None of my sites are going black tomorrow. I don't post anyone else's content on any of my blogs--all thoughts, comments, rantings, etc. are mine. Newsletter content is all mine as well.
I don't know where I stand on this bill being proposed, but I don't want people taking my material and re-posting it elsewhere. While I believe in free speech, I do believe that people have a right to protect material that they have created and worked hard to prepare. I don't think that being unable to "share" what someone else has written is anti-free speech. Write your own crap and say all you want but don't take my crap and say it is yours. Don't copy and paste what someone else has written as if you did it. Don't forward emails you didn't write (there are a MILLION reasons for that). Don't post crap to blogs that you copied and pasted from elsewhere. Create your own crap.
I want to have credit for my own stuff. That's not anti-free speech. Don't tell me that we all should be able to share whatever we want however we want. I don't buy it and I don't "share it" either.
And if I drag my a$$ to a rural cemetery and take a picture of a tombstone and post it on my website, you shouldn't just post it to Findagrave as if you did it yourself or act like it was "okay" because you were "sharing." Please. If you are smart enough to download the image and upload it somewhere else, you are smart enough to EMAIL me and ask permission. Didn't your mother teach you anything?
If' I've got a shopping cart in the parking lot with groceries in it, should you take something out of the cart under the guise of "sharing?" I think not--it's called stealing. If I tell you to take something that's one thing. If I buy something and drop it off at the food pantry (let's call that putting it in the "public domain,") that's ok. If it's not ok to lift stuff out of my shopping cart in the Wal-Mart parking lot, why should it be okay to lift something from my website and use it as your own?
Off rant.
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Update: the failure to allow for due process DOES CONCERN me and I don't care what any old retired senators say. Start learning more here https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
Michael, while I get where you're coming from ... the point is that under SOPA, even if you write your own crap, someone else could complain and say you stole that crap, and WITHOUT DUE PROCESS they could shut your site(s) down. THAT's what we're fighting.
ReplyDeleteIt's less about protecting our blogs than it is punishing the rest of us because the motion picture industry, the recording industry, and all the other big businesses out there can't watchdog their own corners of the world and want make it the government's job to keep people from stealing their crap.
Aside from that, if we give the government an inch to police the internet, and they will eventually take a mile. Two words: Patriot Act.