Gimmie the Whompwhomp!

Damu

SOPA: A Collision of Threatened Business Interests and Political Legerdemain

There is a great opinion piece over on Mashable.com written by Chris Heald, a programmer that apparently scribes a dissenting opinion as well as he writes code.

By now most of us have heard of SOPA. For the uninitiated, SOPA is piece of legislation that supposedly seeks to stop online piracy by criminalizing certain behaviors. In an effort to control internet piracy, SOPA grants broad regulatory powers to the U.S. Attorney General and creates onerous regulatory compliance requirements for leading websites. Accordingly, Reddit, Wikipedia and others will go dark tomorrow (Jan 18^th) in protest of SOPA. All Americans and internet users world-wide should take heed.

Stopping internet piracy may at first glance seem like a noble cause; however, it takes only a bit of digging for SOPA to look like a risky step down a slippery slope towards internet censorship and social media police. Moreover, it is important to point out that SOPA was not borne of a benevolent Congress seeking to protect the greater good. SOPA came about as a result of heavy lobbying by the entertainment industry, its unions and various other stakeholders.

The result is an ugly attempt to protect the entertainment industry and its business model which has not been adapted to address changing distribution mediums and delivery mechanisms (Kodak failing to convert to digital photography technology comes to mind). In an effort to stave off its imminent restructuring, the entertainment industry has decided to use political influence to temporarily survive what can only be called a paradigm shift in industry fundamentals.

In an effort to support their position, entertainment executives have proclaimed that their industry should be protected from online privacy because of the jobs the industry creates. Additionally, some executives have claimed that foreign movie sales will continue to increase the size of the industry and therefore its ability to generate jobs. This reasoning raises more questions than answers.

What about the booming internet economy, how many jobs will it lose as a result of SOPA? How many small business owners and bloggers will lose secondary sources of advertising revenue? Do any industries still repatriate money to the U.S., how will foreign movie sales help bring jobs here? Is movie production scalable in terms of jobs or are economies of scale achieved with greater distribution abroad?

It seems safe to say in the aggregate that the future of the U.S. (and world) economy will be more broadly influenced by ecommerce than by the entertainment industry, and the multitude of websites that would be negatively impacted by SOPA's regulatory intervention will soon dwarf the entertainment industry in terms of economic benefit to society. In light of this, does SOPA or some future iteration still make sense?

Not to this writer. Adaptation is at the core of our entrepreneurial society and we have seen time after time that economic protectionism fails to achieve its stated goals. The downstream ramifications of protectionism are always unclear and therefore undervalued during the planning phases. In the case of SOPA, the downstream risks are identifiable and given the long-term growth of the internet economy, the potential negative economic impact is nearly incalculable.

The entire bill can be read here and if you are having trouble sleeping dive right in. Otherwise know that the authors of this bill are trying to hide the fact that they only have their own political campaign coffers in mind and when the entertainment powers speak, these legislators listen.

Interestingly enough, this is the second major attempt by Congress to regulate the internet in the last 12 months. Check out this piece on Net Neutrality that I wrote last year. At the time, our own Franklin posed a prophetic question:

"Amen. How long do you think it'll be before the FCC uses its power to censor websites found to be objectionable by whatever bureaucrat is running the committee at that time?"

Merely 12 months. That is astonishingly nimble for the Congress, and all internet users should be loud in voicing objection to this short-sighted attempt to protect the interests of the entertainment industry.

In Case You Missed Hakeem Nicks' 37-Yard TD

Prince Hakeem Nicks

@ defending champion Green Bay Packers. First Half Stats: 5 Catches, 152 yards, and 2 TDs including a 37-yard hail-mary to end the half. By far my favorite football player of all-time. I am a Tar Heel.

Stupid brainteaser for stupid people

I put $20 in a box and you put $20 in the same box. You buy the box containing $40 from me for $30. We both make $10!

Death To All But Metal

You hang out with the morons at the HQ and smoke crystal meth one time and you end up in the section of youtube that is home to Steel Panther



Really, go through their ouvre at youtube. It is pretty fucking awesome.

(nsfw)

The UN Flew its Flags at Half Staff to Honor Kim Jong Il's Death

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/un-lowers-flag-kim-jong-il_614948.html

Is there any more wretched hive of scum and villainy in the galaxy than the UN?  What a group of sick freaks.  This is no different than honoring Hitler or Pol Pot. 

Neti Pots

FYI – don’t use tap water in your Neti Pots (those pots where you pour water up your nose to get rid of congestion) since it can carry a brain-eating amoeba that is safe to drink but is deadly if it gets in the mucus membranes around your nose/brain.    

Seriously.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2074957/Deaths-brain-eating-amoeba-linked-sinus-remedy-colds.html

 

 

 

 

Funniest line from latest Iowahawk "essay"

“Speaking at a San Francisco fundraiser, Obama said, "Like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Instead of the praise he should have got for that insightful burn, Obama got scalded for his comments.”

Hah!