Ordinary people’s
livelihoods need protecting from copyright theft somehow – but SOPA is too high
a price to pay.
Apologies to software testing blog entry fans, but this week
it’s another generic IT-related post. This can’t wait because, as you may have
noticed, there was a
blackout of several websites last week, most prominently Wikipedia. This
was in protest over the Stop
Online Piracy Act (SOPA) going through the US House of
Representatives, and although this is only a US law, like software patents it
stands to affect the UK. The participation
of Wikipedia has suddenly brought this issue into the spotlight, with
pro-piracy activists, pro-control record companies and all sorts of people in
between giving their points of view.
Let me be absolutely clear: I have no time for pirates,
especially not those who run websites like The Pirate Bay. They are not noble
crusaders selflessly standing up for internet freedom – they are big businesses who make
a packet from advertising and subscriptions without the tedium of sharing
the proceeds with anyone who made the stuff in the first place. Yes,
the music industry has survived home taping, CD copying and bootleg market
stalls, but file-sharing makes the practice much easier, so the issue must be
taken seriously. I couldn’t care less if Jay-Z or the chairman of
Sony-BMG can’t afford an extra Mercedes, but they aren’t the real victims. And
I’m not talking about the people who work in the music industry (although this
is a valid point the record companies make), but the small-time artists
struggling to make a living.
