SOPA, copyright voluntary agreements: Hollywood lobbyists are like exes who won’t give up..
From the they-just-don’t-get-it department, we bring you more copyright shenanigans from the big money holders in Congress and their best buddies: the media industry.
It’s just a lesson that we, the content consumers, must be ever vigilant if we wish to prevent people like them from destroying sites that we use.
They aren’t doing it directly right this time though, they’re taking a very circuitous route. Instead of attacking Google or Reddit or your favorite social media platform, they are instead following the money (something they are VERY good at): making back room deals with payment processors and advertising companies. Instead of having offending content removed from a site (which is what the DMCA originally allowed for) they are now trying to have sites completely shut down (which is what the original SOPA measures tried to do) by having their funding and revenue streams become wastelands. They are trying to have pages removed from search results, stripped of domain names, and have all their fund sources removed. This would essentially (and effectively) kill off the site.
And it’s all being done voluntarily.
This is where things like cryptocurrency make a difference. If we can start accepting different forms of payment that don’t necessarily need to pass through the hands of big banks and payment processors and credit card companies then we can prevent this sort of stuff from happening. At least, that’s what I hope. Fingers crossed.
I may not care that much if Facebook were to go up in flames, but if Reddit or Google were to disappear I think we could all agree that the internet would be a vastly different place.
I’ll keep updating with new posts as information comes in. If I can find information on which companies are making these backroom deals I will let you know so we can all actively try to avoid them.
Until then, remain vigilant.
Protect one of our greatest inventions and resources: the open, free internet.
Cheers.
-M
