Good to see that this story is finally starting to get coverage in the mainstream media. The more who know about this, the more pressure that can be put on the Senate and House of Representatives to block this crippling bill and force the media industry to compete against pirates and solve the problem in a fashion that would not effect mass censorship of American websites and set a benchmark for other countries around the world (such as the UK) to follow suite.

Furthermore the individuals pushing this bill are not internet savvy (bar a few) and are influenced as is acknowledged by the article by the deep pockets of RIAA and MPAA, surely passing such a bill should require some understanding on the implications of such a bill?

I would also bring into the question the honesty of such companies too as previous legislation such as the DMCA (which was indeed necessary) has been used dishonestly to affect effective censorship of certain media content such videos on Youtube for example. If these companies were granted yet more power, would they stop short of exerting their new found power or would they abuse it?

The worst part is that SOPA/PIPA have a higher chance of passing than laws against cassettes, records, etc. because back then everyone knew how to use cassettes and records. But now the internet is a fairly misunderstood service. And since congress doesn't know how to use the internet, they'll believe everything the entertainment industry tells them.

Shoot First ask questions later (assuming the traget is still alive).

Trouble is it's often an IP address blocked, and small businesses share IP addresses on a server along with other individuals.

Block that IP address and you take down a number of innocent small businesses web sites with it.

This is the sort of behaviour that encourages piracy. Who actually feels guilty about downloading music now after the way the music industry has treated its paying customers?

Whilst specific legislative responses to piracy may be flawed or too draconian, essentially the principle behind them is right.

I have no time whatsoever for the advocates of piracy. If they just had the honesty to admit 'yeah, I just want free stuff' then I might respect them just a little bit, in the way I might respect any honest crook for not trying to claim the moral high ground - for simply admitting he's a thief and taking the consequences of that as he finds them. Fact is that many online pirates are far worse than your average shoplifter. They actually think what they are doing is 'right'. Oh it's about defeating 'the man' and it's about freedom and it's actually good for 'music', 'real music' that is, or something. Grow up. You want free stuff just like the morons looting shops wanted free trainers.

Many of you seem to be under the illusion that because you have a problem with the 'music industry' that entitles you take break the law. I'm sorry but the music industry is not under any obligation to provide you with music. There is no human right to watch films or play video games. They provide a service, you either accept their terms or you don't benefit from the service.

And why did you fail to mention ACTA - the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - the only such measure where UK and European politicians have a right to stand up for freedom and democracy? Privatisation of censorship, criminalisation of trivial offences, chilling effects on innovation...

Response to proviso
Did you actually read the article. The problem with SOPA is that it will not just affect pirates; many innocent legitimate sites, including blogs & you-tube amongst others could also be shut down.
There are a couple of sopa articles you may find helpful, though the second is quite long. Go here & here

Bang on Proviso. You won't find much support here though for those sane and valid points.

You've lost the argument Naughton & Co. The big boys want their toys back. People like you have been attacking content owners for past 10 years for “being behind the times” for not adapting quick enough or for not “innovating” etc. Well, guess what? The content providers have been proved RIGHT. Those in the wrong are those who advocate or sympathise with piracy.

What are people supposed to be innovating? Ways of selling? Er, people don't want to buy. Can't you see that? Legally obtained music has NEVER been cheaper and more accessible. Yet sales and revenues continue to fall.

What are the most successful and “innovative” internet companies in past 10 years? The giant behemoths of Google and Youtube don't create and innovate. They take. Or point people in the right direction to take. They even allow companies to advertise on illegal sites? How innovative! Youtube's business was built on taking content. Not creating or innovating. Most popular videos on Youtube? Music videos. But of course these companies and great. Young and zestful. Nothing evil about interenet companies. Oh no. It's just the content owners who are bad. Boo hiss. Such a childish argument.

Big bad evil record companies actually pay their artists. 100% more than those great defenders of freedom of speech and expression, the pirate sites.........

This has been going on for 10 years. Take, take, take.

I cannot believe you continue to peddle the old “cassette tapes are the same as the internet” argument. It's quite simply WRONG to compare the two. They are not the same thing! You are WRONG and have been wrong for 10 years. When are you going to learn? How can you compare copying cassette tapes with 'the internet'. It's absurd. You are the one who is completely out of step and behind the times. We've been hearing this for the past 10 years and all the stats and figures show you are wrong.

Revenues are DOWN. Sales are DOWN, Music has never been cheaper and accessible but internet sales still haven't got close to catching up with CD sales. Why? You can't get cheaper than FREE.

How can you 'innovate' new ways of selling content when everything becomes available for nothing? Nothing is cheaper than free. Record companies have to act within the law. They have to pay royalties to the creators. Why does the great media darling Spotify constantly struggle? Because they have to pay royalties. Why do pirate sites prosper? No royalties! It's so simple yet you continue to bury your head in the sand.

Interestingly, artists like Prince and David Bowie had success with selling music on their own sites and bypassing the record labels etc but this ended when people just took their music for nothing from illegal sites. The model of bands and artists taking control of their work and selling it via websites etc could have worked. But it can't now. And who is going to INVEST in new music anyway? Oh, it's the big bad evil record companies........

I haven't finished yet :) Feel free to continue to bury your heads in the sand though.

You always come back with the “freedom of speech and expression”. Very grand and noble but what 'freedoms' are you talking about? People want the freedom to steal and take without paying. Don't believe me? Look at the stats. If music is so bad now why are pirate sites so successful? If the “album is dead” why do millions of albums get downloaded illegally?

You've clearly lost the argument when you accuse those of wishing to protect their content as attackers of internet freedom and freedom of speech. You want freedom of expression? Don't steal. You want freedom of expression? Don't upload content that you don't have permission to? Don't visit sites which allow illegal behaviour. If your favourite blogging site gets closed down then use one which doesn't allow or turn a blind eye to illegal activity. YOU have the FREEDOM to do this. Pubs get shut if they don't adhere to their licences. It's not an attack on pubs or the freedom to visit pubs. It's an attack on pubs which break the law.

Remember the old “sampling” argument of people who used the early file 'sharing' sites? “I still buy music, I just 'sample' a lot more”.... Hilarious... “I only download music I wouldn't buy anyway”. Oh really? I've lost count of the number of articles and blogs I've read here saying how file sharing was supposed to GOOD for the music business. Remember?! It was supposed to make people buy more, open their horizons. There was more choice than ever.. etc... BUT........The exact opposite has happened. Look at the charts. Look at the complete lack of variety. Urban dance pop. That's it. Has there ever been a time when there has been such a lack of variety in the charts? You only have to look at the BBC4 repeats of Top of the Pops 1977 to see the contrast.

When people steal bread from Tesco (ooh an evil big business...). What does Tesco do? Do they 'innovate'? Allow them to carry on? Make bread cheaper? Sell individual slices at 5p each? No, they increase security. Put more staff on the door or more CCTV. That's all the record labels and film companies want. Is that so absurd?

I know that kind of attitude is anathema to a lot of Guardian readers. I've been reading it on here for 10 years but the simple truth is that you were wrong 10 years and you are wrong now. The only difference between than and now is that we've had 10 years of evidence and statistics to prove it now. Isn't about time YOU did something about YOUR attitudes to content and piracy rather than continuously attack the 'evil' and 'nasty' companies?

Yours faithfully, a music loving loyal Guardian reader.

So America is capable of breaking the Internet. Are there any other countries that can do that?

when countries have power the temptation to use that power is almost irresistible. So instead of railing against the inevitable perhaps effort should instead be directed at removing this inherent weakness in the Internet.

Have to agree with you. When people say the music industry what they mean is "make it for free." You can get all sorts of music from many different sources for incredibly little money. Nearly 20 million tracks on Spotify is about a tenner a month. I paid £14.99 in 1992 for CDs - short of not charging anything the cost of music has come down massively. Whilst I think SOPA is taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut the Internet has conspicuously failed to stop the flow if pirated material - the fact they've failed so badly at putting their house in order gives the whip hand to someone who will.

Whilst I think SOPA is taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut the Internet has conspicuously failed to stop the flow if pirated material

You refer to the internet as if it is an entity that could possibly somehow effect a solution.

Had the music industry embrace digital distribution when they had the opportunity to get the jump on piracy i might have some sympathy, but they did not, they blocked it at everyturn and it was not until Apple created iTunes that anything started moving, but by this time the genie was out of the bottle, piracy had been normalised.

That said this is not so much a debvate about the rights and wrongs of piracy, it is about massivly overreaching, dangerous legislation. The rights holders have already proved that they cannot be trusted to use the current tools correctly, why they should bge granted these new powers is beyond me.

I do hold the same view as others here in that the comparison of the cassette and VCR era to the Internet does not truly reflect why this legislation is on the table. The fact that a person can obtain an illegal copy of a music or movie recording at a quality level that is identical to that of a purchased version is the reason why the pirate mentality remains a serious issue. People complain about the cost of music and movies back 10 years ago and how they were getting screwed - WAKE UP - you can apply the same logic to a lot of things as a product market matures. A good example is internet broadband access itself - 10 years ago you got a .5Mb download and 128k upload, with a capped amount of data for £25+ and now you can get 20Mb down and 8Mb up for less than a tenner...with no cap under fair usage rights. So why aren't people talking about that? People talk about the price of music 10 years ago as some form of justification for people pirating copyrighted material. The music and movie companies provided a value proposition that was accepted by consumers at the time - if you didn't like, then you didn't have to buy it.

In agreeing with UliCantrell - people love the FREE .... especially when there is either little or no compromise on the quality. I am honest enough to say that I work for a music company, and while I might sound bias in my argument, I am as much a music consumer as the next person. People were very opposed to DRM in music when it came out, as it started placing limitations on what you could do with your purchase... which highlights the biggest headache for the media industry - striking the balance between security and freedom. All the pundits seem to think it is so easy or that the answer is right in front of the industry.... well it's not. If it was, the status quo wouldn't exist.

I wouldn't disagree that SOPA has flaws. For those professional lobby groups that have come to complain about it - why don't you come back with alternatives? No? Thats right, becuase it easy to say its bad. It's like a bunch of tax cheats complaining that a loop hole is going to be closed. I am sure that the committee of politicians are not IT savvy - but just becuase someone is a developer, engineer etc, doesn't make his opinion right or motive clear.

"don't let big business break the internet"

I for one think that's what APPS are all about so to an extent it's already happened.

"Er, people don't want to buy. Can't you see that? Legally obtained music has NEVER been cheaper and more accessible. Yet sales and revenues continue to fall."

Yes true but services like Itunes and Spotify have done alot to lower music piracy, showing that privacy can be defeated through improving services and not through damaging pieces of legislation like SOPA. Piracy is going to be around for a while and it is not going to disappear overnight, therefore these services will slowly but surely reduce piracy.

"The giant behemoths of Google and Youtube don't create and innovate."

Um...are you not aware of the vast numbers of smaller gaming and film companies who use youtube as a platform for advertising? They've found their place on the market thanks to these sites!

"Most popular videos on Youtube? Music videos"

Music videos are often put up by the copyright owners as a way of PROMOTING the music!! And as for music videos uploaded by general users (which are, to be honest rare as alot of them are simply the music with lyrics on screen) It can also act as a way of secondary advertising; what do people do before downloading a song from iTunes? They look it up on youtube to see if it's any good! Youtube doesn't come with a download button so it can be used as an advantage, especially to smaller artists.

"cannot believe you continue to peddle the old “cassette tapes are the same as the internet” argument. It's quite simply WRONG to compare the two."

No ones saying that the internet is literally the same as a cassette tape, the argument is that the reaction of the RIAA back in the 80s when the cassette tape was first announced is very similar to the reaction when the first mp3 player came out and now the introduction of digital downloads. Their argument always was that it would kill the music industry but it didn't and they actually benefited from it. Its hardly surprising that they would be against these newer services because it gives their competition ways of promoting their products.

"How can you 'innovate' new ways of selling content when everything becomes available for nothing?"

As mentioned before, the most logical way to stamp out piracy is by improving services and giving consumers more options (which was a suggestion of the head of the video game company 'Valve', who are directly affected by piracy). SOPA will do little to solve privacy because it is taking the simplest possible route which is not always the best!

"Interestingly, artists like Prince and David Bowie had success with selling music on their own sites and bypassing the record labels etc but this ended when people just took their music for nothing from illegal sites. The model of bands and artists taking control of their work and selling it via websites etc could have worked. But it can't now. And who is going to INVEST in new music anyway? Oh, it's the big bad evil record companies........"

What do you mean by 'bypassing the record labels?' one of Prince's record labels were Warner Bros (One of the biggest record labels) and one of David Bowie's record labels was Virgin. Other artists sell their music through their own sites as well; their is nothing different about that! I should also note that 50 Cent's record label was one company in several who drew up an 'internet blacklist' of sites they felt were 'rouge' and would therefore be blocked if SOPA was inacted. What was one of the sites they put on the list? 50 Cent's personal website! I guess the big labels have more than privacy on their mind!

An this brings me to my final point; SOPA will NOT help with privacy because other copyright laws have been enacted in the past (DMCA) and have infamously caused the removal of videos promoting free speech. If it is enacted this will become far more commonplace. SOPA will not just do nothing for privacy it will also damage free speech and internet security (which is unconstitutional).

Oh and also, going on about 'Revenue and Sales being down' doesn't work when considering that the entertainment industry contributes a lot less to America's overall economy than the technology industry. Considering that SOPA will harm future innovation by making investors more hesitant to fund some internet start up businesses (which was confirmed by the investors themselves) will show how much small businesses and the economy will suffer and how much of a monopoly SOPA will create

TL;DR
Get YOUR head out of the sand and realise that we're not living in the 'CD era' anymore. SOPA is bad for everyone and their is little evidence to prove that it will improve piracy!

Actually, an alternative has been proposed; It's called the OPEN act :) You can read more about it here;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Protection_and_Enforcement_of_Digital_Trade_Act

As it happens, last year digi sales for the first time overtook CD sales, at 52% of total, though total sales (all formats) are down another 5.6%.

... but otherwise I agree. Those of us who make music (but make the 'wrong' kind to ever get any kind of major deal- not that most of us would want one, often) have mostly accepted that our recordings now have little intrinsic value in themselves. When 'sync'd' to TV, film, ads, etc, yes, but that market is very competitive, and you'll need either a wide network of media executives or a very good publisher/agent to get them.

Otherwise the usual story is - indie artist slaps up music on Bandcamp/Tunecore wherever, works their facebook list, gets a brief spike of plays/sales for about three days, then sits there looking at the stats and realises that this is no way to make a living...

And that's the point. Back in the good old days, you could just about survive, getting about the minimum wage, on sales of about 10k or even 7k, for each album. A whole lot of very good music indeed - the stuff that's about the MUSIC, not the hype, or the looks (world music, jazz, electronica) could just about fund itself on these sales. Now they're lucky to sell 3k, often less, and if streaming becomes the norm (Spotify etc) then those artists will need 'sales' that are literally in the millions - per month - to get the same, minimum, wage. And they won't get anything like that....

The reason all you find on major labels these days is mostly rubbish 'urban' is that that music can be relied upon, with a hefty promo budget, to supply some kind of short term quick return - all other genres simply don't, anymore. 'Development' is gone. 60% of all top forty UK artists were educated at private schools - why ? Because they're the only ones with the trust fund/parents able to stick the £60k minimum into 'developing' the act to the point where a major is interested.

For everybody else, it's grim to the point of farce. Yes, we carry on making the stuff, but most of us know the game is up. Indie music isn't dying, but to my ears the quality - in all areas, production, song writing, performance, etc - is dropping fast. Partly that's because it's now easier to 'make records' than ever before (so a lot of people who really shouldn't ... are ...) but also because even 'established' artists find that they can no longer afford the number of players they used to, can't afford the studios to record them in (if they can find one - a lot have gone bust)

SOPA needs some serious evaluation, yes, in its current form. But something has to be done about the rampant assumption that somehow those who create content don't deserve to get paid, and that not getting paid won't make any difference to the quality of the 'product'.

Of course it does.

Money=time=time to write, time to record, time to perfect what we do=good music

No money= no time= bad music.

Which do you want ? Access to X billion free files of dubious music ? Or good music ?

You gets what you pay for.

I have no argument with people who pirate music and videos being prosecuted but it seems to me that the music industry wants other people to do their job for them. Why should a website be closed down simply because some asks the government to do so. Similarly why should an I.S.P. providor hand over details of it"s customers simply because they are asked to. If the music industry wants to stop piracy it should look at technical solutions to prevent illegal copying and should use it"s own money and resources to track down and prosecute pirates.It seems to me tat this legislation is going to punish the innocent majority to prevent crime by a small group without having to go to the bother of going to court.

The problem that most people have with SOPA actually has nothing to do with Piracy: the legislation itself is so vague and all-encompassing that it will allow arbitrary shut-downs of websites that disagree with the Government or its stance on something. If it gets passed in its current form, it's a serious infringement of civil liberties.

The beauty (and sometimes the problem) with the internet is the ability for anyone to write about and say anything that they choose - it is a tool of your freedom of expression. To curtail this tool is to in fact curtail your human rights.

THAT is why SOPA is people so heavily debated.

The music industry has to stop holding on to the way things were and appreciate that the way music is made, shared and bought (not just "stolen") has changed. Programmes like Spotify have made access to huge amounts of music EASY and LEGAL. If they now institutionalise software like that, they're likely to make much more money than they currently do and over time, the mindset of people will change away from illegal downloading. If the film industry does something similar to Spotify (like netflix or something), then they too will continue to make money through digital means.

I don't believe that piracy is anything but a cover to give the Government legislative backing to curtail internet freedoms.

Is the internet an physical manifestation of human cognitive evolution. Or is it just a box of wires that can be switched off. I suppose we wouldn't really know unless it was switched off.