TechStuff Gets on a SOPA Box

So today we are going to talk about something that has made the news recently as of the recording of this podcast. Of course, we don't know exactly what it's going to publish, so it might be old news by then.

But the uh, the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOAPA. Yes, we had a few, quite a few people asking us if we were going to talk about that, and as a matter of fact, initially we were thinking that maybe not, because, um, sometimes when Jonathan talks about these topics, he gets a little in my head that threatens to explode every time I talk about this type of stuff. And and much as much as I like pushing him, to the limit. In that regard, I don't want to see what happens

if it actually finally does. Yeah. And I've also given up caffeine the week that we're recording this podcast, So that's a I'm already I'm predisposed to being cranky. But soapa Stop Online Piracy Act. It's made a lot of news because, um, well because there are some potential consequences that that may not be intended consequences, but people are worried this act may go a long way to breaking

the Internet. That's kind of like the extreme view, right. Yeah, So we're going to talk about what this act is, what it's supposed to target and uh, and reasons why some people are worried that it may be really bad news for even for people who have no intention to

pirate content or to distribute pirated content. Uh and uh and yeah, that's that's its purpose essentially is to cut down on acts of intellectual property piracy over the Internet, and it's specifically targeting piracy that's generated from from entities outside the jurisdiction of the United States. That's the main that's the main goal of this legislation. Uh. If you don't read the Act, you might not realize exactly how it's targeting this. Uh, let me read the purpose of

this act. This is actually the purpose. And it was introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, who is a Texas Republican. Yeah, Republican from Texas. Well, I mean he's from Texas. Of course he's Republican. Uh. That's a that's a joke. That's a joke. Uh. Texas is, however, thought of often as a conservative state. And he introduces

and I should have had this has bipartisan support. Yes, So even though I say Republican and I made some jokes there, there are people on both sides of the aisle supporting this legislation. So I don't mean to say that this is a Republican cause versus a Democrat cause. In fact, there are several people who are on the very conservative side of the aisle who are very much opposed to this legislation. So I want to make that clear. This is not I was. I was making a joke.

I don't want to take sides here. Yeah. That That's one of the funny things about this particular um proposed legislation is that it has bipartisan support, and bipartisan opposition. So the purpose of it is to promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of US property and

for other purpose. Uh So here's the stick. The sticking point here is that the the legislation is at least supposed to promote prosperity, but the people who oppose it say that it does exactly the opposite, that it's going to stifle innovation and it's going to stifle entrepreneurship. And it's really just a a love letter served up to

copyright holders and intellectual property owners. So organizations like the the Motion Picture Association of America um SO, that would be a big one, or the Recording Industry Association of

America that's another big one. So you've got these these big organizations that have a very strong vested interest in um in maintaining copyright and pursuing actions against copyright infringement and there, and there's a limited amount that you can do if the the person or entity that is violating your copyright is not within the jurisdiction of the United States.

So if there's someone in China who has has a server arm that is just holding copies of various movies on it for people to download, either for free or for a very low fee. Uh, there's not a whole lot you can do as the copyright holder to stop that because it's over in China. What are you gonna I mean, you can bring it up and try and put some pressure on on the the whole situation, but you don't have a whole you don't have a stick

to hold right, you don't have any threat. So this is meant to be an act that gives copyright holders a little bit of recourse when this sort of stuff happens um and that it's similar to This is a House bill, but it's similar to one that was introduced in the Senate UH earlier this year called the Protect I P Bill, which was actually put on hold for a while by Senator Ron Wyden who was concerned that the bill in the Senate would intentionally muzzle people and

that it would it would hamper free speech, and that he felt that it was ultimately unconstitutional, and so he's been he's been holding back on it so that it hasn't it passed out of the committee, but it hasn't been voted on by the Senate itself. At least as the recording of this podcast. And just in case you're thinking, oh, protect I P, that's simple. No. Protect IP is also

an acronym. It's stands for preventing real online threats to economic creativity and theft of intellectual property protect ip uh. And it's essentially a rewrite of an earlier piece of legislation called Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act or QUIKA, which failed to pass. Why is that because it didn't have a snazzy acronym that you can pronounce. All right, quakes just doesn't doesn't help. This was actually said. Here's what Widen had to say on about protect IP said.

I understand and agree with the goal of the legislation to protect intellectual property and combat commerce and counterfeit goods. But I am not willing to muzzle speech and stifle innovation and economic growth to achieve this objective at the expense of legitimate commerce. PIPE as prescription, takes an overreaching approach to policing the Internet when a more balanced and

targeted approach would be more effective. The collateral damage of this approach is speech, innovation, and the very integrity of the Internet. So that's pretty interesting to hear. Uh A politicians say that. We hear that from people who are big players in technology. We hear that from people like Eric Schmidt from Google has said similar things to this

sort of legislation. And a lot of these companies have also been involved in the forming of this legislation in a in an attempt to head off any potential problems because a lot of these companies they recognize the problems that copyright holders face, and we should make that clear to the complaint that the copyright holders have that their work is being stolen and distributed freely with no way for them to to make money from their the sale

of their property or distribution of their property. That is a legitimate problem. Yes, piracy is a problem. How big a problem it is that is up for debate now. The justification that various politicians and organizations have used to formulate this legislation states that, uh, there's an estimate here of how much money was lost per year due to intellectual property theft and counterfeiting, which is one and thirty

five billion dollars in revenue. I don't know how they came up with that number, because the government accounting office just earlier this year released a report that said it's essentially impossible to put a figure on the loss from piracy because there's just not you don't have all the facts straight. Well, Jonathan and I, I've had this discussion before, UM, and this is one of the oldest I would say it's one of the oldest arguments in the software industry

because people talk about UM. The old standby in this conversation is, uh, well, it's Adobe Photoshop. That's an expensive piece of software, and it's gotten more expensive over time and people are known. And then there are many pieces of software like this UM, you know, where it is an extremely useful tool, but the average person doesn't want to go and spend you know, six hundred, eight hundred thousand, twelve hundred dollars for a piece of creativity software. They

don't have that in their budget. It's expensive. In some cases it's it's as expensive as a computer itself or more expensive computer, depending on the machine you're using UM. And the thing is they say, well, you know what, if it had been priced within my price range, I would have bought it, but instead they jacked up the cost of the software so much that it was out of my price range. I couldn't afford it, So it serves them right that I downloaded in an illegal copy

of it and I'm and I'm using it. UM. On the other hand, the company that produces this software, UM will say, well, you know what, we wouldn't have to jack up the price of the software so much if people wouldn't stop stealing it. We're trying to make our revenue. We're trying to provide value for our shareholders, and we can't do that if we're not selling copies of our software. And if we can't sell as many copies of our software at that price, we're gonna have to raise the

price a hundred dollars. And and the thing is, Jonathan and I think, uh, you know, if we've talked about it several times, but I think both of us sort of see, Um, this is a situation that you can't really tell. I mean, the thing is, would the people who are downloading illegal copies of the software really pay for it if it were seventy five dollars or where they go? You know what, I really don't want to

pay the seventy five dollars either. Yeah. The way so bad to finds the value of something is they say, the total retail value may be shown by evidence of the total retail price that persons receiving the reproductions, distributions, or public performances constitutent constituting, sorry, the offense would have paid to receive such reproductions, distributions, or public performances lawfully. So in other words, this this applies to all sorts

of stuff, not just software. So let's say that you go to a site that has um lots of movies on it, like movies that are available for you to watch via streaming, and it's an illegal movie site and you watch it. Essentially, they would say that the total retail value for that experience would be the cost of a movie ticket multiplied by however many people streamed that film. So the the argument is that the the copyright holder

is is robbed of that much money. Now that's where the problem comes in because there's a counter art that states some of these people would never have paid to see the movie period, They never would have bothered to buy the tickets. So, in other words, the the copyright holder would not have received that money, whether the people pirted it or not, right, because that's that's not a ticket sale so that was an argument that came up a lot when m x Men's X Men Origins Wolverine

came out. I don't know if everyone on listening knows this, but there was a big deal when X Men Origins Wolverine was getting closer and closer to distribution, that is,

it was going to be in theaters. Before he got to theaters, there was an elaked release of the film that hit the Internet, and there were various pirate sites that hosted the file so that people could access it and watch the movie, and a lot of people did a lot of people did that, and there were not very many many ticket sales for the film, like the essentially Wolverine bombed. Bombed might be a harsh term, but did not perform as well as as the the company

had expected. And so there's a question and is the is the pirated version to blame for the lack of ticket sales or would the people who pirated that version, would they have not bothered to go see the movie in the first place, which means that the movie would have bombed anyway. And you can't answer that question. And that was the Government Accounting Offices point. When they release the report, they said, there's no way to answer this question.

So there is no way to give an actual monetary value to the losses that a group or an industry might encounter as a result of piracy. And if there's no way that you can put a figure to that, then you can't justify. Uh. So you can't justify some of the punishments that are meeted out by the by by the government against people who violate the copyright laws. Uh. You can't justify that the the intensity of those punishments based on these figures because the figures are based on nothing.

There's not there's no basis for it. So you end up having people punished with ridiculous fines or potentially years in jail for things that the whole justification for the punishment is based on on voodoo numbers like these numbers that don't really mean anything. Yeah, the truth is probably

somewhere in between all of these things. Like if the if the company reduces the price of its product, you know, by X number of dollars, and um, the the person who uh is actually you know, going to purchase the product, you know they do actually have the money to do that, then I think some of them will pony up the money for or the software or the c D or the movie ticket. But and I think it's somewhere in between.

Some of the people are still going to pirate and some of the company's profits are still not going to be realized. So some it would affect some, but it's no there's really, as Jonathan said, no way to tell

exactly how many. It's not going to be. Yeah, there's an issue of greed here that is affecting every player in this in this scenario, right, So there's there's the greed on the part of the consumer who feels that he or she has the right to access some content what, no matter what its price point or it's or its availability in that person's market. So you've got a sense of entitlement on the on the part of the consumer, which is bad. You know, there's there's nothing that entitles

a consumer to someone else's intellectual property. I mean that you aren't entitled to that, but there's this perception of entitlement that if it's out there, I should have access to it, and if h if the thing that's blocking my access is that it's too expensive, then I should just be able to take it. Uh, there's a weird kind of justification that goes on in a person's mind.

But then you also have the the greed on the part of the copyright owners where they want to see every single penny come in from every instance that their product is viewed or consumed or whatever. Uh, even if there's no evidence to suggest that those that that, even if there was no piracy, that that money would be pouring in. So they want dollars that just don't exist. Um, yeah, this is this is a complicated issue. Now let's talk

about what SOPA actually does. Yeah, I was gonna say, because SOPA is not necessarily an act that is going to uh impose punitive monetary damages. These uh, the actions that are taken will actually be quite different for the most part the most there there are some some things further in the act about streaming video or streaming streaming content, are allowing content to be accessible that you know, you

don't own the copyright to. There are some elements that are added into the language towards the end of the act and most of it has to do with things like housing motion pictures on a on a site, that kind of stuff. But again, it's it's taking aim at foreign sites, because of course, if it's a company that's overseas, uh is outside of the jurisdiction of the United States government. So how do you target these sites. Well, you do it by cutting off access and cutting off financial support.

That's what this this act really does. And it gives a lot of power and I mean a lot of power to the copyright holders, which is one of the

reasons why people are up in arms about this. So in general, what happens is, let's say that you are the head of a corporation, a vast corporation, has lots and lots of intellectual property, and you discover that there is some site hosted in China, let's say that is uh AS that's got either duplicates of your product or is uh pirated copies of your product out and available

for people to download for a small fee. So they're undercutting you illegally, and they're selling your content for less than what you sell it for and yours, and you feel your sales are suffering as a result. What you could do is you could target I s p S Internet service providers in the United States and tell them, hey, the site over there is they're they're violating my my intellectual property rights, and I need you to remove this site from your donate domain name service so that no

one can access it from the United States. And it's very specific, it's for US directed sites, So in other words, you're cutting off the path way to get to that website. It will you know, you if you were to type in the address in your browser, it wouldn't recognize it as a valid address because of being removed from the donain domain name service in the US, which some people argue breaks the Internet because it means that the the servers are not going to be identical across the globe.

You're gonna have servers in some places that will have uh those those domain names in them and will have the map to the proper ip address, but in the United States they won't. Because some copyright holder has come to the I s p s and said, we need you to take this down. Under SOPA, the I s P has five days to respond to that to that request before the copyright owner can then pursue legal action

I actually get the courts involved. So in other words, the copyright holder can threaten in a way threaten the I s p S with legal action if they don't remove access to that domain name. UM. And furthermore, the I s p s if they if they comply with the copyright holders actions or request or demand really uh,

they are immune from uh legal recourse. So in other words, you as a user, if you rely on going to a certain site and that site is removed, like there's no way for you to access it from the United States without doing a song and dance routine. Um, there's no easy way to access that. You have no legal recourse. You can't sue the the I s P. You can't sue the copyright holder because uh, this act builds that

protection in for those entities. So that is also something that people who oppose the Act are very much up in arms about. They say, well, if a copyright holder comes up to an I s P and makes this demand, and the demand doesn't have a whole lot of of real foundation in fact to it, but the I s P goes ahead and acts on it, there's no way

to you know, easily reverse that. Yeah right now. Uh. Sites like I s p s have what they call safe harbor, which means that if you are using you know, really fast DSL dot net services to get to a site that has copyright infringement on it, or they're hosting the servers there. You know, it's not the I S p S fault. They're not required to police the content of the Internet. It's kind of like can't be. They can't be held responsible for what somebody else has on

their servers. It's kind of like owning a building and someone in that building commits a crime. It's not the building owner's fault that the crime was committed in the building. Yeah, but this changes that, well, sort of changes that, and that they they can come up to the building owner and say you have to evict the tenant. Yeah, and change all the locks, change lots and they can't come back in. And it doesn't matter if you like it

or not. And if that say no. And if changing the lock means you change the lock on a hallway and anyone else who lives in that hallway also can't get to their homes, that's another problem. And that we're talking about removing an entire domain name. It may affect other sites that or other web pages that have nothing to do with piracy, have nothing, no intellectual property as being violated, no counterfeitings going on, and those those pages

will be affected too. So that's really that's another point that the people who oppose this act say, you know, if you do this, there are gonna be a lot of there's gonna be a lot of friendly fire, a lot of casualties in the internet landscape, and it breaks. That's where the breaking the Internet thing comes in. Many of the companies that have spoken out, and there are quite a few of them who have expressed, um, more than a little discomfort with the idea of SOPA going through.

Many of them have said, look, you know, we're we're gonna be uh affected by this in an extremely negative way. I mean we're talking we're talking about large companies like Google, Facebook, Um, you know all sorts of places. Well, you think about it. You have something like how how many people, uh we when we did the episode on YouTube? You said, how much video was uploaded every minute? Forty eight hours of

video every minute. Can you imagine the number of people that would have to examine all that video to make sure it doesn't have any kind of copyright violation? Now now, YouTube is known for complying with copyright infringement requests from companies that own the property, and they'll say hey, you're using this this person posted a video with our music in it. Please remove the music and there and people

will wonder why this video has no sound. It's because, as YouTube has gone in, strip the sound out and let the video up right and and under the d m c A. That's where YouTube has safe harbor. Just like you were saying before with the I s P s, YouTube also has safe harbor for user generated content. And

I should add, uh, well, two things really. First of all, when a copyright holder issues such an order to an I s P or other entity, I'll talk about the other entities in a second, but when it does, it has to do so with proof. You can't just send a message to an I s P and say, hey, you gotta take down access to this site because it violates our intellectual property rights. Now you have to actually

submit proof evidence of of the violation. And according to the Act and the and the language is a little vague, but according to the Act, it's supposed to target uh sites that are the main purpose of the site is to distribute piratic content or counterfeit goods. Uh. So it's so it's not supposed to target sites like YouTube or even a message board where the primary purpose of the site is for something else, but just so happens that some people use it to distribute it pirated content. Supposedly,

this act does not target those sites. It's supposed to aim at sites like, uh, like the Pirate Bay. Let's say it would be a good example. And so you talk about, you know, aiming taking aim at sites that have by their very name come out and said, hey, we're about distributing content freely and uh despite any copyright

UH concerns, So that that's also something to keep in mind. UM. So, in other words, I don't want I don't want to spread too much fear, uncertainty, and doubt the good old fud out there, because the Act does have language built into it so that it doesn't it's not blanketing the entire Internet landscape in the same it's it's trying at least to focus on sites that are known entities for violations. Whether or not that's how it gets applied is a

totally different matter. And of course, through the process of debating this legislation there may be more UM amendments added to it that change it dramatically. UH. Moving on though, besides I S P. S. The Act also gives copyright owners the the recourse to go after search engines and

financial institutions and advertising agencies UH search engines. The deal is that if you're the copyright holder, you can contact Google and Bing and Yahoo and all these other search engines and say, I want you to take down links to this site because it violates my UM copyright, my copyrights, so I want you to go in and remove any links you have to this. Whenever anyone searching for whatever

the topic might be, this site cannot appear in search engines. However, with the blacklist, from what I understand, there are ways around it. UM. Jonathan and I talked a long time ago about domain names and how they work and I

P addresses. So the thing is you can UH, let's say YouTube dot com is blocked because of copyright violations, but if you know the IP address UM, the series of of numbers separated by dots that actually tell you where the site is, you should be able to type in that i P address and still get through, according to UH. To one source, I I checked partially because they were talking about another security measure that people have been working on called d n S sec UM, which

is UH. The d n s are the domain name servers and UH these basically are the system of addressing UH sites that go on on the Internet, so that the the addresses have a general location you can find them. UM and UH the idea of being that there is as an authoritative UH security baked into the d n

s with a public key. So if somebody tried and this, this, UH, from what I understand, would cut down on things like fishing, because you could UM use the secure site to know for in fact, you are at the site that you are trying to get to and not some ingeniously designed copy of that. And d N s SEC would be UH somewhat hamstrung by SOPA if it were to go through and UH and d N s SEX is actually something that people have been working on for quite some

time and would be a more effective security solution. UM. But you know, the people who have been working on SOPA are are trying to get this done more quickly, and I think that's probably part of the reason that, um there are so many holes in it. Yeah. And as for the financial institutions and advertising as you probably have guests based upon the I s p S and

search engines same sort of thing. Copyright holder can go to a things organizations like PayPal or the credit card companies and say this site, this foreign sight is violating our intellectual property rights, so you need to cut off any payments from the United States to those sites. And again those organizations will have five days to respond before

the courts get involved. UH. And same thing with the web advertising, where you'd say, you know you're you're serving up ads on this site, which is giving the site its owner income. Uh, cut it out and again five days to respond reasonably anyway and then um and then cut off again. So it's a very very short time to deal with from giving with getting the getting the information, getting the order, and then having to turn around and

and figure out your response. I mean, especially if you want to truly have due diligence and make sure that the site that's being targeted does indeed UM violate intellectual property rights and that that is the intent of the site. Because one of the concerns that I've seen repeatedly around the Internet is that that I s p s might even take this as an opportunity to shut down sites that have competing UH content on them from because this is the complication we have where certain in an Internet

service providers are also content providers. Now when you when you have both in one entity, there's a conflict of interest there, and I don't think you can get around that. I mean, you're the person who owns all the pipes and you're the person who owns some of the stuff that goes in the pipes. That's complicated because it means

your content is competing with other companies content. Some people are worried that I s p S might be able to use this to cut off access to competitor content so that they lock in users to one specific umbrella of content, and they do so with immunity because it's built into the act. As long as they can somehow show that this stems from an order they received from an intellectual property rights holder, they're they're in the clear.

So that's scary because it means that if you have I s P A and the content you really want to access was not made by I s P A, but was made by I s P B, you might not have access to that content because of this. This this legal safety net that the that SOPA provides. Now that's again not the purpose of the legislation, and it

may come to pass. If this legislation and is actually approved and passes and turns into law, it may turn out that no one ever abuses in such a way, but there are people who are worried, very much worried about the potential for it to be abused like that. Now, this, this legislation was um announced on October I believe of two thousand eleven, shortly before well three or four weeks before we recorded this. UM, and UH at first, people weren't really picking up on it, um until uh some

outlets started uh publicizing drawing attention to this legislation. Now, um, just recently again right before we recorded this, Uh, many American sites had what they were calling American Censorship Day, So you would you would show up on the website and there would be a message about how the site was blocked, um and then essentially a dialogue on hey, this is what could happen if this, uh this goes through. And some companies had put a censored bar over their logo.

Yeah yeah, UM, I was reading on on the next Web that, um, one of the sites affected by this was the blogging site Tumbler. Yes, that's actually a major site that is that people are very concerned would be

affected by things like protect IP and SOPA. Yeah, well, anything anything like UM, a blogging site, UH, photo sharing sites like like Flicker, UM, video sharing sites Vimeo or YouTube, or anything at the even which is a place where people make crafts, but a lot of times people will knit things or make things that include logos or designs

and things like that. UM. Anything like this where there are thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of people submitting content that could infringe a copyright is is you know a likely target? Facebook, any any kind of social sites. UM. So Tumbler was one of them, and they actually asked people who are visiting their site to call their United States representatives to let them know what they thought about SOPA.

And according to the next Web, UM, seven thousand, eight thirty four calls were generated as the results of that effort. Mm hmm. So that's a particularly large number of people that they were able to drive to the representatives. And I think UM generally, what I heard was that people were really concerned because SOPA seemed to have an overwhelming

level of support UM in the House of Representatives. But at this point, I think they have gotten a lot of feedback and are starting to have second thoughts about it. So it seemed like a go at the very first when I first heard about it, and now it seems like the enthusiasm is maybe not uh, it's not over with completely, but it is it's flagging somewhat due to the response from uh, you know now that people are aware of it, um and calling their representatives to let

them know. Sure. And and part of this was due to the fact that, I mean, you can't get around it, due to the fact you've got to follow the money, right. So it turns out that these organizations like the m p A and the r I double A and other similar organizations of the the pharmaceutical industries another one because they're very much concerned with counterfeit drugs, which you know, again legitimate concern, but they pour a lot of money into

political campaigns um. And so there is also this perception of perhaps politicians are acting on behalf of the interests of these parties, partly because it gets so much campaign money from these sources. So you get you know, people some people just come out right out and say, you know, they'll accuse the government of cow towing to these these organizations because they're getting paid essentially that the politicians are for sale. Other people don't take quite such an extreme

stand and say this is problematic. If you are getting massive campaign contributions from these sources and your legislation is acting on behalf of these sources. At the very least, there is the appearance that you are doing this in return for money, even if that's not what you are doing. You have to keep that in mind, that it looks like that, and you have to behave accordingly. And of course there are other people just say no, no, no no, no,

it has nothing to do with it. Total separation. I think. I think both extremes are kind of a little they have blinders on. But I think I do think that there's definitely a problematic issue here. And so you've got other companies like the like Google and Yahoo and Microsoft that also contribute money to campaign funds, but that money is a fraction of what the entertainment industry pours into

campaign funds. So it may have been that the early days of SOPA, the movement on it was very rapid and very enthusiastic because it was in response to campaign contributors who have a lot of sway, and then other campaign contributors that have a good deal of sway but not as much, but also have a massive public following started to protest, and that is what has caused everyone to slow down and say, we do need to think about this a little more and make sure that if

we pass this legislation it really does target what we want to target. And again, I mean, I'm known as the person who comes out and just starts screaming about free speech and I go bonkers, But I understand completely the intent of this legislation and I don't even disagree with it, because it does piracy is a problem. It needs to have some sort of solution. I just think this is the wrong way to do it. Yeah, you're to clarify, you're not disagreeing that people's intellectual property needs

some protection. It's that you're disagreeing with this particular legislation exactly exactly. Yeah, I think I think the people who own an intellectual property have a reasonable right, uh to expect to be able to profit from that that they shouldn't feel like, oh well, you know, it's just the nature of intellectual property. People are gonna steal it. Oh well, I mean that's not fair either, because if you take that perspective, then you suddenly remove a huge incentive to

generate intellectual property. So so that can hurt innovation too. If if you tell someone who is an innovative person, hey, that's a great idea, You're never gonna see a dime for it, because we're all gonna steal it, but thank you for thinking it up. That then people are gonna like, well, I'm just gonna stop thinking and start watching reality television.

But but if you know, at the same time, if you turn around and use the draconian measures to shut down pirates that end up affecting other people in unintended ways, you also shut down innovation because then everyone's scared to do anything. Yeah, that that is the The original intended purpose of copyright was to protect the creator for a certain period, so that twenty eight years originally less than that. Oh the first copyright, yes, I I always was it fourteen.

I thought that when it could be and it could be extended once. Oh, that's right, that's right up to yes. And the thing is that the thing is it's intended to protect people at the beginning, and it expires on purpose so that it can be used to serve the greater good and you know, expanded on and and and embellished and enhanced later by other people. I think it's and I think it's otherwise it would be in perpetuity and we wouldn't even having this discussion. The question is

how long is a fair period of time? That fair period of time has changed dramatically since it was introduced and emotionally in the twentieth century. Yes, because of of lobbying by intellectual property rights holders, you had had come panies that held the rights to certain intellectual properties saying this is not a fair length of time because it affects our corporation. Corporations are the same as people, uh

in the eyes of the law. So therefore, by that estimation, we have to have greater terms for the copyright to stay valid. So now it's seventy five years from the creation of the work, and expect that to be pushed again before too long because a certain mouse is getting older every day. Yes, that's true. So um, well, it'll be interesting to see with time, as people feedback to their representatives whether they will go ahead with this legislation or if they have SOPA on the Ropes. Nice, thanks

Sopa on the Ropes. Okay, so we're just gonna we're just gonna end it now the podcast, I mean, and uh, just to set me just this episode now, we'll see. We still have a couple more recordings we need to do, so I can't lose you just yet of a couple of day of episodes to redeem yourself. But you, guys, if you have any requests for topics that you would like us to cover, or you have any questions about

protect IP or sofa, let us know. You can send us an email that addresses tech stuff as how Stuff Works dot Com or let's know on Facebook or Twitter are handled there as text stuff hs W and Chris and I will talk to you again, assuming we're not censored really soon. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.

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