A better title might be, "Killing the internet to preserve the old methods of distribution so segments of the movie industry dont have to adapt."
Hollywood is trying to fight against an enemy that they don't understand. They think censoring piracy will stop it, when it's obvious that it wont. Gabe Newell said it best - “In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem".
Their arguments are also pretty inconsistent. They complain about piracy, yet Avatar, a movie released in the age of piracy, is the highest-grossing movie of all time.
They aren't afraid of loses from piracy, instead they are afraid that they'll have to start producing quality content instead of dumb movies like Jeniffer's Body, Jack and Jill, Season of the Witch, Red Riding Hood and Shark Night.
I think they are afraid of Youtube, and they are even afraid of becoming obsolete. I think this is the real reason for SOPA.
What happened through the Opensource movement is beginning to repeat in the movie industry. Twenty years ago Big Blue, Cray et.al. laughed at Linux and GNU. Now Linux has gained world domination in the mobile market (Android), and now Linux is leading the TOP 500 supercomputer list.
I think the same phenomeon is starting right now in the movie industry. Private people produce massive amounts of short movies with low quality. But in the long run I believe they will produce high quality movies which will eventually compete with Hollywood standards.
With suitable software and upcoming PCs with multicore processors and possibly TB of RAM it is not an illusion that even a single person could produce movies which match Hollywood standard.
I wonder if they have drank their own Kool-Aid. Maybe they actually believe they could double their revenue if it wasn't for the pirates. Do they actually believe that every pirated film is a lost sale?
If this is how they think, then their behaviour w.r.t. SOPA et al. makes sense. They could double their profits!
They are having record breaking revenue years in 2009 and 2010. It's not like they are suffering the downtown that the newspaper industry has and they don't have nearly the legal protections that Hollywood has and while they are struggling, they are adapting.
If Hollywood were to take a new approach to entertainment, who's to say they wouldn't be having even higher revenue than they are having now? It just seems like a fix for a problem that doesn't exist.
So, I've been thinking. I know the whole "don't attribute to malice..." line, but isn't it possible that SOPA is an effort by big media to control all online content? Is there anything in the proposed laws that mandates rights-holders actively pursue violators? (Trademark law does have this requirement.)
Could SOPA be used as a tool to weaken content-driven tech startups, until they can either be shut down or scooped up at bargain basement prices by a studio? Would it be completely inconceivable that an industry guilty of payola (multiple times over) might collude to use SOPA only target web properties not owned by an RIAA/MPAA member?
Hell, I don't even think collusion would be required. All it would take is a massive cross-licensing deal covering online media. Then BAM! You're logging on to Sony Facebook or sharing a link on Twitter by TimeWarner. What if the true targets of SOPA aren't the pirates, but rather the small tech startups that have been making so much noise about how harmful passage would be to their business model. The small tech startups that aren't so small anymore and, day by day, are looking more and more like the future of content.
I begin to wonder if the studios are not so ignorant of technology trends as we might hope, but rather see a way to ensure that our computer screens are controlled by the same groups that control our television and movie theater screens...
Those small tech startups are exploiting a loophole in the law to allow them to monetize the studios' content. There is nothing unethical about monopolizing access to content you create.
Think of how profitable cable & satellite TV is now. If they applied that model of guaranteed revenue to the entire Internet, and eliminated piracy 100% with SOPA II, they will make hundreds billions of dollars more.
This is not about stopping piracy, it's about gaining control and a market of guaranteed revenue regardless of the junk they put out through it. In other words, this sinister conspiracy you suggest is just in fact good business, they 100% know about technology trends and thus is why they seek to control, manipulate and police the Internet at this early stage rather when it's too late to take it over.
Hanlon's razor (aka "cock-up before conspiracy") is nothing more than an opinion. Whether we should regard selfishness as malice or not is beside the point, but it is quite clear to me that people in general often act out of selfishness!!
This is so clear to me, that I am convinced that Hanlon's razor is utter hogwash (because I do actually think that selfishness and malice are simply one and the same and furthermore when someone "screws up" it's often because they were being selfish with regards to the use of their attention (e.g. texting while driving)).
Thanks for digging up that info. Was just about to reach for my favourite search engine to find evidence that Hollywood, in fact, is not dying.
Regardless of the sensationalist title of the article, I agree with it's point of view.
Title aside, I thought it was a good article that summarized the problems with SOPA, from multiple angles, for the largely disinterested populace out there.
As a Canadian I worry more about US media corporations influencing Canadian politicians which leads to laws being passed. Bev Oda being the the example of an MP that money can buy.
It's bad enough to have DMCA, HDCP, copy protection up the yin yang but when some suit in LA influences what laws are passed in a foreign land I say that's grounds for extradition of the executive and treason charges (or whatever the term would be) for the Canadian politician.
If the situation was reversed I'm sure people in the US would freak out if a music executive from Canada bribed a US congressman to help get laws passed.
I wish journalists would stop referring to SOPA as the "bill to stop piracy" or the "bill to save Hollywood". Even this article admits that SOPA is not going to do a thing to stop piracy. It's easily circumvented. The only thing it's going to accomplish is killing the Internet. There's no upside to it.
This isn't about saving Hollywood... Its about stopping the 99.99%'s of the populations first amendment platform - the internet. Its about stopping sites like Wikileaks and blogs that speak their opinions about the gov and politicians. thats my $.02
Actually everywhere in the world the big problem is the law makers of every country does not fully understand what law they are going to make. They just follow their party stand to save their political position.
Hollywood is trying to fight against an enemy that they don't understand. They think censoring piracy will stop it, when it's obvious that it wont. Gabe Newell said it best - “In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem".