HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is SOPA permanently shifting our focus?

4 points by Zirro ↗ HN
This could be due to me living in my own bubble (like all of us, in some way), but to me it appears as if until SOPA appeared, a lot of the focus and attention here was aimed at presenting pro-piracy arguments.

Record companies essentially scamming their artists, or the bad-bad settlement schemes which abused courts and sometimes ended up targeting innocent people, are a few example of why this was brought forward. Will this be forgotten post-SOPA?

What worries me is that, if we actually manage to "beat" SOPA, we would be happy with a situation where piracy remains illegal, despite that it may not be optimal for anyone, except for the film and record companies.

tl;dr-version: If we beat SOPA, will we still remember the pro-piracy battle we fought before it appeared?

2 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 17.5 ms ] thread
billpatrianakos
You make some good points but calling it piracy and advocating it as a good thing doesn't make sense. At least not to me.

I respectfully disagree with you and don't think piracy should ever be legal. That said, there is still a lot to be said for the frivolous lawsuits brought on by media companies as well as the way they basically screw their artists. On that point I think there's a lot of nuance that people miss when they simply say "piracy is alright because media companies (or software companies) are evil". Pirating as a protest to their actions seems to have done more harm than good and we should find ways to disrupt the industry without stealing.

On what you said about forgetting this issue after SOPA... I'm glad you bring this up because even though I don't agree with most people here I still think its very worthy of discussion. It's a very complex and nuanced issue that I hope we dig pretty deep into in the future. You made a great observation here - most people, after facing something as big as SOPA will either shift their focus to trying to repeal it if it passes or fall to the temptation to declare a premature victory. I'm really glad this got brought up as I was thinking along those lines too. Hopefully this question gets more traction here.

stray
SOPA has no more to do with piracy than the PATRIOT Act had to do with patriotism.

It's really about control of information.