But I found him extremely distasteful. Hackford’s general tone was “if you don’t agree with us, you’re an idiot.” And also, “we’ll screw everyone we can until we get our way.”  Those big company Los Angeles entertainment types have such an inflated view of themselves – I bet they’re very surprised to realize that not everyone loves them as much as they think.

If Taylor Hackford is trying to change minds to support SOPA-like legislation with these arguments, his attempt has backfired with me.  He promises a long war until he gets what he wants.  Well, he can now count on me as a soldier to fight against him as long as it takes.

We need to find entities that know how to create the appropirate class actions and legislative actions to declare the RIAA and MPAA as anti-trust. That continued frivolous law suites against customers and citizens end in the CEOs of the companies bringing these suits go  to jail and are fined out of the 1%.

The bills were never written to just handle overseas piracy and money lost there. In fact, it’s really easy to see how neither bill can do anything to control the traffic of stolen material once it’s left the U.S. All they can do is prevent re-entry, so overseas pirates are free to continue selling in their home countries. 

What they were hoping people would ignore if they said “it only affects out of country piracy” was the inclusion of amendments not related to “overseas piracy” but to things like trafficking in counterfeit medications, altering the ways in which people could be prosecuted for online play of material they didn’t have release for, use of image copyright material and more – all domestic, in what was claimed to be a set of bills targeting “nefarious foreign pirates”.

If the intent was to change domestic law, they needed to openly address THAT issue, and openly change those laws – not sneak amendments into a larger bill. They were trying to sneak one past us, and they failed. We know they lied.

Spoko is right. They’ll come back with other bills named in ways that will seem to have nothing to do with the Net, and we’ll have to keep reading content to see when they try to change domestic law to suit their taste.

Yes it does.

That being said, large dying animals can still be pretty damn dangerous.

Snark aside: these guys don’t have a fucking clue what they’re doing. They saw Big Tech opposing SOPA; they don’t need to know why.

That being said, I would like to see someone like Taylor Hackford answer that question…

[The] claim that blanking our websites was an ‘abuse’ says much about how corporate lobbyists view free expression: as something to be regulated like a rent or privilege.

Let’s not forget that the MPAA/RIAA/Big Media types made their money through regulating what was published (e.g. selecting film projects to ‘green-light’, talent scouts, slush piles etc.), and then pushing discrete, physical units (i.e. records, box office tickets, copies etc.)

As cruftbox observes, this means there’s a twofold desire to continue to push for SPOA-esque legislation: The content selectors such as Paramount, CNN, UMG etc., and the content packagers who actually burn the CDs and print the books and all that.

More importantly to me, Big Media not only promoted certain narratives as Big Culture, they also regulated the narratives of Big Culture.

Big Media Selectors want to continue to dictate what our Big Culture Stories look like – the ones we all know about because they’re ‘green-lighted’ and given the most media attention. Big Media Packagers want to continue to control access to same.

In other words, it’s the old one-to-many broadcast model – but one powerful enough to change US/Western culture’s worldviews. If you control what stories – myths – or facts – are told to the people, you control what they believe and think.

Now along comes the Internet where anyone can broadcast to anyone who ‘tunes in’, weakening Big Media’s power to dictate Big Culture in three ways:

1. Circumventing Big Media’s selection monopoly
2. Derivative works that ‘dilute’ the Big Message (e.g. fanfics)
3. Circumventing access restrictions (e.g. piracy, on-selling copies on eBay)

In a rational world, the Big Media companies would have already retooled for a Steam-style online purchase and POD system, allowing them to monetise people’s creativity and desire to engage with rather than merely consume their culture.

Unfortunately we don’t. Decades of inertia and entrenched assumptions about how things are Meant To™ work have proved that, and as such, we can expect this fight over who (if anyone) should dictate the shape of our society’s culture to continue.

You need to understand their mindset.  I wrote a whole post about this here: http://fotv.biz/2012/01/24/nothing-is-over/

In summary, the major issue is that the studios are bound into contracts with both the people that supply them with entertainment and the people that distribute the content to actively force these kinds of issues.

There are multiple other issues that contribute to the mindset of continuing a march toward SOPA/PIPA laws.    

You are right, they want laws that protect them from change. It’s the classic Innovator’s Dilemma issue.

Then again, it’s nothing new.  Car companies fought against seat belts and air bags for decades and now use safety as main selling point.  The telephone companies are notorious for hiding behind government tariffs to lock in profits and make it harder for competitors to succeed.  Light Squared just got nuked by entrenched telcos using the FCC processes to kill their entire investment.

The fight won’t stop until the underlying drivers change.

I should point out that under the DMCA _any_ website may be seized by The US Secret Service or its International Division – called ICE.  Proof of this is the Swedish file sharing website MegaUpload.

Film has a built-in anti-piracy measure — the theatrical screening.  You still can’t build a sound system like that in your apartment, or that ginormous screen!  And nevermind 3D (just a way to watermark films people!) — no one wants to see a crappy cam version of a film anyway. 

And artists who back this crap are like thieves peddling in stolen goods.  It’s gross.