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George, I am completely in favor of this concerted black-out. It's a strong, elegant, informative protest! It lets us experience for ourselves the true and likely effects on us if either or both of these bills become American law. Since before the dreadful Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we've seen the relentless commodification of knowledge and the arts. The question is, as always, Who benefits? If your first answer is, Large Corporations! you will almost always be correct. Pious claims that these gigantic companies must protect their artists against "piracy" -- as the music business and Hollywood claimed -- are a mockery of their real intentions, which are profits for shareholders. Such claims deserve only mockery in reply. Far more insidious, as I see it, is the DMCA's legalization of the idea called "intellectual property," and lawyers' ever-expanding work at enclosing the works of the mind within paywalls. We ought always, always to be skeptical of new definitions of "property," because as a nation we have a terrible record of defining it badly. We still haven't quite gotten over that. That's one set of reasons. Another is, I like being in good company. A great range of Web sites have gone dark in protest today. My favorite, because it's wittily done, is Stop SOPA (mouse across the screen), at the University of Virginia's excellent Digital Scholars Lab. Good on SLab! And a final reason: in 2007, this excellent essay about intellectual property rights and democratic values, by Jeffrey Matsuura Jeffrey H. Matsuura - Thomas Jefferson and the Evolution of a Populist Vision of Intellectual Property Rights and Democratic Values, appeared in Archipelago, the journal I edited and published on the Web, in which the author explains what Jefferson meant by copyright, and why his useful notion about the encouragement and spread of useful invention is worth bringing up again. If you don't mind hearing from our favorite Founder yet again, here is what Jefferson wrote: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others to exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it focuses itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver can not dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Small publishers, musicians, writers, photographers, journalists, bloggers and the like are right to denounce the illegal use of their materials by people who don't even ask permission (let alone, pay fees, if fees are charged). Copyright does mean something important: it recognizes the moral right of the maker to his or her production. Unauthorized copying is usually a kind of cheating, which is morally wrong. But neither SOPA nor PIPA will be very effective at stopping unauthorized use. What they will do, however, is put awful powers of censorship and denial of access into the hands of government and corporate deciders. I read that the Web protests have already influenced several representatives and senators who had been for the legislation, and who will now oppose it. This is a fine way to do politics. I say, Yay! cheers,
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