US SOPA CRIPPLE FIGHT

There is nothing more headburstingly infuriating than fanatical nutters from both ends of the spectrum going at to an out hysteria each other. This is well documented in many places, Rangers v Celtic, Jews v Palestinians, Daily Mail v Any Person with a soul or who has at least briefly come into contact with someone who has a soul. These all pale into merely toddlerish spats however when you get Copyright Fascists v Copyright Deniers.

It is difficult to dislike the Copyright denier, the cry of "the internet is a free utopian paradise that can only function with the application of rehashed 20 year old ideas and which may only derive income from data mining / adverts" sounds quite pleasant and cuddly, granted it's similar to the Neo Greenie argument that everyone on the western world should turn the clock back to the 1600s and live in soul (seems to be a lot of 'soul' in the post, Ha!) crushing poverty / imminent danger of starvation. This is even after watching how well that has worked out in low carbon Africa.

In a similar vein the Copyright fascist garners sympathy when some unwashed indie girl who you just know is pure filth after 2 Bacardi breezers is wheeled out to cry about how she can't make millions as a musical 'artist'. People might look at the £10.00 for an album which they will listen to once before stuffing the single on the mp3 player and think "bit of a rip off for a chunk of plastic and 90 minutes warbling" but suppose I'd rather have the warbling than fcuking adverts for bathroom tiles every ten minutes.

Where both sides go wrong is where they spack out and refuse to find any common group. The Copyright fascist demands that the state enact laws to block web access to anyone who downloads material in breech of copyright, no due process or expense of enforcement (some expense of enforcement is desirable to encourage innovation and not just sitting on what you have).

The Copyright denier is just as bad however in taking the stance that a person should be unable, or prohibited by monumental expense from protecting their (intellectual) property and that anything floating about on the internet is somehow collectively shared by its very existence. They wheedle on about how great things like Google are, never noticing that the very ‘web blocking’ they are railing against is Google’s bluddy business! It is a giant search engine and it decides what shows up on the first 2 pages (as if anyone goes 3 pages deep) thus deciding what you see. It is not transparent and it is not democratic just because it puts up quirky pictures.


The saddest thing about this is that the whole bluddy cavalcade will continue, the likes of SOPA (we actually have worse on the statute books in the UK but it’s not active…… yet) will roll back round again (just what we fcuking need more ridiculously anacronystic American acts!) until either web blocking is wholesale or both sides reach an agreement that benefits rights holders and consumers and 30 year old programmers who behave like 9 year olds.