Entries tagged “SOPA”
RIAA CEO Hopes SOPA Protests Were a ‘One-Time Thing’ (Link Post)
March 12, 2012
When Wikipedia and Google purport to be neutral sources of information, but then exploit their stature to present information that is not only not neutral but affirmatively incomplete and misleading, they are duping their users into accepting as truth what are merely self-serving political declarations…
Julian Sanchez on the economics of piracy(Link Post)
February 4, 2012
No doubt piracy is costing the content industries something—or they wouldn’t be throwing so much money at Congress in support of this kind of legislation. If we could wave a magic wand and have less piracy, obviously that would be good. But in the real world, where enforcement has direct costs to the taxpayer, regulation has costs on the industries it burdens, and the reduction in piracy they’re likely to produce is very small, it seems important to point out that the credible evidence for the magnitude of the harm is fairly thin…
You know, I think Michael Arrington is a scumbag most of the time. But so far, anything he has written that is remotely political, I have agreed with (and yes, this does sometimes keep me up at night… just kidding). Take this piece for instance…
The US government dropped a nuclear bomb on “cyberlocker” site Megaupload today, seizing its domain names, grabbing $50 million in assets, and getting New Zealand police to arrest four of the site’s key employees, including enigmatic founder Kim Dotcom…
Megaupload.com shut down, founder charged with violating piracy laws(Link Post)
January 21, 2012
Federal prosecutors in Virginia have shut down notorious file-sharing site Megaupload.com and charged the service’s founders with violating piracy laws. The Associated Press broke the story on Thursday, reporting that the indictment accuses Megaupload.com’s owner with costing copyright holders including record labels and movie studios more than $500 million in lost revenue…
Seth’s Blog: When the world changes… (Link Post)
January 18, 2012
It’s painful, expensive, time-consuming, stressful and ultimately pointless to work overtime to preserve your dying business model…
“Clearly stated, we do not support SOPA and its intent to restrict the Internet,” said Taylor. “The values of freedom, creativity and innovation are at the core of our business, and SOPA is not in accordance with those values.”…
It looks like these PR moves to save face, and business, are completely futile. According to TheDomains, 21,054 domains were transferred away from Go Daddy on Friday alone. At $6.99 a pop, that would make for a loss of $147,167, not taking future renewals into account. The day before wasn’t a good one for the company either, with 15,000 people taking their domains elsewhere. That means that even though Go Daddy changed its stance, people have had enough…