I think the response to this letter represents everything that's wrong with the tech community's approach to SOPA, etc.
You can't pretend the political process doesn't exist. We live in a country of 300 million people, each other their own interests, and this is the ugly way they all get hashed out.
At it's core, the White House's response to this petition is both reasonable and an opportunity. Basically they say:
1) we don't want to shut down Google, reddit, etc
2) we can't ignore the grievances of copyright holders, and asks the internet community for help reconciling (1) and (2).
Some of the things facilitated through places like thepiratebay.org are completely illegal, and I don't think anyone is trying to justify those activities. What people are doing, rather, is creating this extreme dichotomy: either thepiratebay.org exists completely in its current form, or you have to censor the entire internet. That is not the dichotomy you want to create, because losing that battle would be of course disastrous.
Given the current climate, and the status of Google, Apple, et al as the only bright part of a dismal economy, the tech industry is uniquely positioned to help pass an extremely narrow law that does little more than give people the political ammo to tell the MPAA/RIAA "hey you already got what you want!" But that'll require a willingness to participate in the political process that I don't think these companies have.
They did already get what they wanted. It was called the DMCA. I don't think your plan will do much more to stop them. They won't be satisfied until they completely eliminate piracy, and that won't happen without horrible measures (completely stamping out almost any crime is the same way)
The DMCA, for all its warts, was a pretty decent solution. The DMCA safe harbor provisions, and the body of precedent that has been built up around it, has been crucial in allowing the growth of sites like Youtube.
The problem now is foreign sites that host copyrighted material, which the DMCA doesn't help with much. This is not an imaginary problem. Over Thanksgiving, my mom was showing my aunt how to download movies from these sites.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but "don't legislate the internet" won't be part of that solution. The world has laws, and the internet is just a way for real-world people to communicate. It will be subject to law. They can either be good laws protective of peoples' rights or they can be bad ones. If the technology community takes its marbles and goes home, it will be the latter.
> Over Thanksgiving, my mom was showing my aunt how to download movies from these sites.
I am Chinese, I play tons of pirated games, over thanksgiving, I bought my favorite ones on Steam at a discount price, even thought I have done playing it.
The funny thing is, to pay for those games, I have to fake my country code and get an American IP address using a VPN. Is it pirating if stuff are not even available on my local market?
You can't pretend the political process doesn't exist. We live in a country of 300 million people, each other their own interests, and this is the ugly way they all get hashed out.
At it's core, the White House's response to this petition is both reasonable and an opportunity. Basically they say: 1) we don't want to shut down Google, reddit, etc 2) we can't ignore the grievances of copyright holders, and asks the internet community for help reconciling (1) and (2).
Some of the things facilitated through places like thepiratebay.org are completely illegal, and I don't think anyone is trying to justify those activities. What people are doing, rather, is creating this extreme dichotomy: either thepiratebay.org exists completely in its current form, or you have to censor the entire internet. That is not the dichotomy you want to create, because losing that battle would be of course disastrous.
Given the current climate, and the status of Google, Apple, et al as the only bright part of a dismal economy, the tech industry is uniquely positioned to help pass an extremely narrow law that does little more than give people the political ammo to tell the MPAA/RIAA "hey you already got what you want!" But that'll require a willingness to participate in the political process that I don't think these companies have.