Is online piracy a really serious problem? My opinion: nope.

[JackRiddler]

20. Nope! Also, let's start with the name: Piracy, my ass.

This just shows the importance of labeling, already well understood by all those who know to call themselves freedom fighters when their enemies want to call themselves terrorists.

Piracy? Really? On a level with commandeering ships and kidnapping human beings on the high seas and holding them for ransom?

It's unauthorized copying, nothing more. The worst thing it was called before MPAA and RIAA decided to unmake the digital age was bootlegging. And long before then, these culturally regressive private self-appointed institutions of the nanny-state were also trying to criminalize tens of millions of people for using magnetic tape!

The summary shutdown of megaupload shows there are already enough laws on the books written to protect these rapacious corporate goons' sense of "property." SOPA goes beyond allowing multiple governments to seize the assets of the company and its principals by surprise, exactly as they did, by creating the additional capacity to persecute EVERYONE for mentioning the existence of megaupload or having it come up in a search!

Meanwhile artists and soapboxers who would have never seen corporate distribution speak to the world and find audiences thanks to Internet, digitalization and social media. We're supposed to worry about Disney and Newscorp and the pre-fab pap they push at us from every platform and channel and their ludicrous fantasy that if you inadvertantly have Justin Bieber or Kim Kardashian appear on your screen you should be forced to pay. Begone, beasts!

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