Copyright is no longer needed in the Internet society

The blindness continues

No. Congress wasn't trying to do that, and isn't going to do it. Congress was trying to take the money of people who want to do that, while also taking the money of those who want it not to be done. They have succeeded.

Content industries monopolies, particularly represented by the Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America and Business Software Alliance have rejected the discussed vision of a world with the absence of Copyright, primarily by their fear to loose the millionaire earnings they received under the current ownership system and try to district public attention and opinion disguising their intentions stating that Copyright will protect artist’s intellectual property, including the resultant revenue and jobs. Even the Obama Administration itself has played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs in this matter as Wired Magazine has revealed recently.

Actually, the primary difference between the WH and the Congress here was only that the WH tried to take both sides' money while also engaging in responsible policy-making. But, having in mind that it's an election year, which means that anybody with any muscle and skill can stop anything, it was really a rigged game in the first place. Your analysis, like most of what's been written about this, has not the slightest tinge of reality to it.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

- http://americancensorship.org

- Stop Online Piracy Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act)

- http://americancensorship.org

- David Kravets, Chief Sponsor Wavers on Web Censorship Bill in Charged Hearing, Wired (November 16, 2011) (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/piracy-blacklisting-bill)

- SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) debate: Why are Google and Facebook against it? (November 17, 2011) (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/sopa-stop-online-piracy-act-debate-why-are-google-and-facebook-against-it/2011/11/17/gIQAvLubVN_story.html)

- Caitlin Bronson, Online Piracy Act Struggles in Congress (November 29, 2011) (http://www.thirdage.com/news/online-piracy-act-struggles-in-congress_11-29-2011)

- Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act Now (November 21, 2011) (http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/11/21/stop-the-stop-online-piracy-act-now.aspx)

- Timothy B. Lee, The Stop Online Piracy Act: Big Content's full-on assault against the Safe Harbor, ARS Technica (November 2011) (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/the-stop-online-piracy-act-big-contents-full-on-assault-against-the-safe-harbor.ars

- David Cravets, U.S. Copyright Czar Cozied Up to Content Industry, E-Mails Show, Wired (October 14, 2011) (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/copyright-czar-cozies-up)

Copyright and Freemium

- Kevin Kelly, Better than Free (January 31, 2008) (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html)

- Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly (November 11, 2005) (http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm)

- Richard Stallman, Misinterpreting Copyright (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html)

- Mike Masnik, Saying You Can't Compete With Free Is Saying You Can't Compete Period, Techdirt (February 15, 2007) (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070215/002923.shtml)

- Fred Wilson, Freemium and Freeconomics (July 4, 2009) (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/07/freemium-and-freeconomics.html)

- Fred Wilson, My Favorite Business Model (March 23, 2006) (http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/03/my_favorite_bus.html)

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithiel_de_Sola_Pool

- Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom (1983). (http://books.google.com/books?id=BzLXGUxV4CkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Technologies+of+freedom&hl=en&ei=8M_WTpr_IIbi0QGU2NnoAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)

- Eric Schlachter, The Intellectual Property Renaissance in Cyberspace: Why Copyright Law Could Be Unimportant on the Internet, Berkeley Technological Law Journal (1997) (http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/btlj/articles/vol12/Schlachter/html/reader.html)

- Danny Colligan, What We Lose When We Embrace Copyright (February 11, 2010) (http://questioncopyright.org/what_we_lose_when_we_embrace_copyright)

- Melody Walker, Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy (March 5, 2009) (http://www.physorg.com/news155495067.html)

- Scott Timberg, Does culture really want to be free? (November 1, 2011) (http://www.salon.com/2011/11/01/does_culture_really_want_to_be_free/singleton)

- Joost Smiers and Marieke van Schijndel, Imagine a world without copyright, New York Times (October 8, 2005) (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/opinion/07iht-edsmiers.html?pagewanted=all)

- Nico van EIJK, Legal, Economic and Cultural Aspects of File Sharing (March 30, 2010) (http://www.ivir.nl/publications/vaneijk/Communications&Strategies_2010.pdf)

- Mark A. Lemley, Is the Sky Falling Dawn on the Content Industries? (2011) (http://www.jthtl.org/content/articles/V9I1/JTHTLv9i1_Lemley.PDF)

- Steven Levy, Facebook, Spotify and the Future of Music (October 21, 2011) (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/10/ff_music)

- Nate Anderson, Big Content to FCC: don't kill our ISP filtering dream!, ARS Technica (2009) (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/big-content-still-cant-compete-with-free.ars)

- JRC Scientific and Technical Reports, The Future Evolution of the Creative Content Industries (2008) (http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/JRC47964.pdf)

- Anita Elberse, Bye Bye Bundles: The Unbundling of Music in Digital Channels (November 1, 2009) (http://www.people.hbs.edu/aelberse/papers/Elberse_2010.pdf)

- Scott Berinato, The iTunes Effect and the Future of Content, Havard Business Review (http://blogs.hbr.org/research/2010/01/the-itunes-effect-and-the-futu.html)

- Gerd Leonhard, The Future of the Content Industries (April 2011) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLxEqy3lngk)

- Gerd Leonhard, Free & Freemium Business Models (June 2011) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uOsLgTMGqc)

I think artists stand to gain the least from copyright law protection. Artists make the least amount of money on album sales as it is. This is not because too many people are downloading their albums instead of buying them. Its largely because there isn't as much money in the record business in general. Most artists make the most off of touring, merchandise, etc. I was watching a 60 minutes episode on Taylor Swift recently, and it said that her tour made between $100 and $150 million. She likely did not receive even a small fraction of that from her record deals. Its annoying that record labels want to disguise these laws as protections for the artist. The record labels largely exist to exploit the artists, not protect them and this is evident by the many suboptimal deals artists get on their record deals. The SOPA law would serve not to protect actors, singers, etc...It is meant to protect the industry monopolies behind the artists.

-- Austin Klar