Poll: If you've ever downloaded something illegally, YOU are to blame for SOPA/PIPA.

[BiscuitTrouser]

No. Whoever Burnie Burns is, I hope many people told him how fucking retarded he is.

When a soccer mom comes out and calls for normal footballs to be banned in schools because her kid got hit in the head with one and has a concussion, we call her stupid. When an athiest comes out and says religion is a bad thing because of the crusades, we point to all the good things religion and religious people have achieved. And when someone comes out and says we should cripple the internet because a few people use it as means of doing something illegal, thats perfectly fine and reasonable?

Im not going to suffer through DRM because someone once downloaded a game illegally. Im not going to stop driving a car because there are drunk drivers out there. Im not going to throw all my knifes away because some people use them as a tool for murder. Why would I be fine with SOPA?

And pirates caused it? Dont make me laugh. SOPA would not stop anyone with half a brain from downloading games or movies illegally. The people who thought it up know that, congress knows that, antipiracy outfits know it. Piracy is nothing but a scapegoat for this. In real life, they use terrorism to justify violating your privacy and harassing you. On the internet, they use copyright infringement. So fuck Burnie Burns and his naive ass for believing this is about piracy and nothing else.

tl;dr: It is apparent that even without the problem of piracy, we would still have something like SOPA coming up. Piracy is and always has been nothing more than a scapegoat.

All youve done is attacked the bills idiocy. And thats fine. You make valid points about why its a stupid bill. And it is. No one claimed it was reasonable. Youve created a very odd straw man from nowhere. No one says the bill is good. No one says it actually fights piracy. No one says its isnt stupid and reactionary.

What we ARE saying is that its caused (partly) by piracy. That piracy was among the reasons the bill was created, one of the main ones. And it was. And i believe that while its not about piracy and nothing else (again a thing no one said except you) piracy plays a key role. If piracy didnt exist SOPA and ACTA wouldnt get nearly as much commercial support. Sure its shitty, sure its unfair but at the end of the day you cant deny that it would place these bills in a weaker stance if piracy didnt exist. In the same way if terrorism didnt happen then freedoms would be more easily kept. Excuses. We are giving them. And although abused these excuses shouldnt be given in the first place.

SOPA sucks, it doesnt work and you outlined some good reasons why. Too bad that wasnt the point of the OP at all.

 

[Redd the Sock]

There is a logic to that. I'll be the first to tell people that if you don't like the laws being passed you should do whatevery you can to not give the government theexcuse to do so. Don't like excessive safety regulations, don't be negilgent in safety and don't give people reason to sue you for example.

On the other hand, much piracy happens due to a perceived lack of response to consumer demand mixed with exagerated claims of the cost of piracy. Statement after statement can be made about how much downloading happens due to lack of availibility both due to reigons and age, yet surprisingly little has been done about it (though certain credit has to be given to the anime industry as at least some of them are trying) and all the RIAA, MPS, ESA and other organizations hear is "I want free shit". Cost complaints are somewhat overblown, at least to those of us being asked to pay $400 for 13 episodes of Fate/Zero, but they still get ignored, as does the possibility that the market is oversaturated with entertainment and downloading may be coming from people that have spent all their money elsewhere. Don't get me started on the draconian efforts made to try and curb piracy actually making piracy the more convenient option as well as the lowest costing, or any claim (such as ones from the video game industry about used game sales) that carries a subtext that anyone that hears, sees, or plays their product owes them money like they'd make it illegal to lend a book if they could.

Yes, we probably should have put more effort into condeming those that download Harry Potter or whatever, but none of us like how much control others seem to want over the system.

 

[Kolby Jack]

There is a logic to that. I'll be the first to tell people that if you don't like the laws being passed you should do whatevery you can to not give the government theexcuse to do so. Don't like excessive safety regulations, don't be negilgent in safety and don't give people reason to sue you for example.

On the other hand, much piracy happens due to a perceived lack of response to consumer demand mixed with exagerated claims of the cost of piracy. Statement after statement can be made about how much downloading happens due to lack of availibility both due to reigons and age, yet surprisingly little has been done about it (though certain credit has to be given to the anime industry as at least some of them are trying) and all the RIAA, MPS, ESA and other organizations hear is "I want free shit". Cost complaints are somewhat overblown, at least to those of us being asked to pay $400 for 13 episodes of Fate/Zero, but they still get ignored, as does the possibility that the market is oversaturated with entertainment and downloading may be coming from people that have spent all their money elsewhere. Don't get me started on the draconian efforts made to try and curb piracy actually making piracy the more convenient option as well as the lowest costing, or any claim (such as ones from the video game industry about used game sales) that carries a subtext that anyone that hears, sees, or plays their product owes them money like they'd make it illegal to lend a book if they could.

Yes, we probably should have put more effort into condeming those that download Harry Potter or whatever, but none of us like how much control others seem to want over the system.

That's fair. I suppose one way to combat piracy would be to give people less reason to resort to it. Make media more available (which seems to be happening, though perhaps not as quickly as it should be) and making accessing the media more convenient (again, also progressing but not at a good enough rate). You, sir, have earned a "good idea" sticker, to be mailed to you in 6-8 weeks.

 

[Viridian]

Because they have enough money already, right? They won't miss a few million dollars. That is the flimsiest justification for breaking the law there is. Stealing from the rich is still stealing, any judge will tell you that.

Did you... even read my post? I didn't say anything about pirating being justified. I'm saying that companies don't freak out over products that they no longer sell, and that people who pirate such products are not taken into account when these companies do freak out. There's no money in it, so they don't care. That's what I'm trying to get across here, don't put words in my mouth. When I said "WE'RE LOSIN' TEH MONEEZ," I said it because it's a justified, logical response to losing profits on stuff that they actually sell.

tl;dr I wasn't being sarcastic with my all caps message.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

And pirates caused it? Dont make me laugh. SOPA would not stop anyone with half a brain from downloading games or movies illegally. The people who thought it up know that, congress knows that, antipiracy outfits know it. Piracy is nothing but a scapegoat for this. In "real life", they use terrorism to justify violating your privacy and harassing you. On the internet, they use copyright infringement. So fuck Burnie Burns and his naive ass for believing this is about piracy and nothing else.

tl;dr: It is apparent that even without the problem of piracy, we would still have something like SOPA coming up. Piracy is and always has been nothing more than a scapegoat.

Those who read things in their entirety go through life with big advantages.

Even if the people who made SOPA know its useless (and you or I have no reason to believe thats the case considering the HUGE mindchange when everyone protested) it still stands that piracy is a lovely easy scapegoat. A lovely easy illegal scapegoat that has nothing going for it. And handing that to them on a plate is gonna cause trouble.

However I wouldnt be surprised if they didnt know it would do nothing. Piracy is this giant evil entity to these people, artists say it is, huge figures are quoted and people get scared. I hate piracy, but christ when we start talking about "millions of dollars" lost sales in companies that fund politicions what the hell do we expect to happen. Massive outrage and reactionary idiocy. Id be outraged if piracy wasnt a load of crap and was an inalienable right. But it isnt. And us stopping, while not the solution in an ideal world, is the most practical solution in this one full of reactionary people ignorant of the internet. It hurts EVERYONE so why dont we just stop.

Just stop piracy. And instead demand faster, more efficient forms of digital media distrubition, fair prices, fair laws on copy right and fairer systems of publishing. And demand them with as much passion and effort as we demand SOPA to be scapped. Maybe something will happen.

Also FYI everything i said applies to the first half of your post, dont brush it off by saying it doesnt apply to the second, you say a few things no one said and imply the OP said them, or that anyone did for that matter. "Why should i be fine with SOPA" just kinda hangs out there, lonely as a point directed at no one because no one ever endorsed that you should be fine with it.

 

[Kolby Jack]

Because they have enough money already, right? They won't miss a few million dollars. That is the flimsiest justification for breaking the law there is. Stealing from the rich is still stealing, any judge will tell you that.

Did you... even read my post? I didn't say anything about pirating being justified. I'm saying that companies don't freak out over products that they no longer sell, and that people who pirate such products are not taken into account when these companies do freak out. There's no money in it, so they don't care. That's what I'm trying to get across here, don't put words in my mouth. When I said "WE'RE LOSIN' TEH MONEEZ," I said it because it's a justified, logical response to losing profits on stuff that they actually sell.

tl;dr I wasn't being sarcastic with my all caps message.

My bad. Usually when someone uses lolcat speech and all caps, they are being sarcastic.

I did notice how it seemed to contradict the rest of your post though. Again, my bad.

 

[Uber Evil]

It's hard to argue that piracy lead to SOPA, but what lead to piracy? Some, if not most, of it is greed, although some of it is due to stuff mention in this thread before, like unavailability or none of the profits actually going to the company, so the title of the thread is false. I think that even if piracy had never existed, a law like SOPA would have come into being for one reason or another. I would think that as hated as used games are (by the publishers, anywho) nowadays they would try and push bills through that outlawed used games if piracy wasn't there to be a more sinister target, as used games also cut into their profit margins, which is really what piracy does, albeit on a grander scale.

Just stop piracy. And instead demand faster, more efficient forms of digital media distrubition, fair prices, fair laws on copy right and fairer systems of publishing. And demand them with as much passion and effort as we demand SOPA to be scapped. Maybe something will happen.

Piracy is far to prevalent now to just stop. I think that it will never go away, although if what you suggest happens it would likely cause at least some people to not pirate, especially if demos were much more prevalent. Even then a core group would just pirate anyway because hey, free shit. Also something need to be done about the horrendous DRM we see. The whole system really needs to be reworked to make it a fairer deal for the gamer.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

It may have caused something like SOPA but it didn't make the stupid wording that will hurt the internet.

 

[Vault101]

yeah? well so what

thats like saying there would be no pain in the world in everyone was nice to each other (hell acording to nickleback if everyone was nice no one would die)

but thats not the case, I dont condone piracy...but I dont condone the fucking stupid reactions the industrys have

 

[MyNameIsNowNotMyName]

No. Whoever Burnie Burns is, I hope many people told him how fucking retarded he is.

When a soccer mom comes out and calls for normal footballs to be banned in schools because her kid got hit in the head with one and has a concussion, we call her stupid. When an athiest comes out and says religion is a bad thing because of the crusades, we point to all the good things religion and religious people have achieved. And when someone comes out and says we should cripple the internet because a few people use it as means of doing something illegal, thats perfectly fine and reasonable?

Im not going to suffer through DRM because someone once downloaded a game illegally. Im not going to stop driving a car because there are drunk drivers out there. Im not going to throw all my knifes away because some people use them as a tool for murder. Why would I be fine with SOPA?

And pirates caused it? Dont make me laugh. SOPA would not stop anyone with half a brain from downloading games or movies illegally. The people who thought it up know that, congress knows that, antipiracy outfits know it. Piracy is nothing but a scapegoat for this. In real life, they use terrorism to justify violating your privacy and harassing you. On the internet, they use copyright infringement. So fuck Burnie Burns and his naive ass for believing this is about piracy and nothing else.

tl;dr: It is apparent that even without the problem of piracy, we would still have something like SOPA coming up. Piracy is and always has been nothing more than a scapegoat.

I don't know what your thinking but Burnie Burns is a goddamn genius. And yes, it's my fault, and I don't care, truly.

 

[Phlakes]

If there was no piracy, there would be no need to regulate piracy, so yeah, in a sense your right.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

Piracy leads to the bills. But our problem with them IS the congressmen who don't understand the internet, and get backed by corporations who see it as an opportunity to get ahead.
and its not the downloaders. It's the pirates.

 

[AngleWyrm]

I voted yes, but with reservations.

First and foremost, the idea of a monopoly market doing sudden dumps of a product, and trying to make all their money before the word gets out. This process works directly against quality.

Second, greed. Greed is not the same thing as wanting to make the most for the least. Greed is when you are actively making poor and detrimental decisions in a vein attempt to get imaginary money.

And third, charging individuals hundreds of thousands of dollars for copyright infringement is a serious breach of the judicial system.

That being said, the efforts to make more people buy a game rather than download it for free are a legitimate enterprise, and only exist because people download games rather than pay for them.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

No, individual people downloading the occasional file aren't the cause of SOPA, nor are commercial pirates, for that matter. The cause of SOPA and its ilk is simply that the entertainment industry used to have a monopoly which became unsustainable the instant the internet came into existence, and are fighting tooth and nail to slow down or prevent the inevitable. They don't honestly care about pirates -- or at least the ones that know what they're doing don't. It's a front to keep up a veneer of legality, as well as to make the shareholders happy that their employees (yes, business executives are employes, not usually employers) are doing what they can to further maximize profits that are already maximized under the old business model -- which nobody wants to be the first to break away from. What this stuff is really about is preserving the stranglehold on distribution.

The recording industry has long enjoyed a world where every few years they get a new distribution format, which requires their customers to re-purchase their libraries. The internet is ultimately the end of that business model -- even with legal digital distribution schemes, physical medium is no longer an issue, to say nothing of illegal copyright infringement. This also says nothing of the fact that the internet creates a true global market (so no more exorbitant rates for countries that these cartels randomly decide can afford it), or any of the other myriad changes the internet made to the world. Basically, the internet has destroyed their business model, it has whether piracy gets completely shut down or not, and they're trying to intimidate the denizens of the web into not recognizing that. They've already lost the battle for hearts and minds, and they'll lose the overall battle in the long run, but it's going to be a while until the law catches up to technology -- like, say, 40 years or so for the millenials to finally take over for both the baby boomers and the gen X-ers.

Edit: Oh, before someone tells me "well, if there was no piracy, they wouldn't have that scapegoat!" -- you're right, they wouldn't have that scapegoat. These people are fully capable of cooking up a scapegoat for anything they want to do. If piracy didn't exist, they'd turn to child porn, or drug sales, or wikileaks, or any other thing on the internet that they could get people mad enough about to slip what they actually want done by in the name of preventing the scapegoat from happening. Heck, look at the games industry: piracy has been minimized as far as it feasibly can be. So what did the industry do? If you said "feel good about their record profits and stop trying to get even more control over the industry[footnote]and they really have been posting record profits in a down economy, despite all the complaints about piracy killing the industry[/footnote]", you'd be wrong. They started going after the used market, something that was completely legal but they could apply the same spurious logic to that they did piracy. This is not surprising. The surprising thing is that so many people bought it, instead of going "wait, if used games are worse for the industry than piracy, doesn't that mean that piracy is actually good for the industry?[footnote]Note to mods: I did not say that piracy is actually good for the industry. It's just that used games /are/, so logically, if used games are worse for the industry than piracy, either piracy is a great thing for the industry, or it's not, and they're lying when they say used games are worse.[/footnote]"

 

[Beryl77]

If piracy didn't exist, then there wouldn't be any anti-piracy laws, that's true.
If only SOPA would fight piracy but that's just an excuse. It has other purposes.
There are ways to reduce piracy without hurting honest people more than pirates and SOPA definitely isn't the way to do it.