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.
I can understand where you're coming from in this point. If they make more money, they can produce better movies and entertainment for us. You're completely right in this respect.
I just, personally, think you're missing the bigger point with SOPA. While it might lessen piracy, I don't think it is going to do anything about increasing their profits.
People like myself pirate because, firstly, it's convenient - and secondly, it's free. If it wasn't convenient though, then I wouldn't pirate it anyway. Free isn't everything. Convenience is more important.
So, they can try and stop piracy - but the people who hate going to cinemas and would rather watch a movie at home, this SOPA law isn't exactly going to somehow convince them to go to the cinema to watch the movie. It's just going to, if successful, limit them in what they can download to watch at home.
If they want to succeed and make more money, they are the ones who need to innovate. It is their job as an industry to make money. That involves everything from filming to selling. It is not my job to SELL the convenience for them.
If they had just released a way, sort of like iTunes or whatever, to buy and stream a high quality movie (movies that just came out in the cinemas) at home - believe me, my family would have personally bought many such films.
But to say it is up to Joe Blow to come up with a 'solution' for their failing business model, is in my opinion, nonsense. It is THEIR business, not mine, not yours, not any other webmasters (I mention webmasters because it affects us - and also to illustrate how stupendously far reaching the SOPA law is). If they want to make money, they're going to need to keep up - and that means keeping up with what the people want.
It's really plain and simple. They're not delivering to us, what we want. Is it that hard for them to comprehend. People are not going to just magically start going to the movies because they took down some of their portals to downloading for free, because people simply don't want to.
I think for the film industry to succeed, they need to give us what we want. If they had the same attitude as you (to leave it up to the public to do the innovation for them) then they're going to be waiting a while.
They're upset because profits are down compared to what they used to be. Who wouldn't be upset if their business wasn't going as well as it used to?The only difference between me and them is (hypothetical), they're upset but they're sitting on their ass and bullying people into doing things their way.
I would ask the people what they wanted, and if possible, I would deliver. In this case, the people are not asking too much - they just want the freedom to download content immediately and watch it right away. That's what we want, and it's very easy to deliver in todays day and age. There's literally no excuse for them not doing something like this, they are cashed up to the top.
Note: I am not supporting ripping off people and their work. I do believe that the film industry could give us more and better moves if they made more money, it's logical. I just think they need to do more themselves, without trying to doctrine us into how they would rather us buy their products.