Quote:
Originally Posted by sabredog
Copyright has a reason for being and rights of authors should be protected. However corporations have made a mockery of copyright by continuously abusing the process over the last fifty years. Disney and death + 70 years.
SOPA is simply an extension of the same abusing process.
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Ultimately, in a democracy, all laws are part of a civic contract between the legislators and the general population. If the laws move too far from the general consensus that the majority of the population will accept then they'll either be changed, as part of the democratic process, or they'll be ignored until they are changed. The US has a prime example in it's recent history with Prohibition.
To my mind the mockery of copyright that Disney and others have bought over the last fifty years has pretty much moved it into the realm of Prohibition in the mind of the general public. Which means that instead of a reasonable copyright arrangement that might obtain general support we have a ludicrous, and patently corrupt, process which has lost the support of the general population, which in turn means that even reasonable copyright adherence on the terms that existed before Disney et. al. started throwing their money around has also gone out with the bathwater.
Interestingly Obama was at a $35,000 a plate dinner in Hollywood tonight. A protestor outside interviewed on TV said something on the lines of "Get out of the fancy dinner you're whoring yourself at and come back to the roots of the people who used to support you". That's not an Obama jab, the Republicans are even worse. But it is a jab at the whole electoral/political/financial sewer that most western democratic processes seem to have evolved into.