I haven't done one of my vaunted opinion pieces in a fair while. Now seems like as good a time as any to climb onto my SOPA-box (D'HOHOHOHO!).
For those of you who don't really follow the political shenanigans of our lofty federal legislature or keep up on internet-related news, Congress is looking to pass a bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act. Read the Wikipedia link to catch up if you haven't already (you really should), but if you're intellectually lazy the tl;dr is as follows: Congress wants to stamp down on intellectual property trafficking by allowing the Department of Justice or the holders of copyrights in question to investigate any shady dealings that may or may not have occurred on websites that may or may not have links to such violations. The arguments for passing it but basically come down to “it helps make money for the people who hold legitimate copyright on things which could be infringed.” I'll be forthright at this juncture: I think this law is stupid and an unnecessary burden upon internet citizens. I would much rather that it returned into the murky pit of Orwellian, fascistic control from whence it crawled.
I've followed some of the arguments about this bill because I have little better to do with my time, and in the spirit of true and honest American political discourse the word “capitalism” was tossed about like it was going out of style. What's more, capitalism as an economic system was, in true and honest American fashion, equivocated with morality. “More capitalist” equaled “more moral” in some instances, and in others people argued that it was somehow anti-capitalist to control the content on the internet. After all, laissez-faire is preferable to regulated. It caused a quite interesting divide (and a fair bit of trolling) between the stereotypical “liberal” and “conservative” political viewpoints.
Capitalism is all about the private accumulation of wealth which comes about through individual, rather than state, ownership of means of production. The widely-held ideal that a free market is the best market is flawed. To those who treat capitalism as an ethical framework, the best market is the market which allows maximal accumulation of capital by the individual. Freedom (political, social, or economic) is irrelevant to the discussion, except that actors should have the greatest possible freedom to amass wealth.
Unfortunately, people with vested economic interests oftentimes have vested political interests as well, and humans are greedy, self-serving fucks by nature. We like things and stuff, and the more things and stuff we have or could have, the happier we become. If a strictly regulated internet would make more money for those with a vested economic interest in that area, then that sort of internet is the way to go. Toss in a little bit of kickback to the people who make it possible and TA-DA! You have your SOPA.
What irks me the most about this whole thing is not really the fact that SOPA exists. I don't pretend to be a shining avatar of Lawful Goodness; I'm as much a bastard as any other person out there. It's that the nature of politics in this country allows for the fact that SOPA can exist so easily. If I were to offer money to one of my representatives in government in exchange for political favors, I would quickly find myself befriending gentlemen in some sort of correctional facility (insert call back to title here). Ah, but if there is enough money being thrown about, or if the perks are oblique enough to not constitute “bribery” under whatever jackassed conception of the term is written into the laws dealing with the issue, then the sailing is smoother than a milkshake made by God Himself.
Is copyright infringement a problem? Absolutely. Gutting individuals' rights in order to retain a profit margin from a bygone era on media, before the rise of Hulu or Bit Torrent or Pandora or The Pirate Bay, is not the solution. Christ, I know about better than anybody about that sort of competition. Hell, by all rights I should be supporting this piece of shit legislation simply because it would only help my profit margin. I've had to adapt my business model and my budget to account for an omnipresence of Netflix. In an ideal market, competitors adapt their products and services to meet demand or they die out as new players supplant the old.
Such a pity the real world doesn't work that way. And that is why I hate economics.
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