A member of the legislature should be held to higher standards than the general public; don't just obey the letter of the law but obey the spirit of the law. This isn't irrelevancies about a person's past or private life, it is directly related to what they're pushing onto other people.
> He also pointed out Smith and his colleagues would only be liable if the value of the streaming performances exceeds $1,000, and it's not clear how valuable a few short clips of local news broadcasts are.
Is the value for the owners, or for the use that the "infringer" gets from them?
> Is the value for the owners, or for the use that the "infringer" gets from them?
I believe it's neither, but rather the value that the owner asserts (and can get a court to agree with). A single copy of a single song isn't worth $1,000, but I believe recent RIAA suits have valued songs as such. Who's to say a few short clips of local news broadcasts aren't worth as much?
Yeah, I can see your point but this too feels like its really reaching for something that's just not there. They should be held to a higher standard but our strong opinions about SOPA seem to be blocking our ability to look at this realistically.
The example in the post can be compared to any one of us embedding a video on a personal site or blog. It's really obvious the guy isn't willfully infringing. We can be technical and argue semantics all day but in the end there really is a big difference between a representative supporting legislation we disagree with possibly technically violating that same legislation with a seemingly innocent video embed and a website that provides a search feature allowing you to access hundreds of thousands of copyrighted files. Big difference.
There is definitely a point to be made about the alleged hypocrisy but in the end nit-picking little things like this and arguing semantics comes off as petty to people and could really do more harm to the opponents of SOPA than good.
> there really is a big difference between a representative supporting legislation we disagree with possibly technically violating that same legislation with a seemingly innocent video embed and a website that provides a search feature allowing you to access hundreds of thousands of copyrighted files. Big difference.
Existing law has been misused, as mentioned in other places in the thread.
There's nothing to say that this law will not be similarly misused.
See, for example, the fact that Google has digital-finger-printing to prevent copyright material being used, even if it's legitimately being used under Fair Use.
Yeah, I agree the law's been misused and SOPA will almost certainly be misused to. My point is that this argument over the representative is kind of petty. This shouldn't be about who's doing what and who's got some double standard. Instead the discussion should just focus on the bill on its own and framing the discussion like has been done in the post makes our side (yeah, our side, for some reason people think I'm for SOPA) look petty or like we've run out of good arguments.
Demonstrating that some people are willing to use weird law to enforce copyright protection, and that some of those people do not understand existing copyright law themselves, is a useful exercise.
The point is to use their language to show how daft the law could be. That's maybe why it feels petty to you, because it is a stupid thing, but it's a stupid thing that they could well end up criminalizing. The politicians talk of "thieves" and "criminals" and "crooks". Using their language it is wrong for someone to have stolen content on their homepage.
> He also pointed out Smith and his colleagues would only be liable if the value of the streaming performances exceeds $1,000, and it's not clear how valuable a few short clips of local news broadcasts are.
Is the value for the owners, or for the use that the "infringer" gets from them?