[Wikimedia-l] O'Dwyer

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 8:19 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 27 June 2012 18:51, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at gmail.com> wrote:> And
> hell, there really are two points of view about copyright,
>
> I understand you've not really studied the subject but there are far
> more than that.



Let's just start with the notion that there might be more than just *one*
view. ;)

Useful article about the Internet's impact on musicians, in an independent
UK music newspaper:

http://www.thestoolpigeon.co.uk/features/interview-robert-levine-ben-watt-sopa-internet-piracy.html

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*How well drafted is SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and what impact do you
think it will have? *

That’s very hard to answer because it’s a complicated law that keeps
changing almost daily. I think SOPA had some problems, some of which were
solved before Christmas and almost all of which will be solved when the
DNS-blocking provisions are blocked. At the same time, most of the
objections were a little silly — enforcing copyright isn’t censorship, and
I can’t see how keeping the current structure of the internet the same way
it was in 1995 is more important than a body of law that’s hundreds of
years old.

The truth is that most of SOPA’s opponents will object to anything that
enforces copyright because they hate it on principle or their businesses
depend on the intellectual property of others — mostly the latter. And it’s
important to remember that many of the nonprofit organisations that came
out against the bill receive some funding from Google. Again, to be clear,
SOPA had problems. But it’s important to keep in mind that the goal of the
other side isn’t to derail SOPA — it’s to prevent any kind of law or legal
precedent that would protect creators’ rights.

*It’s hard to avoid big names from the the arts speaking out strongly
against SOPA at the moment. Both Stephen Fry and the comedy writer Graham
Linehan (‘Father Ted’, ‘The Ladykillers’) have been very outspoken on
Twitter this week. Do you feel they are misguided? *

There are plenty of aspects to SOPA that one can legitimately dislike, but
there’s also a great amount of misinformation. It’s a complex issue that’s
not very well-suited for the tone of the modern media, and it’s even less
well-suited for 140-character tweets. For example, I would not consider
blocking sites like The Pirate Bay to be censorship and neither would US
courts, from what I understand. The truth is that the law wouldn’t change
what’s illegal as much as who’s responsible for infringement — and the
reason Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists are so opposed to it is because
they don’t want any responsibility at all.

To some extent, this is really an argument about corporate liability that
Google is hiding beneath a lot of rhetoric about free speech. That doesn’t
mean there aren’t some free speech issues involved, or that there are no
legitimate reasons to dislike the law; it’s a complicated issue that merits
an extensive and serious discussion (which, to be fair, neither side is
exactly calling for). But many of the nonprofits who have come out against
the law receive funding from Google — and that includes Wikipedia.


---o0o---

It's nice to see not everyone has drunk the Kool-Aid.