The controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA for short) Has actually been rejected by President Barack Obama (yet another reason to like him). The Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) I'm not sure about, but the two are frequently mentioned in the same breath. If these bills are passed in the United States, that's basically the end of youtube : SOPA explicity states that streaming of content will be penalized by 5 years in prison. Also, any allegedly "infringing" site will be blocked from search engines (just what criterion are applied to consider a site "infringing" is kept quite vague). Harvard constitutional law Professor Laurence H. Tribe went as far as to say that passing of SOPA and PIPA would violate the first amendment.
Look, I'm all for protecting of copyrights and all... but this "Intellectual Property" thing is a little subjective for it to have a law attached to it. For example, if you were to use a sentence that sounded a lot like one I had used (say in this blog) I could claim that you infringed upon my intellectual property. And I would be right, regardless of whether you knew what you were doing or not.
The thing is, everything you read, hear, learn, etc. changes the way you think in some manner. Our personal intellect is the sum of everything we have experienced. Our views on... well, everything are influenced by our experiences; we form opinions based on the arguments of others. There's a term for this: an informed opinion. How should I be aware that I'm using a sentence structure that's vaguely similar to that used by Robert Jordan (one of my favourite authors by the way)? It's entirely possible that I am, but did I steal his writing style? Certainly not consciously.
People like to bring up the "slippery slope" argument to avoid changing things. Where do we draw the line? It applies to this too. If a site (like wikipedia or youtube) is unable to post the content of other's works (they still give credit to the original source, by the way) where does it end? I just used the letter "d", is that the intellectual property of Webster's Dictionary? What about the name "Webster's Dictionary"? Am I infringing on their rights by putting that here on my blog? What about something slightly less stupid? How about the name of a character from a book. Let's take the name Harry Potter. What if someone somewhere names their main character for their new book "Harry". Is that infringing on J.K. Rowling's works? What if they use the last name "Potter" for another character? Better lock 'em up.
To my readers in the USA (Yes, I am aware you exist!) if any of you happen to belong to Congress BLOCK THIS STUPID LEGISLATION!!!! And if you're not in Congress, sign a petition or something. The Super Obnoxious Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Paranoid Intellectual Protection Act (PIPA) must be stopped!
Maybe they'll lock me up for my super creative acronyms.
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| A friend of mine drew my attention to this one. |
Guess where I got the info for this. That's right, WIKI-fricking-PEDIA!!!!
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