On one side of the arena, we have businesses that make money by selling content, or creativity, or media, or whatever you want to call it. The build up of the internet in terms of size and speed, and the ever-increasing capability of computers has threatened this business by creating convenient methods of infringing on copyright claims. So really, it is in their best interest to disable foreign sites from distributing their content freely.
On the other side of the area, we have the public. Regular people are also content producers, not just big business. Some people post things they create, or link to things they find interesting. This blog is an example of content producing, but I can assure you I am not a business. On this side of the arena, there is growing fear that big business will be able to dictate how the internet is run. We have all grown to understand that the internet has good sites and bad sites, just like there are good parts of cities and bad parts.
So what do we do? Ideally, nobody would steal content, or infringe on copyrights. Does crippling information sharing solve this? I'd say partially. I would imagine the illegitimate business of selling bootleg movies on the side of the road would increase some. I guess my point is that once you reach a certain size, you are going to have some type of loss. Retail stores do as much as they can to prevent loss, but it still happens. The key is finding a balance of preventing as much loss as you can, while not imposing problems on the trustworthy buyers (discouraging them from making a purchase). The other issue I see is that these "big businesses" push money to legislators to "support" their decisions on what type of legislation introduce and support.
For instance, HR 3261 (the Stop Online Piracy Act) was introduced by Lamar Smith. This site shows that a good portion of his campaign contributions are related to TV/Movies/Music. Now I didn't do much digging, so I don't know how much credibility that site has, but that is the kind of wonky-ness that I don't like about politics.
Who is in the driver's seat, and why?
Otherwise, work was slightly more hectic, but mostly normal. I think this is my last free Wednesday for another semester. Fun.
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