An Introduction to 2010 and 2011 In Review
I didn't write a 2010 Review and that's a shame because there was quite a bit of good stuff to write about. I'll remedy that by wrapping 2010 and 2011 together in a big "D2 in Review" series of posts. D2 meaning decade two, meaning the second decade of the 21st century, meaning no one has come up with a sensible name for this decade. But I'm not writing this introduction just to tell you this.
I want to talk about SOPA.
You won't find any links to audio files or album artwork in these D2 posts. It's not because I'm protesting; it's because I'm terrified. SOPA scares me. Here's my concern: even if my content is legitimate, would the perception, or more extremely, feeling that I'm violating the law be enough to warrant technical or lawful action? If I link to a currently legitimate site, would I be contributing to the possible downfall of the site in the future? "Maybe," is the current, and by far scariest answer to that question.
I don't condone piracy, but I don't certainly condone censorship either. I'd just like to have a discussion about some songs I like. Maybe if you like them too, you'll throw some bucks to the artist so they can continue to earn a living and make more songs I like. But SOPA seems to make easily facilitating that discussion all but impossible. A common thread in SOPA discussions is the thought that corporations not only want to control content, but also the promotion of that content. With that mindset, is there any reason to keep music blogs around? Writers may not only write unfavorable things, but they may have the audacity to let people hear the song they are writing about. Better shut them down! Probably should take down Google too since it makes it easy to find these out-spoken renegades who want to discuss or point to our precious content. Forget the fact that having access to this content may provide additional revenue. We crossed that bridge much too long ago and there's probably no coming back. Is this an overreaction? Perhaps. But if this low-rent website owner feels this way about posting a link to a song on last.fm, how do others with much more at stake feel? Well...
- [YouTube] WTF is SOPA ? aka The American Government trying to ruin the internet
- [Techdirt] The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas
- http://www.americancensorship.org/
So, this is what you'll see in these posts:
[LISTEN] The Magnetic Fields - Beach-a-Boop-Boop
Yep, an unclickable line of text that gives a band and song name. It's up to you to find the actual song. But do so responsibly until we figure out this whole high-falutin' internet-thingy, would you?