Quote Originally Posted by wolfy-hound View Post
I'd have to see the actual proposed legislation.

I'm against piracy of owned materials. Copying games, cds, etc because you don't want to pay for them is the same as stealing to me.

Using someone's song in a youtube video that you make no money from doesn't seem like it should be considered piracy. But then, it's not MY song, so who am I to say it's okay to use it? I think that the individual artists should be able to raise a fuss if it's their materials being used. Generally on YouTube if someone uses a song that the artist fusses over, YouTube will remove the audio from the video. So why shoudl there be additional legislation to 'regulate' that?

So it all depends on what the legislation actually states. Does it say you can't use owned materials? Or does it say "we can remove whateve we want"? If I make a video of me handling a python and I'm wearing one of a band's shirts, should I get tagged with "piracy" because I don't own the band? Would that be covered?

It seems there's tons of opinions on what the legislation will entail with no real facts presented to support the opinions.
I agree that legit piracy is wrong. But what this entails is that if I sing a kareoke of some song and put it on Youtube and the copyright holder doesn't approve they can not only take it down but charge me with a felony. Or say I am at a sporting event recording with my own camera and a copyrighted song is playing in the background and I upload that somewhere. Same thing. Or say I link to a site that has copyrighted material, even if I don't directly have any, I could be charged. Even if you are a citizen of another country they will seek to extradite you to the US to face charges. They are actually try that now on a british teenager under current laws but it's not illegal in the UK.

People like Grayson Chance and (as much as I hate to support his talentless butt) Justin Bieber would have been criminals under SOPA since they started on youtube covering other peoples songs.

Mike Mozart on youtube has a wonderful video on all this and says it much better than me and provides external references. I think his channel is Jeepers Media. I am at work so I can't check for sure.

Anyways, while I am for efforts to fight piracy, this isn't the way to do it.