White House will not support SOPA, PIPA

Sam.I.Am said:
It's not far off of 95%? This sounds like RIAA math which sounds almost exactly like police math when they do a drug bust and give a monetary value for what they seized. I don't believe either one and to be quite honest it makes the rest of their claims weaker by using those types of numbers without hard data to back it up.

iTunes alone has sold how many songs so far? Over 16 billion songs back in August of 2011. Even if iTunes were the only possible way on earth to get music (no CDs, no other online stores) that means that well over 300 billion songs have been stolen using your RIAA-ish math.

That's about 45 stolen songs for every person on the face of the earth. EVERY person on earth. From infants to the very old. From the tech savvy in Silicon Valley to someone who doesn't even have electricity much less internet access in the middle of a rain forest.

That doesn't even account for the legitimately free music that you can find out there or any of the other legitimate online music retailers.

Do you still want to stick with that 95%?
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I think that number might be solid, but the interpretation is just stupid.

For example, you could have a small number of very savvy pirates who each download tens of thousands of songs illegally. All of a sudden you have a huge amount of illegally downloaded music on the books.

However -- so what? What if they had to pay for all those songs? Does anyone think they would actually do so?

It is just people stealing stuff because they can, not because they really want it bad enough to pay for it. So in reality, it is very little money lost.

Which is the point JohnnyClueless is missing.
 
elbe said:
Are... are you being serious?
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Yes I am being totally serious. Why would I risk installing a torrent client from some site I don't know is legit? Why would I even want to take up space on my hard drive with downloaded videos? Why would I even risk visiting some shady site in russia claiming to have the whole mission impossible movie to stream?

People who have jobs, and things to do in their life, and don't spend all day on the computer hacking, take the path of least resistance.

If that path includes watching a few ads, so be it. If that path includes needing to stop at redbox and pay the omg $1.50 for a movie, so be it.

The fundamental flaw in the pro-SOPA argument is that the people who illegally access content will just switch over and pay for that content if SOPA is enforced. That is simply not true.

The majority of people that are willing to pay for television and movie content already do so because it is far easier than pirating it. I don't want to have to figure out how to pirate the first few seasons of LOST -- I will just go rent it. Why not, each dvd is only a few bucks for the weekend.

NOTE that this doesn't speak to obvious IP infringement that simply hasn't been stopped for simply laziness on the part of the owner. For example I just listened to the soundtrack to "brotherhood of the wolf" on youtube. I found it by simply searching for "brotherhood of the wolf soundtrack." If the label that owns that is concerned with people listening for free -- why haven't they told youtube to take it down? Youtube would do so, immediately. They have shown they will comply very quickly. Yet it remains up. How would SOPA address this lack of vigilance on the part of IP owners? It wouldn't, is the short answer.
 
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rocketdodger said:
Yes I am being totally serious.
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Well it's just not true. TV piracy is alive and well, including several well known "scene" groups. I know a few reasons for it:

I've known some "collectors" who like to keep shows, lots of shows, to watch at later dates (not all online tv show viewers have extensive back catalogs) or for offline viewing.

It's also used for more obscure, hard to find programming. Not all networks really feel the need to do online viewing.

And the, more or less, ignored little brother of piracy: fansubbing of foreign language programming. And, to another extent, all foreign programming. Say you got hooked on Bondi Vet while visiting Australia, as an example, you might find it hard to find new episodes aired here. For more obscure things even DVD copies of it might be hard to legally purchase overseas.
 
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elbe said:
It's also used for more obscure, hard to find programming. Not all networks really feel the need to do online viewing.

And the, more or less, ignored little brother of piracy: fansubbing of foreign language programming. And, to another extent, all foreign programming. Say you got hooked on Bondi Vet while visiting Australia, as an example, you might find it hard to find new episodes aired here. For more obscure things even DVD copies of it might be hard to legally purchase overseas.
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Try being a fan of obscure British television while living in the US. Most of the shows can't even be purchased with US region encoded DVDs.

I wish I could pay the BBC the tax or fee or whatever it is the Limey's pay and get access to all of their programming.
 
Newtons Bit said:
Try being a fan of obscure British television while living in the US. Most of the shows can't even be purchased with US region encoded DVDs.

I wish I could pay the BBC the tax or fee or whatever it is the Limey's pay and get access to all of their programming.
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The UK is one of the easier nations to pick up material for (though, by volume, the top spot might be Japan - or Canada if you count all the CA made US shows), but, yeah, there are tough things to find. Online viewing is still tricky because it, too, is often region locked. If memory serves, BBC material is probably still not viewable in the States and Viacom isn't viewable in Europe (unless you use a proxy, but isn't that, too, skirting the laws?). In this one case, though, the more material comes to BBC America the easier it will be to buy - so, everyone who enjoys British television, get on the horn to BBC-America and tell them to stop airing old American shows like Star Trek: TNG (as much as I like that show) and put on more British made programming! You might get lucky with your PBS affiliate, but not always.

You can, of course, buy region free DVD players, but those aren't always easy to find and may not be as feature rich as the mainstream players.
 
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elbe said:
Well it's just not true. TV piracy is alive and well, including several well known "scene" groups. I know a few reasons for it:

I've known some "collectors" who like to keep shows, lots of shows, to watch at later dates (not all online tv show viewers have extensive back catalogs) or for offline viewing.

It's also used for more obscure, hard to find programming. Not all networks really feel the need to do online viewing.

And the, more or less, ignored little brother of piracy: fansubbing of foreign language programming. And, to another extent, all foreign programming. Say you got hooked on Bondi Vet while visiting Australia, as an example, you might find it hard to find new episodes aired here. For more obscure things even DVD copies of it might be hard to legally purchase overseas.
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Anecdotal evidence and hypothetical arguments: not compelling.
 
Cleon said:
Seriously. I'm all for skepticism, but this is like asking for evidence of the Pope's Catholicism.
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I'm hoping it's some subclaim I made, like some of the reasons I know of that people actually pirate shows, that he wants evidence for. The only way I can think to actually provide evidence of tv piracy is against the rules on the forum.
 
elbe said:
The UK is one of the easier nations to pick up material for (though, by volume, the top spot might be Japan - or Canada if you count all the CA made US shows), but, yeah, there are tough things to find. Online viewing is still tricky because it, too, is often region locked. If memory serves, BBC material is probably still not viewable in the States and Viacom isn't viewable in Europe (unless you use a proxy, but isn't that, too, skirting the laws?). In this one case, though, the more material comes to BBC America the easier it will be to buy - so, everyone who enjoys British television, get on the horn to BBC-America and tell them to stop airing old American shows like Star Trek: TNG (as much as I like that show) and put on more British made programming! You might get lucky with your PBS affiliate, but not always.

You can, of course, buy region free DVD players, but those aren't always easy to find and may not be as feature rich as the mainstream players.
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My parents have BBC America, and all it plays is X-Files, ST:TNG and Top Gear. It's distressing.

Our PBS station here is pretty good about getting shows like Downton Abbey a year after it airs in the Britain. But unless it's something that is part of the Masterpiece Theater brand, we don't get it.

Buying a DVD from amazon.co.uk and then watching it in the US is also illegal. Can you believe that? Ugh.
 
elbe said:
Well it's just not true. TV piracy is alive and well, including several well known "scene" groups. I know a few reasons for it:

I've known some "collectors" who like to keep shows, lots of shows, to watch at later dates (not all online tv show viewers have extensive back catalogs) or for offline viewing.

It's also used for more obscure, hard to find programming. Not all networks really feel the need to do online viewing.

And the, more or less, ignored little brother of piracy: fansubbing of foreign language programming. And, to another extent, all foreign programming. Say you got hooked on Bondi Vet while visiting Australia, as an example, you might find it hard to find new episodes aired here. For more obscure things even DVD copies of it might be hard to legally purchase overseas.
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When I say "nobody bothers anymore" I don't mean "literally not a single person."

I mean statistically, the pirating of TV shows that deprive the studios of any remotely significant revenue is not even worth considering.

And look at the examples you use to counter my argument:

1) Collectors who would rather own digital copies than hard copies -- not a big group.
2) People who can't find the episodes anyway, because of how difficult it is -- by definition if they can't find those episodes they wouldn't be buying them anyway. Case in point -- I really want to watch HBO shows but it isn't easy to do it for free, so I go spend my time doing something else. I don't buy HBO just because it isn't easy to find it for free, I simply go without it.

So in other words, not significant revenue.

The fact remains that it is absurdly simple to watch any major television show in a legitimate fashion, futhermore with better connection speed than most illegal sources can offer anyway, and because of this the vast majority of consumers will choose that legal ( read: easy ) method of delivery.

NOTE that I am not saying piracy is not an issue, like I said I am a game developer and I really hate piracy, I am just saying that for television at least -- which has been driven by advertising for the most part for as long as we can remember -- it seems like some broadcasters have arrived at the right solution.
 
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Newtons Bit said:
My parents have BBC America, and all it plays is X-Files, ST:TNG and Top Gear. It's distressing.

Our PBS station here is pretty good about getting shows like Downton Abbey a year after it airs in the Britain. But unless it's something that is part of the Masterpiece Theater brand, we don't get it.

Buying a DVD from amazon.co.uk and then watching it in the US is also illegal. Can you believe that? Ugh.
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Time delay is the big bug bear I have. I download US TV shows mainly because I'll read about an interesting show, and I'm not really looking to wait two years for a series to get picked up in the UK, if ever. Also with so many cable channels it can be hard to pin down where a show you've been following actually is and downloading a torrent is just plain easier. And that doesn't even cover Sky's charming habit of letting a free to view terrestrial station build an audience for a US import and then outbidding the terrestrial and putting it on a pay channel.

Now that may not be right but the laws being proposed in the US and the UK too deal with it are insanely out of proportion to the seriousness of the 'crime' being committed.
 
Richard Masters said:
Good news, but why are we hearing about this for the first time? Why couldn't Obama make his intentions clear before any such legislation were even proposed? Shouldn't it have been obvious where he stood on this issue? Only two days ago, it was basically a coin-flip.
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Because there was always the chance that it would die without his help, and he would have been able to avoid upsetting Big Money during an election year? But since that wasn't going to happen, he had to act.
 
Newtons Bit said:
And I'm sure he'll continue voicing his dissent as he signs the bill, just as he did with the national defense authorization act.
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The NDAA would've been passed regardless if it had the "controversial provision" or not. This bill on the other hand isn't a provision bundled inside a bill that's passed yearly. I don't see Obama signing this into law despite not vetoing the NDAA.
 
Good thing. SOPA wants the US to become the internet police for the whole world. I don't think other governments would be to happy if the US wants to start arresting people because of SOPA anyways.
 
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