Jason's Tidbits

As a publisher and an author, I obviously have a dog in this hunt. But what I see so far makes this program and its output an absolute nonstarter for me.

Sure, Congress has a marketing problem--largely because they have a problem with the decisions they make and the way that they make them.

At least they've left us a useful career guide about what not to do in the real world.

SOPA and PIPA are not dead: they are waiting in the shadows. What’s happened in the last 24 hours, though, is extraordinary. The Internet has enabled creativity, knowledge, and innovation to shine, and as Wikipedia went dark, you've directed your energy to protecting it.

We’re turning the lights back on. Help us keep them shining brightly.

But you know something? Christian Dior is clever enough and talented enough that he doesn’t need to be copyrighted.  People KNOW a Dior when they see one, and they can usually see the difference between his work and a knockoff. Fashion designers riff off of each other and all follow a lot of the same trends – it happens all the time. And guess what?

The fashion industry is one of the highest grossing artistic market in the WORLD. They make more money – and have a wider and more free-flowing exchange of information that has made them successful.

Whoah.

This unprecedented effort has turned the tide against a backroom lobbying effort by interests that aren't used to being told 'no.' I know suspending and changing access to sites was not necessarily an easy decision, but this is a responsible and transparent exercise of freedom of speech. I applaud those participating in today's protest for their sturdy defense of American innovation, openness and Internet freedom.

He said "responsible and transparent exercise of freedom of speech", Sen. Dodd.

We fear that the broad new enforcement powers provided under SOPA and PIPA could be easily abused against legitimate services like those upon which we depend. These bills would allow entire websites to be blocked without due process, causing collateral damage to the legitimate users of the same services - artists and creators like us who would be censored as a result.

Here is a letter from actual producers of creative works. It's the companies that benefit from those works that tend to be in favor of SOPA.

It will undermine free speech and due process, says one side. It will protect America's creative class from thieves, says the other. But what's really in the Stop Online Piracy Act?

Click through for a good explanation of each bill.

However, the protests has prompted at least one sponsor of the legislation, Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, to weaken his support for the bills.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) withdrew as a co-sponsor of the Protect IP Act in the Senate, while Reps. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) said they were pulling their names from the companion House bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act. Opponents of the legislation, led by large Internet companies, say its broad definitions could lead to censorship of online content and force some websites to shut down.