furtech | SOPA: I am totally /c/o/n/f/u/s/e/d/ overreacting.

[EDIT: Short version: the SOPA legislation is poorly written and should either be modified or not passed. Naughty word. The end. Those uninterested in politics can skip the rest below.]

I've heard so much about the SOPA/"Stop Online Piracy Act" that I tired to figure out what all the scraeling was about.

Yes, I understand that it gives the US Attorney General far too much power without any due process.

At the same time, I looked at all of the evil companies that support it, and I see name after name of companies that I really love--businesses who produce the creative content that I watch on a daily basis and that I am happy to throw money at because they provide an enjoyable experience. Companies who develop and produce things that make the lives of my friends, my dogs and myself better. I support these companies and, as a content provider myself, I am against piracy and creative theft.

And yet, on the other side (anti-SOPA) are companies that I also wholeheartedly support. I agree with their arguments that this will stifle creative freedom generally. Yes, technically, uploading a home video to YouTube of you and your friends dancing to a Lady Gaga song is a violation under this act. That song is still controlled and owned by a company (likely one on that list).

I think Stephen Colbert explains this well .

I place the blame on all parties for this mess: music publishers, media producers and other groups who support SOPA should have LONG AGO created allowances or practical methods to allow home videos to exist on internet sites-- but they are so fearful of "precedence" that none of them have addressed this in a general way. There -are- ways to do this, but a combination of attitude (not wanting to deal with this small-fry, aka, not enough money to care about) and laziness (wanting a simple, one-size-fits-all solution) has led to this.

At the same time, the Anti-SOPA groups did not approach this in a practical way that could have lead to a solution. They are also guilty of laziness and their own agendas: some significant number of them do NOT want to see piracy limited or stopped. Some of the larger names, IMO, purposely did not try to mitigate the law (to exclude the home-video examples or smaller websites) so that the whole law was tainted to gain the popular support of internet users and free-web supporters. It's ridiculous.

This issue is playing out like a gigantic version of the internet drama where a fan artist calls Disney (or whomever) evil and mean because they shut down their Disney character porn art...and that same artist finding some of their original work on 4chan (or whomever) and screaming about how they are taking money from the artist's pocket and how they will SUE!

Personally, I think both sides are fuckers.

I clarify: the movers and shakers (ie, companies, groups, etc.) fighting for or against this law are the above pejorative. Individuals like us are just the flotsam and jetsam thrown about by the big waves.

Again, all of this is just my own, ineffectual opinion. As someone who has real concerns on both sides of this issue--- and can see that there was a point that practical solutions could have been written into the law but weren't-- I think I have a balanced viewpoint. The best solution would be to throw this out and write a more targeted law that exempts the innocuous situations that most companies neither care about nor really want to limit, and include a procedure that includes due process.

Next up: silly dog pictures!