Ruckus Random Ramblings™

S.O.P.A. (Stop Online Piracy Act) is an United States impending law that stops copyright infringement over the Internet. It would affect worldwide sites. What this actually means, putting into lame-man’s terms, is that websites who (whether a user or the webmaster) upload copyrighted content will be prosecuted or have their website shut down. For example, the likes of Limewire and other torrent sharing sites that is mostly user-content that has songs, music videos, movies, etc. (which I presume 99% are under copyright), will probably be shut down if the bill becomes law. I think the exceptions are e.g. YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, WE7.com, and the likes who all have either a contract or some agreement with the copyright holders.

So how do I get free music? I hear you ask. Uhm, you don’t. I think that’s the point. You wouldn’t go into a music store, grab a CD, and simply walk out with it without paying for it, would you? So, why do it online? Technically, it’s stealing, or to be more exact, it’s allowed stealing. Currently, you can just go online and download millions of songs for free. But who gave you that right? The whole point of SOPA is that if you want to share/use music via your own website, you need to pay for it.

I was talking about this on Facebook a while ago, and a friend said he “wants to help the little guys”, meaning the little websites that made music, etc available for download on their sites for free. I said to my friend, but what about the “little guys” of music, that singer who can’t make it big, because their music is been publicly broadcast and downloaded for free? How will they go further in their career if you keep taking their hard work away from them for free? The saying “money makes the world go ’round” is true, especially for “little” music artists or “little” actors. Without money, how will they get to be a big shot? How will they be able to be as big as Lady Gaga if you don’t pay for their music?

For example, have you heard of the artist “Shiloh”. No? You may know her as Onsion’s (ex-)girlfriend on YouTube, but did you know she has her own music album? How do you expect Shiloh to get high into the charts if you don’t buy her songs? Do you want to crush her dreams? That’s just one person. How many dreams of other people are you going to destroy? How many more hopes and desires do you need to crush before you realise that downloading music illegally for free is wrong? It has to stop.

People are bitching, saying SOPA is wrong, blah blah blah. It’s not, the truth of the matter is, people don’t have the money or are unwilling to pay for music and movies. But it’s not yours, is it? You may own a copy of it, but it’s not yours. You pay for a copy of the original to play privately for as many times as you’d like, wherever you like. That doesn’t give you the right to go play it on your radio station. But, it’s not yours to take if you haven’t paid for it. It’s not yours to publicly broadcast, whether online or in fact, anywhere else. You are breaching copyright. You violated the law for your own personal need.

My point is; copyrights are there to protect people’s personal work that they want to publicly broadcast. You have no right to take that. You can possibly buy it, but not take it for free.