SOPA / PIPA RIP Final Reflections

It has been nearly 3 weeks since our original article about SOPA, and the wave of public outcry has risen and broken. It was fascinating to watch it spiral from a minor news bullet to dominating Facebook, Twitter, major news as well as seeing blackouts and protest from major sites like Google and Wikipedia. It illustrates how powerful the internet is as a collective sharing and communications tool. And how the younger generation, often dismissed as politically apathetic, just needs the right context to get massive political angst.

My stance, overwhelmingly, is that the SOPA bill (and it’s cousin PIPA) are crap: too broad, special interest nightmare, unreasonable burden on free enterprise. My question to the masses is: what did you expect would happen? You have these massive moneymakers of old media in Hollywood and the record industry and you’d expect them to quietly watch a large chunk of their revenue publically disappear into piracy? At some level we must know that measures such as SOPA and DRM etc are reality. I have maybe a different perspective on this as the holder of several copyrights and patents.  Legal ownership to an idea isn’t security in the slightest. The burden is on the holder to protect it…in court, with expensive discovery and attorneys. Intellectual property is something that roots in our most basic of constitutional rights so I am loathe to throw that out the window quickly. When Napster was up part of the rush of downloading was knowing it was about to get shut down. That it wasn’t sustainable and couldn’t be.

An argument can be made both for and against the need for big business in creative arts (software, music, film). Films like The Dark Night could never come from an indie environment. Yet films like Primer couldn’t come from the box office.  Whatever the scale, I believe in the right of profit to be made on ideas. That if you have a good idea and can execute then you should be able to make money on it. And if the amount of money isn’t proportional or bad business practices are involved then that is a separate issue. But the probability of ideas is critical for innovation. Without financial incentive for entrepreneurs there is no motive for change or improvement and the U.S.  stands still as the globe spins.

The system is broke, that much is obvious and we gain nothing by mindlessly chanting the slogan. Furthermore outcry and activism without meaningful reform is actually causing more harm than good. Without solutions the system remains broken and those who are trying to fix it legislatively are only growing more determined and more frustrated. They and the core issue of Intellectual Property are never going away. We can’t ignore it. We need more models like Spotify that satisfy this instant gratification generation but still profit the other interests in the transaction. We must take ownership of the problem and design and build systems that work and are equitable for everyone.