The US House and Senate are considering bills called the Stop On-Line Piracy Act
(SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (
PIPA).
The bills are "bought and paid for" by the movie and recording industry. It is not necessarily sponsored by the artists. The recording and movie industry do not need any additional protection by the US Government. In fact, I believe we need to change the Digital Millennium copyright act to reduce the amount of time that industry is protected under copyright. The Movie industry claims to be losing billions of dollars in revenue due to piracy. However it is very difficult to measure revenue that might have been made. It is also difficult to explain when the industry has continued to
increase US box office revenue, even while the country is in difficult economic times. In addition to US box office revenue, the movie industry has greatly increased it's DVD sales, and foreign box office sales. In 2010 MPAA reported sales of
31.8 Billion Dollars, and increase of 8% over 2009. We expect 2011 to also have an increase. Industry executives and movie star salaries have continued to skyrocket, while most other US industries are hurting and millions are out of work. In the music industry, the situation is similar. "Physical" music sales have fallen off (CDs), however digital sales have increased to almost make up for the fall off in physical music sales. Part of the fall of in music sales is due to the change in media -- who buys CDs anymore? Another part of the fall of in sales is due to demographics. The "baby boom" generation is entering retirement, so are buying less music. Also, the types of music has dramatically changed. Nonetheless, sales are up, profits are up, artists are making more money than ever and the music industry executives are paying themselves even more.
This industry agreed to consent decree that they had cheated consumers in the
1990s by price fixing. As a result, everyone who had bought a record received a "credit" as part of the agreement. It appears that they
continue to do it. They they agreed that they had cheated their distributors, and had to pay them. Then they agreed that they
had cheated the artists, and had to pay the artists. As a reward, for their good behavior, we gave them the DMCA which, in effect gave them billions of dollars in copyright extensions as well as enforcement. Did Disney really need to protect those early black and white cartoons that were about to belong to the public? Well they got it anyway! Now they want more? Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp clearly
supports the two bills. His publications have continually published articles and editorials in favor of them. Of course Murdoch and his company has also admitted to illegal wiretapping to listen in to private conversations to help them publish scandalous stories all around the world.
The industry claims that they are losing money to piracy, however their sales continues to rise, and the salaries of the executives and the artists seems to rise beyond anyone's dreams! How can they possibly complain?
The problem is that by having the US Government grant them the right to block web sites, we will end up with a more powerful form of censorship than China has! It will also create a form of citizen spying that will be beyond the dreams of George Orwell's 1984 Big Brother! They say it is only to protect us from "foreign" web sites --but the DNS blocking will block all sites.
One of the problems with expanding these federal laws is that we already have too many laws where the average citizen can find themselves in trouble without understanding the complexity of the law. See my blogs on "State of Justice in America" -- Which, it appears that Rupert Murdoch and his Wall Street Journal also have concerns about. In addition, it is clear that when new laws are written, prosecutors use them as tools to help them prosecute other crimes. So someone could be held in jail for an illegal downloading crime because the police is suspicious that the person may have committed another crime. This slippery slope has allowed police and prosecutors to lock innocent people up for years without proper justice. This is not the American way!
I have written to Daryl Issa our Congressional Represntative as well as Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, our Calironia Senators to ask them to not support either of these bills.
