Diary of a Mad Editor

If the supporters of the Stop Online Piracy Act believe there piece of crap bill will actually stop intellectual property theft, I’ve got some motorhome insurance to sell ya. Seriously, Online pirates will adapt if this bill becomes law. What will happen is a gross violation of our constitutional rights, a violation that will essentially break the Internet.

Although, intended to block sites dedicated to distributing Pirated material (sites like Piratebay.org and MegaUpload, et. al.), what the bill mostly does is promote censorship and violate our privacy rights.  The problem of online piracy has been grossly exaggerated by the entities that support this bill and, to the extent that it is a problem at all, those same entities have created the problem by there own draconian efforts to extend copyright, control access to intellectual property and fix prices.   It’s short sighted. Those who download from pirate sites generally fall into two groups:  those who weren’t going to buy the product in the first place and those who want to try something out to see if they like it before they buy it.  As such, the real loss of income from these illegal downloads is really minimal when you think about it logically.  Take a kid who downloads a Jay-Z song illegally. Maybe he was never going to pay for the song. Maybe he eventually pays for the whole album. And maybe he buys a concert ticket or several concert tickets. The government already has the tools to go after pirates and counterfeiters. We don’t need this oppressive bill that will only violate our rights. This is Chinese democracy, folks!  Keep the Internet free of government control.