kayaks ✍ angela shetler
Behold! What the Stop SOPA blackout managed to accomplish in 24 hours.
High five, internet.
Geekosystem has a fantastic post about the DMCA, how broken it is, how it’s frequently abused (with no consequences for the offenders), and how disastrous it would be if something like SOPA or PIPA were law, because it would certainly be abused in the same way, with much more serious consequences.
It’s almost funny, in a I-want-to-cry sort of way. SOPA and PIPA seem to be constructed on the premise that the DMCA had the right approach, but just isn’t strong enough. The fact of the matter is that DMCA has the wrong approach and is toopowerful. There’s evidence to back this up.
The main DMCA principle that SOPA and PIPA are building on is the takedown request. Under DMCA, anybody – anybody – can file a takedown request claiming that something on the Internet falls under their copyright and needs to be removed from wherever it is, typically YouTube. That’s all fine and dandy — good even — the problem is that there are no repercussions for filing a bogus takedown request, something that happens all the time.
Read on to see the examples he cites. I predict they will make your jaw drop.
In a leaked letter sent to Spain’s outgoing President, the US ambassador to the country warned that as punishment for not passing a SOPA-style file-sharing site blocking law, Spain risked being put on a United States trade blacklist . Inclusion would have left Spain open to a range of “retaliatory options” but already the US was working with the incoming government to reach its goals.
United States government interference in Spain’s intellectual property laws had long been suspected, but it was revelations from Wikileaks that finally confirmed the depth of its involvement. More than 100 leaked cables showed that the US had helped draft new Spanish copyright legislation and had heavily influenced the decisions of both the government and opposition.
In another media leak it’s now been revealed that American Chamber of Commerce in Spain chief Jaime Malet wrote a cautionary letter to incoming Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy. He warned of the potential flight of foreign investment from Spain and urged him to take action on the protection of intellectual property once in office.
“[The law’s] lack of approval before the elections has been a blow to the country’s seriousness in this matter of such importance,” said Malet, while urging Rajoy to “to retrieve the consensus reached.”
Rajoy’s government quickly responded and fully implemented the legislation within 10 days of taking office.
It’s bad enough that the RIAA and MPAA are doing everything they can to destroy the Internet in America, but it’s just appalling that the American government is interfering with the domestic politics of other countries to help them destroy the Internet overseas.
According to a report by the Knight-Batten Award-winning nonprofit MAPLight, the 32 sponsors of the bill received just under $2 million in campaign contributions from the movie, music, and TV entertainment industries.
To put that in perspective, this weekend’s box office take for Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (you can’t make this stuff up) took in $23 million in just one weekend. So, for less than a tenth of the take from Alvin and the Chipmunks, our congress-critters have let themselves be influenced by a historically and unendingly regressive group of trade organizations.
By the way, if you calculate up the contributions the tech industry has made to these same 32 “lawmakers,” you’ll find the total to be $524,977 — one fourth the amount contributed by the entertainment industry.
Despite all the cries from tech experts throughout the United States, Congress is still doing its best to pass SOPA. Is there a correlation? Are our elected representatives paying four times more attention to the entertainment industry compared to us in technology? You be the judge.
tl;dr: A handful of congress-critters (Lamar Smith, Joe Baca, Howard Berman, Marsha Blackburn, Mary Bono Mack, John Carter, Steven Chabot, John Conyers, Jim Cooper, Elton Gallegly, Robert Goodlatte, Tim Holden, Peter King, John Larson, Adam Schiff, Brad Sherman, Lee Terry, Melvin Watt, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, John Barrow, Steve Scalise, Ben Luján, Judy Chu, William Owens, Karen Bass, Ted Deutch, Ben Quayle, Tim Griffin, Dennis Ross, Alan Nunnelee, Thomas Marino, and Mark Amodei.) took an average of $524,977 each from lobbyists to sponsor SOPA. Even though the people they represent overwhelmingly oppose SOPA and don’t want it to become law, they’re still doing everything they can to pass it, against the wishes of their constituents — who they supposedly represent — because it’s what they were paid off to do.
This is yet another reason we need a revolution in America. We need to burn it to the ground and start over, eliminating corporate money and lobbyists from the political process entirely.
(via neil-gaiman)
