By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

“Over 200 Tech Visionaries Blast ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ in New Letter to Congress”

Posted Friday, December 9th, 2011 - 3 Comments »
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To Members of the United States Congress:

The undersigned are 204 entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs and executives who have been involved in 415 technology start-ups, and who have created over 70,000 jobs directly through our companies and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more through the technologies we invented, funded, brought to market and made mainstream.

We write today with one simple ask:

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We urge you to reject H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), as well as S.968, the PROTECT IP Act, also known as “PIPA” in their current forms, and instead please collaborate with us to adopt more focused, tailored solutions. We appreciate the stated purpose of these bills, but if they are allowed to become law in their present forms, they will hurt economic growth and chill innovation in legitimate services that help people create, communicate, and make money online.

Many of us wrote to you in September expressing our concern with PIPA (see attached). Since then, the number of concerned entrepreneurs on this letter has grown, as have the myriad other voices expressing their fears. We have come to DC to express our concerns directly with some of you.

Yet today the problems in this legislation remain unaddressed, and, in fact, SOPA exacerbates them. It would redefine the standard for copyright infringement on the Internet; create a new private right of action against law-abiding US companies; and subject lawful US companies to the threat of unworkable and harmful technology mandates, among other things.

We oppose piracy by rogue foreign sites as well, but there’s a better way forward than this. We stand ready to work with you on targeted legislation that focuses on these bad actors — without imposing new, harmful regulations on legitimate entrepreneurs and innovators.

We also stand ready to work with artists of all kinds to innovate in more content tools, platforms and services. These tools are a key way to address piracy, while also creating new jobs and fueling economic growth. Entrepreneurs like us can help do that; PIPA and SOPA can’t.

Sincerely,

http://www.engineadvocacy.org/voice/about.html

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Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | 3 Comments »

3 Responses to ““Over 200 Tech Visionaries Blast ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ in New Letter to Congress””

  1. Frank says:
    December 9, 2011 at 10:12 am

    I wrote to my Senator and got this response:

    Dear Frannk:
     
    Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to S. 968, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) Act.  Your opinion is very important to me, and I appreciate the opportunity to respond to you about this important issue.
     
    The PROTECT IP Act would prohibit foreign websites, formerly operating outside the realm of U.S. law, from exploiting U.S. Internet service providers, payment processors, search engines, and ad placement services.  However, many have expressed concern that the legislation does not create an adequate procedure for review, and could lead to websites being shut down without sufficient evidence of illegal action by the host site itself.
     
    As Internet technologies rapidly change society, we must work to ensure that our laws continue to reflect the values most important to us.  It is imperative that we continue to respect property rights, and protect copyrights and intellectual property.  Yet it is equally essential that we protect the fundamental right of freedom of speech, and do not permit baseless censorship of content.  Please be assured that I will work with my colleagues in the Senate to best address these issues, and continue my commitment both to protecting property rights and preserving freedom of expression in all public mediums.
     
    Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.  I encourage you to contact me if I can be of further assistance on this or any other concern.  I also invite you to visit my website (http://menendez.senate.gov) to learn more about how I am standing up for New Jersey families in the United States Senate.  

  2. Frank says:
    December 9, 2011 at 10:13 am

    My Senator doesn’t know how to use Spell-Check and I’m supposed to trust that he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to IT?

  3. AC says:
    December 9, 2011 at 11:10 am

    How about some SANE copyright reform? You know, reduce copyright terms back to a SANE length of 20 years after publication rather than the current forever plus 80 year term? Eliminating criminal copyright laws, and going back to the previous SANE situation, where copyright infringement was only a civil matter? Putting FAIR back into fair use? Repealing the DMCA and its ilk?

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon