First SOPA/PIPA, now Komen. We're on to something here, folks!

[Ms. Toad]

30. I wasn't discussing the goal - but the tool used to get there.

I see corporate speech the same way I do signing statements. If signing statements are an inappropriate tool, they are an inappropriate tool regardless of whether they are used to "permit" torture or limit the use of anti-terrorism against U.S. citizens. If corporate speech is an inappropriate tool, it is inappropriate both to buy the enactment of SOPA/PIPA and to motivate outrage against SOPA/PIPA.

As for my opinion about SOPA/PIPA - they used a tank to kill a wild coyote.

Among other things, I am a photographer and digital research artist. I create work protected by copyright. There is a significant problem with copyright infringement and the internet. A lot of the digital retouching I do takes hours, but can be copied without my consent and transmitted millions of times in the blink of an eye. As an owner of material protected by copyright it is getting harder and harder to enforce those rights because of (1) a lot of misunderstanding about what is protected by copyright - resulting in a lot of people engaging in infringement that they do not understand is infringement (2) the ease of copying things over the internet, and (3) deliberate theft by people who believe "information should be fee" regardless of the law. Protecting my work has been made harder by bad legal interpretations of the DMCA which have made it harder for copyright owners to keep material from being widely disseminated before it is too late for damage control, by hidden domain owners, and by the increasing use of/resistance by foreign domains to cooperate with take-down notices.

But SOPA/PIPA went way overboard. I personally experienced the chilling effect of the acts, even though they did not go into effect, when I uploaded a slide show set to music on facebook. The images were my own, and the music was licensed by all owners of the right to the music, for use with my slide show on websites. Facebook yanked it down, alleged I was engaging in copyright infringement, and threatened to disable my ability to upload videos. I filed a counternotice, they restored it, took it down again, another notice, another counternotice, back up again, back down again, and it has remained down for about a week now - and there is no meaningful way to communicate with them about the rights I have, short of legal action.

Facebook has started the kind of proactive review process that is not required for entities like facebook (and DU) under the DMCA, but would likely be necessary under SOPA/PIPA. Because of the quantity of material involved, they are removing even fully licensed use of materials protected by copyright - as near as I can tell from other complaints - based on anything musical in a video (You-Tube uses a pattern recognition, but Facebook appears to be more indiscriminate).

I don't know where the balance is, because there is a real problem of copyright infringement - but SOPA/PIPA went way too far.