We stand with the many websites and web-companies today in opposition to the current “Stop Online Piracy Act” and “Protect I.P. Act” in the House and Senate.
Online piracy, especially illegal downloads, has helped to bring a massive decline to the independent recording sector, and we must strive to stop it, however, the current bills in the U.S. House and Senate do not help accomplish this. As a company, Rosebrook Classical helps independent artists, organizations, and record labels to expand their businesses and art through online marketing efforts. These efforts help to use the internet to grow their business rather than destroy it. However, should the online outlets like Facebook, YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitter, Blogs, and the many many more that our clients use to grow their businesses be threatened with complete blacklisting for illegal content posted by users, their ability to have viable businesses creating, presenting, and spreading the Arts would be greatly hampered.
But not only that, censorship of this nature is an ever-growing, and always-hungry beast, and without due process (which is one of the biggest sticking points of these bills), artist websites, record label sites, arts organizations sites and more could all be blocked on a whim, crushing their ability to market and sell their artist products. Think that point is a little far-fetched? While we work diligently to stop all SPAM comments or SPAM-related Ping-Backs on any of our client’s blogs, the process is still mainly reactive, meaning that for even a little while, there could be an infringing link on a website. Sites have been hacked with SPAM related issues for years, why do people think it would stop now, especially when a site could be completely blocked because of a SPAM or Virus attack? Within these bills, a few infringing links (whether they were posted by the site owner or not) are enough to block a site full of legal material. Imagine being an orchestra that depends on web-ticket-sales as much as phone sales all of the sudden waking up with all U.S. web-traffic and search traffic blocked? How would that orchestra’s sponsors react? This is an issue for more than just tech-geeks, it’s an issue for all, and as a sector (the Arts) that has always struggled against censorship, we should stand up and say no!
But don’t just take our word for it, educate yourselves and act:
- AmericanCensorship.org
- SopaStrike.com
- Wikipedia
- And for a little humor about it all: The Oatmeal
[...] In reference to this episode, we ask that you also read our blog Rosebrook Classical Stands Against SOPA & PIPA [...]