The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

The negation stated that this bill is coming across the issue backwards, changing the internet to better fit copyright laws rather than changing copyright laws to better fit the internet. This statement is simply fallacious. I will refer you back to my first argument, pleading with you to read the actual piece of legislation, and apparently you did not. The bill by no means tries to change the internet, it only changes the copyright laws. I refer you to one of my sources, the library of congress's summary of the bill. It states that " (it) Expands the offense of criminal copyright infringement to include public performances of: (1) copyrighted work by digital transmission, and (2) work intended for commercial dissemination by making it available on a computer network. Expands the criminal offenses of trafficking in inherently dangerous goods or services to include: (1) counterfeit drugs; and (2) goods or services falsely identified as meeting military standards or intended for use in a national security, law enforcement, or critical infrastructure application." furthermore an intellectual property right holder harmed by a U.S.-directed site dedicated to infringement, or a site promoted or used for infringement under certain circumstances, to first provide a written notification identifying the site to related payment network providers and Internet advertising services requiring such entities to forward the notification and suspend their services to such an identified site unless the site's owner, operator, or domain name registrant, upon receiving the forwarded notification, provides a counter notification explaining that it is not dedicated to engaging in specified violations. Authorizes the right holder to then commence an action for limited injunctive relief against the owner". Negation- in your next argument will you please outline for me where in the legislation it alters the internet? This leads me to my next point which is the simple vagueality of his statements. You can see that he has no references and doesn't cite any examples in his first paragraph. He simply states that the bill alters the internet. But nowhere in his speech does he say exactly how it does such. He is simply writing an opinion because he doesn't back up anything he says. I challenge you to read the actual bill, or at least the summary, and show me exactly where it tries to alter the internet. The bill as written now only provides for companies to file and injunction with a site to possibly take it down. The bill simply extends the copyright laws onto the internet, and in no way tries to change the internet. For his next argument he stated that a website is innocent until proven guilty, but again i say read the actual bill!!! nowhere in the bill does it do this. The bill outlines a very complicated process for the shutting down of websites. A company that doesn't like the website can ask the Attorney General to put it on a blacklist, which is then sent for approval by a federal judge, which then gives the power to a company to send a cease and desist order to the website, if the site does not comply then they are taken down. The statement that "the website is immediately shut down" is a bold faced lie. He then went on to protect his point that artists actually want to be pirated. He stated that artists don't really receive that much money from their songs and get most of their money from there tours. And yes i would agree with this, but we also must protect the rights of the companies selling the music. The companies get the majority of the money when selling an album, and they don't want it to be pirated because the more people that pirate it the less money they make. This completely throws his argument out of the window because it doesn't matter what the artists want because they are not the ones being harmed. It is the companies who we are trying to protect, therefore the artists opinions don't matter. He tried to justify his arguments by using the example of rick Astley, and as much as i love his song the negation is again misguided. Rick Astly is in the small percentage of people that are helped when piracy takes place. Along with bands like fish he is one of the few people in favor for it. But we cannot look at the fame of one man and let it decide this issue. Just because one guy got more famous off of pirating doesn't mean that we should legalize it. The majority of people in the entertainment industry (writers, producers, directors...) are in favor of this bill and against pirating. The negation is valuing the rights of the few over the rights of the many. saying that a few people benefit while completely disregarding the overwhelming majority of people that piracy hurts. He then stated that we have to listen to major tech companies who are against this legislation. I say we listen to the people that this situation hurts, like the companies because the people who are negatively affected by a situation are a good judge. "It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor."---Steve Jobs So to reiterate Copyright laws are out of date and this bill reforms the law rather than the internet Bill gives due process Does not help the companies who made the copyrighted material