It really bothers me that their lobbying organization is called "Creative America". Creative America is me and other people who make things. It's not corporate parasites who form insidious symbiotic relationships with corrupt congressmen to pass laws that strangle free expression.
"Creative America" does not represent artists and intellectual property producers. It represents the interests of the predators who feed off out what we produce while adding nothing of value, and the interests of those who want more power and control over the populace, including the ability to stiffle dissent.
I think Ars Technica should either put "Creative America" in quotes, abbreviate it CA, or place it in italics. Appearing many times in the article in plain typography is confusing and misleading.
This is a typical lobby tactic. I spent many years fighting similar interests related to DNS issues at ICANN and in Washington. Our position was to support a smaller ICANN and more control by the community - less regulation and more checks and balances. Anyways, we were always bouncing up against Big Business, Big Media and the Telco's and they would lobby back under the guise of organizations like The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, The Free Speech Coalition, Net Choice and many others. After a while when I came across a new group, I'd just take the opposite of what their name said and that usually represented their position.
Many of these groups have mastered pre-emptive appropriation of key terms, usually forcing the opposition to do verbal backflips in order to make their point without conceding the oppositions opinion.
That's interesting. We are still united, but I think most people would look on the US as a single entity, not co-operating states anymore. States have lost most of their sovereignty. But then again, at the time we came up with the name, it was more fitting.
This is exactly what annoys me about it; all artists I know are against. I don't think many creative people are in favor of SOPA/PIPA. Maybe Lars Ulrich is... I guess he should be considering his stance on 'copyright' and I hear he needs a 12.000th pool. /rant. Anyway; it's the publishers across the board, not the creative people. The creative people should let their voice be heard; maybe they cannot because of contracts or?
It's especially ironic considering the nature of the blackout protest.
On one side, for the most part, we have a bunch of creators using their own creations to spread the message. On the other, there's a bunch of distribution companies paying someone else to spread their message for them. So of course, guess which side picks a name claiming to represent the "Creative"s.
What's stopping us from raising money on Kickstarter to buy up tons of billboard inventory on AdStruc.com? (the Airbnb of billboards - kind of awesome btw)
When one appeals to patriotism, one is basically saying "I have no logical or credible argument, suspend your brain and do as we damn well tell you" "Patriotism" is nothing more than a device to control the brainless.
Well, not always. There are legitimate reasons to ring the "patriotism" bell: Pearl Harbor, 9/11 (spare the theories please). Drumming up patriotism to join the forces to defend the country is the original reason for patriotism and it can still be applicable. Just not in most of the cases you may hear on TV.
Logic and compassion should be more than enough. Think about it, the whole world was shocked by such events. Were the shocked, say, Danish, US patriots? Were the Aussies who helped with rendition US patriots? We the MI6 interrogators US patriots? No, they all reasoned that they were doing the right thing. (OK, some could have been just sadists!!!)
Patriotism to me means follow the country or its leader regardless of logic or sense, or any other reasonable form of reasoning. Patriotism can only be used to persuade people against the better logical judgement. Other wise, what is it there for? If the argument stands then no need. Patriotism only gets trotted out when a leader wants to go against the people or majority. Its a big club to bash opposition with.
If the Chinese invade the US, or my home the UK, I don't need to be instantly patriotic to fight them off. I just need to decide who I'd rather run my country. Just logic. Or reason.
There seems to me to be something very engrained in to Americans about being a patriot. I don't know why, but it does seem a very American disease. Bush used it a hell of a lot. Any one disagreeing was called unpatriotic or un-american. I'm sorry, but if that alone does not damage the concept of patriotism, then logic has left the building.
I actually fear seeing or hearing the word patriot. The second I hear or read it I know there is no logic or reasoning to the attached point, argument or issue.
I think a better term than "brainless" is "mindless." Mindless is the opposite of mindfulness, which is being aware, awake, and just plain giving a damn. The mindless are none of those things.
Fun fact: the 7 consolidated media companies (all media there is in the US basically), are intimately interconnected with Pharmaceutical and Insurance companies. Link: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3845
I find it somewhat ironic that the only way I knew that "Creative America" even existed and that it was running TV and billboard ads was through the Web.
Also, it's not just "foreign criminals" who are pirating content. People right here in the US are making money doing it. See http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk for an example. (I did a whois on funnyjunk.com and they appear to be US based).
One thing the guy definitely has going for him is that even if they strip the label off, the sense of humour and the style is still recognisable as Oatmeal.
They also fought it today with minimal, biased coverage. I compared the Google trends search volume of the headline stories that were shown today on the major news sites. SOPA was easily 2-3x more searched than any other headline, yet it barely showed up as a blip on sites like FOX News.
Fox, my daily dose of US Corporatist Christian bias, had the blackout as the main article on their site. The coverage was not particularly unreasonable.
If you think Fox is the most biased news network, you clearly aren't watching any of the others. I say this not in defense of Fox, but because news coverage with slant in some direction is positively ubiquitous.
If you think you're looking at something that's unbiased, it's only because that news outlet matches your own world view more closely.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's impossible to produce news that's entirely without bias. So I wish they'd stop pretending to be even-handed, and just come clean with what their editorial views are. It would make our job of filtering a lot easier.
What an unsubstantial TV ad. The resistance from the anti-SOPA side comes with factual arguments. However they've chosen to go with their usual favorites: meaningless symbolic imagery and biased, baseless statements. They're trying to push their way through this with brute force. Idiots.
I find this incredibly fascinating. As someone who doesn't lives in the US, I used to just dismiss the amount of misinformation or propaganda (as some of my online friends in the states call it) was spread by news media as exaggeration. I never really got what the big deal was with 'Fox News LOL'. But this seems to be the pretty extreme.
People off the net and unaware that this was an issue are now aware that there's something that large swathes of the internet are kicking up a fuss over. How many will get curious and investigate? More than none, I imagine.
You can joke around with this stuff but if your passion is the arts and real creativity (without profit motive) it's sickening.
In Ireland when senior fat cat state servants are threatened with any kind of reprimand the media and unions are mobilized for operation 'blue collar' shield. Police, nurses and teachers are wheeled out to protect the cabal at the top. It always works.
So Newscorp, Hollywood and the Label's are protecting the creative people now, the little guy? As brazen as you would expect from the axis of (creative) evil.
So sad. All this effort because they spent years ignoring technology and trying to do innovation via outsourcing and customer dis-servicing business development.
If ever a billboard needed some C 'n' B work done to it it is these billboards.
Arise the gorilla C 'n' B army of the new millennium.
But seriously it just makes me want to get into politics just to kick these fuckers out and I'm not even a yank, I'm Australian, so I couldn't directly help the people in the US.
Sometimes I wonder if the biggest reason media companies are pissed off about piracy, is because they can't add their own free political messages to any content they want. they are loosing the power of distribution, which is fundamentally more important that loosing a revenue stream.
"Creative America" does not represent artists and intellectual property producers. It represents the interests of the predators who feed off out what we produce while adding nothing of value, and the interests of those who want more power and control over the populace, including the ability to stiffle dissent.
I think Ars Technica should either put "Creative America" in quotes, abbreviate it CA, or place it in italics. Appearing many times in the article in plain typography is confusing and misleading.