SROYS

Power sits on top of humanity because it exists to control human flaws. Human beings are corrupt by nature - most would rather not do many of the seemingly right things - like pay for books, movies, music - which is why we need laws.

The SOPA idea is simply devious - it’s easier to shut down the site (Facebook, Google, Youtube… any site really) - than to go after the users. But it’s obvious that, with this law it’ll be easy to frame any company, it can actually effectively be used to find violations on all the government sites - of course they would put in a clause to keep them away from the ambit of this law.

It’s probably more important to try to create a law to force the media and technology companies to work together. We have in our hands possibly the greatest distribution channel ever made - use it!

The job of those in power is to identify and take out problematic elements which violate the laws of “Intellectual property”, “right to life and liberty” and “freedom of speech” and others - but surely not dampen the process which allows innovation and advancement of the human race by promoting those same fundamental rights.

We live in a complicated world and having laws which effect open communication is probably the most dangerous thing one can get into.

What the media companies should be doing is fairly simple:

There is existing technology which can assist in identifying content theft or near accurate content identification. Google by itself has technology which allows youtube to identify copyright infringement plus their search can pretty much find any content based on (hate) keywords.

Videos

• Create a central organization which will get these media companies subscription money from online shares - make it cheap for users ($10 to see all copyrighted content which is distributed according to the number of views of each publisher).
  
  
• Use the identification technology to place media company’s ads on video content - even if shared by someone else. Reduce monitoring needs by automating ad replacement if the user has placed his own ads. More money earned as per views. Google possibly already offer this to major publishers.
  
  
• Direct ad space control - add trailer distribution, other promotions on copyrighted videos - the video companies will love this.

Copyrighted ebooks and text

• Behavioral ads, promotions - they need to work with the ebook reader software companies to create technology to identify if the ebook was purchased or if it was downloaded for free.
  
  
• Direct ad space control to copyright owner who should be able to put in any promotion they want or show behavioral ads.
  
  
• Creation of a script which gives text based sites a way to easily be copyright complaint by adding a script which can place origin links and source attribution so authors can get actual traffic to their sites from where users should be able to download more of their books - which of course would have ads and promo space.

Music

• Work with technology companies to identify and place ads - directly embedded in files or via the music players - huge boost in revenue for both media companies and independent artists.

Hate Speech

• Really! after what goes on in the parliaments! But yes… this is a problem and it should be addressed by the companies by creating filters and letting people have access to these filters. Possibly also commit to take down requests when it’s an issue of national security on a case basis and move court if they disagree. But no law should be passed for prosecution of companies based on this - the wording of the judgement must include the content which is ruled for/against and should never be generalized.

The solution to content theft seems fairly simple, economized promotion space on the content and direct control to the content creator. It seems Google is the leading party which has a lot of this identifying technology but it also seems that the media companies are being to proud to ask “what does that button do” on technology they don’t understand completely.

Unfortunately it seems its up to “Google” to extend their helping hand and help out these media companies continue to be profitable - and both parties would also be raking in a ton of cash if they do this, not to mention Google will also live up to their “Don’t be evil” catch phrase. They need to open source some parts of this technology and also create a way for it to be used by other small parties who may not be so technologically adept.

Since almost all media is moving to the internet - it makes sense to try to solve the problem with technology rather than prosecution. The law should be to create and make companies use this technology and be complaint and possibly even give the distributors a cut for being compliant.

But will these big boys ever work together - maybe if there is money to be made!