Why should we stop online piracy? – opinion – 19 January 2012 – New Scientist : ‘There’s no evidence that the US is currently suffering from an excessive amount of online piracy, and there is ample reason to believe that a non-zero level of copyright infringement is socially beneficial. Online piracy is like fouling in basketball. You want to penalise it to prevent it from getting out of control, but any effort to actually eliminate it would be a cure much worse than the disease.’ Good description of ‘dead weight loss’ and the consumer pressure on the industry that illegal competition poses
(tags: piracy new-scientist slate sopa filesharing dead-weight-loss economics music movies)Does Online Piracy Hurt The Economy? A Look At The Numbers – Forbes : ‘The data simply doesn’t suggest that piracy is causing any serious economic harm to the US economy or the entertainment industry. Heavy-handed approaches to preventing piracy are wrong-headed and reveal a dangerous level of short-term thinking on the part of both lawmakers and industry leaders. Worse, the impetus to crack down on piracy is based largely on industry data that wildly inflates the problem.’
(tags: piracy forbes filesharing politics sopa economics law)Adrian Weckler confims that “Ireland’s SOPA” will be vague and open-ended : ‘The clear implication from [Adrian’s] interview with Sean Sherlock is that the proposed measures will be lacking in any real detail, leaving it entirely up to the judges as to what types of blocking might emerge. (Possibly going beyond web blocking to also target hosting and other services.) This ambiguity — as well as jeopardising fundamental rights — will create intolerable uncertainty for businesses such as Google who might find themselves at risk of business threatening and unpredictable injunctions and will certainly deter others from setting up in Ireland.’ — this is much, much worse than I thought, particularly given the level of technical knowledge among Ireland’s judges (if Mr. Justice Charleton’s performance in EMI v. UPC is anything to go by).
(tags: sopa ireland law filesharing piracy internet filtering blocking)