SOPA Will Break the Internet, But Will Not Stop Online Piracy
Published December 20th, 2011 | 
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.
They Did a Bad, Bad Thing
Published December 20th, 2011 | A while back, I said that even though I was firmly against the “agency model” for pricing e-books, I did not believe that Apple colluded with publishers. Well… as the lawsuit against Apple and the mainstream publishers moves forward, information has come to light to make me rethink my initial conclusion. If we roll up our sleeves, put on a pair of tillman gloves and get to work investigating the matter further, we find that it was an unnamed publishing insider who tipped Grant & Eisenhofer, a law firm hoping to represent consumers in the matter, to the conspiracy. They could be blowing smoke. The “publishing insider” could be full of shit. However, If there is indeed actual proof that there was collusion, perhaps we can finally put an end to the agency model.
Amazon Has Publishing Fire
Published December 6th, 2011 | You can almost set your citizen watch by it: Every Christmas season for the past several years, Amazon has had some major news to lay on its customers. This year is no different. First, Amazon cut prices on the Kindle and released the Kindle Fire. Now, they are in the process of acquiring Children’s Book Publisher, Marshall Cavendish to add to the growing list of imprints in the Amazon Publishing empire. Meanwhile, Apple and the big mainstream publishers are in hot water over the “Agency Model” for e-book publishing. EU watchdogs are investigating Apple, Hachette Livre, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Germany’s Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck for anti-trust violations. There’s No denying it. Amazon has made all they right decisions when it comes to advancing its publishing agenda.
