The Great Abstraction

Re: SOPA - Put my money where your mouth is

One of the most common arguments lobbied against SOPA and PIPA is that there is a wealth of data to suggest piracy actually increases revenue to content creators/publishers. Anti-SOPA enthusiasts love to reference the recording industry’s public war on radio (and later cassette and compact disc manufacturers) as examples of its initially alarmist and, eventually, glacial adoption of a technology that ends up compounding its revenue. But they don’t seem to want to tell the most pivotal part of the story —- the boycott:

In 1941, ASCAP, having already raised its royalty rates by over 448% from 1931-1939, blew minds by doubling its fees to radio stations. Radio stations responded by boycotting all ASCAP artists for ten months, instead spinning freebie arrangements of public domain music and as well as lesser-known artists from the growing catalogue of recently formed competitor Broadcast Music Inc (BMI), which mainly represented independent country and blues artists from the rest of the nation. Eventually ASCAP was forced to renegotiate much lower fees in order to get the spins again. In 1942, major label minds were further blown when a brand new label, Capitol Records entered the market by audaciously giving radio stations free copies of their records to spin. By 1946 Capitol had positioned itself as one of the six majors, selling over 42 million record (Incidentally, Capitol records was also the first major music label to embrace Internet-delivered music - in 1997). 

Why don’t these “pirated” content aggregators and gateways prove their point by giving the RIAA and MPAA what they think they want: removal of their copyrighted content? If history is any indicator, those same labels will be paying them for placement in a few short years —- Payola 2.0, as it were. So why not clear out the Hollywood content, and give that real-estate to independent artists that recognize the value of P2P exposure?

Here’s why: because for companies like Megaupload, Piratebay, Google, etc., SOPA is not really about 1st amendment rights, over-reaching government, or ruining the spirit of our precious porn-ridden internet… it’s about ad revenue. And they have no intention of sharing that money with the creators of the content they’re exploiting, famous or not. 

And that is exactly what SOPA, however flawed, was intended to address.

Now I’m not saying I think SOPA should’ve passed, and I’m not saying that we don’t need to be conscious of legislation that may effect our rights and our freedoms, I’m saying most of you don’t seem to realize that you’re parroting press releases from conglomerates, not revolutionaries. You don’t seem to be reading the actual bill before posting, ”they hate our internet freedom.” 

Find the balance in the argument and advocate that. Otherwise, y’all just sound like Bush Jr., and that dude was dumb as a porch.