Where I stand on SOPA

(The following is a very cut-down version of what will be a much longer “But I Digress” in an upcoming issue of “Comic Buyer’s Guide.)

The denizens of the Internet are, for the most part, screaming foul and bloody murder and (of course) shouting for boycotts of any and all who are in support of SOPA and PIPA. Because when you want to show that you’re a firm advocate of free expression and unimpeded distribution of information, naturally the best way to do that is to try and financially punish and shun anyone who disagrees with you.

Now I don’t pretend to understand all the ramifications of SOPA. I’ve read a lot about it. Read position papers on both sides. I’m fairly convinced that, yes, SOPA goes too far in its current language. It should not be passed in its present form, and–if it does go forward–will likely be scaled down to something more manageable.

But oddly enough, I can’t find it within me to work up much outrage over it. I suppose I should. I’m a freedom of expression guy.

And yet, here’s what I keep coming back to…

And I address this not to the corporations on either side, fighting for their personal interests. And not to the congressmen who are punting SOPA around like a political hacky sack.

No, I’m talking to the owners of the various pirate sites who decided it was fine to post my novels for free downloads.

I’m talking to the guy in Florida who decided that he was going to unilaterally create his own online library and was blithely offering copyrighted comic book material to millions of people before the Feds nailed him.

I’m talking to the denizens of a website whose cavalier disregard for restrictions on how much of a comic book one could reproduce caused their entire site to be shut down and their response was—with a complete inability to accept the results of their own actions—to blame me for it.

I’m talking to everyone on the Internet who is the first to download the latest anti-virus ware to protect their own computers and digital property, but have zero trouble feeling a sense of misplaced entitlement that enables them to rationalize swiping other people’s intellectual property or enjoying it at no cost.

And if you’re not among those people…if you are, for instance, one of the fans who writes to me to inform me about pirate sites because you understand that theft is theft…then you’re off the hook, and you can kick back and watch me talk to everyone else.

Ladies…gentlemen…guys…gals…

What the hëll did you think was going to happen?

All you have to do is look at the recent history of advancing technology when it comes to copyrighted material. Every single time something comes along that involves reproduction of intellectual property, the owners of that property seek legal relief.

Now it’s easy to say that IP corporations are simply clueless. Sure, they screamed over, for instance, videotaping programs off televisions…and then they found ways to cash in on it. So what are they whining about now? They should just find ways to make money off the complete disregard for their copyrights, and all will be well.

Here’s the problem with that: they shouldn’t have to. The IP holders are being victimized here. They are in the right, and the pirates are in the wrong, which is what pirates typically are because if they were in the right, they wouldn’t be called pirates, they’d be called the navy.

There are plenty of Internet users who, while screaming loudly in protest, also endorsed the piracy, supported the piracy, enabled the piracy, felt their own actions weren’t piracy, and now refuse to accept the consequences of their own actions. Again.

If Newton’s Third Law of Motion is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, then David’s Third Law of Commotion is that, for every Internet action, there is an unequal and opposition reaction. Which is why Bill Maher can make a fairly mild joke on Twitter about Tim Tebow and the result is that the opposition declares him today’s public enemy number one and starts shouting it’s time to boycott HBO.

All people had to do in order to prevent anything like SOPA from ever coming into existence was respect copyright laws. You don’t bìŧçh that copyright law is outdated. You don’t declare that the rise of the Internet means that everyone, everywhere should have free access to everything. If you felt that strongly that copyright law should be changed, then you do what you’re supposed to do: you go to your elected officials and seek redress of grievances. You don’t just sit on your ášš in front of your computer screen, announce that you can do whatever you want, and declare that anyone who disagrees with you is clueless and should just pìšš øff. Because you know what? Maybe they are clueless. But they’ve also got high-powered lawyers who are going to seek redress of grievances, and suddenly you’re staring down the double cannon of SOPA and PIPA and wondering how it all went wrong.

Here’s how it went wrong: you let it happen. You made it happen. The Internet presented a wonderful power of communication that is unprecedented in the history of mankind. But with that great power comes great responsibility. And you just stood there and watched the bad guys go running past you, and you smiled under your mask of Internet anonymity and said, “Not my problem.” And suddenly Uncle Ben is worm food and you’re bellowing, “Hey! Not fair!” Well, “fair” and “unfair” can be, and often is, disputed. What is indisputable is that it was avoidable. All you had to do was condemn piracy. Instead you supported piracy (and probably still do) and declared that everyone else with a vested interest in copyright, who didn’t appreciate their material being stolen and never seeing any compensation for it, was just a dipshit.

You all think you’re John Connor in Terminator 2, fighting the good fight for the future. No, you’re not. John Connor is the copyright holder, confident in his rightness. The Terminator is his lawyer. And you’re one of the swaggering jocks getting the crap kicked out of him while John stands there smugly, his arms folded, saying, “Are you calling moi a dipshit?”

How can Internet denizens avoid the government trying to clamp down on piracy and, in doing so, threatening the freedom of the Internet? I’m reminded of the moment in the film Liar, Liar, where Jim Carrey’s lawyer character—compelled by his son’s birthday wish always to tell the truth—is informed that a recidivist client is on the phone. The client’s been arrested (this time for knocking over an ATM), and is asking for legal advice. Carrey grabs the receiver and shouts, “Stop breaking the law, áššhølë!”

One has to admire the common sense brevity of that advice.

PAD

313 comments on “Where I stand on SOPA

  1. One good thing about everyone downloading books is that there are authors out there that can earn a decent living by self-publishing. A few big authors like Barry Eisler and J.A. Kontrath/Jack Killborne have even forgone their publishers and are in business for themselves.

    1. Um. That’s nice. I’d add Tom Smith, who’s reportedly doing well selling his filk songs on line. I’m happy for all of them.

      But what does that have to do with the subject at hand?

      Are these authors offering their books for free? If so, how are they making a decent living? Do they depend on donations? Or is there a fee to get the book? If the latter, how happy would they be to learn someone paid for and downloaded a copy and then sent the file out to a few hundred of their friends at no charge? Delighted at the extra readers or robbed?

      I’m not sure where I stand on the SOPA /PIPA question but I’m unclear what someone who is selling their stories on line, a respectable concept certainly, has to do with those who are giving out copies of something they had nothing to do with creating. As Mr. David said on another occasion, if he does not get paid for what he creates, he’ll have to find some other way to pay his bills. Saying but some big company is leading the call for these laws does not prove the ideas behind the laws are good or bad.

  2. “Now it’s easy to say that IP corporations are simply clueless. Sure, they screamed over, for instance, videotaping programs off televisions…and then they found ways to cash in on it. So what are they whining about now? They should just find ways to make money off the complete disregard for their copyrights, and all will be well. Here’s the problem with that: they shouldn’t have to.”
    .
    Yes, they should. They should have organically come to the realization that the problem of scarcity with regard to producing physical products does not translate to the digital landscape. There is a reason why physical goods are scarce. Creating a copy requires that phsyical material be taken from use elsewhere to create the thing and that the costs of moving the thing from place to place are high. This does not hold true for digital goods. IP corporations did not come to this conclusion and sought to treat the emerging digital marketplace as exactly similar to the physical one. When there is a change to a fundamental axiom that necessarily forces all assumptions and practices built on it to be rethought. Your repeated maxim of “what did they think was going to happen” really does hit the nail on the head, but it should actually be directed at the people who produced digital goods without understanding why they are fundamentally dissimilar to physical goods. The pithy quote is “they made unrealistic demands on reality and reality did not oblige.”
    .
    “All people had to do in order to prevent anything like SOPA from ever coming into existence was respect copyright laws. You don’t bìŧçh that copyright law is outdated. You don’t declare that the rise of the Internet means that everyone, everywhere should have free access to everything. If you felt that strongly that copyright law should be changed, then you do what you’re supposed to do: you go to your elected officials and seek redress of grievances.”
    .
    I don’t think laws work that way. Laws should be changed to reflect societies’ changing mores, but society has to necessarily hold the values that the laws are supposed to embody before those laws are enacted.

    1. .
      Ralf Haring: “Your repeated maxim of “what did they think was going to happen” really does hit the nail on the head, but it should actually be directed at the people who produced digital goods without understanding why they are fundamentally dissimilar to physical goods. The pithy quote is “they made unrealistic demands on reality and reality did not oblige.””
      .
      Of course, the tiny problem with your statement is that not all, and I doubt most, online piracy is originally sourced to a digital copy. People have been pirating songs and movies from CDs and DVDs and uploading them to pirate sites for the better part of a decade now. People have been scanning books, magazines and comic books and uploading them for a decade or more now.
      .
      And they still do.
      .
      And the invention of the digital copy should change nothing at all. If you think it’s wrong to break into a store when it’s closed, steal a few boxes of the latest hot selling book and then hand them out to people for free (or even sell them) the next day, then there should be no difference in your thinking here. You’re still stealing from the publisher and the artist by taking your copy and turning it into a thousand copies that people have downloaded from the web.
      .
      Not wanting to acknowledge that on your part isn’t a sign of the businesses out there being behind the times or having a problem, it’s a sign that you are a problem.

      1. .
        “Now it’s easy to say that IP corporations are simply clueless. Sure, they screamed over, for instance, videotaping programs off televisions…and then they found ways to cash in on it. So what are they whining about now? They should just find ways to make money off the complete disregard for their copyrights, and all will be well. Here’s the problem with that: they shouldn’t have to.”
        .
        Yes, they should.”
        .
        Right, they should figure out how to profit off of you stealing from them. Tell you what, Ralf, you publish your address and work hours for us. We’ll all swing by and steal all of your belongings some time later in the week. You go ahead and look at that as an opportunity to figure out to make a profit from yourself. We’ll all enjoy your swag for you.
        .
        Oh, and be sure to let us know when you’ve replaced your stuff. We’ll all be happy to give you the opportunity to “profit” again down the road.

      2. Jerry Chandler, why are you ascribing motivations and thoughts to me that I have not expressed?

      3. .
        “Jerry Chandler, why are you ascribing motivations and thoughts to me that I have not expressed?”
        .
        I didn’t. I simply quoted you, two points that you actually made, and addressed those two things. I didn’t ascribe “motivations and thoughts” to you that were “not expressed” by you.
        .
        I took two of your points and addressed them.

      4. Jerry, I find your posts very vitriolic. I don’t think there’s much point in continuing to converse with you, but to clarify my previous post I will point out the assumptions you are making. I assume this comes from responding too quickly without considering what was written, something Peter has also been the victim of in this thread when people responded to him about why he was supporting SOPA (which he said he wasn’t).

        “You’re still stealing from the publisher and the artist by taking your copy and turning it into a thousand copies that people have downloaded from the web”

        You are assuming that I download pirated content, copy it, and/or distribute it willy-nilly all over the web. You are wrong to assume this.

        “Not wanting to acknowledge that on your part … is a sign that you are a problem.”

        You created the scenario in the previous quote, accused me of it, and then immediately assumed I wouldn’t acknowledge it so you could pounce on me with another attack. You are wrong to assume this.

        “they should figure out how to profit off of you stealing from them”

        You are assuming I am participating in the behavior under discussion. You are wrong to assume this.

      5. .
        Ralf, those were generic yous. Lots of people use them. Not an uncommon thing to see when discussing things.
        .
        The only point I made where I personalized anything was responding to your response to Peter that corporations and such should just learn to turn a profit on being ripped off. At that point I presented you with a specific example (stealing from you specifically) that would effect you.
        .
        And what I wrote was vitriolic? Noooooooo… It was neither bitter nor scathing. Wasn’t from responding to quickly either. You put forward ideas. I responded to those ideas. That’s all.

      6. Jerry,
        .
        the following is not meant to endorse piracy. Creators have unquestionably the right to remuneration for their work, and, more importantly, as PAD pointed out in his answer to my earlier post, control over their work.
        .
        However.
        .
        That does not change the fact that many of the things the media companies do are annoying to the paying customers without good reason. Now, if I have to see commercials when I watch a TV episode online, then that is understandable, it is how they finance it. Things like unskippable trailers or these horrible “You wouldn’t steal a car!!!!!”-videos at the beginning… that is how you reward me for actually paying for your product? As has been pointed out, the actual target of the ad, the pirate, doesn’t have to have to sit through it. Most DRM doesn’t inconvenience pirates, it inconveniences legitimate customers (Going so far that when one of the Assassin’s Creed titles, I forget which, was released, the first weekend customers who had paid were not able to play while pirated copies worked).
        .
        And this is not necessary, there are positive examples; as PAD pointed out, The Camelot Papers were released at a lower price than the print version with as few restrictions as Amazon allowed – that makes me as a customer feel respected. The German DVD of “The Wrestler” by Kinobild Filmverleih didn’t have these interminable videos, it had a simple slide: “Thank you for buying the original.” This made me feel that I had given my money to a company that wanted me as a customer. If I buy a game at gog.com, I know that I can download it and then own it, without worrying if their DRM-servers are up, or if their Starforce protection will kill my DVD drive.
        .
        This does not entitle me to steal the products of the companies that do not respect me, that is without question. But it is still a service problem, and one can point it out without endorsing theft.

      7. And that post was supposed to follow the one you wrote in response to Craig J. Ries further down, I obviously chose the wrong reply-button.

      8. “Yeah, except that Ralf, who you’re basically referencing, said that about a post of mine that had no harsh language, no insults and no belittling nature to it.”

        (tried to reply to the one that you posted this in, but there was no reply option there)

        Jerry, I hate to break it to you, but you need to take some of your own advice and learn to read, because EVERY SINGLE ONE of your posts is insulting, condescending and just plain mean. I agree with you on a lot of points, but the way in which you frame your arguments and treat everyone as though they are stupid and beneath you is pretty off putting. And this is coming from someone who came to this site with the express purpose of being a bully and a dìçk, and make comments insinuating that people are stupid and beneath me. Believe me, I can smell my own, and you, sir, have made me, a self-described bully of bullies and áššhølë to áššhølëš, go, “oh, man, that guy needs to just take a break.” Seriously. Take a second. Do some tactical breathing to regulate your heart rate. Watch that movie you talked about loving. But don’t act like you’re some pious hero, swooping in to save Mr. David from us idiots. You’re not. You’re a 41-year-old man who spends a great deal of time showing righteous indignation at perceived slights on one message board. Shìŧ, Jerry, even I, a self-proclaimed bully and áššhølë, diversifies the sites I tell people off at, and at least I have to good grace to admit when I’m wrong and apologize when I make a mistake. Can you, Jerry? Or are insults and a condescending all you have to offer?

      9. .
        First – If you want to respond to the proper point in a thread and find the post you want to respond to, slowly scroll upwards. The first “Reply” button you see above that post in that thread will should put your posts in the place you want them to be.
        .
        Anyhow…
        .
        RB, I’ve been on this site for a while and I’ve apologized to people in the past when I was in the wrong on matters. So your little comment/challenge there rings hallow.
        .
        And, really, you can say whatever the hëll else you want to say on the topic at hand, but the fact is that we’ve had this conversation here before. We’ve all seen this topic discussed elsewhere as well. Internet piracy is not a new subject or a new debate. While I have no problem with people expressing the idea that maybe new models of legal distribution need to be looked at by businesses and artists or that some artists who want their stuff offered for free should have that right, I have no real patience anymore for the people that want to look mass theft square in the eyes, embrace it and declare that it’s anything and everything but what it is.
        .
        Big Christmas Movie is hits the store shelves on DVD and Blu-Ray this week. If a thousand people decide that they want it, but decide that, rather than buying it, they’re going to go to a pirate site and download it; that’s a form of theft. If the legal owner of that property says that they don’t want people pirating their property and the people doing so tell them to basically go fûçk themselves; they’re now in a position where they can’t claim ignorance about their action, they’re engaged in mass theft and they’re áššhølëš.
        .
        There really isn’t a lot of gray here despite the protestations of some in the discussion. Online piracy is theft. Period. End of discussion. If you cannot, after repeated discussions on the matter, figure that out or, even better, argue that it isn’t theft and is somehow actually some noble endeavor that’s sticking it to “the man” or pushing the entertainment industry and artist kicking and screaming into some golden future… Then you are an idiot and deserve to be talked down to like the idiot you are.

      10. Jerry, you told me before to “learn to read.” I told you with my last reply you should take your own advice, and it seems that you haven’t. (You also said something about “reading comprehension fail” that you probably thought was really clever but just showed how dated your references are, but I’ll leave that alone in the interest of not being redundant)

        My last post said nothing about piracy. Not one single solitary word about piracy, or SOPA or PIPA. My entire last post was calling you a liar, and pointing out what a dìçk you were, and how much time you wasted being a dìçk to people for no reason on this site. You’ve had this conversation on this site before? Guess what? If you asked me if I had a fûçk to spare about that statement, I don’t. “Sorry, fresh out of fûçkš,” I’d say,”not even a half left.” I’ve never been to this site before, and I would not have if you hadn’t presented such a ripe opportunity to be a bully to bullies, an áššhølë to áššhølë, a troll to trolls. I notice you didn’t say one thing about that, you just carried on with your BS about piracy as if I had been arguing with you (incidentally, I, for the most part, agree with you about piracy, I’m just less of a condescending áššhølë about it). I came to this site to be a dìçk to someone who I thought was being a dìçk. You pointed out I was wrong and I apologized. But in doing so, you presented a wondrous opportunity to me. Browsing your posts, I finally found someone who is a bigger dìçk than I am, who’s life is surely ten times more pathetic and useless than mine is. See, Jerry, I don’t browse the internet and play dìçk’s dìçk because I want to. I do it because I have nothing better to do thanks to my horrifying illness, which leaves me with 10-15 minute intervals between excruciating pain every morning. I’m not here because I want to be, I’m here because I have tons and tons of pent of anger and frustration, and I channel that towards useless losers who don’t have horrible stomach problems like me but still waste their time, say, posting mean comments on message boards for no reason, and act like they are hot šhìŧ and above everyone else when all they do is sit in front of a screen and shove their bile and hatred on other people, just because they’re so unoriginal they can’t think of anything better to do. And, oh my FSM Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, you so perfectly fit into that category. Looking at all the times you treated people as stupid or beneath you (which is to say, every post you make) whether they deserved it or not (mostly not), I knew I had finally found a new plaything. So congrats, Jer (can I call you Jer? No? Too bad, Jer, I’m still going to anyway.). You have a new nemesis. Except I don’t care what you say. You’re just some meaningless loser on the internet, and when this site bans my IP address, I’ll just find another target. But you, Jer, it is obvious from the volume, frequency, self-aggrandizing language and lack of comprehension that you do care. You care with all your fat little heart. Don’t you see, Jer? Whatever you say to me, whatever your response (or lack of response), I win. Because I know you can’t resist. Just like Marty McFly, you can’t walk away when someone calls you chicken. Or, you know what Jer? Don’t respond. Your silence will will speak even louder, Jer.

        Either way, I’ve already won.

      11. .
        Feel free to call me Jer. Some guys at work already do and I’m fine with it. I also respond well to “JJ,” “JC,” “Chandler,” “Vampire,” “freak,” “geek,” “áššhølë” and “mother fûçkër.”
        .
        And those are just some of the things that the people who like me call me.
        .
        🙂
        .
        And I don’t need to “learn to read” or comprehend what I’m reading and you still do. You addressed posts that I’ve made on this this thread without really citing specifics other than commenting on the exchange between Graig and I. That was made clear by the fact that you quoted a line directly from that exchange.
        .
        That exchange was about the topic at hand. The topic at hand was internet piracy. There you go. That’s why I discussed my frustration with the topic and hand and my comments that you characterized in the manner you did.
        .
        “You have a new nemesis.”
        .
        Well, we all have to have goals in life. If that’s what gets you through, if that’s what you need to give meaning to your life, declaring yourself my new nemesis, more power to you. But, since you just want to play that game, I won’t be playing it with you. And it won’t be because Peter or Glenn will ban you. They rarely resort to that. No, we have something that we refer to here as “the shroud.” That basically means that anyone who is shrouded by one or all is ignored by that one or all. We see their name on a post and we just skip it.
        .
        You want to play dumb games like that? Fine. I am shrouding you. I will no longer look at or reply to your posts. You are shrouded. I have no intention of playing such a silly game with you. Have the last word. Have the last thousand words.
        .
        Done with you now.

      12. .
        Ben Gaede: “That does not change the fact that many of the things the media companies do are annoying to the paying customers without good reason.”
        .
        Yeah, but they’ve been doing that for decades now. You want to talk annoyed? Back in the 80s, back in the dark days of VHS, there were several movies I wanted. My two local rental places didn’t carry them but I knew that they were out there because I had watched the tape when visiting an out of state relative’s place and he had rented it. I peddled my bike down to the local mall and asked the video store if they could order one of them. They looked it up. They could get it. And it would only cost me $88.00.
        .
        The cost of the average film on VHS was about $18.95 at the time in my area. Apparently the high price had something to do with the video companies putting out mass sale VHS tapes while for a time putting a few movies out in only higher priced, “rental store only” editions or in limited quantity volumes that had a major price hike attached to them. Long story short, I passed on purchasing it.
        .
        Maybe that’s why I’m not as moved by the cries of so many now complaining about media companies doing dumb things, doing things that annoy the consumer or doing things that make it “harder” to “easily” get things that we want. I remember when it really was almost impossible to get films, music or books that you wanted but weren’t available in your immediate area. If you wanted it but couldn’t get it, you just did without. And that was certainly more of an annoyance by comparison than…
        .
        Ben Gaede: “Things like unskippable trailers or these horrible “You wouldn’t steal a car!!!!!”-videos at the beginning… that is how you reward me for actually paying for your product?”
        .
        The “unskippable trailers” aren’t actually. Most DVDs I have will jump to the menu if you hit the menu button on the remote and, when they don’t, you can fast forward through them all in about 10 to 20 seconds. Back in the VHS day, you had tapes with two or three trailers and you only had the fast forward option and it was slower than the fastest speed that a DVD can fast forward on.
        .
        The “car” PSA (if it’s the one I’m thinking off) doesn’t bother me either. I have a few British sci-fi DVDs with that on there and it’s short, easy to breeze through and it’ not addressed to me so I just pay it no mind. Again, I don’t feel the need for instant gratification, so the extra minute that it takes to get to the main feature doesn’t bother me in the least. It’s less than a minute. Go get your drink. Get your chips. Run to the bathroom so that you don’t have to go during the film. It’s really not annoying unless you make it out to be.
        .
        And anyone citing stuff like this, and I know you said you’re not doing this so it’s not addressed to you, as reasons why pirating and pirate copies are the way to go is just rationalizing theft.
        .
        Ben Gaede: “Most DRM doesn’t inconvenience pirates, it inconveniences legitimate customers (Going so far that when one of the Assassin’s Creed titles, I forget which, was released, the first weekend customers who had paid were not able to play while pirated copies worked).”
        .
        Then you take it up with them. Sony did something a little over seven years back that landed them in a lot of hot water with consumers. They encoded CDs and DVDs with a program that was meant ding pirates, but it actually ended up screwing up computers owned by people who were legally putting songs into their computer for use on MP3 players and such or viewing DVDs on their computers. A lot of people let Sony know that their products would no longer be purchased by them so long as this junk was encrypted in their stuff and they even got sued.
        .
        http://news.cnet.com/Sony-settles-rootkit-class-action-lawsuit/2100-1002_3-6012173.html
        .
        It was stupid of them. What you cited was stupid as well. But, you know what? You are never going to get rid of human stupidity. As soon as they figure out a business model to take advantage of the new things out there, someone will try to figure out how to rip them off. As soon as they notice that their getting ripped off, they will take steps to stop that and some will be stupid and overreach. I’m human, I make dumb mistakes from time to time. I’m sure you do as well. Guess what, the humans that make these decisions make dumb mistakes too. Sometimes all it takes is for a dumb idea to be presented to the powers that be in a way that makes it look like a good idea and then, pow, we’re all screwed for a while until it gets sorted out. But at least, as the link I provided shows, there are was to address that grievance when the screw up on their part is colossal.
        .
        Ben Gaede: “And this is not necessary, there are positive examples; as PAD pointed out, The Camelot Papers were released at a lower price than the print version with as few restrictions as Amazon allowed – that makes me as a customer feel respected.”
        .
        Yeah, again, that’s something that I generally agree with you about but also disagree. Peter and the others were smart about their price points. Others have been less so. There’s a book I read a while back, a zombie novel called Day by Day Armageddon that I quite liked. The problem was that the only book version of it was in an oversized paperback that was $12 or $14 and the print in the book was a little large. It’s a short read and I wasn’t too swift on buying a copy right then because of that. The sequel came out. I had actually gotten an Amazon gift card and decided that I would see about picking both books up in Kindle format to save costs. When I looked them up, the Kindle e-versions cost more than the dámņëd paperbacks.
        .
        I passed on the books, got something else I wanted and let my local new and used book dealer know that I was looking for copies. About four months later, I walked in to the shop to grabs a new release and he had both Armageddon novels waiting for me behind the counter. I got both books for just under the price that one book as Kindle purchase would have cost. Dumb move on the part of whoever priced the books. They lost a new sale, I got my books in really good condition and apparently someone with no taste who got two zombie novels for Christmas got rid of two books he or she didn’t like.
        .
        That’s the system and it works well. The smart sellers and artists will survive and hopefully thrive. The ones who do dumb things or make dumb decisions will suffer for it until they smarten up. It’s usually a self correcting process, but it takes time.
        .
        Ben Gaede: “This does not entitle me to steal the products of the companies that do not respect me, that is without question. But it is still a service problem, and one can point it out without endorsing theft.”
        .
        True. But one does have to be careful when discussing the one while discussing the other in a forum such as this. It’s easy to mistype something or type a point up poorly and look like you’re saying one thing when you’re saying the other. I’ve done it in the past. People reacted like I had grown a second head and I clarified my point. Yeah, maybe we should assume that some people might not be saying what it looks like they’re saying and sometimes we do that. But sometimes we don’t. We all have good and bad days (or weeks) when it comes to either typing the point up or reacting to it.

      13. RB–I hate to break it to you, but you can’t declare yourself to be someone’s nemesis. It’s like you can’t give yourself your own nickname. It’s something that has to be bestowed upon you by someone else. You can declare yourself someone’s enemy, but for you to be their nemesis, they have to kind of give a šhìŧ about you. At least that’s how I see it.
        .
        PAD

    2. Mr. Haring, you miss the point because you did not bother to read the Congressional grant. The Constitution allows Congress to promote science and the useful arts by granting to authors and inventors a TEMPORARY period of exclusivity in the sale or disposal of their writings and inventions. It says nothing about creation of property in any form (that is a function of state law). While this commonly is called “intellectual property,” it is not property in any natural legal sense because no one can “own” an idea or establish a natural monopoly on thinking correctly. (Hence, to answer another critic, we could extend the grant to library books and used-book stores, but we don’t because Congress never thought it necessary.)

      Rather, the constitutional grant exists to encourage people to go to the effort of discovering or creating something and making that discovery or creation known, so that others (including you) will benefit from the originator’s effort and, one would hope, then think correctly.

      The problem is not new. Consider the invention of the calculus. That was another one of those things Isaac Newton gave us to frustrate freshmen in college, remember? But, because there was no “intellectual property” in 1688, Newton put the discovery in his back pocket and kept it there until Leibnitz came along and scooped him about 1704.

      How many more important discoveries would have been made, and sooner, had Newton published his idea with the Principia? But, because there was no incentive, he held it back as his ace in the hole.

      Now, no one can have a property in a mathematical equation, but that is not the point. Congress does not create property by protecting copyrights or patents. It simply does what is needed to free up the flow of information. And, isn’t that what we and those at Wikipedia and Yahoo and Google want?

      At least, that’s what they say they are wanting.

      I don’t know what it takes to write a comic book (probably more imagination than anything else), and I can tell a whale of a tale if all I need is my imagination. But, I’m not a novelist; I’m an historian. I have to at least make an effort to report facts, and that takes time and expense. No one like me will put years of cost and effort into any significant project if freeloaders then just can run off with that effort to profit as they choose. Peter is right: The pirates looking for a quick profit and rationalizing their conduct brought this on themselves.

      At this point, both Ron Paul and the Cato Institute oppose SOPA, and that tells me the bill is overkill; however, the problem the bill was meant to address remains. The world remains full of socialists, terrorists, and heil-Hitler hooligans who DON’T care for the greater picture and only want to make off with whatever they can steal in the moment. If there isn’t some mechanism in place to stop that, the free flow of information on which our civilization is based will dry up, not overflow its banks.

    3. I posted this before, and somehow it fell through the cracks. I’ll try again.

      Ralf, you’re not looking at the constitutional grant, which does NOT create property in anything (that’s a function of state law) but instead authorizes Congress to advance science and the useful arts by granting to authors and inventors a TEMPORARY exclusivity in the disposal of their writings and inventions. In other words, Congress is authorized to offer a financial incentive to those who do NOT keep their discoveries secret, that’s all.

      This problem is not new. In the 1680s, before there was anything like “intellectual property,” Sir Isaac Newton invented calculus and, for want of any reason to let anyone know about it, kept it secret till Leibnitz scooped him about 1704. How many discoveries would have been made sooner had Newton been able to “own” the textbook and publish his discovery?

      There obviously can be no property in an equation, and if there be no scarcity in digital copies, there’s no property in that either. But, that is not the grant. Congress made the law what it is to do what the Constitution commands them to do: Make it worthwhile for there to be a free exchange of information and ideas. This is what the blackout artists at Wiki say they want.

      As of this moment, both Ron Paul and the Cato Institute say they oppose SOPA, and that’s enough to convince me that the law is overkill; however, the problem it was introduced to redress remains: Foreign jurisdictions with more lax standards allow those WE call pirates to post “our” work on an instrument which defeats the purpose erected in our local jurisdiction. In this way, a pirate in Sweden is able to pick Peter’s pocket in South Carolina, and even though it might be argued that Peter has no “property” interest in Sweden, without doubt he has a legal interest of constitutional dimension in South Carolina.

      If we want SOPA defeated, it is not enough to say that we protest. We need an alternative which genuinely redresses the harm here, and so far, I haven’t seen it. How do we redress abuse by those with access to the internet who see no harm in issuing parallel patents for mere “red” ones?

      1. “If we want SOPA defeated, it is not enough to say that we protest. We need an alternative which genuinely redresses the harm here, and so far, I haven’t seen it. How do we redress abuse by those with access to the internet who see no harm in issuing parallel patents for mere “red” ones?”
        .
        It is addressed by making it simpler and easier for people to get the content legitimately than illegitimately. People will choose the path of least resistance. It’s a far more effective and constructive solution to build something like iTunes or Hulu to combat piracy than to seek to bring the hammer down on every person who has pirated or shared something (and SOPA would have affected way more than just those people).

      2. I guess I have to reply to my own reply.

        Ralf: “Legitimate; illegitimate” — that’s corrupting us with language. For, at the heart of the debate is the standard we use for either.

        An example from my personal experience: Our firm invents a herbicide which dessicates weeds. If we are not very careful in how we draw the worldwide patent, a firm in Japan will copy the invention and get a parallel patent, good solely because their herbicide is red.

        That’s what I was getting at.

        Now, if you are correct that there is no actual property in an unscarce item like a digital copy, then what we are left with is what it takes to effect the constitutional grant, and that decision will be made by Congress for America, by Parliament for England, by the Bundestag for Germany, &c.; and, because each body will come to a different conclusion re what incentives and protection are needed “to advance science and the useful arts,” the standard of “legitimacy” will vary from country to country. The Japanese firm making the red herbicide is not violating the laws of Japan, and that’s not a titanic problem because herbicide is an actual product which is bought and sold (whatever social harm there is remains confined to Japan).

        The problem is far different with Peter’s comic book. He may CALL the Jap or Swede or whoever a “thief,” and he may even accurately brand him a “pirate,” but it’s also quite possible that our “crook” simply is making literary red herbicide.

        Now, what happens when our “crook” puts his literary herbicide on the internet? The authorities may not care in Japan or China, but Peter very much cares in South Carolina, because such an act costs him sales and DEFEATS THE POLICY OF THE CONGRESS WITHIN AMERICAN JURISDICTION. That’s what gives Peter power to complain, and that’s what gives Congress incentive to act. (Peter also can complain about the library books and the old book stores, but Congress will ignore him.)

        That, as I see it, is the problem presented by the SOPA debate. For better or for ill, SOPA attempts to decouple the net in a way which prevents acts perhaps not even illegal in another land from interfering with Congress’ plenary power to protect writings and inventions HERE.

        That’s the issue we have to address. Were it just a matter of frustrating “illegitimate” behavior (by whatever tactic we agree to use), then the solution is to proceed to an understanding of what “illegitimate” is, then evaluate the options.

        But, the problem isn’t generated by that. It’s generated by an inability so far even to agree among the jurisdictions on what “illegitimate” is. SOPA proponents claim the piracy is occurring off-shore. The legislation was not introduced (at least in the beginning) to attack readers of this column who from, time to time, sneak an i-tune. It was intended to interdict worldwide end runs of copyright protection.

      3. .
        “It is addressed by making it simpler and easier for people to get the content legitimately than illegitimately. People will choose the path of least resistance.”
        .
        Except, it’s really not addressed by that. It’s already amazingly simple to get products and it has been for a very long time now.
        .
        Oh, I should point at this point that, again, the use of the word “you” in this post is a generic “you” and not specifically you, Ralf Haring. This post is therefore not designed to ascribing motivations and thoughts to you, Ralf Haring, and should not be taken as me ascribing motivations and thoughts to you, Ralf Haring.
        .
        Anyhow…
        .
        Do you want to read a new book by your favorite writer? Do you want to see the hot new DVD/Blu-Ray release that’s the unrated director’s cut of the big film from a few months ago? Easy to do really. In most places, if you go out to grab your groceries you’re going to pass by major retailers who also sell books, CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays. You can buy your book or the audio book version rather easily and conveniently and get you DVD or Blu-Ray just as easily.
        .
        Your tastes are a little more off the beaten path you say? The movie or book you want isn’t quite as mainstream as some of the big name stuff from the last year and isn’t being carried on the limited shelf space in the store? No problem. You can pre-order books and films online with a few simple clicks of your mouse. Not only is it easy to do, but you may even get the item delivered to your door on the day it’s released in stores or maybe even the day before it hits stores.
        .
        Seriously, how much easier can it get?
        .
        I’m a fan of a lot of cult classic films. I love a lot of movies made back in the day by Hammer Films. One film I’ve been a longtime fan of is Vampire Circus. It’s also a film that you couldn’t get on DVD in the US. A company finally decided to put it out last year. They not only decided to put out the DVD, but they went back and got the original print with scenes long ago cut out for the US and international releases, remastered that original print, put together some sweet extras on the film and put it in a DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack that was priced at about the same price as a new release DVD.
        .
        Super sweet!
        .
        But no one around here stocked it for sale. Now, I’m sure I could have driven about 45 minutes to an hour down the road in one of several directions to where I know some places that would have stocked it would likely be, but I didn’t want to waste the time, gas and money. So I went home, logged in to a site that I often get DVDs from and ordered it.
        .
        How does it get simpler or easier than that? If I want one of Peter’s books and I know that the local bookstore might not have it or might not order enough copies to guarantee that it will be in stock by the time I’m out that way, I can go to Amazon, Deepdiscount.com, Barnes & Nobles online shop or any number of other websites and order the book with a few clicks of the mouse and a valid credit card.
        .
        Again, how does it get simpler or easier than that?
        .
        And you can even get digital copies online now. You can get books, music and movies in digital format as rentals or purchases and have them downloaded and ready to enjoy almost as soon as you’ve finished tapping away at the keyboard and confirming and submitting your purchase order.
        .
        And it doesn’t matter one bit if you’re an online pirate or you just don’t want to pay for what you want and would rather find a way to get it for free. If anything, as has been made clear from the comments of some pirates and their supporters, digital copies have made it even easier for you to be a pirate or to download pirated books, music or films.
        .
        The simple truth is, if you don’t want to pay for it you will simply not pay for it and seek out pirate sites to get it for free. It’s no different than stealing a physical item from a brick and mortar store because you don’t want to pay for it. And I’ve seen arrests where people got busted for shoplifting $5 items while they had $10, $20, $30 or more in cash on them. They just didn’t want to pay for what they wanted and tried to steal it.
        .
        Make it simpler and easier for people to get the content legitimately than illegitimately? Pick a product that you might want to have. Put the name of it into the search engine of your choice. You know what you’ll get as a lot of the top hits? You’ll get online stores of various legal sellers and the links will take you straight to the product pages.
        .
        Do you know what you won’t get? You won’t get pirate sites and illegal streaming sites anywhere near the first few pages. You actually have to work to find some of these sites because they have to try and stay under the radar of the mainstream to avoid getting shut down. You actually have to work harder to find a pirate site than to find a legitimate, legal seller of goods. And even then, you have to work a little more to find a site that will not get your computer jammed up with viruses, spyware and malware.
        .
        It’s already harder and less convenient to find and use a “safe” pirate site than it is to use legal sites or to just swing by the mall or shopping center when out and about. But it’s a hëll of a lot cheaper to use a pirate site than it is to actually pay for it. And if that’s what you’re looking for, if you’re looking for a price point range of “Free” and nothing but, then a pirate site it is.
        .
        It’s already simpler and easier for people to get the content legitimately and it has been for a long time now. That’s not the problem. The problem is that people want something for nothing and, as has been seen by some in this thread, the Scans Daily thread and around the web in various other threads, people will excuse rationalize that behavior for as long as they can.
        .
        Hëll, some people will even rationalize what they’re doing by twisting things around to the point that they’ll declare that they, the pirate, are the good guys who are championing the rights of the people and it’s the evil corporations and the greedy, whiny, spoiled brat artists who insist that people pay for the things that the greedy, whiny, spoiled brat artists have worked to create and that the evil corporations have made widely available to the masses that are the real bad guys here. They’re the heroes of their little story. They’re the valiant Rebel Alliance and they’re taking on the Evil Empire and its Death Star.
        .
        That’s a special form of self delusional stupidity and it’s not solved by anything but prosecutions.

      4. Seriously, how much easier can it get?
        .
        If only reality was as ‘easy’ as you claim it to be, Jerry.
        .
        Ebooks and many computer games are loaded with DRM (and some of that DRM with the latter is harmful). DVD and Blu-Rays still make you deal with trailers, as if you’re still in a theater. And comic books? They’re the ones still resisting hardest to the digital age we live in.
        .
        It took years for the music industry to realize that no DRM is better, and they’ve benefited from that.
        .
        Like it or not, the unauthorized versions are often the BETTER versions. Because they have no DRM, they have no commercials and trailers. And, perhaps more importantly, because they are offered in just about any format available while having the greatest portability.
        .
        But then, including DVDs in the argument is a non-starter, as we’re talking about digital media and its availability. And in that regard, a lot of TV shows and movies, like comics, still aren’t available legally. To get those that are, you often have to sign up for half a dozen services so you don’t miss anything. That’s not easy, that’s throwing up as many road blocks as possible.
        .
        No, media companies often don’t make it easy at all. They don’t want it easy, because they want complete control.

      5. .
        “But then, including DVDs in the argument is a non-starter, as we’re talking about digital media and its availability.”
        .
        No, we’re talking about piracy and the ability to obtain things we want easily. A lot of the pirate sites that have had movies and TV shows on them got that product by ripping it from a DVD and uploading it. Looking at books comic books, many if the pirate sites that traffic in those items are pirating products that exist only in paper form. Hëll, remember the flap about Scans Daily? Remember the discussions about what Scans Daily was doing? Gee, you think maybe there’s a hint there about how we’re talking about more than just digital product?
        .
        As for most of the rest of your post…
        .
        Are you fûçkìņg kidding me? Oh my God! DVDs have trailers! Let’s just ignore that they’re easy to bypass on 99% of the DVDs out there or, if your smart, you put the DVD in before you get your drink/snack/whatever and settle down and just go steal copies instead. Let’s just throw out there ridiculous excuses that really have no bearing at all on how easy it is to get a book, CD, DVD, comic book, magazine, individual television episode or single song legally and declare that, OMG, trailers and commercials exist on DVDs or legal streaming platforms like Hulu so it’s not easy at all to get/see things legally.
        .
        And I don’t know how signing up for a service like Hulu, Netflix or other services to be able to stream television shows or movies that are not yet available on DVD is throwing roadblocks up. They’re websites. You have to go to the websites to get the product and view it. If you want to get an illegal download, you have to go to a website to view it. There’s no difference at all.
        .
        Oh, wait… Yes there is… To get Netflix streaming, the premium Hulu service and other such newer services, you actually have to pay for the service. So, in reality, what you’re saying is that paying for it isn’t as easy as not paying for it by actually asking you to pay for it the owners of the materials in question are throwing up roadblocks.
        .
        Seriously, what they fûçk is wrong with people? It boggles my mind the thought processes that must occur in anyone over the age of 10 who thinks and talks in a manner consistent with your post.
        .
        I’m 41. I’ve spent most of my life with no digital downloads and no internet. At this point, the majority of my life was spent with having television channel options that numbered below 100 (hëll, under 50) rather than having 200, 300 or 400 channels available to me. It’s really only been about 2/3 of my lifetime that home entertainment options like buying a movie and owning has been around and actually reasonably affordable.
        .
        Hëll, anyone over 20 has spent half to more than half of their life without the easily obtainable, legal entertainment options available to us right now and, in many ways, they’re more affordable now than they were 10 or 15 years ago. We have access to more entertainment options in any given day than we could actually watch, listen to or read in any given month and there’s new stuff coming at us all the time. We have things being made available to us legally and at insanely affordable prices that as little as 10 years ago we were all sitting around wishing was something available to us and discussing how we’d pay more money than we actually have to now to have it.
        .
        And now that we have all of that and more, the response of even many of the people old enough to remember that is to say that it’s not good enough that we have it available to us. No, now it’s got to be free to take and we’ll come up with any twisted bit of logic to excuse pirates and pirate sites and our use of them. It can’t have commercials or trailers, or that makes it just too dámņëd hard to get a hold of and makes searching the web for a pirate site and risking downloading a virus and maybe jail time the easier option.
        .
        Seriously, what the fûçk is wrong with some of you people?

      6. Are you fûçkìņg kidding me?
        .
        Btw, if anybody needed more proof of how vitriolic your posts have gotten (and I should know, I’ve been guilty of it myself in the past), “here’s your sign”.
        .
        So, no, I didn’t read the rest of your post after this, because I too find it’s no longer worth discussing it with you.
        .
        And that has nothing to do with whether anybody is for or against piracy, but a fundamental lack of ability on your part to see this issue as anything other than black or white.
        .
        It isn’t. It’s gray, and you need to learn how to fûçkìņg deal with it.

      7. .
        “Btw, if anybody needed more proof of how vitriolic your posts have gotten (and I should know, I’ve been guilty of it myself in the past), “here’s your sign”.”
        .
        Yeah, except that Ralf, who you’re basically referencing, said that about a post of mine that had no harsh language, no insults and no belittling nature to it. Ralf just said something stupid, I quite politely pointed out the reasons as to why it was stupid without calling him or his points stupid in the process and Ralf responded by calling it “vitriolic,” making up some garbage that I was saying that he was doing things that I didn’t say he was doing and turned tail and ran away after watching his points dismantled.
        .
        Even after that stupid comment from Ralf, I still addressed his points politely (other than making it clear to him that discussing actions in general were not the same as saying that the person you’re addressing is doing those things.
        .
        So, no, my posts haven’t been particular vitriolic at all here even when they were responding to posts where it might be warranted.
        .
        The response to your post? Yeah, I decided to go both barrels and, quite frankly, your post deserved it.
        .
        Ralf states that one of the problems that needs to be addressed is the ease and convenience of getting products legally VS how easy and convenient it is to get them via pirate sites. I point out that this position is ridiculous because it’s become insanely easy to legally obtain more entertainment material than ever before in history and that it’s actually in some cases more affordable to do so now then even in decades past.
        .
        Your response to that?
        .
        You don’t actually address that point at all. You declare that legally obtained materials have trailers and commercials and ads and other such stuff and, well, you don’t like that stuff so stealing really is better than buying. You declare that the pirated stuff is better because you can’t handle the extra ten seconds or so that it takes to skip the ads and trailers.
        .
        I’m sorry, but if you though that such an expressed idea deserved more respect than it got, you’re mistaken.
        .
        “And that has nothing to do with whether anybody is for or against piracy, but a fundamental lack of ability on your part to see this issue as anything other than black or white.
        .
        It isn’t. It’s gray, and you need to learn how to fûçkìņg deal with it.”
        .
        Pirate sites take books, films, television and such and upload them to essentially become mass market publishers themselves. Then thousands of idiots download the pirated materials and the artists and companies behind those works get zero compensation for the thousands to millions of copies downloaded and now owned by people using those sites. And occasionally, the pirates actually charge for goods or find other ways to make money off of their theft while, again, the creator of the work, people like Peter for example, gets nothing out of it.
        .
        That’s theft. Period. End of story. There is no gray in that. That is black and white. That’s what your defending right now. That’s what you’re excusing right now.
        .
        It’s theft that you’re rationalizing and trying to shift in your mind into being a “gray area” here. If you can buy it legally, but you choose not to and pirate it instead because you’ve rationalized your actions as being “right” because of such flimsy garbage as most of what you outlined, you’re rationalizing the act of theft. But it is still theft that you’re engaged in and, whether you want to admit it or not, people are going to call it, the people engaged in it and the people who excuse it exactly what they are.

      8. .
        And, one other thing…
        .
        “Are you fûçkìņg kidding me?”
        .
        “Btw, if anybody needed more proof of how vitriolic your posts have gotten (and I should know, I’ve been guilty of it myself in the past), “here’s your sign”.”
        .
        If that’s the best you can pull out of my post to try and label it as “vitriolic,” then you’re really grasping at straws to make that claim about the post in question. There are people that post here that have met me and hung out with me. They can tell you point blank that I talk that way in conversations where there’s no amount of vitriol involved.
        .
        Where the word “fûçk” and it’s various tense versions are concerned, I take the same general approach to the word that is in line with what I’ve seen Harlan Ellison say about it. It’s a perfectly good word and sometimes it’s the only appropriate word. It’s not a sign of vitriol, so take your sign back.
        .
        Could it have been a sign of vitriol? Yes. It might have been if it had been used in, but not limited to, one of the following ways.
        .
        *****
        “That’s the dumbest fûçkìņg thing you’ve ever said.”
        .
        “I’ve never seen a more fûçkìņg retarded opinion expressed by someone on the subject before yours.”
        .
        “You’re a complete fûçkìņg moron.”
        .
        “You can take your fûçkìņg sign back now and shove it up your fûçkìņg ášš.”
        *****
        .
        But this?
        .
        “Seriously, what they fûçk is wrong with people?”
        .
        Or this?
        .
        “Are you fûçkìņg kidding me?”
        .
        No, not vitriolic. We talk to each other worse than that hanging out before briefing and ragging on the one guy on the shift who thinks that the Twilight films aren’t that bad. So, to quote you, deal with it.

      9. .
        Please also note, Craig, that those are only examples and not specifically directed at you or your post. So, again, not vitriolic. Just exasperation from watching people claim that theft somehow isn’t, pirate sites are actually just as legitimate as legal sale sites and that thousands of free, illegal downloads of the latest hit movie by people who don’t want to pay for it through a legal seller of that film is somehow in a “gray” area on the black and white scale of right and wrong.
        .
        After seeing person after person, some, like you, who I know aren’t stupid, making those absurd claims; I hit the point of being just a wee bit exasperated.

      10. I’m not defending piracy.
        .
        I’m just pointing out that the media companies are not doing dámņ near enough to keep consumers from wanting to turn to piracy. THAT is the gray area.
        .
        Maybe this guy says it better:
        .
        Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and other things
        http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2012/01/21/megaupload/
        .
        “Tim (O’Reilly) points out that he and a lot of other content creators have been happily coexisting with piracy all this time, and I’m certainly one of them. Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan. The big content companies are TERRIBLE at doing both of these things, so it’s no wonder they’re not doing so well in the current environment. And right now everyone’s fighting to control distribution channels, which is why I can’t watch Star Wars on Netflix or iTunes. It’s fine if you want to have that fight, but don’t yell and scream about how you’re losing business to piracy when your stuff isn’t even available in the box I have on top of my TV. A lot of us have figured out how to do this.”
        .
        .
        This is what I’m talking about: consumers demand options. You can say that consumers have no right to demand anything, but you’d be wrong about that. Demand and supply is just as important as supply and demand. Consumers demand options, and they will pay if providers supply them. iTunes, Amazon Kindle, Steam… they prove, with stumbling blocks, that people will pay.
        .
        Should anybody really have to have Comcast, Time Warner, AND DirecTV to get all the TV channels they want? Because it’s the same thing with having to use iTunes, Netflix, AND Hulu to watch what I want. Is it really so bad to be able to get everything you want for TV shows and movies from a single place, a single website or service? Is that what you want to have to do for every TV show and movie you want to watch, instead of admitting that there’s a better way?
        .
        To say that pirates often provide a better product either isn’t to defend piracy either. It is simply reflects the reality that media companies can also do a helluva lot better job with how they present their products. But instead, they resist.
        .
        But if you want to keep trying to puts words in my mouth, whatever. You’ve made up your mind: anybody who doesn’t agree with you is an evil pirate who deserves whatever šhìŧ you throw their way. Never mind if that’s not what some of us are saying; there’s certainly no gray area with you on that, either. So I’m done with this.

      11. I’m just pointing out that the media companies are not doing dámņ near enough to keep consumers from wanting to turn to piracy. THAT is the gray area.
        .
        Once upon a time, the same argument was made about women getting assaulted: They needed to do more to avoid being the victims of criminal acts, like maybe not dress provocatively. Ðámņ those media companies for all that provocative trade dress. Y’ask me, they had it coming.
        .
        PAD

      12. Once upon a time, the same argument was made about women getting assaulted
        .
        Because intentionally keeping a movie from being available to legally purchase digitally compares oh so well to a sexual assault.
        .
        Man, how could any of us had missed this *obvious* comparison?
        .
        You’re far better than this, PAD.

      13. .
        Okay, if that’s what you were saying than I’m sorry I read it wrong. But it did look a lot like what you were saying was what I took it as being said. It really came across that way a lot when your response to the ease of getting movies on DVD or Blu-Ray was met with a response of complaining that legally purchased DVDs and Blu-Rays have trailers, pirated copies don’t and, in regards to everything in general, that “the unauthorized versions are often the BETTER versions.”
        .
        To a large degree on the DVD subject, I would disagree because I like trailers. I just discovered a wonderfully dark film called “The Last Circus” that had completely flown under my radar. The first I really consciously knew about it or saw about it that piqued my interest was the trailer for it on (I think) Machete Maidens Unleashed. Do I watch trailers every time I put in a DVD? No. On 99% of the DVDs out there, you can skip them by hitting the menu button on your remote or just fast forward through them.
        .
        So, especially the trailers and ads comments, really struck me as odd given that it was a response to how easy it is to get the product VS how Ralf was discussing it and further read wrong for me with the comments about how the pirated stuff was better.
        .
        And I do get the odd TV show or movie from iTunes, and they have no trailers at all. So there’s a way to get content on that front that’s every bit as easy as the pirate sites and has zero trailers or ads.
        .
        Anything that streams on Netflix is the same. No trailers, no ads and no waiting beyond the initial load time. $8.99 a month gets you a lot of streaming content and not all of it is old stuff. And, bonus, some of it is actually stuff you can’t get on DVD. You can’t buy The Ugly on a DVD in this country or on a region 0 that I’ve seen. It’s a streaming film on Netflix. So is The Keep and so was Vampire Circus for well before the DVD/Blu-Ray pack was released in the US.
        .
        All of it with good image quality, all of it without ads or trailers and all of it easy as hëll to see.
        .
        “Should anybody really have to have Comcast, Time Warner, AND DirecTV to get all the TV channels they want? Because it’s the same thing with having to use iTunes, Netflix, AND Hulu to watch what I want. Is it really so bad to be able to get everything you want for TV shows and movies from a single place, a single website or service? Is that what you want to have to do for every TV show and movie you want to watch, instead of admitting that there’s a better way?”
        .
        Of course I’d love it if we didn’t have to do that. But the reality of it is that we have always had this situation, we have it now and we will always have this situation for so long as there is competition in the marketplace.
        .
        When my family first got cable in the 80s, there were only three pay cable movie channels on our carrier. We had The Movie Channel, HBO and (I think) Showtime. Each one cost about $10 a month extra on the cable bill. my parents were only willing to shell out for one. My mother didn’t care which one they got so my father picked The Movie Channel. Me? I was a boxing and fight fan even back then. My father’s take on it was that we had ESPN in the cable package, but the fact was that HBO had some nice fights that you didn’t get on ESPN and ABC. Would it have been nice to have everything that I wanted in one package? Yeah, but that’s not reality.
        .
        I’m a horror host fan. I grew up loving a host out of DC by the name of Count Gore de Vol. For a time, we lived in an area where we were right on the line between two cable providers and could actually pick one or the other. The cable provider my parents went with had WDCA Channel 20 out of DC and I discovered Gore at that point. Just loved him. Loved the movies he showed and loved his act. We moved. The other cable carrier didn’t carry WDCA 20 and had no interest in picking it up. Would I have loved it beyond words if I could have still seen Gore after we moved and had to get a new cable carrier? Hëll yeah, but that’s not the way the world works.
        .
        Our system is based on competition between businesses. There are times when a business works a deal to offer an exclusive that other like businesses can’t in order to get consumers to spend their money with them and not their competitors. Fact of life. A friend of mine is a huge MMA fan and had to decide whether or not to drop Comcast and switch to Dish Network when ComCast dropped HDNet and cut off his access to HDNet Fights, inside MMA and the various fights from Japan that they air. He weighed the options, looked at what he’d lose VS what he’d gain and jumped to Dish.
        .
        Hëll, sometimes the fact that you van get something that you can only get through one source makes it cool as hëll. What, you’ve never gotten a convention exclusive before? I have a book full of original short stories that you could only get at Dragon*Con and, for a short time, their webstore. I love that book and I treasure it because it has in it one of the last short stories, if not the last, written by the late Robert Asprin that’s set in and around the fun of my favorite convention of all time. Would I be bummed if it had been for San Diego ComicCon instead and I had never been able to get ot? Yeah, but I can say that about a bunch of convention exclusive books, toys and items from all sorts of cons over the years.
        .
        You and I may want a system where one provider can give us everything we want, but that’s not the system that we have and it’s not a system that we will ever have. So what we do is pick and choose. Yeah, I would love it if Showtime hadn’t decided that they wanted to start their own streaming service and yanked Dexter from Netflix streaming, but they did. I wasn’t thrilled with that action, but the simple fact is that I know I’m not entitled to have everything I want and everything I want my way just because I want it. That’s not the way the system works.
        .
        And, dámņ… God help us all if we get that system. People want to complain about the cost of things now? The day we have one provider who can give us everything is the day we have given up the system we have now and are living under a monopoly. And much as is being touched upon in the “Big Fish” thread, we’d see an even worse selection of things than we see now.
        .
        We’d lose so much. The big distributor of all entertainment would have no incentive to cut a deal with so-and-so to be an exclusive partner with some group who does entertainment that caters to a cult following or a niche audience. Why bother? And, like we’ve seen with the comic book distributors once the consolidated, anything that is still profitable but not selling well enough to satisfy they big distributor will find itself no longer being carried by that distributor. We’d end up with less options than we have now.
        .
        What? The people getting cold shouldered could go elsewhere or self distribute? Well, yeah, they could, And then we’d be back to where we are now with different companies forming that have the same general content with a few exclusives content-wise to each brand name.
        .
        This is the system we have. It’s actually a good system and, despite the need for a little improvement here and there, it’s the best system we ever could have. This, the system we have, is the system that creates diversity in entertainment. Everyone competes and everyone wins. And, everyone has to occasionally choose what they want more and decide what they are willing to do without for a time.
        .
        It’s no different than not being able to walk into a small, family owned Vietnamese Pho restaurant and order an authentic Italian style pizza. Well, you could do that, but the people in the place would look at you like you just grew an arm out of your forehead.
        .
        We have to make choices. We’ve always had to make choices about just about everything in life. That’s a good thing and a great system.

      14. I’m just pointing out that the media companies are not doing dámņ near enough to keep consumers from wanting to turn to piracy. THAT is the gray area.
        .
        Right, because when God said, “Thou shalt not steal,” what He meant to say was, “Thou Shalt Not Steal unless the property owner does not do enough to discourage it, whereupon we’re into a gray area.”
        .
        PAD

  3. Don’t worry I won’t download your comics.Or pay for your “writing”. Ever.

    1. So you would have no issues with someone coming to your house and stealing your couch?
      It is your couch and yours to dispose of as you wish but I need one and don’t feel like paying for one
      PAD says he disagrees with the bill in its present form but something must be done to protect property, be it actual or intellectual
      Justify it how you want, but if you download without paying the creator, directly or indirectly through a licensed distributor, you are a thief!

  4. This doesn’t directly relate to SOPA/PIPA, but it is a serious question that I haven’t seen addressed elsewhere. Forgive me if it is addressed earlier in this thread–I tried to read through it all, but I gave up. I address my questions primarily to PAD or other people who derive money from creative work, but of course I invite responses from anyone.

    As I understand things, creators like PAD don’t like people downloading things for free because they want to be paid for their work. I understand that, and I’m not arguing against it by any means.

    Given that, how do creators feel about used bookstores and libraries, or for that matter, my lending a book to a friend? I can’t imagine anyone coming out against libraries, but if I go check out some books from a library and read them, the writers don’t get any money. My local library often has current best sellers which I could buy from a bookstore, but instead I get the content for free. Sure, I have to turn the physical object back in, but I’ve gotten the use and/or information out of it for free.

    If I buy a Peter David book from a used bookstore, which I have done quite a few times, he doesn’t see a cut of that action.The only person making money in that case would be the bookstore owner, right? So is that sort of thing seen as an equivalent? I mean, sure, somebody bought the book originally, but that’s also the case with almost anything that’s been digitalized and put online:somebody scanned the book or converted the files to mp3 or whatever, but the original was paid for.

    This is something that I’ve genuinely been pondering for some time, and I’m curious about what the responses might be.

      1. .
        A used bookstore falls under the second thing I addressed. That copy was purchased by someone already. It’s been paid for and the publisher and writer got their cut. The person who now owns the copy can sell it if they want since it belongs to them just like their car.
        .
        And, key difference here, it’s still just one copy of a book. It’s not someone taking the book and uploading it online and turning one copy into hundreds or thousands of copies.

    1. I have no reason to object, either from a moral point of view or a legal one, to buying books in used book stores.
      .
      However, just FYI–if you purchase books with stripped covers, you are buying material that is effectively stolen.
      .
      See, books stores receive credit on unsold books. What they do, or at least what is supposed to happen, is that they strip the covers, send the covers back to the publisher for credit, and then destroy the books themselves. But what some underhanded stores do is, rather than destroy the books, they sell them to used book stores. So they both get the credit for the book and line their pockets with money from the books that were supposed to be trashed. If you purchase used books with no covers, you are effectively supporting a market in which the bookstore–or even an individual worker in the bookstore–is making money while the publisher is issuing credits and the author is seeing nothing.
      .
      It’s kind of the pre-Internet version of piracy.
      .
      PAD

      1. As a former bookstore employee, one who stripped many a cover from paperbacks and mastheads from periodicals, I can confirm that part of what Mr. David describes is fact. In my experience, legit book stores did not sell coverless books to used book stores. I never saw coverless books in a used book store, just in party stores that sold coverless comics in 3 for $1 packs or coverless men’s magazines at 3 for $10.00.
        Which might be an argument for the content not being worth what it’s priced at, and that the cover is the most expensive part of the magazine.

        I’ve known store owners that gave away boxes of stripped books to good customers, maybe they sold them somehow. But other than pitching them in a dumpster, I’ve seen no attempt to curtail dumpster diving by destroying the books. Maybe by having an anti-piracy book-burning. What a spin on the news that would be. Silly me, I always thought it would be the environmentalists that would be upset to know the dark secret
        of book-stripping.

        I think it’s becoming obvious that the way the various industries fight piracy (and you really should think of a less romantic term than that) is by feeding it. Music companies own the rights to the songs and sell the equipment necessary to download and make your own CDs. At some point it will come out that the comics companies have been putting their own books up for download for some time now. (Like some pirate worth his salt would be scanning “Pride and Prejudice”)

        –Ed

      2. Peter David: I have no reason to object, either from a moral point of view or a legal one, to buying books in used book stores.
        .
        On the other hand, this guy did. It’s a funny little blast from the past. The objections he raises are pretty familiar, and it’s weird to see my outlandish accusations about libraries and secondhand shops having as much potential to do damage to content creators as internet piracy said earnestly.
        .
        I mean, I only brought it up as a World War I type of thing, where theories and expectations that used to work fine suddenly became disastrously self-destructive when new advances changed the rules. I didn’t expect anyone would’ve seriously advanced the view that those practices were existentially dangerous before computers came around. I’m not sure if that makes the writer an intellectual property hardliner who was ahead of his time, or a chicken-little moron for thinking the popularity of buying used would do more than dent revenues. The part of me that wants to redesign copyright from scratch to work with a digital model says the former, but the part of me that wants to carry on with tradition with as few changes as possible says the latter.

  5. I agree with Kent regarding the overpricing of ebooks. When our rpg released a digital copy I argued with the other members to price the book at half the cost of the hard copy.
    .
    I still feel that the fact it has not shown up on any (reputable) torrent sites or rpg file share sites is because our price is lower than the hard copy while almost every other rpg book (definately every one in our genre) prices their ebooks higher than the hard copy.
    .
    Theno

  6. Agree 100%. I’m so sick of the “there’s no physical form, so it’s not actually theft” argument, and also the “the writer/filmmaker/musician should just be happy I’m helping get their work out there”…

  7. My final 2 cents on the matter:
    .
    Guess who’s hand was recently caught in the cookie jar?
    .
    The Author of SOPA Is a Copyright Violator
    http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/lamar-smith-sopa-copyright-whoops
    .
    Other reports recently from sites that track torrents have stated that hundreds if not thousands of downloads were from IP addresses of not only major media companies, but also from Capitol Hill and Congressional offices. (And hey, if IPs are good enough to file lawsuits against individuals…)

    1. I guess I scrounged up $.02 after all:
      .
      It’s breaking news that the Feds have shut down Megaupload and indicted employees.
      .
      In the end, I’m surprised the site managed to last as long as it did.

  8. I recognize everyone’s role in this. it’s partially our blame for stealing other people’s work. but this bill it’s not a exclusive consecuence of these things. i just to read x-factor, published by marvel comics and written by mr. david, but because of economic priorites i stopped, i had the tentation many times to go to a blog or whatever and download it to see what’s going on even though it’s wrong. it’s contradictory but i bought many more comics and records before (when i sometimes downloaded something) than now. its f@@@ but it its what it is. but also this bill has other ramifications that should be looked, if it was only against piracy, they should reinforce the knowledge on people that this is wrong, that laws and morals has to count for something but they don’t do it because they don’t have it in them. Also my apologies to Mr. David if they count for something.

  9. The problem with your analogy is that not only have most of us who would suffer from this not once pirated a comic book (let alone one of yours), but we also do not have spider powers to stop criminals. Seriously, what do you expect us to do, fly to Europe and physically assault the people who run pirating websites? Come on, be realistic.

    1. .
      Uhm… RB, are you trying to take the award for “Most Accomplished Reading Comprehension Fail” on the thread here? You just stated that you were a part of the “us” and “we” that are not putting up pirate sites or downloading brand new novels from those sites when they come out. You are saying that you buy your stuff from the proper sources and in the legal way.
      .
      In that case, Peter was not addressing this to you. I’d direct you to the top of the page, but you seem to have read that once and gotten lost in it, so I’ll just quote the pertinent section of the post Peter where made clear who he was addressing.
      .
      I address this not to the corporations on either side, fighting for their personal interests. And not to the congressmen who are punting SOPA around like a political hacky sack.
      .
      No, I’m talking to the owners of the various pirate sites who decided it was fine to post my novels for free downloads.
      .
      I’m talking to the guy in Florida who decided that he was going to unilaterally create his own online library and was blithely offering copyrighted comic book material to millions of people before the Feds nailed him.
      .
      I’m talking to the denizens of a website whose cavalier disregard for restrictions on how much of a comic book one could reproduce caused their entire site to be shut down and their response was—with a complete inability to accept the results of their own actions—to blame me for it.
      .
      I’m talking to everyone on the Internet who is the first to download the latest anti-virus ware to protect their own computers and digital property, but have zero trouble feeling a sense of misplaced entitlement that enables them to rationalize swiping other people’s intellectual property or enjoying it at no cost.
      .
      ***** And if you’re not among those people…if you are, for instance, one of the fans who writes to me to inform me about pirate sites because you understand that theft is theft…then you’re off the hook, and you can kick back and watch me talk to everyone else. ***** (Asterisks mine.)
      .
      Ladies…gentlemen…guys…gals…
      .
      What the hëll did you think was going to happen?
      .
      So, not only did he say, multiple times, that he was addressing this to the pirates and the people who support their actions and create rationalizations for why it’s okay, but he actually made a point clarifying who he wasn’t chewing out by of saying, “if you’re not among those people…if you are, for instance, one of the fans who writes to me to inform me about pirate sites because you understand that theft is theft…then you’re off the hook, and you can kick back and watch me talk to everyone else.”
      .
      And somehow you, RB, take all of that and act as though it’s directed at you, self described non-pirate or pirate supporter, and make silly comments about his expecting you and others to have super powers, going to other countries (which ignores the fact that there’s plenty of piracy in this country as he cites in his examples) to stop pirates and declare that he needs to “be realistic.”
      .
      RB, learn to read.

      1. You’re right, I missed that paragraph. My apologies. I was skimming the article because I have stomach problems that include chronic diarrhea, and I was just entertaining myself between bowel movements and must have skimmed a little too far and missed it. Thanks for putting me in my place, Jerry.

  10. “And if you’re not among those people… then you’re off the hook, and you can kick back and watch me talk to everyone else.”

    Trying to decide whether highlighting this section in 80-point bold type with blinking lights would have made any difference in the reactions.

    Suspecting it still would have gone unnoticed, anyway. Sigh.

    1. I don’t think it would. The rest of the post seems to slip back and forth between addressing “those people” and “everyone else”. There are many references to “internet denizens” and “standing around watching bad guys”. The whole Spider-Man analogy is explicitly not addressing the people who pirate. I’m sure the post started as an attempt to address pirates, but I don’t think it’s surprising that everyone else felt addressed.

    2. .
      Matt Kuhns: “Suspecting it still would have gone unnoticed, anyway. Sigh.”
      .
      Unfortunately, you’re likely 110% correct. I made a post in the thread here –
      .
      http://www.peterdavid.net/index.php/2012/01/17/where-i-stand-on-sopa/comment-page-1/#comment-630414
      .
      – that wasn’t as long as Peter’s opening header and was maybe a little more specific in pointing out that it was addressed specifically to the people posting in the thread who either can’t figure out the difference between “lending” a book and pirating it online and the the people claiming that they couldn’t figure out the difference between buying a book/movie/CD and later selling it to someone secondhand VS that someone just getting a free pirate copy. So, of course, I get some idiot named critter42 taking me to task because he knows the difference between those things, doesn’t pirate and is against SOPA. That was made an even stranger post by the fact that I’m against SOPA as well.
      .
      But no one seems to be able to actually understand what they’re reading these days when they want to find fault or offense it seems.
      .
      Ralf Haring: “The whole Spider-Man analogy is explicitly not addressing the people who pirate. I’m sure the post started as an attempt to address pirates, but I don’t think it’s surprising that everyone else felt addressed.”
      .
      You might want to reread that bit. While, no, the Spider-Man bit is not addressed to people who pirate, it’s still not addressed to everyone. Please not the following line form that paragraph.
      .
      “And suddenly Uncle Ben is worm food and you’re bellowing, “Hey! Not fair!” Well, “fair” and “unfair” can be, and often is, disputed. What is indisputable is that it was avoidable. All you had to do was condemn piracy. Instead you supported piracy (and probably still do) and declared that everyone else with a vested interest in copyright, who didn’t appreciate their material being stolen and never seeing any compensation for it, was just a dipshit.”
      .
      So, again, it was addressing the pirates and the people who supported piracy and no one else. Go back to the top of the thread. Reread the original post Peter started this thread off with. Every single paragraph makes it clear that everything in the post is being addressed specifically to the pirates, those who supported online piracy and the actual action of piracy itself.
      .
      There’s not one single paragraph in that post that isn’t clear about who it is addressed to or what actions he is specifically addressing. So, yeah, apparently Matt is correct that Peter could have highlighted certain sections in 80-point bold type with blinking lights and it would still have gone unnoticed by many anyway.

      1. .
        That one line should read –
        .
        “You might want to reread that bit. While, no, the Spider-Man bit is not addressed only to people who pirate, it’s still not addressed to everyone. Please not the following line from that paragraph.”

  11. The Starwolf said, “Things moved slower and people weren’t as impatient as they often are,”, adding the hypothetical quote, “Why haven’t I gotten an answer? It’s been at least five minutes!”
    .
    Reminds me of the old joke where someone complains about having to wait a full minute for “Minute Rice.” Wouldn’t surprise me if that had some basis in fact.
    .
    The Starwolf also said, “Internet may be usually faster than regular mail, but cheaper? How many letters could you send for the price of that computer? And better? If there is something important or urgent, I’ll use the phone. Electronic mail is not as reliable as people think it is. And I’d rather receive (or send) a real Christmas (or birthday) card than an electronic one any day.”
    .
    I still write letters (and Christmas cards) myself, but I also use E-Mail. However, I regard E-Mail as an electronic letter, and compose it as such.
    .
    By the way, I didn’t post this in the subset of the thread containing the Starwolf’s posts, because I didn’t know where these comments would appear relative to those.
    .
    David Gian-Cursio said, “You pay for free (or subsidized, on cable) TV by giving your attention to their advertisers. If you don’t watch the commercials, you aren’t paying. As far as the TV people are concerned, using fast-forward or otherwise ignoring commercials is just as bad as illegal downloading. You thieves.”
    .
    People weren’t watching the commercials since long before VCRs existed. The commercial’s the part where most people would get up to get a snack, or use the bathroom. Or where kids who are supposed to be doing their homework actually spend time at that task, before returning their attention to the show.
    .
    Advertisers, of course, try to find ways to get people to stay for the commercials (fair warning to said advertisers: increasing the volume is annoying and gives people even more reason to mute or otherwise ignore the commercials). And that’s been going on long before television. On the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show (technically, The Johnson Wax Program, as the sponsor’s name was often in the title of radio programs), announcer and Johnson Wax pitchman Harlow Wilcox would interact with Fibber and Molly during the course of the story, and whatever the topic of conversation, Wilcox would tie in the various benefits of Johnson’s “self-polishing glow coat.” The blatant product placement got to be such a running joke that in one episode Jim Jordan as Fibber McGee said something to the effect of “all right, let’s get it over with.”
    .
    Those interchanges are often funny, and listeners may well have stayed by their radios to hear them. To what degree it influenced listeners to buy Johnson’s Wax, I’ve no idea. But those listeners weren’t stealing if they turned to a different station, left the room, and/or never bought the product.
    .
    Also, I’m on the same page (no pun intended) as Jerry and Luigi regarding libraries. My library has at least one copy of Sir Atropos of Nothing. Assuming there weren’t other copies that happened to be checked out last time I saw it on the shelf, that means only one person at a time can check it out and read it. It’s not available to thousands of people at once, as something illegally scanned and posted to the Internet would be.
    .
    My library has at least 10 copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (all of which the library purchased), which means only 10 people at a time can check out a copy. But the presumably many people who’d want to read it (otherwise why would the library have bought so many copies?) will still have to wait their turn. And then they can only borrow the book for a finite amount of time. The same hold for ebooks.
    .
    Oh, and according to information on the library’s website, whoever checked out the copy of Deathly Hallows due back last May has been billed for it. Books (and CDs and DVDs and magazines and other material) on the library’s shelves are the library’s property, and it has the right to lend them, as well as to charge for a replacement copies if they’re damaged. But no one except the actual copyright holder has the right to scan or retype or otherwise distribute a particular book or other creative work.
    .
    Rick

    1. Rick Keating: People weren’t watching the commercials since long before VCRs existed. The commercial’s the part where most people would get up to get a snack, or use the bathroom.
      .
      Yes, but studios still panicked over formalizing that with VCRs and DVRs and 30-second-skip buttons. In the end, it was seen as being no big deal and everyone got over it, though the questions it raised were never really resolved. If people don’t watch the commercials, why should sponsors pay for them? The only answer seems to be, “because that’s how we’ve always done it, and we like to think it makes a difference.”
      .
      Personally, I think the fact that the TV industry (and periodicals and the internet, for that matter) is essentially based on wishful thinking about the efficacy of advertising is deeply troubling, and I’m really optimistic about things like iTunes offering next-day episode downloads for sale and Netflix commissioning their own shows. Before too long, I hope to cancel my cable and switch over to directly buying shows I enjoy a la carte. Especially after conversations like this where I think about it too hard, I start to feel like I’m just conning companies into paying for the shows I like rather than supporting the shows myself.

  12. Megaupload has been taken off the air and people have been arrested. It’s about time. I’ve said here that the full force of law enforcement should be brought to bear against the digital pirates. Simply appealing to people’s basic honesty will never work.
    .
    But it’s also undeniable that legitimate entertainment businesses have not utilized the full potential of the internet, and the pirates have come to fill the gap.
    .
    I agree with Thenodrin above. The entertainment industries are afraid to take the big plunge, charging the same (or higher!) for digital copies over physical ones is insane, self-defeating.
    .
    Complete catalogues available for, at most, 1/4 the price of the physical copies would vastly reduce the appeal of the pirates.

  13. The essential thing that most of the posters here seem to be missing is that SOPA/PIPA will do -nothing- to stop the pirates. Nada. Zip. It might slow them down for half a heartbeat.

    Take Megaupload. Let’s assume, for a moment, that the arrests in that case weren’t the equivalent of arresting a hammer-making company because some people use hammers for murder.

    How long was Megaupload offline? A day? Less?

    The provisions in SOPA/PIPA won’t affect the pirates in anything but a marginal way. We already have laws in place to arrest pirates. SOPA/PIPA add nothing to that arsenal.

    What they -do- accomplish is to create an atmosphere where this decade’s version of the much-loathed DMCA notice will be enough to take down entire websites. For example, if someone posted, say, a pirated picture on Yahoo Groups, SOPA/PIPA allow them to take down -the entire Yahoo domain-.

    Let’s not even debate the idea of changing business models or the real effects of piracy on sales, etc. Let’s just talk about what kind of power SOPA/PIPA put in the hands of law enforcement who a) don’t really understand technology and b) will happily abuse their authority. Remember the warrantless wiretaps they promised were only going to be used against foreign terrorists? Yeah, me too.

    The majority of people and corporations arguing against SOPA/PIPA aren’t supporting pirates. They’re trying to save the World Wide Web from becoming a zone where you can get my entire website taken down by making a bogus copyright claim on it.

    This is what’s at stake. All the arguments about how bad piracy is are irrelevant.

    1. No. They’re not irrelevant. Especially when I make it clear up front that I don’t think SOPA should be passed.
      .
      The entire POINT of my first post was that piracy IS bad. Yet there are plenty of people out there who believe it isn’t. Not to mention what do you make of the mindset of people who, even though I oppose SOPA, have declared that they are going to stop reading my work (as if they had been) or never going to read my work (as if they were going to) because they didn’t like my saying piracy was bad. Not to mention the people going out of their way to take offense even though I took huge pains to say that, if they were opposed to piracy, I wasn’t talking to them, which means that they considered just voicing the concept so offensive that they took offense.
      .
      The entire discussion was supposed to center around a certain mindset: that stealing property–when purchasing it is an easy option–is not a-okay, and how actions have consequences. I think that, in and of itself, is a discussion worth having. Especially since you’d think those ideas wouldn’t be the least bit revolutionary…that indeed, they’d be self-evident. “Why sure, Peter…piracy is wrong, copyrights should be respected, why are you even bothering to bring up things that are so self-evident?” Yet here we are, over 200 messages later, still arguing about it, and the “You áššhølë, I’m never going to buy your books” brigade is starting to pop up.
      .
      The fact that piracy is bad is even BEING argued tells you just how relevant the discussion is.
      .
      PAD

      1. Yes, piracy is bad. No question about it. But framing it in the framework of “where I stand on SOPA” is a mistake, in my opinion. This is what renders the discussion of piracy irrelevant.

        SOPA has very little to do with piracy, and everything to do about corporate control of content on the web.

        I will certainly continue to buy your books.

    2. C’mon, Ben. Megaupload’s entire business model is predicated on piracy. They remove your uploadeds file if only a few people downloads them, in other words, you gotta upload popular stuff for it to stay in the site. And they get money by ads, not by charging people for stored files. They count on people to upload popular stuff that will have downloaders looking at the ads.

      The right analogy for Megaupload is that they’re a hammer-making company that gives you a big discount if you use their hammers to kill people. And if you only use their hammer for what it was ostensibly intended, they take your hammer away.

      1. Megaupload’s business is predicated on people uploading files and other people downloading them. Megaupload actually does make money via memberships (i.e. charging people for stored files), as much as they do from advertisement.

        Regardless, my point is this: you want to stop piracy? There’s two easy ways to do it. 1 – Make a business model for content that is actually palatable to the consumer. Music piracy -plummeted- after Apple introduced iTunes. Why? Because the price point was right, and getting the content was easier than pirating it. 2 – Go after pirates.

        However, the second option is a battle that can’t be won, because pirates are global, and technology allows them to shift to new providers with little to no downtime. The Pirate Bay is still up, despite being the target of industry and law enforcement for -years-.

        Rather than strangling the legal consumer with laws that will have no effect, it makes a lot more sense for business people to adapt to a business model that discourages piracy.

        The legal establishment can’t do anything effective about piracy — but good sales and marketing can.

      2. I agree with you on that one. Most traditional media corporations are hopeless at working with digital content. It’s like they never think “How could we make money with downloadable stuff?”, rather they think “How can we minimize the damage downloadable stuff is doing to our non-Internet commerce?”
        .
        Like I’ve said in other threads, pricing a digital novel or comic book the same as a physical one is one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen. Correction, the most insane is when they price it HIGHER!

  14. I really don’t want to get into protracted debates with anyone on this topic, since it’s one of those topics that people have a fixed opinion on, not one that they are convinced to change by what they read.

    However, I do hate seeing the ole “theft is theft” phrase, or calling the piracy theft or stealing.

    It’s not.

    It’s copyright infringement. Which may not sound sexier or flow off the tongue, but carries ridiculously steeper penalties than mere theft.

    I also hate the fact that corporations have been stealing like bandits from the public domain by abusing copyright legislation. And I also hate the ridiculous claims they get away with, like equating every single download to lost revenue.

    In a world of thieves, it takes a particularly honest (or stupid) man, to be the only one not stealing.
    In “corporations versus internet users” they’re both stealing like bášŧárdš from each other.

    It’s the artists who get screwed. Musicians can play concerts, and hëll might even see their ticket sales go up if every tom dìçk and harry is listening to their album (downloaded for free).

    But what the hëll is an author supposed to do?

      1. Along these lines, PAD, what have your various publishers said, if anything, to you about self-publishing?
        .
        Publishers were already struggling. Amazon has made the e-book the huge success much faster than anybody thought possible. So where self-publishing (and even Baen) was viewed as a novelty and not much of a threat only a couple years ago, the major publishers are now in a full blown panic on both self-publishing as well as pricing.
        .
        And I can’t help but wonder how many of them are going to sink before the industry learns how to swim in the digital ocean. The music industry more or less has, but the tv/movie, book, and comic industries have a long way to go.

      2. Along these lines, PAD, what have your various publishers said, if anything, to you about self-publishing?
        .
        They honestly don’t care, Craig. Because the books I’m publishing through Crazy 8 are books that won’t be mass market enough for them to care…or at least that’s what they think. (The exception to this is “Hidden Earth,” which was another matter. I had to work actively to get it back for various reasons I won’t go into.)
        .
        For instance: I have a send-up of vampire novels that I’m working on, “Pulling Up Stakes.” Publishers aren’t the least bit interested. First of all, they’ve decided that humorous fantasy doesn’t sell. Period. Second, I was told that when it comes to anything vampire related, publishers are–and I quote–“only looking for books by women.” Because everyone from Bram Stoker to Joss Whedon knows that only women have a handle on the genre. Third, the hero–himself a vampire–spends time making fun of other people’s vampire series. The following graf, for instance, narrated by my vampire protagonist, didn’t endear me to certain editors or companies:
        .
        Most modern day vampires used as role models various televisions shows or maybe Lost Boys (although no one aped Twilight. Sparklepires? Come on. Those books were generally considered to be such a loose flow of unmitigated crap that it was typically referred to as Vampirrhea. )
        .
        So they honestly don’t care about the types of books that C8 will be publishing. And believe me, nothing would make me happier than to prove them wrong.
        .
        PAD

      3. .
        “First of all, they’ve decided that humorous fantasy doesn’t sell. Period. Second, I was told that when it comes to anything vampire related, publishers are–and I quote–”only looking for books by women.””
        .
        Which underscores something I just said to Craig in response to one of his posts to me.
        .
        Peter’s publisher and maybe a few others have said that to Peter, but there are a few publishers out there now who are publishing the odd bit of humorous fantasy here and there. And there are a few books coming out here and there that are vampire novels written by men and not the least bit romantic in nature. And then there’s Peter and others who have ventured into self publishing via Crazy 8 and other such start-ups to allow their various muses to take them where they want to go without a publisher telling them what “fans want” that’s in direct opposition to what their fans tell them they’d love to see from them. And, thanks to the diversity in the system, we get good stuff to read.
        .
        Now imagine that we don’t have that. We have one giant source responsible for providing us with everything. When that source says that Peter can’t sell that novel through them because they feel no one wants it, it’s dead in the water. The book is dead, done and end of discussion.
        .
        Me, I love vampires, I love humorous fantasy stories and I love taking potshots at Twilight. I like the fact that Peter can put this book out even if I can’t get it everywhere and some stuff that I want that’s not Peter’s work I can’t get through Crazy 8. So what I’f I have to use two, three or four websites and sources to get the books that I want? I’m still getting them and I’m getting a lot better variety because of that than I got in the old days or that I would get if there were just one master controller source for what we all get.
        .
        Good system. Frustrating at times, but then so is everything else in life.

      1. Really? So if I pirate an episode of Star Trek, then I have somehow stolen the copyright?
        .
        Amazing. When do my cheques start arriving in the post?
        .
        I respectfully suggest you’re so far in the wrong, that you can’t even see “right” anymore.

      2. In answer to your question, John, the copy you made doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the copyright holder. If you’ve acquired material that doesn’t belong to you without getting the permission of its owners, you are committing theft.

  15. Peter, this is a great piece. Do you mind if I quote a couple of lines from it in my own writing on the subject?

    1. And both were essentially DOA for some time before the “Blackout” day. The White House had also stated a few days earlier that there was no chance of either bill even getting the President’s signature.

  16. I think the problem is HOW to make money out of IP, realistically. Unless you shut down the internet entirely, people will always find a way to share and access IP. You shut down a site: 10 sites appear. You manage to control a system, a new system will emerge. And that’s without considering the fact that some countries, such as India, are really reluctant to prosecute their citizens over these matters. How do you shut down a website if it’s owned and located by citizens of such a country? The pirates will always be one step ahead of the authorities. ALWAYS. That’s a fact of life (or, at least, of technology). Now I agree that, without money, creators die of hunger. That’s another fact of life that, if Peter David isn’t paid for his comics, then there won’t be any new comic by Peter David to be read, legally or illegally, and I certainly don’t want that to happen. So what’s left? What’s left is what happened when the question was raised on how to make artists get money out of people recording films and music on videotapes and cassettes, later CD’s and CD-Roms and DVD’s. I don’t know about the USA but in France the problem was raised everytime a recordable format appeared, and was solved every time the same way: take a few bucks out of the price of every blank cassette/videotape/CD/DVD/ that’s being sold, and then redistribute it proportionally, according to the royalties delivered from the sales and broadcast of every film and record any particular month/year. Piracy might be immoral but it’s unavoidable. No law, no technology can change that as long as there’s an internet as we know it. What can be done is to raise the price of the internet connexions of a few bucks and redistribute to every filmmaker, recording artist and (now) published artist who gets money out of the legal ways any particular month. How many homes are connected to the internet in the USA? 100 million? More? Make it 5 bucks a month taken from (or added to) the price of every connection and you get 500 million dollars to share for IP owners every MONTH. No one can escape it, every one pays, every one downloads a bit and buys a bit, just like before with videotapes and cassettes, and this war that cannot be won ends here! Why no government anywhere in the world (including France), why no owner of IP wants to do this? It(s beyond me. It’s the only way. That and some all-you-can-eat legal but cheap options such as Marvel’s DCU (or Deezer for music). Piracy is not a solution, it might indeed kill the income of many creators. But instead of trying to force people to buy what they can get for free when they will always have ways to to it no matter what laws are passed and enforced, we just need to think of other ways to get their money…

    Best regards, Mr. David.

    1. It’s a decent concept in theory, but with a lot of problems and/or flaws.
      .
      One being that the big media companies are already pretty good at creative accounting, and they’ll demand all but the crumbs of this kind of money pie.

      1. I’m not saying it is flawless. It’s far from being perfect and redistribution obviously cannot be 100% fair and square. Nonetheless that’s the system that was adopted here everytime there was no other way: to get money from the shops and bars playing radio stations, from indie radios who wouldn’t provide detailed playlists, from the bands who cover other people’s songs live, and from recordable medias such as blank cassettes, videotapes, etc., as evoked above.

        It’s not flawless but it’s the only way. If we keep things the way they are, in 50 years you’ll still see RIAA and the FBI running after the latest pirates and a couple of internet users, while hackers and computers experts will keep creating new ways to share stuff, and both artists and media companies still WON’T be doing nothing but SPEND money trying to fight the phenomenon, instead of EARNING money from it. I might be wrong, but you have my bet 😉

    2. I dislike the charging option on principal, simply because it basically says that everyone is a thief. Why should people who never pirate/download have to pay for those that do?

  17. I Google for “megaupload” and “Peter David” and I get 183,000 results. The first page of results shows links to where to get a collection of Incredible Hulk comic books, then various novels he has written. I wonder how many people will start buying his work if they can’t so easily get it online. File hosting sites are 99% illegal content and always have been. If someone reports something as illegal, they’ll take it down, but they don’t stop that same person from uploading it again the very same day.

    SOPA is bad though, since it doesn’t require proof. So instead of just taking down sites that are obviously pirating things, according to the Wikia, it means that if someone uploads a copyrighted picture to Wikipedia or Wikia, they can shut those sites down, blocking everyone in America from being able to go there. Its shoot first and ask questions later.

    1. .
      Yeah, pretty much. That’s why most of us here, even those against internet piracy, dislike SOPA and want to see it scrapped and, if brought back at all, rewritten into something intelligent.

  18. I salute you, PAD
    Having worked in merchandising and licensing, I know that, when you pirate something, you have broken the law.
    I also know that, when confronted with this, the righteousness of most of the perps is stunning, as if they are simultaneously Jesus Christ, St. Valentine and Sophia Scholl (look her up)
    I remember one guy who said he would love to live in an anrachy where he could download what he wanted, when he wanted and no one could tell him otherwise. Then one of the people there pointed out that he was a skinny little bìŧçh who would be the sex toy of a large man who was popularly known as the “ayatollah of rock and rollah” without the protection of those evil police and lawyers he hated so much. Also, without some return on their investment , there ain’t gonna be too much of naything produced when pimply faced neckbeards can just steal it

    1. I agree with you–this was the best viewpoint on SOPA and PIPA that I’ve read. PAD made it very clear (well, some seemed not to notice) that he was against both bills, while at the same time he did a superb takedown of piracy.

  19. Good God, this is the most amazing thread ever. hard to pick a winner but I guess I’d have to give it to Jerry finally achieving genuine superhero status by getting his very own nemesis. Granted, it’s Captain Diarrhea which doesn’t flow off the tongue, to coin a phrase, as easily as Dr Doom or Stilt Man but it’s more than I have, unless you include the neighbor who shoots me dirty looks when I play my Poopy Lungstuffing music with the volume set to 10.

    1. If having a nemesis means having to deal with Captain Diarrhea, I’ll pass on ever being a superhero. 🙂

      1. Yes, but where do you stand on the far more important issue of the threat posed by Captain Fashion Sense?
        .
        As far away as possible?
        .
        Now my poor brain is going to have to debate whether diarrhea is worse than fashion sense or not. My Saturday is ruined!

  20. I disagree strongly with illegal downloading. But when the measures to counteract it become a danger to democracy, then you need to find another measure. And SOPA is so broad that it could used against virtually any site that includes content from the public, any search engine. It’s a huge amount of power. It is, essentially, the end of a free internet. In America.

  21. Now that the furor is over, I’d like to call Peter out on his John Conner metaphor…

    I distinctly remember that scene from Terminator 2 because when I saw it I thought “this kid is an immature áššhølë”. If you recall, in the scene John was being restrained by the Terminator to prevent him from going to rescue his mother. He called out for help, “get this guy offa me” to paraphrase. Two bystanders come over to help, but by the time they get there he’s figured out the Terminator has to obey his commands. When they ask what the problem is, he blows them off, and one of the guys calls him a dipshit. John then makes his dipshit quote and sics the Terminator on him.

    He SCREAMED for help! When help arrived, rather than say “no thanks, we got it settled”, he is unnecessarily RUDE to his would be rescuers! And then he sics a KILLING MACHINE on them for calling him (appropriately) a name! At the very least he owed them an “I’m sorry” as he told them to “get out of here”. Bet those guys won’t stick their necks out to help a kid in trouble again. No more Good Samaritan for them.

    Really, am I the only one who saw the scene that way? I realize he didn’t expect the terminator to go off on them but he didn’t really stop him after he started inflicting serious bodily harm (lifting on guy by his hair, crushing the other one’s hand as I recall, or similar) and only found his voice and took action when the Terminator brought out his gun to kill them. So I can’t believe he was expecting the Terminator to lift him by his shirt with one hand or something when he said “grab this guy” because he didn’t say squat when he started hurting them.

    Sorry, Peter, but poor metaphor for the subject. In this situation, John Conner was the villian.

    1. Well, John Conner is rude by the way you define the situation. Wikipedia(and gosh, how convenient to have an online source of info that is free to disperse it) states that he is 14 years old in T2. The age of 14(Wikipedia again states, thanks Internet!) is below the ages of 16 to 21 where most societies define adulthood as occurring. Except Africa, which has some cultures using age 13 as the beginning of adulthood.
      Connor’s not African, nor of apparent African descent. He’s not an adult. Therefore, he is, by definition immature. As for being an “áššhølë…”
      Precious few adolescent males aren’t, by any random adult’s point-of-view. I would not use the example of John sicced the T800 on his would-be rescuers as a first-rate example. The bystanders John alerted when he panicked weren’t likely to be assuaged by John going, “I take it back, we worked it out.” And then, John needed to test the T800 to make sure he wouldn’t kill. Yes, the T800 said he had to take John’s order, but it also could have been programmed to just say that. He sicced a possible, even probable, “reprogrammed not to kill killing machine” to ascertain that he could rely it on to rescue his mother without it killing. It might not have been fair to those guys to take a beating for that reason, but John’s survival was paramount to the human race’s survival. It was logical, necessary, but cruel. I daresay most 14 year-olds handed the power of a T800 outside of adult supervision and society’s control would have probably been crueler, although possibly, less “rude.”
      A 14 year-old, rude. “Shock, gasp!” Next you’ll be telling me immature teenagers, adults, and criminal organizations engage in crime on the internet that lawyers paid to defend large corporation profits have decided that laws cutting all Americans’ constitutionally protected access to the internet is a good idea. I don’t think it is. However, PAD’s use of the Connor/T800 metaphor is sound as far as he takes it.
      Now blaming people for being immature and irresponsible for using the opportunity to break the law without any immediate consequences is like blaming water for going through a breach in a dam. Yes, people should have been responsible, and known they were wrong. However, we have laws in the first place because society needs protection from the small minority that has existed throughout history who are not responsible and do not care they are wrong. Blaming those people is blaming human nature. It is a fair, but obvious, cop. Do we sacrifice the freedom of the many, because of the few, for the profits of the fewer? It’s not about just writers having the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their labor, it’s about what all Americans will have to give up for an infrastructure to redress this law-breaking, which by the accounts I’ve read, is negligible for anyone who’s not a corporation. People always want to believe right is right and wrong is wrong. Just telling people not to steal is not the solution, however much it should be. These proposed laws are not the solution either. But something like them may be inevitable. But it needs to be vetted by a lot more people than a few corporation lawyers, industry insiders, and Capitol Hill. Everyone needs to have a voice. And the First Amendment needs to be a defining principle. The First Amendment should not be redefined with so many exceptions that it’s useless as both a practical and a ethical example. Because, when you look at where we all today, that’s what all civil rights and human rights are becoming: essentially worthless.

      1. Okay, I hate to be *that person*, but John was ten in T-2. Terminator 3 got it wrong (although there was a slight mess up with his age in T2). This site explains it pretty well. http://www.terminatorfiles.com/media/articles/moviesfacts_012.htm Also, have to agree with Whiplash, it was a funny scene but he was clearly a little turd.

        As for the rest of the argument, well, my belief is that the only realistic way to fight pirating is to make it easier and cheap enough that it’s a no brainer to buy an item versus using a torrent. JA Konrath makes a lot of good points regarding this argument on his blog, as well as a fairly realistic way for a writer to make money while still giving a book away for free.

  22. Peter, I really am doing my utmost to understand where you’re coming from. Yes, SOPA was brought about in part by irresponsible and hypocritical internet pirates. However, any article that has a general tone of “Sure, SOPA is one of the gravest threats to the U.S. Constitution in many a year, BUT…” is a cause for some concern.

    1. .
      I don’t see where there’s any reason for concern in it. It’s not as if, using an example Peter frequently cites on other topics, he’s going the way of a First Amendment But-Head where someone says that they believe in the First Amendment, but… And then explain why the essentially don’t. Peter said that he’s against SOPA. Period. End of story.
      .
      How is that a cause for some concern?

      1. Primarily because Peer spends most of the article attacking the small-time hoods who helped create the environment in which SOPA could be pushed forward, as opposed to the big-time hoods in the power suits who currently reside in Washington.

        Look, there will be time enough to go after the obnoxious pirates who violate copyright law. It’s the men and women who have access to more power than any pirate could ever hope to achieve we should be more worried about.

  23. A terrific essay, Mr. David, and I look forward to reading the expanded version in But I Digress. I think that the whole SOPA/PIPA debacle underscores how broken the current system is. It seems to me that the various players in the game have a lot of work to do to fix the system, some more than others.

    Consumers: need to stop supporting piracy. That means not downloading intellectual property without paying for it, unless it is legally available for free. They also need to stop tacitly supporting it by enabling a culture that embraces or at least ignores digital piracy.

    Copyright holders: need to find a way to embrace digital distribution. The legal distribution of music, through venues such as iTunes and Amazon, is a good example of how to do it right. Note that this isn’t a moral need, this is a practical need. Provide a channel for consumers to easily download digital material for a fair price and many will do so rather than turn to piracy.

    Legislators: need to clarify the existing laws, to make clear and bolster the rights of existing copyright holders. They need to do so in a way that balances the economic and social benefits of free and open forums with the rights of IP owners not to have their material stolen. The law should stiffen penalties for actual pirates but not squelch fair use or unfairly punish sites for objectionable user generated content.

    Pirates: need to go get real jobs and contribute to society, rather than be blood sucking ticks on the neck of society.

    1. I think that a large step towards pulling the plug on piracy would be putting somebody with brains in charge of SyFy channel. I can’t speak for anybody else, but that is what draws me the most to it. Availability. There are tons of good shows out there, that I simply can’t watch on TV/buy on DVD. (Examples: BSG, Doctor Who [on TV, but DVDs are impossible to find here in NL], Eureka, Farscape, Sanctuary, Stargate [all three shows], Star Trek [all shows] and Warehouse 13.)If SyFy channel had it’s house in order, I would have a lot reason to support pirates.

      1. Oops, major typo there….I meant I would have a lot LESS reason to support piracy. An example of what I mean….Nobody is going to stay up to 03.00 to watch a re-run of Battlestar Galactica. It would be much easier if they did those reruns in the afternoon. But what do they rerun in the afternoon ? One of their own, horribly made, horribly acted and horribly written B-movies, featuring some stereo foam monster/creature/villain. Lose the movies, lose the wrestling and get some proper commercials and we’re halfway to solving the problem. (At least for me.)

      2. Hi Ruben.

        Not to be picky, but you could for example just order the dr who dvds from the uk

      3. I don’t have a credit card, Rick. (In my opinion, credit cards are bad news. But that’s a story for another time.) Which makes ordering from the UK (nearly) impossible.

  24. Am I the only one who keeps wanting to call it “SOPApilla”?
    .
    Ooh, now I want a sopapilla.

      1. Will this legislation be significantly changed before it’s re-instroduced?

        Will congress listen to its citizens over the money of coprorate lobbyists?

        Will Jessica be convicted of Peter’s murder?
        These quewstions and many others will be answered, on the the next episode of SOPA!

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