Check out this debate, produced by Democracynow.org, pitting Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales against Sandra Aistars, exec director of the Copyright Alliance, a group including the Motion Picture Association of America, NBC, Time Warner, Viacom and others.
Congressional support for SOPA and PIPA is weakening, particularly after this week’s online protest, in which thousands of sites, including Wikipedia, blacked out.
“We’re talking about sites that are operated and dedicated to piracy and that are really preventing individual creators across the country from having an economic livelihood from their creative pursuits,” says Aistars, in support of the bills. Responds Wales, “That would mean it would be illegal for Wikipedia to link to a site, even if we are explaining to the public what is going on here. That would become illegal. This is outrageous. It’s not acceptable under the First Amendment.”
If you want a clearer understanding of SOPA and PIPA, definitely check this video out.
Disclosure: aNewDomain’s Gina Smith serves on a non-profit board with Wales — civilination.org — a group dedicated toward curbing online hate speech.
That Sandra is really sneaky. All she talks about are the poor little people the law is protecting and conveniently leaves out all the big corporate players. The little people I know are in on the new distribution model and get it…the RIAA and MPAA (may Chris Dodd *** ** ****) not so much.
I couldn’t have said it better!
SOPA and PIPA are for the corporate media robber barons, not for the poor little people. The creative community that actually creates the content is often at the bottom of the media money food chain.