Look at the
Business Software Alliance Members
Why would Microsoft and Apple buy Hollywood companies to kill those bills when when they
agree with SOPA and PIPA? I don't see them on any of the "companies that oppose SOPA and PIPA" lists. Copyright is even more important for Microsoft and Apple (and the other members of the Business Software Alliance).
I sort-of agree with the article, but unfortunately the game producers (which IMHO are the successors to Hollywood entertainment complex) tend to
support those bills! Electronic Arts supports it directly (instead of hiding in the Business Software Alliance, and pretending that they don't support it).
The real problem here is the open floodgates of money (and corruption) since the "Citizens United" Supreme Court ruling that Corporations can contribute unlimited quantities of money to any politician. Congress or
these people need to update the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform law to limit corporate donations to those of an individual. As an individual, I cannot contribute unlimited quantities of money to a politician, so why should a corporation be able to? I don't expect congress to act on this, since they are the recipients of this new orgy of cash.
We need to lobby congress ourselves, or at least donate to
these people to lobby on our behalf, in opposition of these bills.
DMCA is an abomination, and these bills take it to the next level of absurdity.
There are no technical or legislative measures that can ever prevent all piracy! These MegaCorporations have already eroded our fair use rights with DMCA. They are already censoring free speech and shutting down fair use, with unwarranted DMCA takedown notices. There are no checks and balances to their power, and now they want to turn every citizen of this country into a felon. Enough is enough!
We could kill these bills with two amendments. The first one would be to require a different copyright symbol to apply the new law to a copyrighted work (or a company could go "all in" with all of their copyrighted works). This would be an opt-in arrangement. The second amendment would be to make any copyrighted works subject to these laws have an expiration time of one year from the copyright date. This would kill or neuter the bills. No copyright holder in their right mind would permit their works to expire in one year, even if they had one year of guaranteed "no piracy."
The next thing we need to do is to repeal the CTEA that will effectively make copyright permanent. In its place, the government could put in place a law where copyright extensions are possible, but with a fee that doubles every year, starting at USD $1M per year (from the original pre-CTEA copyright expiration dates). Given the small number of copyrights that this would apply to, a government-run website could easily disseminate a list of works that have had their copyrights extended, such as the original Mickey Mouse Cartoon that caused the CTEA to be enacted. Our government could certainly use the money!
All other works not on that list (that have expired due to the original time limits) would then become part of the Public Domain! Copyrights were never intended to be "forever."
