The Graphic Artist's Guild has pulled back from supporting SOPA. Now they want to know who's going to save them from piracy. Frankly, this enrages me. In 1986, 22-year-old me could tell that preventing digital duplication would be difficult to prevent - and that was just from looking at the copyright problems surrounding xerography. Since then, I haven't seen anything that counters that. The basic nature of the problem (preventing a computer from making an exact duplicate of a string of 1's and 0's) militates against there being a simple or widely useable solution. If a sideline observer like me can see the problem, why the hell have the people and organizations with actual economic interests been ignoring it? They've had over 20 years to work out solutions to the problem, and legislating protections for their old business models is the best they can do? Apparently it's OK if automation throws a bunch of factory workers out of their jobs, but being 'creative' entitles you to special legal protections, even if those protections cost the rest of us in terms of increased costs and decreased civil rights. You know what I say to that? Screw you, GAG, and you, Author's Guild, and the MPAA, and the RIAA. You should have been paying attention to the shifts in technology and society, instead of sleazing around legislative back doors with wads of cash.
To be clear: it's not the creative people I'm angry at, it's the groups that claim to be acting in their best interest. I don't believe they are - to me it seems as though they are acting to preserve their own status quo, rather than the livelihoods of the people they claim to be protecting. For my own part, I am down for doing anything I can to ensure that those who are actually creating new things get paid well enough that they can keep on doing it. I buy their stuff, I promote their work where and when I can, I am constantly thinking and fiddling with ideas and tools to make it easier for anyone to create, distribute, and GET PAID for the years of training and practice required to do the unique and amazing things they do. SOPA and PROTECT-IP and similar legislative ham-handedness do nothing towards those goals; they exist primarily to serve those who have the time, money, and lawyers to exploit the legal system for profit.
(Originally posted on Google+ 2011-12-28)
