Most of the RIAA’s statistics are false and presumptuous at best. It’s either naive or dishonest to assume that every single person who pirates or infringes on an IP would ever be a customer, or that they would do so given the general disposition of the entertainment sector.

In fact, many new musicians are giving away their content for free on Youtube and other sites while finding this openness rewarded with both donations and purchases. The RIAA defends record companies who have ripped off musicians for half a century and this bill was another terrible attempt to defend a fleeting monopoly.

+ Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.
Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open conversation kills companies.
+ There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market.
+ In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.
+ As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.

They have been trying to take control back since Pandora opened her box

http://www.cluetrain.com/

That’s the book that many wish had never been written:

“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.”

Including torrent-finder, which only lists sites that in some cases (not all) deal in copyrighted materials (though not in their entirety).

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/the-rise-of-web-censorship/375?tag=nl.e539

So ICE has shut down sites guilty of no crime except TALKING about other sites with censored materials.

Never mind our first amendment rights, we weren’t using them anyway.

Well some of us upstarts were… have no doubt, we’re next.

Your faith has been fulfilled!

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/the-rise-of-web-censorship/375?tag=nl.e539

Ahead of the bill’s passage, ICE is already shutting down websites guilty only of listing other websites that deal on some level in copyrighted material – a CLEAR violation of the 1st amendment. Let it be noted that the torrent-finder website didn’t actually host anything in violation of the law.

Go on folks, have faith! See how far it gets you.

And why would they?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_scandals_of_the_United_States

Gosh, power never corrupted anyone…

Dude, stop that. Not every download file would have actually been purchased. You are making a seriously biased argument with inflated numbers.

Really?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/the-rise-of-web-censorship/375?tag=nl.e539

That’s called ICE getting a jump on the new bill. They didn’t just shut down counterfeiters, they shut down directories that simply list other places that might h

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/the-rise-of-web-censorship/375?tag=nl.e539

Is it?

Billions is it? Let’s see a citation for those numbers.

My guess is that you are making a blind assumption: that someone who streams music or downloads a TV episode they missed would have otherwise bought it. In most cases, they would simply give it a miss and pay for something more entertaining.

Record and movie executives seen “billions” in lost revenue to people who will store a digital copy of something they may never even listen to (8 of 10 songs on an album) and would certainly never pay for under other circumstances (Really? You wanted how much for each episode of Heroes on iTunes?)

But I digress, that tends to happen when I come into contact with one of the “faithful” who has an almost religious zeal for the (often unconstitutional) actions of a few government wonks.

“You need to have faith” has been the basis for every religious war ever fought in the bloody course of our history.

You, Vladdie, need to be more cynical.

Kinda sucks that you can’t edit your own posts..
(edit of last line in above post by me)
_{“political donations” would be some pretty oblivious thinking imo.}

When you do manage to create media you wish to profit from, the best way these days is to seek not a publisher or recording studio, but such websites as Amazon.com, itunes, or some other Digital Media giant that took the time to put in the necessary means to protect the media and enable it to generate money when consumed.

With technology being the way it is today, most people with talent in the Arts can cut out the middle man and all the sudden it became a lot cheaper to produce your own media! All it takes is either learning how yourself, or finding someone you trust to help you. You can use Social Media to promote yourself. Can you see where I’m coming from here? Times have changed a lot since the 90’s where Media Moguls ruled with an Iron Fist. Hell, they’re looking for people who can do all these things themselves before they’d even think about signing them, at which point they have the power to control what you produce! Would you rather not have that external influence?

The Recording and Media industries just need to FLAT OUT EVOLVE their business models and adapt to Digital Media. Passing this bill isn’t the answer to their lack of implementing Safe-guards ala I-tunes back when they easily could have.

It shouldn’t be the Government’s job to bail out Industries that make mistakes, especially if those mistakes were intentionally made due to greed or some other obscure reason only the rich stock-holders fathom. Corporations and industries and especially the rich need to learn from mistakes just like everyone else does.

This bill will just be the beginning of more power over the internet being taken away from the people, and given to the Government and bodies of interest that have the power to sway political decisions.

To think that Political parties aren’t swayed by the people lining their coffers with “Political Donations” are totally oblivious.

DHS shuts down 70 websites and COICA isn’t even a law.

http://www.osnews.com/story/24074/US_Government_Censors_70_Websites

“Then child porn websites aren’t blocked. They’re disabled or taken down then the people responsible are brought to justice, all of which is not censorship.”

That is the same thing this bill does, and yes that is censorship. In a truly free and uncensored internet you will find all kind of things, free, unbiased, uncensored, good, bad, repulsive, you name it. The removal of anything by government or a business is a form of censorship.

“Censorship is suppression of speech or other communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body.”

Are you kidding? Spam and viruses are destructive to everyone, unwanted. In most cases people can choose to block this stuff or not. You can always unblock you favorite spammers and virus writers. Read your junk mail folder everyday if you want, get infected, scammed, identity stolen, and buy some counterfeit stuff. You argument in this case to is complete fail.

Well yes it is censorship when you block anything you find offensive. Maybe we should be like Pakistan and block Facebook. When you start down this path, where do you stop?

They are losing money because they are still using an outdated business model. If you don’t change your business model to keep up with technology your business will fail. Bribing the government protection is out of bounds for a civil matter. The majority of traders wouldn’t buy the music anyway; nothing of value was ever lost.

When music is made and released for free, you know its art. That is why so many garage bands became very popular early in their careers, but years later they are have turned fans away with garbage. Look at NIN, releasing their art for free and making money with a new business model that works. Don’t be so ignorant about the music business and how it functions.

This bill gives the government the power to remove any website from the internet by claiming infringement. COICA is an abuse of power, it’s bad for everyone. If this bill passes, you will see these powers expanded to remove other things the government or businesses don’t want online. DMCA is bad enough.

To everyone that thinks that this is an even decent idea just read this article: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/11/case-against-coica

First my “opinion” is based on fact, unlike Taylor’s, making it fact instead of just “opinion.”

Then that’s fine NHWynter, but obviously it is your knowledge that is limited. You actually proved my point in your argument, since when are Yahoo, Google, AOL, and Microsoft the government/ISP? They’re two different body’s, one being private and one being the government; also they DON’T block the websites. Why would we have anti this and that to block the websites for us otherwise????

Then lastly sir it is you that does not understand the definition of censorship because the definition matches the purposes of this bill exactly. Just in case though, according to Cambridge “to remove anything offensive or to remove parts considered unsuitable.” Yep, that pretty much sounds like the bill…“a service provider…shall take reasonable steps that will prevent a domain name from resolving to that domain name’s Internet protocol address.”

This is another example of “Slippery Slope” legislation.
Today it’s “pirate sites” being shut down. Tomorrow it will “dissenting sites”.
The reality today is that money talks.
Just my $0.02

4ofjulyguy – Just because you say that Taylor’s argument is completely invalid doesn’t make it so. That is just your opinion.

I’m going to be honest. You clearly don’t understand the definition of censorship. And your claim that hackers/virus/spammer websites are not blocked by the Government/ISP is also false. I can state, for a fact, that YAHOO, Google, AOL, and Microsoft all DO block sites that are known for viruses and spam without you having to tell them to do so.

Also, please show me where it says that the Free Internet means that people can break the law by distributing copyrighted materials?

This bill isn’t just harmful to the structure of the internet but also the cause of internet neutrality as a whole.
As a supporter of internet neutrality, I believe that government regulation is necessary to prevent ISPs from abusing their position of power.However, if this bill gets passed, it will make many view the government as an ineffective corrupt censor disproved of its ability to uphold the intrest of the public.
As others have stated before me, this bill will not actually block users from accessing suppliers of contraband, but rather allowing them from accessing them through a DNS server. And I guarantee that work-around will pop up the second this bill gets passed, making its effectiveness null.
Thats why a believe this bill’s effect is far greater than the scope of the Internet Piracy debate; we should consider how it effects the topic of Telecommunication regulation as a whole.

The bill you are proposing “S.3804 – Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” is not good for the future of the internet. We understand that copyrighted materials should be protected, but this bill is not the way to do it. Private technology companies will figure out how to protect their investments. Please do not push this bill through, it is the wrong thing to do. Many of your supporters do not support a bill such as this and will definitely not support you in the future because you would be the guy who destroyed their free internet.

Copyright used to be a matter of civil law, before the MPAA mafia convinced the feds to start doing their dirty work for them. That’s why FBI notices appear on home releases of movies. Now it’s increasingly criminalized, even as copyright is also increasingly extended. Copyright today would be unrecognizable to the founding fathers, who put the concept into the Constitution with the express warning that copyright be limited in duration.
This bill would mean literally the end of the internet within US borders and territories and even open the door for other countries to follow suit.

While I might agree that uploading or downloading copyrighted content is wrong, I think our lawmakers should be very careful with the wording of this to be sure it doesn’t allow for restriction of rights of US citizens in other areas. There is so much other content on the internet that, in my opinion, should be restricted before working on this type of content, such as pornography sites. I’ll never forget the time I searched for pictures of boats at work and got some really embarrasing content. Scary. I fear for our rights as Americans when I see bills such as this and wonder what the next step will be. Public libraries where books are free to read? Will we still be able to access dictionaries and encyclopedias online? Will internet searches be monitored? What if I misspell a word and get search results that directs the attention of these watchdogs to me? Who will be appointed as these watchdogs? Do I still live in the US?

not only does this law try to combat copyright infringement, it also “attacks” websites like YouTube, Facebook, and WikiLeaks. all three of those sites are either on or they are trying to get on the “lists” of sites that they want to shut down.