Clay Shirky stopped by the TED offices to chat about “Why SOPA is a bad idea.” 100% totally worth watching. Shirky offers a great explanation, with metaphors that help SOPA and PIPA make sense, and a quick history of how we got into this copyright infringement debate with rights holders anyway.
SOPA and PIPA Blackouts are planned across the web tomorrow in protest of the two acts before the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. The web is going on strike as a protest to legislation that tampers with the participatory culture of the web for the sake of large corporate and government interests.
What is SOPA? What is PIPA?
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) aim to prevent online piracy of films and other forms of media by giving the US government and copyright holders the right to seek court orders against sites they believe infringe copyright or enable infringement.
Sites affected include search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, ecommerce sites like eBay, and participatory sites like Wikipedia and Reddit. Really, every site is affected but these are the big players opposing SOPA and PIPA. Other opponents include Reporters without Borders, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch and tech-news sites like Boing Boing.
So what’s the big deal? Copyright infringement is wrong.
Copyright infringement seems to be at the heart of this legislation, but the real opposition is that the legislation introduces censorship and abuse by larger powers while not stopping piracy. People who want to pirate media will always find a way around censorship. In this particular case, downloaders will simply enter the IP address for the site vs the domain name. For example, http://198.171.79.36/ is the IP address for http://www.whois.net/.
The legislation does not stop piracy but if passed, gives the US government and rights holders the ability to get a site censored. On top of that, US-based internet service providers, payment processors and advertisers would be prohibited from doing business with alleged infringers. SOPA, in particular, could force search engines to remove infringing sites from their results.
Opponents to SOPA and PIPA say the legislation is destructive, unconstitutional, an extraordinary measure and that it endangers free speech and has an impact on users beyond the US.
1. Both bills would allow the blocking of entire websites, even though the site may contain a large percentage of perfectly legal speech.
2. Sites can be shut down whether or not they’ve done something wrong. Enabling or facilitating copyright infringement could be flagged due to a commenter linking to a site that uses a copyrighted image inappropriately. The site with the comment is liable to the full extent of the broad enforcement powers.
This is a big deal for social media sites and participatory sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, and any site with comments open.
3. SOPA doesn’t stop real pirates (not the cap and eye-patch kind but the real infringers) but it does mean that an ordinary user who posts copyrighted work could go to jail for five years. If you post on YouTube or Facebook a link to your cat dancing to a copyright song, that means you could face prison.
4. SOPA affects how domain names and registrations are handled, which may open security loopholes and give hackers easier access to websites.
5. It will cost $47 million tax dollars a year for a bandaid that doesn’t stick to the right injury.
At all points of transition in cultural and entertainment history, we see panic from the establishment and energy wasted seeking bans to protect the old ways. The first recorded music freaked out musicians. TV freaked the movie makers. The written word upset the orators. Go further back, electricity upset candlemakers. The printing press upset the scribes. It’s all so misguided.
Here’s a nice bit of content that infringes in the best way to explain SOPA.
“You don’t destroy the internet because it doesn’t fit your business model.”
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
In October, Monique Trottier became Monique Sherrett. And the crazy thing is that she loves the team of James & Monique Sherrett enough to not care that Google is going to be confused about what to display in results for Monique Trottier, or that people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ will wonder where is Monique Trottier and who is Monique Sherrett. But that’s life in a digital age, and love comes before work so here I am, Monique Sherrett.
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Step 2: Send me an email or post in the comments the link to your avatar.
Step 3: We will return the avatar with an appropriate mustache. Or as we like to spell it here in the office, moustache, with the proper elongation of “moooo-stash” if spoken verbally.
Disclaimer: Not all moustaches are guaranteed to look as stylish as mine.
Secondary claim: Mustache generators are ok, but we’re doing custom, original Moustaches, which is why your ‘stache is going to look awesome.
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
The second BookCamp Vancouver is this Friday, October 1. BookCamp is a conference that brings together 250 members from the technology and publishing industries to talk about digital aspects of book publishing and how online media is changing the game.
The early days of the internet brought to publishing:
Credit card payments
Shipping trackers
Inventory counts
Reviews
Buy and recommendation engines
Communities and tribes
Sharing, collaboration, organization and knowledge exchange were reinforced through easy tools, search and recommendation engines such as those available through YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, iTunes and Twitter.
With the social web, fresh insights into the community are possible. A publisher can:
Listen and learn: identify influencers; build up reputation and leadership
Build awareness: create compelling campaigns and, more important, movements
Facilitate participation: Contribute to the community, provide tools that empower others to speak on their behalf, and create connections
Support purchasing: Accommodate individuality (customizations), provide service on-demand and support multiple payment methods
Re-engage and empower: provide social rewards for positive behaviours that support the community and, with permission, encourage repeat behaviour
Ebook readers bring new insights to reading preferences, as well as a shift in reading from a linear model to an interactive one.
Big questions are forming. How long will we be in a transition from printed books to digital works? Will publishing houses continue to exist as they do today or will light-weight publishing condos develop instead (where a core group handles finding, making and marketing)? Will price points reflect more points along the demand curve? How will people behave in a market of infinite choice? What will they want to pay for, who will make money and how do we finance publishing new works?
Seth Godin says that publishers have done an excellent job for 100+ years. As curators, they pick the winners. As producers, they create and manufacture the works. As financial risk takers, they make the initial investment. As distributors, they manage inventory and shelf space. And as promoters, they disseminate press releases, earn publicity and buy advertising space.
His challenge to the industry is to focus on curation, leadership and connection.
This Friday, we’ll do just that. We’ll look at digital sales to libraries, ecatalogues, ebook production and the reading practices. We’ll explore how literary communities are supporting new works and the discovery of amazing authors. We’ll talk strategy, tools and tactics for fostering community and dialogue within and between online tribes.
All of this happens daily on the web, but BookCamp is a chance for us to have an in-person literary salon where innovators and problem-solvers in the technology space interact with risk takers and trendspotters in publishing to explore how digital technology continues to amplify and extend the discovery, production and delivery of new works of fiction and non-fiction, whether they be in tree format or pixels and bits.
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
This month, the CBC Book Club is exploring the future of reading. Here’s an interesting interview with Benjamin Rivers - an independent game developer, comic artist and web designer - that looks at the interactive and cross-media opportunities that are now available with books. In his words, if you’re a publisher today “you should be thinking small and thinking light.”
This montage of AT&T ads came from a 1993 Newsweek CD-ROM, when Newsweek thought that one day, magazines would be sent to you in CD-ROM form, sponsored with ads. It’s an interesting view of the future.
What is your business promising?
Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
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