DT writes us:

Hoopy Frood and Generally Towel-Bearing Fuzzy Czar,

As you know, some of our “representatives” are passing around a bill that would do some pretty bad things to the Internet and freedom of expression as a whole. It’s such a bad bill that Erick Erickson of Redstate has called on the left and right to unite to defeat the sponsors in their primaries, even if it means losing a stalwart ally. I fully support his sentiment. Really, any censorious asshat who wants to give Eric Holder the keys to the innurwebs should be unemployed asafp.

Anyhow, I was incensed to read Lamar Smith’s comments on the bill:

The criticism of this bill is completely hypothetical; none of it is based in reality. Not one of the critics was able to point to any language in the bill that would in any way harm the Internet. Their accusations are simply not supported by any facts….

Such intentional, arrogant stupidity cannot be allowed to stand. That’s why I’m asking for your help in pursuing a new Constitutional Amendment imposing term limits, followed by immediate execution, for all politicians.

Are you with me?

Hello, DT! Happy new year.

Your proposal to execute all politicians might be met with enthusiasm in some circles, but term limits basically penalize people who like their politicians. Rather, ending the ridiculous notion that politics is a career would be more effective.

Anyhow, SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) is a lot of nonsense, and for proof of this, you do not need to look further than its original authors: the MPAA (the Motion Pictures Association of America.

Why would they be involved? Because they are the real asshats, and they have been a thorn in the side of entertainment for decades. First, understand that the MPAA is really a big group of Hollywood entertainment attorneys and executives—they are not a benevolent organization, but effectively a racket. They serve one function: to ensure that Hollywood entertainment attorneys and executives get billions of dollars a year.

Forget movie ratings. Their number on fear is not a 12-year-old getting in to see a movie rated R: it is ensuring that the little punk brat doesn’t make copies of the that movie for his friends!. Total eleventy.

The MPAA exists in this paranoid cloud that billions of people want to steal their products. Remember those ads you couldn’t turn off a few years back on every DVD? The one about “You wouldn’t steal a car, so why are you stealing this movie?” The backlash to those was severe because most people, in fact, have no interest in stealing a movie they already paid for.

When audio cassettes came out decades ago, this was the group that tried to block it because people would use them to steal soundtracks from LPs or motion pictures. These are the same folks who got the music industry to block digital audio tapes in the 1980s because they would be used solely to steal music from CDs. They forced the audiovisual industry to switch to the new HDMI plug…not because it worked better, but because it contains built-in copy protection codes. The MPAA does this because it knows, for a fact, that if they eliminated piracy, they could make $928 billion in profit each year, instead of the starvation-wages $904 billion they make thanks to this rampant piracy.

Apple called bullshit on this, and after significant delays and blocks by the MPAA, sells online media through its iTunes store. Apple’s hunch was that if you offer people everything they want in an easy-to-purchase and inexpensive format, piracy would literally vanish.

Indeed, iTunes proved exactly that. Napster—which for you kids was an online service in the late 1990s that allowed people to exchange files—was used to trade illegal copies of music. Despite attempts to shut it and its clones down, the trade in illegal song files continued—until iTunes came out. People would much rather pay $1 for a song than live off some unmanaged, digital copy. Music piracy is almost laughable.

Netflix, Redbox, Amazon, Blockbuster and the other entertainment houses see that video rental is dying out. They are already staging for streaming on demand: this is where you hook your laptop, iPad, or television up to the internet, and you can download any movie you want, when you want, for a small fee.

Guess who just went into tachycardia over this? The MPAA, because God knows the only thing that will result from this is Rampant Online Piracy! Eleventy, all over again. Clealy, the MPAA figures, you will turn your laptop into a server to make millions of copies of movies and television shows, and woe unto us, we will all be eating cardboard in total poverty. The fact that these online services have copy protection built in, are not about to see their own revenues slip due to sloppy security, et cetera, means nothing.

What the MPAA needs is legislation, which is something they crave. Who do you think was behind the massive conversion to digital television? Not because it offers better quality, but because copy protection can be integrated into the HD signal. Rather than encourage manufacturers to develop an improved standard, they got Congress to make it law. This is what they do.

So they found their suckers. Lamar Smith is one one of the bill’s sponsors, DT: and he has received millions in campaign funds for it.

But what is SOPA?

Imagine an internet site in some weird country…like China. Today, they could start a hosting service that exists solely to trade in illegal pirated copies of movies and music (the Czar uses italics a lot here to convey the hysterical paranoia the MPAA uses). How can Hollywood stop this rampant, large-scale piracy?

Well, today, they can only ask nicely to stop…because they have no stronger means to stop it. With SOPA, they can petition the attorney general of the United States to look into it. And if he or she agrees that there is credible evidence of online piracy occurring (eleventy), the AG can direct the Internet powers that be to shut down the site and make it inaccessible.

Sounds reasonable, right? After all, if you have some Backweirdistan pirates giving copies of ‘Til There Was You, you want to shut that down, right? And the US still control the internet and can close off a bad website from the rest of the Internet.

But the problem is that the process, as defined by the bill, is really crappy and puts too much power in the hands of the one making the charge of piracy. Basically, it gives folks like the MPAA total authority over the internet. All they need to do is point to something, anything, that looks like advocation of piracy or the promotion of piracy, and they can shut it down until the matter is resolved.

Imagine what they could do to iTunes, who supports having multiple copies of the same media file (legally) on different devices. There are serious problems with SOPA from the security perspective, too: you can really get bogged down in details, but despite Smith’s quote, there is a lot to dislike about SOPA unless you are a cretin.

Is SOPA likely to pass? This is a tough call, but the odds are against it. Some of the biggest tech companies—all of whom donate massive amounts to both parties—are dead set against it. Both the right and left, Republicans and Democrats, are against it in large numbers. And the folks who do support it, such as the MPAA and music industry, have a track record of pushing for bad legislation that gets defeated.

The Czar is optimistic that it will not pass, and that if it passes, it will be successfully challenged in court.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.