I whined about #SOPA too much, so the local news asked if I would come on air and talk about it. I thought that I might need a little help in making it clear for the audience, so I asked my friends the question, “How would you explain #SOPA to your mother?”
My friends were fantastic, here’s what they had to say: (oh, and by the way, the video of the on-air segment can be seen at the bottom of this post)
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PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet
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“Alright friends, how would you explain #SOPA to your mother? Help a brother out.
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“@bryanjones it’s sorta like Paula Deen being a spokeperson for Diabetes – knows how to get there, but isn’t an expert.
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“@bryanjones If you can use any of the points in this, feel free. on.fb.me/AbMsAP
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“@bryanjones Tell her to imagine Vanna White only turning every other letter in a Wheel of Fortune puzzle.
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“@bryanjones someone claims your treasured family recipe is theirs. now you can’t cook it anymore AND you have to go to court. #SOPAforMom
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“Just use the oatmeal analogy, like trying to capture an escaped tiger by killing kittens with a flame thrower…. then again maybe there is a better way…
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“Like theoatmeal.com said today, it’s like dealing with a lion who has escaped from the zoo by torching a bunch of kittens with a flamethrower.
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“well if i was explaining it to my dad, i would explain it is yet another way big brother is watching us and trying to control our actuions. then he would go off on some kind of rant about Obama, and we’d get into a political argument…so scratch that and use the oatmeal analogy.
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“Just say your favorite blog could be taken down because the author posted a photo of their child wearing a Disney t-shirt. And don’t forget to mention death panels.
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“Watch this before you go on. http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea.html
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****Defend our freedom to share media. Don’t let YouTube die! (or why SOPA is a bad idea) (Mirror) -
“For the conservatives: “The government is trying to regulate more free enterprise! Here they go again, trying to kill businesses!” For the liberals: “They’re trying to take away your right to free speech! It’s censorship! The government is being bought by huge corporations!”
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“I heard a great explanation a little earlier but am changing it a little: Pretend you’re having a garage sale and told your brother it was okay come over and sell some stuff. He comes over, sets up his own table, and sells items HIMSELF (unbeknownst to you and without your help) that was stolen, you would be arrested and made to serve the sentence that would rightly belong to him.
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“For the Libertarian: “Intellectual Property is a State enforced monopoly on non-scarce goods, and an unnatural impediment to human progress.”
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“SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. There are several websites with Internet servers located mostly overseas that do not recognize the same copyright laws we do in the US. Internet users in the US can easily access these websites and il…legally obtain movies, software, music and other intelectual property. Big media companies, such as Disney, believe these websites hurt their income and want to put a stop mainly to the pirate sites, but also to any Internet user that infringes on their intelectual property rights. To do this, they want to put a system in place that allows them to effectively sensor their intellectual property from the Internet by using several different methods. Many people not only feel that the bill goes too far, but hurts one of America’s most thriving industries by making it harder for startups to succeed. This is mainly because it makes these small start-ups responsible for anything their users might post. The biggest names in the Internet industry, like Google and Facebook, have publicly stated they are firmly against SOPA and PIPA. However, the big media companies that have generally struggled with embracing the Internet as a new medium for content distribution, such as Disney and Comcast, support SOPA/PIPA. I think there are many in my field who feel this bill isn’t getting fair coverage in from the national news outlets because most of their parent companies publicly support the bill.
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“I like Chris’s analogy. You might carry it a bit farther and say it would be like forcing all Goodwill stores to close if some of the donated goods in one store were found to be stolen. Very few people believe creators shouldn’t have the right to protect intellectual property. But a scorched earth policy that holds aggregators of user-generated content responsible is not the way.
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“It’s like burning down your neighborhood because your house is messy and you don’t want to clean.
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“@bryanjones Old people understand old phrases “it’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face.” And don’t call me old.
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“You do realize, though, that if you go on TV and say anything that remotely sounds like something I wrote here, I am going to take down the KTHV website and Facebook and maybe even the CJRW site, too, right?
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“How about: Your 12 daughter will no longer be able to record videos of her her and her friends singing and dancing to the new Dustin Beaver song and share it with other friends on facebook. They’ll be treated like thieves of Bieber’s record… label until facebook can verify the content isn’t infringing, which is too expensive to to to 500 million users and shut down their favorite tool to connect with friends, along with plethora of other sites.
I’m out of words, now.
that's like, your opinion