Hello guys and girls

I couldn't hel to wonder what is daniweb's community position towards the Stop Online Piracy Act to be discussed today in the US Congress.

Is Dani censoring the logo tonight?

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Too little too late. They can try and throw up all these provisions and laws to try and prevent piracy but when over 50% of young people are violating copyrights in one form or another (and a significant portion of the older people) the battle is already lost. The culture has changed and it will take more than a few angry execs/celebs/politicians to change it back. Creating more punitive laws and trying to enforce them will just cause a public backlash and be viewed as big corporations running our country. A new approach has to be taken to persuade users/consumers that they should pay for material. And new business models which allow creators to profit without selling their product is the only way forward.

I for one have no problem with sitting through advertisements to stream a video/tv show online or to have my browser filled with ads while streaming music. Nor would I object to and IP tax or surcharge on internet bills. If there was a way to donate online to creators without spreading my credit card details across the web I would do it.

I've heard at least one story of a musician who had the rates of piracy go down after they removed DRM from their downloads. When consumers feel they are being treated poorly by the people who want their business they fight back anyway they can, it is moronic for corporations to try and go to war with their consumers. It only results in a lose-lose situation for everybody.

the only reason they had piracy seemingly go down is because they lost all means to track it...

But yes, the cat is out of the bag and has been since the introduction of the CD-ROM some 20 years ago.

I won't however support any law that forces me to pay a "download fee" through taxes or otherwise, as that gives a free pass to lawlessness, legitimises disrespect for private property, and forces me to pay for other peoples' piracy so they can pirate all the want when I refuse to do it (I DO respect other peoples' property).

As is the only things that can possibly work is very active enforcement of existing laws, removing the business licenses and shutting down any ISP, hosting provider, and software or hardware creator or vendor who helps or shields pirates, and convicting pirates to penalties equivalent to the penalties enacted for stealing similar amounts of physical goods (so if you're caught with 20.000 tracks of pirated music, you're dealt with the same way as you'd be when being caught with 1000 CDs).
Education also plays a part, teaching kids respect for property, that it's NOT ok to steal and vandalise, and graphic examples of the consequences to them if they do it anyway.

I guess over 700,000 people responded,PRETTY AMAZING!!!!

Its sad,this is just another attempt by the US to run the world :(

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Too late - I agree. Corps make big money from the savings that the internet offers - no distribution fees, cutting out a number of middle men, to offer inflated prices, thereby making greater profits. I don't advocate piracy for one minute, but our global culture has progressed to a point where we expect free software, music, video, free use of images etc. It's terrible that it has come to this, but I feel whatever legislation is passed, users will not desist. Big noise, little effect. If the work was affordable in the first place, that may make a difference.

If the work was affordable in the first place, that may make a difference.

sadly, it won't. I've worked a volunteer job supporting from low priced game addons in the past (we got free access to the products, that's it), and we had major problems with piracy.
Some of us made it a job to look for pirated products on eBay and shut down the vendors, what they found was huge quantities of freeware (but not public domain) being sold there, often alongside products released by us and colleagues.
Most of our stuff cost like $30, hardly something to break the bank, some other companies sold things for $10 or less and still had to deal with piracy.
Of that $30, a full third was taken up by means to deter at least casual piracy and to cover the cost of dealing with it (increased load on customer support, increased bandwidth for the support forums and download servers, etc.).

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