SOPA/PIPA Follow-Up

Mike Masnick and Steve Forbes had interesting follow-up posts.  Mike Masnick posted a cartoon by Ruben Bolling which once again demonstrates how graphics can be much more descriptive than written narrative. Mr. Bolling even observes an interpretative twist that I have overlooked. That is how can the content industry claim "theft" if the content was created knowing that it would have fallen into the public domain had the law not changed???!!!

Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling

Mr. Forbes in "Don't Soft-Soap SOPA" makes certain critical observations. One, that the current public outrage has only "temporarily derailed" the continued the growing trend in eliminating civil liberties in the quest to protect a special interest group. Mr. Bolling, in the cartoon above, illustrates this in the background. Mr. Forbes goes on to say:"SOPA's and PIPA's unwritten agenda seemed to be to throttle the Web for its drastic - and very unwelcome - upending of the traditional way business is done in the entertainment world.  Hollywood has fought every technological advance tooth and nail since the early days of television."

Mr. Forbes goes on to suggest some compromises and alternative approaches using private market solutions rather than government regulation. My quibble with Mr. Forbes' conclusions is that he does not mention rolling back copyright to a more reasonable time duration, to protect the private property rights of the content buyers, or to expand the concept of "fair-use".