AFAICT, Netflix has said nothing about supporting SOPA-like legislation with this PAC, and indeed has said nothing about FIXPAC's agenda at all. It could just as likely act as a net neutrality advocate. Stow your pitchforks, at least for now.
Other than in this article, and those like it, where exactly does it say that this PAC will be pro-SOPA? I haven't seen anything at all from Netflix saying as much.
On the surface, I don't see anything wrong with people/corporations being on the side of "stopping online piracy". So just saying a new bill is being introduced to stop online piracy or that a corporation is going to funnel money to legislators writing it should not be enough to break out the pitchforks and assemble in the town square. Just because SOPA was a dog turd doesn't mean that every attempt to stop piracy is going to be the same. If the next bill fixed all the problems that people had with SOPA/PIPA and still managed to combat piracy, would that be a bad thing? Is it so crazy to be against piracy? Isn't piracy illegal?
EDIT: just to clarify... I torrent the hell out of movies and CDs. I just won't ever claim that doing it today is legal. Would I be sad if it all went away? sure. But I don't think I'm entitled to any of it. And I don't buy the "I'm poor... so I have to pirate it" argument.
While I agree with you in principle, I think that in the long term, piracy issues in the United States are going to go the way of abortion.
Just to illustrate what I mean: I personally oppose women's right to have abortions -- no holds barred -- I think that it's always morally wrong to pursue the termination of pregnancy as an end and practically always wrong to pursue it as a means to some other end (although there are cancer treatments etc that jeopardize the well-being of a fetus that people should not be barred from pursuing simply based on the potential harm).
On the other hand, it is very clearly a cultural issue. I believe that on a practical level, to attempt to police abortion would require a Stasi amount of government effort. If the people want the right to abort, the horse is already out of the barn, and the job is not the government's to swing the pendulum back, it belongs to magazine article writers, philosophers, and op-ed journalists. If they should fail, that's okay. It is more important not to live The Lives of Others than to save those children's lives, simply because saving them would not represent a noble Arthurian quest, it would involve spying on pregnant women and assassinating doctors. Disgusting.
Intellectual property is a patently less important arena of human activity, but I think in a similar way the policing of the internet should be cultural. There ought to be a cultural directive not to steal things over the internet when you're not a college kid anymore. When you can afford something, and it's reasonably available, I think this cultural directive already exists.
This cultural approach is successful and that's the reason that -- for the most part -- torrenting and music sales are weakly correlated. Most of the people that think it's okay to steal things, would not be customers anyhow.
I believe that most of the time torrenting represents charity on the part of movie studios and textbook publishers and music labels, providing their wares to those who would not have otherwise been able to afford them, which is not a bad thing, they're hiring cheap brand ambassadors. The ability to work subtle complicated questions like this one out is the power of cultural motivation.
TL;DR : When you're talking about the decision to terminate a pregnancy, or the decision to commit online piracy, the power is entirely in the hands of the citizen. It is so easy to pirate, it is so distasteful to set a woman's body against her will. Law-abidingness in these cases requires the cooperation of the potential "criminals". You cannot pursue justice in these cases through traditional law enforcement.
When someone figures out how to combat sharing information covered by IP laws without large scale surveillance and censorship systems then maybe it would make sense. I can't even see how that would be possible, but who knows?
Right now "combating piracy" is a bad thing just like "combating evil thoughts" or "combating hateful speech" is bad, because the only possible way to do it causes much more harm than the stated enemy is causing.
Illegal is whatever Congress says is illegal. It's not easy to derive an "ought" from an "is". So the fact that X is illegal, on its own, makes no difference when it comes to the question of whether Congress (or anybody else) should combat X. (Pot is illegal in most parts of the U.S., but a lot of people strongly believe that the government should stop trying to combat it.)
It's entirely possible that some subset of X should not be illegal, and therefore Congress should not combat it. I think such sentiments are a major aspect (though not the only aspect) of the debate surrounding SOPA/PIPA. Should it be illegal to post a link to a link to some copyrighted material?
ADDED: I don't think there would be anything crazy or wrong about being against some appropriately defined subset of "piracy", but simply being against "piracy" doesn't seem to be a position that someone who understands all the complexities of the issue can reasonably hold.
I've been a paid Nexflix users for maybe 30+ months now. I like, love, the service. This is unfortunate, the only thing that I can do is see how it plays out over the next cuple of weeks and move my money out of the service if necessary.
This most likely stems from a partial support of SOPA in the past, in that Netflix said something along the lines of supporting some of what SOPA does, but not supporting the way in which it does it. I'm afraid I can't provide any sources, as I heard this second-hand myself, but that's how I understand it to be at the moment.
[+] [-] powrtoch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leeoniya|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zikes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dissident|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronsw|14 years ago|reply
http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2012/01/netflix-to-testify-tue...
[+] [-] jack-r-abbit|14 years ago|reply
EDIT: just to clarify... I torrent the hell out of movies and CDs. I just won't ever claim that doing it today is legal. Would I be sad if it all went away? sure. But I don't think I'm entitled to any of it. And I don't buy the "I'm poor... so I have to pirate it" argument.
[+] [-] bgilroy26|14 years ago|reply
Just to illustrate what I mean: I personally oppose women's right to have abortions -- no holds barred -- I think that it's always morally wrong to pursue the termination of pregnancy as an end and practically always wrong to pursue it as a means to some other end (although there are cancer treatments etc that jeopardize the well-being of a fetus that people should not be barred from pursuing simply based on the potential harm).
On the other hand, it is very clearly a cultural issue. I believe that on a practical level, to attempt to police abortion would require a Stasi amount of government effort. If the people want the right to abort, the horse is already out of the barn, and the job is not the government's to swing the pendulum back, it belongs to magazine article writers, philosophers, and op-ed journalists. If they should fail, that's okay. It is more important not to live The Lives of Others than to save those children's lives, simply because saving them would not represent a noble Arthurian quest, it would involve spying on pregnant women and assassinating doctors. Disgusting.
Intellectual property is a patently less important arena of human activity, but I think in a similar way the policing of the internet should be cultural. There ought to be a cultural directive not to steal things over the internet when you're not a college kid anymore. When you can afford something, and it's reasonably available, I think this cultural directive already exists.
This cultural approach is successful and that's the reason that -- for the most part -- torrenting and music sales are weakly correlated. Most of the people that think it's okay to steal things, would not be customers anyhow.
I believe that most of the time torrenting represents charity on the part of movie studios and textbook publishers and music labels, providing their wares to those who would not have otherwise been able to afford them, which is not a bad thing, they're hiring cheap brand ambassadors. The ability to work subtle complicated questions like this one out is the power of cultural motivation.
TL;DR : When you're talking about the decision to terminate a pregnancy, or the decision to commit online piracy, the power is entirely in the hands of the citizen. It is so easy to pirate, it is so distasteful to set a woman's body against her will. Law-abidingness in these cases requires the cooperation of the potential "criminals". You cannot pursue justice in these cases through traditional law enforcement.
[+] [-] freshhawk|14 years ago|reply
Right now "combating piracy" is a bad thing just like "combating evil thoughts" or "combating hateful speech" is bad, because the only possible way to do it causes much more harm than the stated enemy is causing.
[+] [-] kijin|14 years ago|reply
Illegal is whatever Congress says is illegal. It's not easy to derive an "ought" from an "is". So the fact that X is illegal, on its own, makes no difference when it comes to the question of whether Congress (or anybody else) should combat X. (Pot is illegal in most parts of the U.S., but a lot of people strongly believe that the government should stop trying to combat it.)
It's entirely possible that some subset of X should not be illegal, and therefore Congress should not combat it. I think such sentiments are a major aspect (though not the only aspect) of the debate surrounding SOPA/PIPA. Should it be illegal to post a link to a link to some copyrighted material?
ADDED: I don't think there would be anything crazy or wrong about being against some appropriately defined subset of "piracy", but simply being against "piracy" doesn't seem to be a position that someone who understands all the complexities of the issue can reasonably hold.
[+] [-] emehrkay|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ComputerGuru|14 years ago|reply
(sorry!)
[+] [-] jack-r-abbit|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hornbaker|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcamillion|14 years ago|reply
Can someone explain why they would want to do this?
[+] [-] Zikes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lachyg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greenpizza13|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]