SOPA

[egosheep]

This Stop Online Piracy Act has been in the news a lot lately. Gibson, Fender, Taylor and Peavey have come out in support of the bill. I was wondering if RIC had any official stance on it, or if it affected their sphere of copyright law.

[jps]

RIC has always been an enforcer of anti-piracy, just read some posts here on the forum, and you will see their stance.

[rickenbrother]

I hope this thread doesn't get too political because having my own website, internet piracy is a concern for me as well. I use electronic means to find the infringers. They have used material from my website and my vidoes without permission. They put my info on these "Dummy" storage sites. The effort for owner of the storage site is only to use a boiler plate template website and stick everyone else's efforts on their site so they can have ads and make money off everyone else's hard work, even though the person being infringed on isn't making a penny or even pays to have their site up. Until the website who has embedded my vids without permission removes them. My vids are hidden. Unfortunately Youtube does not have a selective site embedding tool.
The site that is taking my vids is also taking vids from many others and believe some of them are Rickenbacker bassists right from this forum, no permission asked, no credit is given and THAT site makes the money.
Not too long ago, there were sites stealing my wring diagrams. I had to hide them also.
I will not post those sites here. I'm not giving them free advertising.
Maybe I should have written a book!

[Halbert]

I have an opinion on this, but since political discussions are against the rules I will leave it at that.

[Clint]

I really can't see how a thread, on a political topic, isn't going to get too political.

Defending intellectual property rights has always been a hard sell and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

[winston]

Comments do have to avoid political overtones of course but this is really an important issue to so many artists and corporate entities. I also have my personal views and fears but they largely have to be kept to myself as well.

I can say this however and still stay within the rules of our forum:

Unintended impact to individuals and corporations could possibly be a bi-product of the effort to protect intellectual property rights. The common fear is that enforcement of the law (if passed) could possibly extend far beyond the original intent. It is a difficult subject for law makers to broach considering that the cat has been out of the bag (a wide open internet) for so long now.

In the interest of continuing to advance a successful business model that provides us all with good new music and new films and quality products, I also endorse the effort to control piracy, but I remain concerned along with so many others that this effort does not go so far as to limit our ability to continue to have free use of information that is currently at our disposal.

[Clint]

I think that sums up the problems and the pitfalls of this topic quite nicely. Well said, sir.

[Ivan3000]

SOPA is a load of rubbish. I could get really wild with descreptions and my feelings, but thats against the rules. So, I'll leave it at that. Rubbish!

[jps]

Unintended impact to individuals and corporations could possibly be a bi-product of the effort to protect intellectual property rights. The common fear is that enforcement of the law (if passed) could possibly extend far beyond the original intent.

Just as the Lacey Act has been a problem for an industry we are all involved with!

[winston]

SOPA is a load of rubbish!

Please be careful posting over simplified generalisations Ivan. You may not fully understand what is at stake here. This is a very complex issue. Let's just look at the music piracy side of the equation.

All of the professional musicians that I know on a personal basis understand and support the intent. They do not like having their products and their livelihoods stripped away from them by thieves who profit from the labours of the artist, many of whom wrote, arranged, played, sung and paid to record their products.

However a law if not crafted properly it can be misapplied, resulting in unintended consequences.

I am sure that if you made a living by selling your music you would see things quite differently.

[Ivan3000]

SOPA is a load of rubbish!

Please be careful posting over simplified generalisations Ivan. You may not fully understand what is at stake here. This is a very complex issue. Let's just look at the music piracy side of the equation.

All of the professional musicians that I know on a personal basis understand and support the intent. They do not like having their products and their livelihoods stripped away from them by thieves who profit from the labours of the artist, many of whom wrote, arranged, played, sung and paid to record their products.

However a law if not crafted properly it can be misapplied, resulting in unintended consequences.

I am sure that if you made a living by selling your music you would see things quite differently.

I completely understand it from that point, but I'd say the Cons of the Bill outweigh the Pros. This would cost the loss of all of the free information that is used for research in schools. Even if it does go through (I don't think it will, based on the fact that many people are pulling out of it) The people who have their heart set on piracy will still find a way, be it on the "deep web" or proxies, or any other way around it. If "Anonymous" (aka /b/ to some) can take down a FBI goverment institution, and hack the Playstation network. They can get past anything. Because they work together. All of this is illegal, like the massive DDOS attacks on websites, but people will still do it. I think that a few bad apples are spoiling it for everyone. I've never downloaded pirated stuff, sure I've broke some minor internet laws in order to listen to a song, and I've nabbed a password of a site to watch a TV show, but thats a drop in the bucket to most. People go wild with pirating, and they not only do it for themselves, but they try to make a profit on it aswell. I mean no disrespect to anyone saying this, I'm just voicing an opinion. If its not good Feel free to delete it.

[Grey]

I am sure that if you made a living by selling your music you would see things quite differently.

I make a living as an independant graphic artist and believe me when I say that piracy is far more common in my particular line of work, since it is an entirely digital medium. With all due respect to independant musicians, I don't think they are all that affected by Internet piracy due to the relatively indie/underground nature of their work. I'm trying to say this without ruffling any feathers, but the people who know about their work are probably fans who will want to support them and buy their material, or would like to own a physical copy of the album, and the people who would be pirating it are probably more interested in albums being produced by AAA record companies. Having said that, my point is, SOPA is rubbish.

These two bills, SOPA and the Protect IP Act extend far beyond protecting intellectual property. Do you like posting and watching music covers on YouTube? Technically, you don't own the right to redistribute that music, and these bills would allow the Government to take action against sites like YouTube and other online media sharing websites.

It's not worth sacrificing the farm to protect the henhouse from a wolf that may or may not be there.

[Ivan3000]

I am sure that if you made a living by selling your music you would see things quite differently.

I make a living as an independant graphic artist and believe me when I say that piracy is far more common in my particular line of work, since it is an entirely digital medium. With all due respect to independant musicians, I don't think they are all that affected by Internet piracy due to the relatively indie/underground nature of their work. I'm trying to say this without ruffling any feathers, but the people who know about their work are probably fans who will want to support them and buy their material, or would like to own a physical copy of the album, and the people who would be pirating it are probably more interested in albums being produced by AAA record companies. Having said that, my point is, SOPA is rubbish.

These two bills, SOPA and the Protect IP Act extend far beyond protecting intellectual property. Do you like posting and watching music covers on YouTube? Technically, you don't own the right to redistribute that music, and these bills would allow the Government to take action against sites like YouTube and other online media sharing websites.

It's not worth sacrificing the farm to protect the henhouse from a wolf that may or may not be there.

Very Well Said, Erik. If it goes through, they essentially ruin what people have worked over a decade to produce...Unlimited data for (Mosty) free use. If you take away this, you take away knowlege, but thats the way some argue the government wants the citizens. In the dark. I will not post my view on that statement because its against forum rules, and I don't want to ruff feathers either.

[winston]

Erik,

One top flight musician/songwriters that I know personally, calculated his loss in excess of a $500K. That's nothing to be sniffed at. Perhaps. re-read what I said earlier. The bill is most definitely flawed. The intent is not though.

[Grey]

Erik,

One top flight musician/songwriters that I know personally, calculated his loss in excess of a $500K. That's nothing to be sniffed at. Perhaps. re-read what I said earlier. The bill is most definitely flawed. The intent is not though.

I would need more information in regards to what caused these losses to comment on that further, otherwise I would just be speculating.

I read an interesting study about piracy in the video game industry which revealed that second hand sales were more detremental than piracy. This is because many people who pirate content be it music, video games, movies, and so forth, are made up of users who would not have bought the material to begin with. They do not factor in as "losses" because they were never going to make a purchase in the first place, they only pirate as a matter of avilability. Whereas money made from second hand sales, (i.e used purchases) is money that people would have likely spent on retail albums and the like but instead decided to buy used, with the label/artist seeing none of that. These products circulate the used market and continue to make money on resale factor while the artist only recieved the proceeds from the initial sale.