Chris Dodd is obviously befuddled

Quoting: But just as the celebrations began over the saving of Internet Freedom, something else happened: the U.S. Justice Department not only indicted the owners of one of the world’s largest websites, the file-sharing site Megaupload, but also seized and shut down that site, and also seized or froze millions of dollars of its assets — all based on the unproved accusations, set forth in an indictment, that the site deliberately aided copyright infringement.

In other words, many SOPA opponents were confused and even shocked when they learned that the very power they feared the most in that bill — the power of the U.S. Government to seize and shut down websites based solely on accusations, with no trial — is a power the U.S. Government already possesses....

Quoting:Our "votes" don't really matter, anyway.

Quoting:Before PRO-IP, of course, there was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), still in effect, that also allows government and copyright holders to take drastic action against web publishers without the need to bother with chores like proving a case or convincing a jury.

You see, while we’ve been busy not paying attention to our rights, our feudal lords have been busy taking them away from us. We keep forgetting that our rights aren’t something we can just take for granted; we have to fight to keep them each and every day. The loss of our precious freedoms goes far beyond IP. Since the end of the 1960s we have lost rights in every aspect of our lives.

Quoting:Tim O'Reilly coined the famous saying that obscurity is a much bigger problem than piracy -- and it seems that the folks over at The Pirate Bay have constructed a simple experiment to test this aphorism out. It's called The Promo Bay, and it's a system for letting content creators promote their works on the front page of The Pirate Bay in up to three countries of their choosing (for free, of course). Remember, The Pirate Bay gets a tone of traffic -- over 1.8 billion pageviews per month, apparently. If you're an up-and-coming artist who no one's heard of, at some point it has to be pretty tempting to turn that firehose in your direction... even if it means having works distributed for free. In fact, it seems like artists should be lining up for such a program just to get that kind of traffic. Of course, we've seen some artists do deals with The Pirate Bay before -- to great success. The new program just seems like a away of making that easier for artists... and doing it more often. But it really does seem to be a quick way of asking the obscurity vs. piracy question in a much more direct and very, very real manner.

Quoting: Busta Rhymes Backs Megaupload, Says Record Labels Are The Real Criminals

There's a key point in all of this that we missed in our earlier analysis about paid accounts at Megaupload. In the indictment, the government seems to assume that paid accounts are clearly all about illegal infringing works. But that's not always the case. In fact, plenty of big name artists -- especially in the hip hop world -- use the paid accounts to make themselves money. This is how they release tracks. You sign up for a paid account from services like Megaupload, which pay you if you get a ton of downloads. For big name artists, that's easy: of course you get a ton of downloads. So it's a great business model for artists: they get paid and their fans get music for free. Everyone wins. Oh... except for the old gatekeeper labels.

In fact, this is part of the ecosystem, especially in the hip hop world. It's why the artists also support those hip hop blogs that the RIAA insists are dens of pure thievery. The artists release their tracks to those blogs, knowing they'll get tons of downloads -- and actually get money. If they do deals with labels, they know they'll never see a dime. Putting music on Megaupload is a way to get paid. Working with a gatekeeper is not.

And yet... Megaupload is the criminal operation? Seems like the actual artists know otherwise.

What Busta is pointing out is that services like Megaupload -- while it may be run by some sketchy individuals and probably crossed the legal line in some cases -- are actually a great new business model for artists, while also being the future of distribution. It's a great way to distribute, make money, and let fans get the works for free. And that's why the major labels are so freaked out by cyberlockers. It's not because there's so much infringement on there, but because it's a system whereby artists can get paid and can better distribute their own works to fans... without signing an indentured servitude contract with a label, which never pays any royalties.

Did Megaupload break the law? Perhaps. But it seems clear that the real fear on the part of the RIAA and the major labels is not so much about that. It's the recognition that such a distribution and payment system undermines much of their reason for existing, and takes away their ability to control artists. A smart label would learn to embrace these things. But we're talking about the major labels here, and so instead, they run to the US government -- who clearly knows nothing about the way modern artists monetize and distribute music -- and lets them try to paint a picture of just how "evil" services like Megaupload are.

But the artists know better.

Quoting:Though I think your main points in all this are steeply degenerating quickly.