The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas

from the let's-walk-through-the-reasons dept

The Player Piano



�I foresee a marked deterioration in American Music�and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations by virtue � or rather by vice � of the multiplication of the various music reproducing machines� -- John Philips Sousa, 1906



The Video Cassette Recorder



"But now we are faced with a new and troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life, and we are facing it from a thing called the Video Cassette Recorder" -- MPAA President Jack Valenti in 1982



Cassette Tapes



"When the manufacturers hand the public a license to record at home...not only will the songwriter tie a noose around his neck, not only will there be no more records to tape, but the innocent public will be made accessory to the destruction of four industries" -- ASCAP, 1982



Digital Audio Tape





The Mp3 Player



�Diamond's product Rio was destined to undermine the creation of a legitimate digital distribution marketplace..." -- RIAA President Hillary Rosen in 1998



The Digital Video Recorder



"It's theft...Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming." Turner Broadcasting CEO Jaime Kellner in 2002

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There's been plenty of talk (and a ton of posts here on Techdirt) discussing both SOPA (originally E-PARASITE) and PROTECT IP (aka PIPA), but it seemed like it would be useful to create a single, "definitive" post to highlight why both of these bills are extremely problematic and won't do much (if anything) to deal with the issues they're supposed to deal with, but will have massive unintended consequences. I also think it's important to highlight how PIPA is almost as bad as SOPA. Tragically, because SOPA was, some in the entertainment industry have seen it as an opportunity to present PIPA as a "compromise." It is not. Both bills have tremendous problems, and they start with the fact that neither bill will help deal with the actual issues being raised.That main issue, we're told over and over again, is "piracy" and specifically "rogue" websites. And, let's be clear: infringement. But the question is? Much of the evidence suggests that it's not an enforcement problem and it's not a legal problem. Decades of evidence from around the globe all show the same thing: making copyright law or enforcement stricter. It does not decrease infringement at all -- and, quite frequently, leads to more infringement . That's because the reason that there's infringement in the first place is that consumers are being under-served . Historically, infringement has never been about "free," but about indicating where the business models have not kept up with the technology.Thus, the real issue is that this is. As we've seen over and over and over again, those who embrace what the internet enables, have found themselves to be much better off than they were before. They're able to build up larger fanbases, and to rely on various new platforms and services to make more money.And, as we've seen with near perfect consistency, the, by far, to decrease infringement is to offer awesome new services that areand useful. This doesn't mean just offering any old service -- and it certainly doesn't mean trying to limit what users can do with those services. And, most importantly, it doesn't mean treating consumers like they were criminals and "pirates." It means constantlythe consumer experience. When that consumer experience is great, then people switch in droves. You can, absolutely, compete with free, and many do so. If more were able to without restriction, infringement would decrease. If you look at the two largest contributors to holding back "piracy" lately, it's been Netflix and Spotify. Those two services alone have been orders of magnitude more successful in decreasing infringement than any new copyright law. Because they compete by beingandthan infringement.Finally, even if you disagree with all of that, and believe that the problem is enforcement, SOPA and PIPA, won't be effective in dealing with that. The internet always has a way of routing around "damage" no matter how hard people try to stop it, and the approach put forth by these bills is a joke. It's hard to find anyone with technology skills who thinks that they will be effective. Every "blockade" has an easy path around it, and the supposed "anti-circumvention" rule in SOPA will never deal with the more obvious paths around things like DNS blocking (use a different DNS or a perfectly legal foreign VPN system). The private right of action efforts are also mistargeted. They're based on the premise that infringement is done for monetary reasons. It's amusing that just a few years ago, these same industries insisted that music and movie fans never wanted to pay anything any more, but now they're claiming that these same people are paying for cyberlockers all the time? That's simply not credible. And if there's so much money to be made, the studios and labels would be opening their own cyberlockers. Either way, we've watched this game of Whac-a-mole for over a decade. It doesn't work. Every site that is shut down leads to half a dozen new ones that spring up. This is not how you tackle a problem: by making the same mistake made over and over again in the past.So... SOPA & PIPA don't attack the real problem, do nothing to build up the services that do solve the problem, and won't work from a technological standpoint. And that's just if we look at the what these bills areto do.The real fear is the massive collateral damage these bills will have to jobs, the economy and innovation.To be honest, there are many, many more problems hidden down within the specifics of the bill, but this post was already getting long enough. However, what we have is a bill that doesn't tackle the real problems at all, that won't solve the problem it thinks it's facing, and has massive unintended consequences. Why? Well, because the entertainment industry insists that it's in trouble. This is the same entertainment industry who has been claiming the same thing about every technological innovation ever. If they'd had their way in the past, there would be no radio, no cable TV, no VCR, no TiVo and no iPods. Do we really trust them now to create a "narrowly focused" law that will only target the really bad behaviors? We'll close it out with a few quotes from the entertainment industry over the last century discussing various technological innovations, and question why we're letting them drive PIPA and SOPA forward:

Filed Under: bad ideas, censorship, copyright, economy, investment, jobs, pipa, protect ip, secondary liability, sopa