Something For Nothing - The Cost Of SOPA To Wikipedia.

Yesterday Wikipedia went down for 24 hours, the reasons it gave for this were due to the U.S. SOPA and PIPA legislation currently under review to be passed by Congress.  In a nutshell, this legislation aims to try and prevent copyright infringement, by targeting sites suspected of copyright infringement and stopping them having prominence on search engines, and cutting off their access to online payment services - but Wikipedia says it's protest has nothing to do with money....

Today it has been stated that Independent Record Labels in the UK have lobbied the government to prevent the sale of British label giant, EMI as this will mean that other majors (Sony and Universal) will have a disproportionate market share. For those out of the know, EMI is essentially a record label that went bust, entered administration, and has been sold to Sony and Universal.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/news/a361013/indie-labels-want-uk-government-to-stop-emi-sale.html 

EMI went bust despite owning the catalogues of the Beatles, Coldplay, Katy Perry, Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue plus many more. The music industry market has become majorly distorted and the main reasons behind this distortion come down to a very simple entity - money; there isn't any of it left in music.

It's a very well blown trumpet - but piracy actually is killing the creative industries. It is honestly a fact. If anyone out there has a dream of becoming a singer, or playing in a band I would advise them to look at the link below, it shows you how many LEGAL streams/downloads/plays etc an artist needs in order to make minimum wage: just so you can see how much money you're (not) going to be earning....

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/


This week a British student named Richard O'Dwyer was extradited to the U.S. for creating a website that simply lists where films could be downloaded. He faces 10 years in prison in America if he is convicted. Google does the exact same thing. A 23 year old computing student will have his freedom taken away by mimicking an internet company, when all he was trying to do was pay his University fees.

In 2007 an American Judge ordered Jammie Thomas-Rasset to pay $222,000 in punitive damages for illegally downloading 24 songs, think about how many songs any of you have illegally downloaded.

Now neither of these court rulings are clever or fair - they are both disgustingly stupid. But they do demonstrate how desperate the creative industries have become. They are up shit creek without a pair of armbands let alone a rubber dinghy and a fucking paddle.

Remember: ONLY the creative industries invest in new talent. That is a fact. .

Whether anyone agrees with SOPA or PIPA or not, quite frankly, is irrelevant, because it all comes down to money. The Internet giants oppose this legislation because they make so much money from the way the web is run and are scared of it being jepoardised. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Wikipedia - are worth literally BILLIONS; why the hell would they care about the little guys (artists) getting proper payment for their work?

Copyright legislation is always about money - and at least the record companies admit that.

So the next time you read a heartfelt quote from Wikipedia about how 'they care passionately about the rights of authors' - know that that is bollocks. Wikipedia are a business - they care about a profit margin. Songwriters and Screen-writers are authors and Wikipedia don't give a shit about them?

The next time Wikipedia 'appeals' for some 'donations' to 'help' run its services, do me a favour - don't. Instead, go out, and donate some money towards a struggling band who can barely pay their rent - let alone bank a billion.

And lastly -  for the record Jimmy Wales: knowledge at the expense of creativity is not only wrong, but pointless, you hyprocritical fuck.