Anonymous attacking Sony for supporting SOPA

demongerbil said:

Have you ever seen an ad for Zappos? Their business plan is to spend all their marketing $ on customer service, and that is why they are #1 in their niche.

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OMG. I just did research on this "Zappos" company, and it turns out they are a distributor for name brand shoes. They sell other companies products. Other companies make the shoes, and Zappos distributes them to the customer.

Zappos was founded by Nick Swinmurn in 1999. The initial inspiration came when he couldn?t find a pair of brown Airwalks at his local mall.

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Does this remind you of what I was talking about before? Did Airwalk invent a better way to distribute their shoes when Nick had a problem? No. Nick worked with some friends to make distribution more efficient with advancing technology.

Don't you see you just proved my entire point? It wasn't the Shoe Industry or Shoe Manufacturer who solved the problem it was an average consumer with an idea!

SOPA is stupid and arrogant anyone who supports it are the same...

Kickflip said:

Lol. Your whole argument here was based on the fact that you don't enjoy music like Justin Bieber or The Backstreet Boys, wasn't it? Despite what you think, most "artists" do require a lot of work to sellout stadiums around the world. Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga couldn't have done it on their own. You can only go so far without a million dollar marketing budget.

Never heard of Zappos. I think its a Pokemon character though. Maybe they should have put more money into Marketing.

Basically every Top 10 artist in the Music business is signed with a Major label who pays for the production and marketing of their music. I think that speaks for itself.

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Actually you are incorrect, I happen to think Justin Bieber is very talented, despite the fact I do not listen to his music. And if anything, he is the exception that PROVES MY FUCKING POINT. Do you know how he got famous first? YouTube. And he was signed by Usher's Raymond Braun Media Group, by no means a major label.

Your point about Top 10 music artists is tautological. "It is this way, therefore it is right that it should be this way". It only happens to be this way because it is a necessary evil now, and it is virtually impossible to break into top 10 without a major $ backing you, you are right on that point.

If you haven't heard of Zappos, you don't know the Internet very well, sir. They are the industry's poster child on how to construct a successful ecommerce business.

Kickflip said:

You guys are freakin hilarious and frustrating at the same time.

Who perfected the Tape Players and CD Players and MP3 players? Was it the Record Companies who OWN the music, or was it the Electronics Companies? Who came up with the idea for them? Was it the Record Companies, or was it someone else?

Sony ELECTRONICS is a big player in Designing and perfecting these applications, not Sony Music. They have NOTHING to do with making distribution easier. That simply isn't their industry. I don't understand how you guys don't get that.

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It seems you are contradicting the general point you are trying to make.

Yes the electronics companies made the cassette players and the MP3 players, but how exactly are you trying to tie them into the businesses that are responsible for the innovation for the film/music industry?

The electronics companies are already innovative. They made the cassette players, CD players, MP3 players. They've done their part, they moved with the progression of technology. The film industry did not.

With the age of the internet, large screen TV's & so on - (which the electronics companies have produced and thus done their part for innovation) - people have expected more from the film/music industry.

After all, you said that the electronics companies made the MP3 players and so on - but how did the music industry try and sell it to us? They tried to sell it to us on CD's and so on. We don't want them on CD's! We have MP3 players - that the electronics companies MADE for us to use - yet the music industry doesn't keep up with us and insists we buy their shitty old CD's that no one wants.

Likewise with movies. We have super fast internet, big PC or TV panels - we want to watch the movies in the comfort of our own homes. The electronics companies have DONE THEIR PART, they have made it POSSIBLE - but the film industry did NOT innovate their approach to accommodate for peoples desires to watch movies and entertain themselves at home.

Instead, the film industry kept on pushing their product to be exclusively seen at the movies (discounting that later they get sold on DVD as it is irrelevant to our specific discussion) - so who is at fault here.

The film industry has been provided the platform and the hardware to do what the people demand - but they haven't stepped up to the game.

It is not my fault, it is not the internet's fault, it is not Google's, Yahoo's, YouTube's or anyone elses problem. We are just moving with the change in technology, and the film industry is not.

They are indirectly slowing us down. With their SOPA bill, they want it to pass and stop pirating - and keep on forcing us to go to the cinema to see movies. We don't want that. We want them to innovate and give us what we WANT. We do NOT want to go the cinema - but they don't offer us any legal alternatives - likewise, how you *you* not see that?

demongerbil said:

Actually you are incorrect, I happen to think Justin Bieber is very talented, despite the fact I do not listen to his music. And if anything, he is the exception that PROVES MY FUCKING POINT. Do you know how he got famous first? YouTube. And he was signed by Usher's Raymond Braun Media Group, by no means a major label.

Your point about Top 10 music artists is tautological. "It is this way, therefore it is right that it should be this way". It only happens to be this way because it is a necessary evil now, and it is virtually impossible to break into top 10 without a major $ backing you, you are right on that point.

If you haven't heard of Zappos, you don't know the Internet very well, sir. They are the industry's poster child on how to construct a successful ecommerce business.

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To further strengthen what you have said, it seems (assuming what you have said is correct) that YouTube was one of the main reasons for Justin Beiber becoming famous.

If SOPA had it's way, and imagining that it was already introduced before YouTube, then we wouldn't even know who Justin Beiber was.

There were so many people uploading music and other copyrighted content to YouTube (now and when it first started too) that the SOPA would have just closed the site down for good. When they were starting out, from memory, it was some college kids who made it - do you think they had the resources to monitor everything going online? No chance.

YouTube would not have survived, and none of us would have it - yet, we are all very happy with YouTube and thankful that we have it. I know I am, and I am sure you are, too.

If SOPA had it's way, things would be very very different. YouTube would not have been what it is today. Likewise with all of the other bigger video sharing websites.

These are the types of sites & things we are opening ourselves up to when allowing SOPA.

demongerbil said:

Actually you are incorrect, I happen to think Justin Bieber is very talented, despite the fact I do not listen to his music. And if anything, he is the exception that PROVES MY FUCKING POINT. Do you know how he got famous first? YouTube. And he was signed by Usher's Raymond Braun Media Group, by no means a major label.

Your point about Top 10 music artists is tautological. "It is this way, therefore it is right that it should be this way". It only happens to be this way because it is a necessary evil now, and it is virtually impossible to break into top 10 without a major $ backing you, you are right on that point.

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You idea of famous and my idea of famous are clearly quite a bit different. I would say he got DISCOVERED through YouTube, which actually doesn't prove your point at all. Justin Bieber NEEDED to be signed by another company to become as famous as he eventually has become. There are HUNDREDS of acts every year who go viral on YouTube, but never get signed, and fade into nothingness after several months because they don't have the look or the personality, even if they have the talent.

Do you really want Record Companies to just go away? Is that your argument? I just don't understand your argument here. You seem to hate Record Companies.

Kickflip said:

You idea of famous and my idea of famous are clearly quite a bit different. I would say he got DISCOVERED through YouTube, which actually doesn't prove your point at all. Justin Bieber NEEDED to be signed by another company to become as famous as he eventually has become. There are HUNDREDS of acts every year who go viral on YouTube, but never get signed, and fade into nothingness after several months because they don't have the look or the personality, even if they have the talent.

Do you really want Record Companies to just go away? Is that your argument? I just don't understand your argument here. You seem to hate Record Companies.

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You raise good points, but you are still missing the point from my perspective. Let's not go out of context (not aimed at you, just all of us participating in general).

If SOPA has it's way - YouTube would have been shut down, JBeiber would have never even had the opportunity to 'go viral' and thus would still never get signed. Directly or not, YouTube is credited for his success and discovery.

With SOPA, this would not have happened. Whether you hate him or not, it doesn't matter - just apply it to any other situation and it should raise some eye brows.

Kickflip said:

You idea of famous and my idea of famous are clearly quite a bit different. I would say he got DISCOVERED through YouTube, which actually doesn't prove your point at all. Justin Bieber NEEDED to be signed by another company to become as famous as he eventually has become. There are HUNDREDS of acts every year who go viral on YouTube, but never get signed, and fade into nothingness after several months because they don't have the look or the personality, even if they have the talent.

Do you really want Record Companies to just go away? Is that your argument? I just don't understand your argument here. You seem to hate Record Companies.

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Yes, I want record companies to go away. Adapt to new realities or perish. You are finally catching on. Their function is obsolete.

I want to be able to discover great new music. Previously it would not have been possible for me to hear of the Beatles if I live in the US, and without a major label signing them they would continue playing in Liverpool. Now I can see their music on YouTube and then buy their album digitally from their site that they can record on their computer. I dont need the record company and they dont need the record company. The record company is a leech on the whole process. Unless they come up with some new value creation that they bring to the table besides packaging the CDs and shipping them, they have no use.

krzysiekz said:

To further strengthen what you have said, it seems (assuming what you have said is correct) that YouTube was one of the main reasons for Justin Beiber becoming famous.

If SOPA had it's way, and imagining that it was already introduced before YouTube, then we wouldn't even know who Justin Beiber was.

There were so many people uploading music and other copyrighted content to YouTube (now and when it first started too) that the SOPA would have just closed the site down for good. When they were starting out, from memory, it was some college kids who made it - do you think they had the resources to monitor everything going online? No chance.

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Oh god. Don't be ridiculous now. Music Talent has many other ways of getting discovered besides YouTube. Even if YouTube had to be fully moderated to ensure only quality, non-infringing content got posted, we would still be able to discover new artists through the internet. If SOPA was around before YouTube, then Justin Bieber might have joined a DIFFERENT website, like Garageband where artists uploaded their own original music and got signed to record labels.

SOPA will NOT stop original talents from being discovered. It just means we have to adapt. I use YouTube sometimes, but I honestly wouldn't miss it too much if it went away. There are so many other sites that have amazing original content on them its not even funny.

When I first found Garageband years ago, I spent MONTHS discovering hundreds of crazy good bands. It was the only website I went to. People are just USED to YouTube, they don't understand you can LEGALLY watch a lot of music videos and television shows for free. People just dont know about them because they just use YouTube.

demongerbil said:

Yes, I want record companies to go away. Adapt to new realities or perish. You are finally catching on. Their function is obsolete.

I want to be able to discover great new music. Previously it would not have been possible for me to hear of the Beatles if I live in the US, and without a major label signing them they would continue playing in Liverpool. Now I can see their music on YouTube and then buy their album digitally from their site that they can record on their computer. I dont need the record company and they dont need the record company. The record company is a leech on the whole process. Unless they come up with some new value creation that they bring to the table besides packaging the CDs and shipping them, they have no use.

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Who pays for the World Tour? You might be just be happy with 10million views on YouTube, but if they are really amazing, don't you think the world deserves to be exposed to them? That takes more marketing. That needs to be shoved down our throats. Justin Bieber would NOT be even 1/100th as famous without record labels backing him.

Fuck the big entertainment companies. The produce shit and feed it down our throats with a big fat price tag attached. The original artists/actors/writers barely see 5% of what these companies make off their creations.
The less power they have the better. I don't want the big media companies playing government anymore than they currently do. Let alone dictating what websites they can approve we visit or not.

A good example. Look at Louis ck. he just self released his OWN cd on his OWN website and made more then a million dollars so far that went straight into his pocket and will continue to do so for every sale. He is only charging 5$. And a lot more people are willing to support that then paying 20$ for the same shit that the media company would pocket most of.

Thats my late night rant

Kickflip said:

Oh god. Don't be ridiculous now. Music Talent has many other ways of getting discovered besides YouTube. Even if YouTube had to be fully moderated to ensure only quality, non-infringing content got posted, we would still be able to discover new artists through the internet. If SOPA was around before YouTube, then Justin Bieber might have joined a DIFFERENT website, like Garageband where artists uploaded their own original music and got signed to record labels.

SOPA will NOT stop original talents from being discovered. It just means we have to adapt. I use YouTube sometimes, but I honestly wouldn't miss it too much if it went away. There are so many other sites that have amazing original content on them its not even funny.

When I first found Garageband years ago, I spent MONTHS discovering hundreds of crazy good bands. It was the only website I went to. People are just USED to YouTube, they don't understand you can LEGALLY watch a lot of music videos and television shows for free. People just dont know about them because they just use YouTube.

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Dude, your main argument so far seems to be "dont worry guys, SOPA isnt gonna be so bad". That's like someone telling their friend who is about to go to prison "don't worry, ass rape doesn't hurt TOO much".

You have not proposed one single thing that you think SOPA will improve. It's easy to argue when you have no stance, and all you're doing is picking holes in other people's arguments.

Take a stand on something, so we can pick holes in yours

Kickflip said:

Who pays for the World Tour? You might be just be happy with 10million views on YouTube, but if they are really amazing, don't you think the world deserves to be exposed to them? That takes more marketing. That needs to be shoved down our throats. Justin Bieber would NOT be even 1/100th as famous without record labels backing him.

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How big was Mozart's marketing budget? Bach's?

Man,whenever i read about them , i want to be part of them....but i don't have the level of knowledge they have....they are GOD!

Im kinda concerned about this SOPA thing.

What if it comes in and they actually shut down Google and all the big SE?

How can we adapt to that, when even paid advertising traffic originates from Google in the first place really in my opinion.

IDK maybe im just worried too much.

Fuck sony they can burn in hell with all the other main snake oil sellers out there.

oni3350 said:

Im kinda concerned about this SOPA thing.

What if it comes in and they actually shut down Google and all the big SE?

How can we adapt to that, when even paid advertising traffic originates from Google in the first place really in my opinion.

IDK maybe im just worried too much.

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It wont shut down Google or Yahoo etc. If any problems arise, there will be amendments made to the bill that provide specific amnesty for Search Engines to get extra time to remove certain sites from their result listings. It will be ok in that respect.

demongerbil said:

Dude, your main argument so far seems to be "dont worry guys, SOPA isnt gonna be so bad". That's like someone telling their friend who is about to go to prison "don't worry, ass rape doesn't hurt TOO much".

You have not proposed one single thing that you think SOPA will improve. It's easy to argue when you have no stance, and all you're doing is picking holes in other people's arguments.

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I think SOPA has the possibility to lead to lower costs for accessing entertainment, and larger budgets for production leading to higher quality. Imagine if EVERY movie had the budgets of Avatar, Transformers, Harry Potter etc. Imagine if we got twice as many amazing movies released every year. Imagine if we didn't have to wait so long to see new release movies at home.

These are the possibilities. Shit like this CAN change the world for the better. It can cause us to innovate.

I got a question: Do you guys really think YouTube doesn't have the technology to filter out 99.999% of copyright material from being uploaded? YouTube has the resources and technology for this. That's not even a question. YouTube COULD fully survive just fine with SOPA. They just don't WANT to.

You guys want Record Companies to innovate or Movie Production companies to innovate, why doesn't Google or YouTube innovate?

I don't support it and I am not against it. I expect the people in charge to know more about this then I do.

Anon have some pretty interesting new concepts for a new internet I stumbled upon recently, I won't link here and don't PM me.

Kickflip said:

I think SOPA has the possibility to lead to lower costs for accessing entertainment, and larger budgets for production leading to higher quality. Imagine if EVERY movie had the budgets of Avatar, Transformers, Harry Potter etc. Imagine if we got twice as many amazing movies released every year. Imagine if we didn't have to wait so long to see new release movies at home.

These are the possibilities. Shit like this CAN change the world for the better. It can cause us to innovate.

I got a question: Do you guys really think YouTube doesn't have the technology to filter out 99.999% of copyright material from being uploaded? YouTube has the resources and technology for this. That's not even a question. YouTube COULD fully survive just fine with SOPA. They just don't WANT to.

You guys want Record Companies to innovate or Movie Production companies to innovate, why doesn't Google or YouTube innovate?

I don't support it and I am not against it. I expect the people in charge to know more about this then I do.

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YouTube already does exactly what you propose.

"We take copyright very seriously. We've built groundbreaking technology for copyright holders that we call Content ID, a sophisticated set of tools that helps them find their content on YouTube and gives them the choice of what to do when they find it: block it, leave it up, or make money from it. Content ID scans over 100 years of video every day and is used by over 1000 partners, including every major US network broadcaster, movie studio, and record label. In addition, if a user feels that a video is violating their copyright, they can flag the video and select "infringes my copyright" from the list of options for review by the YouTube team."

So yes, YouTube and Google (same company btw) ARE innovating, and are lightyears ahead of music/movie industries (much like the rest of most internet companies).

As far as Avatar, Harry Potter and Transformers goes, I dont mean to poopoo on your point, but if there were HALF of these types of movies, I would be much happier lol. You could not have picked worse 3 movies to make your point, dude.

See, what you keep equating is big budgets and quality. Ok, so youre arguing that production companies will have bigger budgets for producing content, because they wont have to spend as much $ on fighting copyrights, right? You did not prove that HAVING a larger budget available will necessary MAKE them spend that $ on new content. Then you throw out some vague platitude like "Shit like this CAN change the world for the better. It can cause us to innovate." What? Where did that come from? How did we get from higher budgets for Avatar 2 to a better world? Where did innovation come from?

"I don't support it and I am not against it. I expect the people in charge to know more about this then I do." - THIS is the problem, dude. Members of Congress who are pushing this through know shit about how the Internet works, and are pawns of Big Entertainment's lobbying. Thankfully the bill got slowed down and now that tons of people are starting to realize the possible ramifications there is big $$$ spent on lobbying against it, so it's much more of a fair fight.

You say you dont support it and youre not against it, and I believe you. But it seems this whole thread you are being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian then, and resorting to polemics, such as accusing us of having uneducated opinions. I suggest you read up on SOPA and it's implications and then come up with an opinion on it. If you would like I can provide some suggestions of places to start the research (and I don't mean for that to come off as insulting or demeaning).