force. Capitalism does not include monopoly cartels with full horizontal (all the publishers know each other, talk to each other, and systematically exclude the same kinds of thing) and vertical (the publishers are in with the distributors who in turn are in with the sole chain bookstore remaining in the USA, thereby controlling each level of the distribution chain) control. Nor does it include collaborative price fixing (funny how almost all CDs cost the same, isn’t it?), and working to squeeze out any upstart competitors (which is what SOPA/PIPA are really all about. Shutting down Amazon.com and the other online markets who provide the only outlet for the quality products the established media won’t touch). Also, “sign this or you will never work as a musician” is force. It’s blackmail. And it’s the norm in the content industries. Musicians and authors sign because until very recently they didn’t have any alternatives.
And lastly, what gives you or anybody the legal jurisdiction to intervene in film accounting that seems funny but which you in fact know nothing about? You never figured out the reason film budgets ballooned is because they are lying for tax purposes? Unless you work for the IRS it would be called none of you business and certainly doesn’t give you the right to start pirating Star Wars.
Lying for tax purposes is my business. I pay taxes – anything that lies for tax purposes is de facto defrauding me. And you. And everyone else who pays taxes. Not to mention many people find it deeply offensive that a large movie studio can use all sorts of dirty tricks to deny the people who worked for them their share of residual income by this kind of accounting dirty pool. The more of this that happens, the more people start to think that it isn’t going to matter if they rip a copy of that movie, because the people who should be getting the money won’t see a penny. The next step of reasoning, that if the studio goes under, nobody gets anything, usually doesn’t occur – but it wouldn’t occur to people if they weren’t hearing about these gross distortions of ethics. And no, the solution is not to stop people hearing about it. It’s to stop the ethical violations.
Each of you arguments are worthless.
I’ll refrain from peeing on your typo or your grammar. As for the worth of my arguments, that’s a bit rich when you denied every fact I presented, tried to shift the terms of discussion, threw in irrelevant comparisons and tried your own sob-story which you proceeded to directly contradict only two paragraphs from your sob story.
If you have evidence that contradicts what I’m saying, kindly present it.
Your first argument is distraction, trying to turn this into a majority as opposed to minority theft argument: it’s theft. And I’ve learned one thing in this life: when people say “exactly” in an instance where they couldn’t possibly know the truth, they are only revealing what they want to believe. The idea you can use a study to peer into the moral habits of millions world wide is nonsense. Here’s what we DO “know”: people are stealing and in massive amounts. The “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” is still coming about by extortion by way of theft. SOPA is saying I’m not joining, I’m protecting my copyright.
Your second argument is also wrong: copyright belongs to the holder and not to who you approve of. And Richardson himself directed me to an article that said Martin’s book at $14.99 was wrong so steal it. This is extortion by saying make it $7.99 and I won’t steal it. Well, maybe.
As for Hoyt: Prometheus read Libertarian read scarce species. To my knowledge there is no conspicuous trend that’s introducing us to new SF authors or musicians who otherwise wouldn’t have appeared and who now have massive success by using Amazon or YouTube. This is an exception and talent will win out and not have to go to YouTube. If Jack McDevitt or Peter Hamilton had come by this road I’d say you have a point but they didn’t and you don’t.
Since I am a stock photographer I am very much minding my own business and not peering into the tax returns of George Lucas.
This copying and watching video privately or semi-privately is not the argument behind SOPA and so is neither here nor there. I am not being taken for felony charges by watching a recorded show in my home. People deal drugs out of their homes so I think this will not become a problem. Stick to the actual leaking of money rather than distractions. My home use is not a copyright violation in a real world prosecutorial sense and you know it.
As for anti-trust, rap musicians have shown ways to set up their own companies and if you don’t like the big companies and the way they do business I suggest you do the same. No one is holding a gun to musicians heads. This is another false “rights” issue. No one has a right to be famous or rich as a musician. If you don’t like the traditional road, choose another. It is not a permission for theft no matter how you turn it.
As for saying tax concerns are someone’s business: the actual argument is whether it then translates into a permission to steal and not some abstract argument over tax theft itself. No one has appointed you as a de facto judge to enact revenge on people like Lucas by engaging in industry wide theft.
Your arguments a still worthless and it is you who have shifted the argument by bringing up things I didn’t say. I have and can rebut any argument directly if I think it merits rebuttal.
I am not a professional againster who disagrees for the sake of disagreement. I was initially against SOPA and it may in fact overreach. However now that I have heard the arguments against it I am surprised how worthless, illegal and unethical they are.
You don’t have a leg to stand on and I think if you spent a lot of time and money producing paintings, photos, and drawings and then had them stolen wholesale you might see a little bit of why rights ownership is just that – right. The fact is that if you steal my photos I can sue you. You probably don’t like that either. Go to Gutenberg; you won’t inconvenience any dead people.
John, John, you sure you don’t work for the MPAA?
First, I never said “steal Martin’s book at $14.99. Read for content. What I said was the pricing was ridiculous. Nor was I actually advocating piracy, having just finished sending off a half dozen cease and desist letters to some scraper sites who stole a bunch of my work wholesale. I have no issue with fair use, I do have issues with outright theft. (Note, had they come to me personally and _asked_ could they put my work up linking back to my original blog I would have said “thank you!” and given them permission as I have done many times.)
I made the case against DRM and the continued stranglehold the major media companies wish to have on what we read, what we see and what we listen to.
Note, the record companies would like to make you buy a copy of every album you want to listen to for every device you want to listen to it on. So for instance, if you wanted to listen to that copy of the Beatles “Blackbird” on your iPod, your computer and in your car you would need to purchase three copies. SOPA would require this as stupid as it is.
To my knowledge there is no conspicuous trend that’s introducing us to new SF authors or musicians who otherwise wouldn’t have appeared and who now have massive success by using Amazon or YouTube.
Well on the SF front there’s Ric Locke who’s been doing quite well. And while he didn’t start on Amazon, but was self published and sold over the Internet, there’s also multiple NYT bestseller Larry Corriea who is also a big opponent of SOPA. As for the music front, Justin Beiber anyone? We may wish the little twit had never been discovered but he _was_ found on YouTube — singing covers which is technically illegal NOW and which under SOPA could be used to shut down YouTube. As to there being a “conspicuous trend” well, in the publishing industry at present there’s still much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about the whole epub thing.
Most of the big six wish Amazon and the Kindle would just go away and are pricing their e-titles in such a way as to try to keep people from buying them. Any lackwit who could actually read for comprehension would note the article I directed you to was about how the publishers could make _more money_ if they would just price things reasonably and remove the DRM which prevents people from sharing a book they like with a friend.
As for anti-trust, rap musicians have shown ways to set up their own companies and if you don’t like the big companies and the way they do business I suggest you do the same. No one is holding a gun to musicians heads. This is another false “rights” issue. No one has a right to be famous or rich as a musician. If you don’t like the traditional road, choose another. It is not a permission for theft no matter how you turn it.
I commend to your attention Naked Reader Press for an example of some authors saying “Pee on the traditional route we’ll do it ourselves.”
As a big proponent of IP rights, would it surprise you to know that the big six publishers have a very bad habit of offering for sale ebooks to which they do not have the rights? Books, which have, in fact had the rights revert to the author? This has happened to a friend of mine.
If you are, as you say, a stock photographer, well, that’s a bit of a different animal. You are 100 percent correct you have the right to be paid if someone uses your work. Your rights absolutely should be protected. So should all content creators — which, btw, Kate is and a rather good author indeed — SOPA does not do that. What SOPA does is give, not the actual creators power to enforce their rights, but the record companies, the movie industry and the publishing industry the right to shut down any site which appears, to infringe on copyright, without due process and without regard to fair use. Which I might add, the Supreme Court has upheld on numerous occasions.
Patrick, I don’t understand what the issue is with DRM. I’ve heard it’s there, it exists, but I’ve never had any trouble making CDs from my iTunes purchases or with cross platform uses.
Much of my digital collection of music is a mish mash of work that was originally vinyl, went to cassette, then to mini-disc and then to MP3. Oddly, it still sounds more full and better than original MP3s. If I bought that original album, I award myself the right to copy it to whatever format I choose to listen to it in.
As for my lack of wits in regards to publishers ignoring your generous offer to manage their profit system, they and I are apparently jealous of our lack of wits.
I doubt the passage of SOPA in its present form would allow me to shut down the Huffington Post for using one of my photos without paying. Since the legal basis of a record company would be the same as mine how is this going to affect websites that are not clearing houses for stolen work?
It seems to me that too much of this argument is being built around small guy big guy without regard to where those entities fit into right and wrong. Robin Hood was a fun story but in the real world things are a little more complicated.
To my knowledge there is no conspicuous trend that’s introducing us to new SF authors or musicians who otherwise wouldn’t have appeared and who now have massive success by using Amazon or YouTube.
Ignorance is not an argument. I’ll commend to you John Locke’s book: http://www.amazon.com/Sold-Million-eBooks-Months-ebook/dp/B0056BMK6K
In fact, the sudden appearance of self-published best-selling ebooks by authors who have been unable to break into traditional publishing is one of the most dramatic — and most heavily discussed — trends in publishing in recent years. We’ve discussed it on many occasions in PJ Media (I was writing about it in 2008) and its now being widely discussed in PW and other traditional-media fora.
Bleah….seen this line of argument on RASFW a decade ago. The end result was that Baen Books…in particular Eric Flint….put their older works on-line for free. The Baen Free Library. The result is that every author who has put their work up for free has received increased sales.
Everything John Byter has to say is wrong. Demonstrably and factually wrong.
In other words, BAEN was forced at the point of a gun, by theft as extortion, to suddenly realize their business model, of insisting on being paid, was wrong. The truth is that giving stuff away for free can be a useful promotional tool but usually it is the idea of the company and not the consumer.
So BAEN shows me new work I didn’t know existed and I press a few more buttons and there it is for free anyway; how is your post proof that thieves are suddenly transformed into honest people? There is no proof other than your wishful thinking and anecdotal instances that giving into the reality of theft is a successful business model. That’s like saying let them build shanty towns and put them on welfare and maybe they won’t riot.
The reality is that the digital age is a Pandora’s Box that will and has destroyed careers and cut revenues forever by broadening the public’s ability to create product themselves thereby flooding the market and by enabling naked theft.
Seemingly every news site in America has a system where you can send in “news” photos that by an amazing coincidence transfer your rights to them and agencies like Getty prefer looting clueless hand-clapping amateurs from Flickr and paying them a fraction of what they pay their own pros.
I don’t begrudge anyone the good fortune to stem this tide and protect their rights to their own product, revenue streams and distribution networks. People are acting like mass media is like water without which they cannot live. Go outside or better yet, produce something everybody wants to have at enormous expense and then watch some bastard in Russia put it up for free on the net. How do you earn a living doing that? By giving into the reality of copyright theft or fighting back if you can?
What BAEN is doing is a temporary stop gap with false returns; they cannot survive doing it and they know it. A large part of this whole issue is the overturning of hard copies in favor of the digital age and this is simple reality but a lot of it is simple thievery.
Close down massive clearing houses for file sharing and watch revenues start to climb again. The weird claim that people are in fact not stealing is belied by the very fact the net is not policing itself by actually doing the honest thing you say and so is now being attacked.
And this issue of “reasonable price” is nonsense. Who am I to act as if owning a movie is some kind of right? If the price is too high I won’t buy it; or wait, I can just steal it.
And on top of all this everyone wants to be famous and the next Heinlein and the next music idol but without the talent and who cares? It’s a democracy only in the sense that art has been dumbed down to the worst common denominator and by looking at Amazon one could well believe there are more authors than readers.
Americans have egos as big as Napoleons but instead of conquering Europe they put on their own shoes in the morning and call for Josephine to bring them coffee which their dog doesn’t know how to do.
You can’t steal and then show how it is actually a favor. When did stealing become okay because the thief shows how it’s actually a “good” thing? What world do you live in? Oh look, I robbed your house but I painted it pink so it will sell better if you want to sell it.
That’s odd. My first novel has been in Baen’s Free Library since 2007. It continues to sell in stores, as downloads, and I get about one fanmail a week telling me someone read it and then bought something else. I’m about to add a second book, and my collab with John Ringo is in there, as is a short story (which I got paid for).
I’m not sure what inside information you have that it’s “a temporary stop gap with false returns; they cannot survive doing it and they know it.” My royalty checks are bigger every statement, my first novel is now in its 5th printing, I gain market share with every book. This has been going on since 2004, and since 2007 with free content.
Or check out the Schlock Mercenary comic strip. Howard started posting for free, but does a brisk business in bound editions, tie-ins, contract work, etc.
If I hear from a deployed troop, I usually send them the newest unpublished work as a .doc file to keep them entertained while in that third world you speak of(which I’ve spent a goodly portion of my own life in, on top of being an immigrant).
I look forward to offering more free content.
The other advantage? There’s zero cred in stealing my stuff. Are there pirate copies? Sure. Usually bad ones. My fans don’t care, occasionally I pick up a new reader, idiotic laws won’t stop it. The worst threat any artist faces is obscurity. I regularly get, “Holy crap, you’re Mike Williamson!” at appearances.
The model appears to be working.
Oh, yes–Baen also offers advance peaks at the pending works. The $6 download for August can be read as early as April…for $15. Hundreds of people do this, then buy the print version as well.
Come back in a decade and one of us gets to admit error.
If the MPAA does indeed capture the $250 billion in lost revenue, we need to tax it at90%, just to make sure the liberals arent hypocrits.
Yes!!!
Not sure what saving whales has to do with trying to save our rights online BUT ████’█ ███ ██████.the ████ ████ ██ ████ ████ █████ government████ ███ ██ knows█████ ██ ██████ ███ best█ █████ ██ ███ ██████ █████ █████ ████/████ ███’█ ██████ ████████
“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
George Washington
Surprised to see politically correct Marxist Critical Pedagogy passed off on a conservative site and hiding under a garment of conservative thought.
In this argument against SOPA, the rich occupy the wrong social enclave and are therefore immoral as a default position. The cyberpunk cool-guys occupy the rebel’s stand and are therefore dispensed morality as their default position. One’s social position trumps reason, reality, talent or right and wrong.
Congratulations, you’ve just joined the Rainbow Coalition and the Democratic Party where black folks, feminists and gays can’t be bigots and cool rebels can’t be thieves. You’re like junkies who are seeing the price of your drugs go up while pretending those drugs you can’t live without are not important but a right somehow at the same time.
There is no philosophical consistency here but only moving goalposts that cozen theft.
Since I have a dog in this fight and you appear not to–nuts.
Example: Fleetwood Mac sold 20 million copies of Rumours, then “only” 4 million copies of Tusk. Mick Fleetwood blames this on an LA DJ playing the entire album one night…which logic only makes sense if 16 million people in LA would have bought the album but taped it instead and never replaced the tape.
Likewise, G. Lucas blames the lesser receipts of Ep 2 vs Ep 1 on “illegal downloads” at a time when few people had the ability to download, less had the bandwidth, fewer had the means to properly watch said copy, and even fewer would have known how to find it online.
Since I have a dog in this fight and you appear not to–nuts.
Example: Fleetwood Mac sold 20 million copies of Rumours, then “only” 4 million copies of Tusk. Mick Fleetwood blames this on an LA DJ playing the entire album one night…which logic only makes sense if 16 million people in LA would have bought the album but taped it instead and never replaced the tape.
Likewise, G. Lucas blames the lesser receipts of Ep 2 vs Ep 1 on “illegal downloads” at a time when few people had the ability to download, less had the bandwidth, fewer had the means to properly watch said copy, and even fewer would have known how to find it online. They’ll do anything except admit that the potential customer has no obligation to them. (Tusk was okay. Ep2 SUCKED GOATS)
The problem is overstated, and the proposal denies due process–something very liberal in scope, not very conservative.
So no, we haven’t secretly joined a Democratic conspiracy, and ad hominem is still an invalid debate technique.
John Byter,
As it happens, I am an author. I make money from legitimate copies of my work being sold. I am also published by one of those alternatives to the publishing Big Six which would not be able to exist under SOPA/PIPA. The reason I am published by an alternative and not the Big Six is not the quality of my work but that it’s the kind of thing that tends to get a smallish group of fans and I don’t trumpet the politics the publishers favor.
Now, since the discussion has derailed somewhat, perhaps you’d care to tell me what kind of person supports a law that is capable of destroying legitimate businesses without due process – and indeed includes that as a feature. Do you really think that any organization which has been part of an abusive cartel for decades will not use that law to shut down competition?
For the record and to put this in language even you would have trouble misreading. I do not support intellectual property theft. I also do not believe, based on the studies I have read, that theft of copies of music or literature – or art, for that matter – is as big a problem as the regulatory capture which has led to abusive laws penalizing theft of copies at a higher level than manslaughter.
I am not in any way against “the rich”. I am vehemently against the corrupt of all colors and persuasion who buy themselves laws to prop up a business model that needs to change and the corrupt who take that money. It just so happens that all those who have the power to work that corruption happen to be wealthy, possibly because it takes a significant amount of money to buy oneself personal legislative exemptions from the law the rest of us have to follow.
I am not a “conservative” by the standards of this site. Nor am I politically correct. I do try to stay polite, but I don’t have much of a tolerance for rank stupidity, so my willingness to be civil is starting to fray at the edges.
Now, if you reread my posts, I have never once said I supported piracy. I have simply said that a) there is a powerful lobby of established interests who are trying to legislate special protection and are lying about the extent and scope of piracy, and b) the scope of piracy is often co-dependent on the availability and price of media. This translates to the more of a ripoff something appears to be, the more likely someone who wants it will find a way to justify stealing it. When publishers price an ebook edition above a paperback, Joe Public sees a ripoff because there are no delivery and paper costs with an ebook, and there is no physical item, therefore an electronic item should cost less than its physical counterpart.
Observing a fact of human nature does not mean supporting it, nor does it say anything about my personal beliefs regarding said fact of human nature. Drawing conclusions like that is equivalent to assuming that the color of my eyes affects my politics.
Excuse my rank stupidity; even with having spent 7 years in 12 Third World countries and seen the massive amount of piracy and speaking those languages I apparently don’t meet your rather high standards of intellect.
I once met an Aussie business associate in Bali in 2000 and it was his first time. He was stunned at the Windows software available and bought all he could for a fraction of the price. This has been true in Rio, Istanbul, Guatemala City and every other place you can think of outside the West. Now, with the internet, it’s inside the West and in a big way. Even if you are correct about the big companies, what they are doing is no worse than what they are fighting – why should they have to play footsy with unflinching thieves?
Now, in 2012, one doesn’t need the big players to see the extent and scope of piracy on the internet. If I want the entirety of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire books and the HBO series for free it’s there and with no problem by way of PDFs and RMVBs. How extensive is that if pushed out to include everyone’s personal favorites? Free Real Player gives a happy assist my enabling people to make a bewildering variety of cross platform music files from YouTube videos.
On one middle eastern site right now and with no registration, I can have every major film out there for the last few years til today and TV series too and as soon as they come out.
In short I can have access to a staggering variety of work from the entire series of the old Outer Limits to Discworld books with music included and never have to pay one thin dime. It is ludicrous to suggest anyone who can cozen that should be calling anyone a lackwit. Regardless of how much money claimed is being lost by big companies it is certainly a lot.
Suddenly those actors who steal bread from writer’s mouth by blogging for free about the evil 1% on HuffPo don’t have much to say. Try acting for free and see how fast SAG drops a noose around your career. The fact is that without SAG actors would be spamming Amazon forums along with the writers whose worth has plummeted to the point they are desperate.
But making movies is an expensive affair, not like writing, taking photos or forming a band. This means there are so many people flogging product thanks to the digital age that no unionizing can take place and protect product. As a result people seem to have a pouty lipped insistence that if they’re screwed then book and music publisher and film studios should be too. Why penalize them for the big guys for their success in making product everyone wants or resort to extra legal activity because you see them as the new J.P. Morgans? Try making a film like Star Wars that moves a world and generates billions and see how easy it is.
Any grease monkey can write a 7 part fantasy series 1,100 pages to a book that’s little more than a stereotype factory and publish it on Amazon while declaring themselves the next H.P. Lovecraft because they killed off a character when you didn’t expect it; try making a career off killing off characters when it’s least expected.
Unlike OWS I do not dispense morality according to economic status, success or lack of it, or wits: that is a child’s game. Even if the companies are guilty of everything you say, they have exact counterparts among their own consumers.
As one of those “grease monkeys”, let me say that you have no idea what it takes to write a short story, much less a book or series. No one is more protective of her work than am I. No one here is promoting piracy. What you, and so many others, seem to overlook when it comes to SOPA and PIPA is that it will allow for the taking down of websites WITHOUT DUE PROCESS. Sorry, but that’s something everyone should be worried about.
As for pirate sites, yes, they exist. Yes, they do take some money out of the creators’ pockets. Yes, they should be prosecuted for breaking the law. However, good does come from their sites as well because, like it or not, most folks are honest and they do go on to buy an author’s work or a musician’s or movie studios’ if they like what they have already sampled for free. The fact that Baen and other companies like it have seen sales increase in direct proportion to what they offer for free should prove that. You are also forgetting the little tendency of most folks not to like pirate sites because, gee, they don’t know what sort of virus or worm they might be infecting their computers with.
For every one of the supporters of SOPA who say this is to stop piracy, think again. This is a tool that can be used to shut down sites that merely quote from copyrighted material if the holder of the copyright doesn’t like that site’s politics, etc. If it was retooled to include due process, most of us would not only support it, but we’d applaud it. However, the lack of due process guarantees is something we should all be fighting.
One last observation. Look at who the supporters of these bills are. On the whole, it’s not the creators of the work. It is the distributors. That should tell you something right there.
I don’t disagree that SOPA is overreaching and maybe unconstitutional; I was responding to this entitlement mentality of give it to us the way we want it or else. If you think most people are honest in regard to piracy you have certainly never been to the Third World where people don’t pay for squat and artists and companies in America rely on foreign sales and even now make films with foreign markets in mind.
I’m not sure what knowing how to write a short story has to do with anything; I know junk when I see it and epub when it comes to SF and fantasy is full of junk written by clueless rednecks. The alternative is to believe that every one who writes a novel is some sort of artist. If you believe that then it explains why Amazon forums are spammed non-stop promoting this junk.
In other words you just don’t like SF or Fantasy and are somehow morally superior to the rest of us because you’ve spent time in the Third World.
Gotcha, now that I know how much smarter than the rest of us you are, how superior, I’ll just fold up my tent and go home. I guess I never knew I was just some dumb redneck until you pointed it out.
The issue wasn’t one of morality but of whether I was a lackwit who could read. Piracy is endemic in the Third World, I know that from experience, experience is the opposite of ignorance. I taught myself Spanish, Portugese and Indonesian out of a grammar book in a matter of days in order to free myself for non-English speaking areas; lackwits don’t do that.
Instead of saying you’re really smart and I’m really stupid or something that is in fact ignorant like writing I don’t like SF try an argument on for size, one that doesn’t have a weird double standard where you don’t mind paying for cable TV but do mind if that same content is on the net. In fact I’ve read virtually every seminal short story and novel in fantastic literature and that guide is how I know junk Star Wars SF full of “mercs” in armor with the giant boots ala Marvel Comics from the early 80s.
Saile Furman,
“If you think most people are honest in regard to piracy you have certainly never been to the Third World where people don’t pay for squat and artists and companies in America rely on foreign sales and even now make films with foreign markets in mind.”
So, because there are peoples OUTSIDE OF THIS COUNTRY that pirate items made here and elsewhere, we are supposed to throw away our own guarantees of due process? Sorry, that’s not what our founding fathers had in mind — in my own red-necked opinion. I guess, by your way of thinking, we should apply DRM to everything, limit the number of devices we are able to play, view, read them on, and continue with the farce that all we are buying when we buy an e-book or download an MP3, etc., is a license and not the song or book or movie itself.
“I’m not sure what knowing how to write a short story has to do with anything.”
Then maybe you should have thought about it before bringing it up in your prior comment. You were the one who said any grease monkey could do it.
“I know junk when I see it and epub when it comes to SF and fantasy is full of junk written by clueless rednecks. The alternative is to believe that every one who writes a novel is some sort of artist. If you believe that then it explains why Amazon forums are spammed non-stop promoting this junk.”
First off, count me as one of those clueless rednecks. Gee, I never knew. And no one said every author is an artist. There are hacks. A lot of them are published by legacy publishers and that is one of many reasons why those same legacy publishers are having troubles now. As for saying Amazon forums are spammed non-stop “promoting this junk”, perhaps you are looking at different fora than am I because Amazon has moved self-promotion threads into the Meet Our Authors forum and is pretty darned good about enforcing it.
But then, I’m just a red-neck hack who makes her living as a writer and editor and who is more worried about maintaining the due process guaranteed under the Constitution than I am about losing a few sales because of piracy. Guess most of my author friends are also red-necks because they view this piece of crap legislation the same as I do.
For someone so keen on showing off the ability to write and parse English, my comment about greasemonkeys clearly meant any of these people thinks they can do it. That is so simple and straightforward it’s sad.
And again with the DRM thing: I don’t give a squat about DRM one way or the other; it has never affected a thing I do and I have tons of music and movies. If I am not distributing to others something I have paid for then I feel I have the right to make whatever copies in whatever format for my use I want. I have already paid and once is enough and DRM can go its way and I’ll go mine.
As for being a writer and an editor I’ll choose end product over profession. Being a writer means nothing, making art does. When you can make something as effortlessly unique and creative as Clark Ashton Smith or Jack Vance let me know about that.
Everyone knows about the Meet the Author forum, a forum the authors hate as segregated. Any forum about books on Amazon will have deleted comments from epub kiddies, sometimes more, sometimes less. Rednecks never know they’re rednecks, especially self-styled artists. Endless repetition should be clue but it’s not since this is all hacks have to offer, imitation.
Since it would take far too long to go through every factual and logical error in this post, I’m going to focus on one statement:
Even if you are correct about the big companies, what they are doing is no worse than what they are fighting – why should they have to play footsy with unflinching thieves?
Let’s parse this out. Assume that I’m correct in stating that SOPA/PIPA is functionally bought and written by and for the legacy media conglomerates, even if you don’t believe this. It makes the next stage a little less cumbersome.
You’re claiming that SOPA/PIPA is no worse than the theft the legacy media conglomerates are fighting and that legislative capture where politicians are no longer beholden to the people who vote for them but the interest groups who pay for their campaigns and offer them lucrative positions after they retire from politics.
You’re claiming that a law which allows the takedown of an entire site on the unsubstantiated and unproven claim, without providing the owners of the site an opportunity to defend themselves, is legitimate. The non-digital equivalent of this is claiming that no-knock SWAT raids of every house in a street to catch the one shoplifter that an anonymous tip said lived there is or should be legal and acceptable.
You’re claiming that the only purpose of file upload sites like MegaUpload is to host illicit material. I don’t recommend trying that argument to the families of military members who use sites like MegaUpload to store their home videos of family events so their on-duty military family member can at least see the event. Nor do I suggest that you try it with the indie gaming companies who use the file upload sites as a way to provide their customers with their products. As for the medium-sized software business that uses these sites as a convenient method to transfer customer databases so the company can have access to the customer’s data structures when debugging customer issues, well, obviously you don’t care a damn about what happens to them if they happen to have the misfortune to use the same site as an alleged thief.
The US justice system is supposed to operate on the principle of innocent unless proven guilty. Laws like SOPA/PIPA and the DMCA before it dismantle that principle, and include unacceptable collateral damage to the innocent. Just as it is not acceptable in US law to destroy every house on a street to extract the alleged criminal living in one of the houses, it should not be acceptable to destroy the digital assets of all users of a site to shut down the alleged criminal also using that site.
If you think that this is acceptable, then you are supporting a police state. It makes no difference who or what controls a police state – innocent people will always suffer. I hope you’re proud of that.
Everyone knows SOPA is created and backed by special interests nor have I said otherwise. Extending that out to stormtroopers breaking down doors makes for bad science fiction let alone reality.
I never claimed that MegaUpload or RapidShare don’t do legitimate business – having said that, they are criminal enterprises and your moral weather vane that ignores law at will points in some strange directions rather than exhibiting any overarching philosophy of right and wrong equally applied.
As for a police state, since I am clearly not innocent it will not affect me in the least one way or the other. I’ll just go all cyberpunky and be a rat in the wall and jack in to where the going is easiest and start a revolution in cyber space. My first act will be to destroy every junk 7 volume fantasy series written by a hairdresser and put on Amazon with a cover a 6 yr. old could do better using Elmer’s glue and scissors.
“Any grease monkey can write a 7 part fantasy series 1,100 pages to a book that’s little more than a stereotype factory and publish it on Amazon while declaring themselves the next H.P. Lovecraft because they killed off a character when you didn’t expect it; try making a career off killing off characters when it’s least expected.”
Tell you what dude, you’re so smart, why don’t you try writing it and getting a traditional publisher to publish your opus? (Just for the record the statistical odds against you suggest that saying ‘Any grease monkey can get onto the space program’ makes more sense. No I’m not saying that writers are smarter than astronauts, just that the pool of successful fantasy/sf writers is very tiny (depending on how you apply your criteria, but say selling more than 25K and producing a book at least every two years), and that getting in ceased to be principally a matter of skill and started being principally a matter of luck or connections about two decades ago.
I’m in favor of things which protect and foster creators. Any sane person or state should be. That is not something you can say about PIPA or SOPA which are designed principally to keep the existing middlemen in their cosy oligopoly, and worsen the plight of creators.
My criteria for success in this conversation about the endless hackery via epub is based on artistry. Jack Vance, perhaps as fine an American prose stylist as there was in the 20th century never got rich or had films made of his work and he’s as good as SF and fantasy comes – how many people know who Jack Vance is? Forget popular, read “Palace” by Katherine Kerr and Mark Kreighbaum for some great, ignored and really well written work.
The pool of SF/Fantasy success stories may be tiny but it’s light years ahead of the 30′s to the 50′s. Oh, and guess what, that’s when the pool of artistry was much higher. What does that tell you about the insipid popularization and dumbing down of a once bright genre? I would say, please people, stop writing. Find some other genre to dragonize, cyberpunk and merc to death.
I’m replying here to you, S. Furman, since I wasn’t able to reply directly to your last response to me. I find it interesting that you have no problem with DRM or no DRM and you continue to talk about Amazon fora, but you declined to discuss my biggest concern with SOPA — the lack of due process. That is enough to tell me you are nothing but a troll who likes to stir the pot so, since this red-neck grease monkey of a writer and editor has better things to do, I’ll leave you to your high brow and oh so much more informed opinion (at least in your own mind).
I am not a troll but speaking my actual mind. I am amazed at how often people portray anyone who disagrees with them as insincere. I have stated SOPA is probably overreaching and unconstitutional. However notions of jack-booted police with shiny black helmets that make them look like beetles rapelling into one’s home is plain nuts. And does anyone really think for one minute that the HuffPo will go offline because I say they used a photo of mine without permission? There are a ton of sites that have my photos, so many that just one particular photo takes up a sizeable percentage of image results. I wouldn’t care if those sites were taken down or stripped from Google’s search engine. They know about copyright, they just don’t care. Traditionally with thieves you MAKE them care. When their own behind is on the line suddenly all becomes clear.
Besides that, too much of this argument is simply ignoring or cozening theft in what is a plain double standard of dispensing right and wrong according to consumer/producer rather than consistency. It is stated with certainty that most people are honest, something all the philosophers in the history of the world couldn’t prove; this is wishful thinking, especially in light of the massive existence of piracy. Most or not is not an argument. Every theft is a theft.
Saile Furman’s response to me about Baen Books is utter nonsense. The sort of silliness made up in one’s mind that is utterly devoid of facts. M. Furman’s premise is built on sheer fantasy. Here’s the real story of why Jim Baen and Eric Flint created the Baen Free Library.
Steve Stirling.
About a decade ago Steve Stirling posted on the USENET group that he thought that people who digitally pirated his books ought to be “ass raped” because he literally “sweated blood” when writing his books. Eric, who had been a machinist and worked in steel mills thought this was nonsense as he’d _actually_ bled doing the tough blue collar jobs many literary snobs look down on.
After a lot of back and forth with people like M. Furman on RASFW, Eric spoke with Jim about setting up the Baen Free Library. They did and the results are actual fact: those authors who put up older works saw an increase in sales.
Another result was that we found that people with physical disabilities were able to read books on computers when they couldn’t comfortably hold a book. We formed a small charity to help those people and today ReadAssist volunteers help facilitate Baen’s program for providing ebooks to qualified disabled vets for free.
Though I’m not a Baen employee I am reliably informed that their business is doing just fine and have a decade’s worth of data to indicate that everything Saile Furman says is the stuff one shovels out the barn door.
As the second author to put a book up on the Free Library, I confirm Quilly’s tale. And the book continued to sell (more than before putting up) after being available for free.
Jim Baen’s business model is actually one that all the media companies would do well to learn from. ‘Piracy’ is actually a minor issue for me – you have to try quite hard to find pirated versions of my work. The reason is fairly simple. It’s very reasonably priced, available in any format you care to mention, available anywhere and does not have DRM.
Please leave Karres alone; even Schmitz himself made an awful mess in trying to novelize one of the all-time great SF short stories.
And no pre-quels or sequels of the following:
Captain Future and the Space Emperor
Fondly Fahrenheit
The High Crusade
Vintage Season
The Third Episode of Vathek
A Pail of Air
Under the Red Flag
The Nightland
The Soft Weapon
Varney the Vampire
New Riders of the Purple Wage
1984
The Road to Azrael
The House and the Brain
Pines In the Dusk
The Bible
You could at least have the courtesy to warn of a thread-jacking.
“Please leave Karres alone” indeed – here you are, after screaming about the EVIL EVIL PIRATES ZOMG THEY’RE STEALING FILES!!!!, and you’re complaining about a licensed use of copyright material (Baen owns the rights), and claiming the right to tell an author not to do something that earns him income because you don’t like it.
You have completely invalidated any possible validity your arguments might have had. Go tell your paymaster you’ve failed to convince anyone or start a proper argument. Maybe you’ll have more success somewhere else.
I did start with proper arguments and to the point and I will make one now: having the legal right to enter an author’s domain is not the same as the moral right. As someone who loves Schmitz’ work I wouldn’t even attempt to imitate it. Schmitz was unique and it is impossible to recreate his world without leaving what it is that made that world admirable out of it. It’s like authors who write Conan sequels without seeming to realize that Conan stories are built of prose and that minus this consideration Conan minus artistry is not all that interesting a character. How interesting is Karres now?
Some moron has made an “modern” version of William Hope Hodgson’s “The Nightland,” claiming it is now readable. This nitwit has the legal right to do it but the work itself, which I have read, is depraved not to say plain stupid. Since Hodgson died in WW I I don’t think he said OK to the project. Your supposed to read Gutenberg’s works not rewrite them.
May we now have a readable version of “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Jane Eyre” cuz they are just a bit stilted and could probably use a zombie or two.
I myself am contemplating an Octavia Butler sequel she won’t mind, being dead, called “Methuselah’s Chillin’,” about immortals born in the slave era who ferry ice asteroids to farmers on Ganymede. It’s completely original.
I almost listed “Under the Moons of Mars,” the original title of “A Princess of Mars.” Surprise, all new stories, mostly by nobodies, just came out on Amazon under that title.
I’m thinking about doing an Honor Harrington meets Alien where she has a sidekick who is a 10 year old Predator and setting it up as The Battle of Aboukir Bay redux cuz lord knows you can’t cross enough Ts in space battles.
Jan 6, 2012 Ron Paul Talks About SOPA And The NDAA Bill At N.H Airport Hanger Rally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phRi80HBIuU&fe…
Everyone knows SOPA is created and backed by special interests nor have I said otherwise. Extending that out to stormtroopers breaking down doors makes for bad science fiction let alone reality.
“Stormtroopers” (aka SWAT units) already break down doors in pursuit of other non-violent crimes, kill children and dogs, and then claim that it’s all okay because they found evidence supporting a misdemeanor. It’s not a big step to expand using them to a different class of non-violent crime, especially after sufficient demonization of any or all of the following: people who actually commit said crime, people who disagree with you (the copyright laws are such a mess that it’s impossible not to break them. Every time you reply to or forward an email if you didn’t explicitly get the permission of the person who wrote the original and don’t remove the quoted text, you are committing a copyright violation. Just think, that makes almost every single person in this country a “pirate”, since “pirate” has come to mean “a person who violates copyright law”), people who transform original work to make new work (satire is legal. There are huge numbers of takedown attempts to try to shut out satire), people who legitimately exercise their Fair Use rights in ways the copyright holder doesn’t like. This method is how every dictatorship has come to power. Forgive me for being disturbed by the evidence of the same thing happening here.
If you have an “overarching philosophy of right and wrong equally applied” it’s one Stalin would have been quite comfortable with – everything you say reeks of “I am right, everyone who disagrees is wrong, and I have the power to decide how you should be penalized.”
What you write reeks of feeling threatened by what I write. Expressed authoritatively or not, it’s just my opinion; why should I have to belabor that one on the noggin with Thor’s hammer?
Alongside of that is someone who obviously lives in fear of worse case scenarios. Either that or you’ve been tortured for forwarding emails and imprisoned for listening to an unauthorized CD.
Given this native fear of the most unlikely events, I recommend never doing the following:
Circumnavigating Bali on a motorcycle
Hiking the Inca Trail
Climbing a live volcano
Purchasing heroin on your first ever visit to New York City to finance climbing said volcano
Trekking in the jungles of Guatemala to unvisited Mayan sites
Selling drugs
Skipping school
Robbing houses
Fighting
Leaving the house without a helmet and arms at your sides
Any or all of these may result in your demise.
Very amusing, my dear Furman.
Also completely and ridiculously off topic. Do try to keep to the topic at hand: you haven’t just “expressed” your opinion, you’ve systematically belittled anyone who dares to disagree with you, refused to present evidence of any facts underlying your opinion, and generally wasted a lot of time pissing in someone else’s sandbox.
I’ve been playing with you because I have a really bad habit of helping idiots to display their folly even more extensively, but your psychotic topic breaks are becoming rather tedious.
In short words: you have made a fool of yourself.
More amusing than you know.
Belittled as in using terms like lackwit while suggesting I need sentences spelled out for me or in caps among other endearments? The funny thing is that my comment is actually not off topic in both a larger and very specific sense, something that entirely escapes you and which is amusing to me. There is certainly no world or dimension in which you would be capable of playing with me in any sense as you cannot separate a psychotic topic break from real events because you cannot even imagine that as a reality unless you did it – how then do you imagine the unreal by way of writing?
Anyway, hats off to Jamaica Plains, MA. 41 writers of the fantastic there and only 3.4 miles away in Newton Center there are “219 SF Writers.” Are there even 219 people who regularly read SF in Newton Center?
If that doesn’t clue you into the brutal fate that has overtaken SF and fantasy nothing will. You want me to respect them all or I’m a pig?
I’m a pig.
With all due respect Miss Kate, you, as a writer, should know that writing “sadly misinformed about the facts. Please allow me to enlighten you” is considered both insulting and arrogant. If as an editor you are unaware of this or that you started this process, then you are no editor. There is little point in your using the term “belittled” since you would have to apologize for belittling first.
Disclaimer: I am not Sally Furman.
Wow..I go away for several weeks and look what happens. Don’t you just love paid trolls? Which Saile Furman and John Byter clearly are? Dayuummm.
Since I am neither paid nor a troll your judgement and instincts are still away. Perhaps they shall never meet again if they ever did in the first place. I myself have a very interesting story about a 73rd and 3rd doorman in NYC but I’m not going to tell it to you because it’s actually is interesting.
SOPA has one horrifying flaw which its supporters don’t even understand.
Online fraudsters have learned to hijack DNS (the process by which the Internet converts a URL to an IP address), so that users who think they are accessing a secure e-commerce site are actually directed to a fraud site.
There is technology to stop this, called DNSSEC, which basically guarantees that the user gets the real IP address.
SOPA mandates the suppression of alleged “pirate” sites by DNS blocking. Internet providers are required to make their DNS return “not found” for a “pirate” site URL. SOPA also and prohibits any technology that would defeat DNS blocking.
Guess what – DNSSEC would defeat DNS blocking. A key element of the Internet cannot be protected against an imminent threat.
EPIC: Good to Really Know
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaxXcENLfWI&feature=youtu.be