It really bothers me that their lobbying organization is called "Creative America". Creative America is me and other people who make things. It's not corporate parasites who form insidious symbiotic relationships with corrupt congressmen to pass laws that strangle free expression.
"Creative America" does not represent artists and intellectual property producers. It represents the interests of the predators who feed off out what we produce while adding nothing of value, and the interests of those who want more power and control over the populace, including the ability to stiffle dissent.
I think Ars Technica should either put "Creative America" in quotes, abbreviate it CA, or place it in italics. Appearing many times in the article in plain typography is confusing and misleading.
This is a typical lobby tactic. I spent many years fighting similar interests related to DNS issues at ICANN and in Washington. Our position was to support a smaller ICANN and more control by the community - less regulation and more checks and balances. Anyways, we were always bouncing up against Big Business, Big Media and the Telco's and they would lobby back under the guise of organizations like The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, The Free Speech Coalition, Net Choice and many others. After a while when I came across a new group, I'd just take the opposite of what their name said and that usually represented their position.
Many of these groups have mastered pre-emptive appropriation of key terms, usually forcing the opposition to do verbal backflips in order to make their point without conceding the oppositions opinion.
That's interesting. We are still united, but I think most people would look on the US as a single entity, not co-operating states anymore. States have lost most of their sovereignty. But then again, at the time we came up with the name, it was more fitting.
This is exactly what annoys me about it; all artists I know are against. I don't think many creative people are in favor of SOPA/PIPA. Maybe Lars Ulrich is... I guess he should be considering his stance on 'copyright' and I hear he needs a 12.000th pool. /rant. Anyway; it's the publishers across the board, not the creative people. The creative people should let their voice be heard; maybe they cannot because of contracts or?
It's especially ironic considering the nature of the blackout protest.
On one side, for the most part, we have a bunch of creators using their own creations to spread the message. On the other, there's a bunch of distribution companies paying someone else to spread their message for them. So of course, guess which side picks a name claiming to represent the "Creative"s.
"Creative America" does not represent artists and intellectual property producers. It represents the interests of the predators who feed off out what we produce while adding nothing of value, and the interests of those who want more power and control over the populace, including the ability to stiffle dissent.
I think Ars Technica should either put "Creative America" in quotes, abbreviate it CA, or place it in italics. Appearing many times in the article in plain typography is confusing and misleading.