
If Congress wants jobs, it can’t want SOPA - FluidDjango
http://gigaom.com/2012/01/22/if-congress-wants-jobs-it-cant-want-sopa/
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gareim
The author makes the argument that "movie studios, often cited as the driving
force behind the two controversial bills, are losing money to online pirates,
but that doesn’t tell the whole story" but I disagree. From my own experience,
people tend to pirate things they didn't have the money to buy because they
had already spent it on all the movies they could afford or because things
aren't available in the States (some manga series and anime being examples).

Would there be more money flowing to the studios if piracy didn't exist?
Maybe. But maybe not. I've had friends who ended up buying special editions of
movies they pirated because they liked it so much. Or friends who buy
merchandise related to the anime or shows or whatever.

There's just too much going on, too many factors, too many different people,
to conclusively say that piracy is linearly related to losses for studios.
There have been studies that tried to determine if piracy is bad for studios
and the non-studio funded ones have said it's hard to determine. But writing
an article that says "yes, movie studios, piracy is making you lose money"
when it's not even proven gives the MPAA and RIAA more ammunition that we
shouldn't be giving them.

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raintrees
A numbers proof for an argument I have observed repeatedly: The American
Congress, on the balance, seems to be more about staying in Congress (or
affiliates i.e. Lobbying) than about jobs for Americans.

When will we develop a digital representation system that allows us to
dismantle the American Congress? We have the tools...

Edit: Another HN post that could be part of the solution:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3495623>

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saryant
There's an excellent interview with John Perry Barlow on This Week in Tech
from a few years ago where he discusses this:

> They're working in this way that just vastly consumes resources but doesn't
> actually get much done. I guess I could've seen that coming, if you say the
> existing institutions of the industrial period are going to collapse, well
> it's not like they collapse one afternoon and the next day you've got the
> new Jerusalem in place. It takes a while for them to collapse. Right now
> you've got this ugly situation in which they're all still occupying the
> receptor sites of power but not in a position to exercise it in any useful
> or judicious fashion. And we on the other hand, who saw this coming, have
> not been able to take the self-organizing systems that we can probably start
> developing and turn it in to much of anything.

<http://twit.tv/specials43>

Start at around 17:00.

For those who don't know, John Perry Barlow is one of the founders of the EFF.
The interview is a few years old but still incredibly relevant and worth
watching.

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vaksel
Congress doesn't really care about "jobs", it's just a platitude they use as
an excuse to push through the bills they want...you wouldn't vote against
jobs, would you?

