I still feel strongly that disrupting the flow of free entertainment is the one thing that will actually get people up and protesting. Rights and freedoms stripped away with regularity have minimal impact, but SOPA got the world riled up in fear that torrenting the next season of Game of Thrones was about to get mildly more difficult.
Just imagine for a second what would happen if Facebook did the same for a day...
Yeah, I know, I know, it's a corporation, It would loose lots of money by going down for a whole day, and it's shareholders would be very angry. It's not going to happen.
But if for some strange reason it did happen... that would call the attention of LOTS of people.
Indeed. In Poland, which was the first country in Europe to stand up against SOPA, people only started caring after a popular video streaming site got taken down (it was something related to Megaupload scandal) - and they realized that this is what world with SOPA will look like. You can take away our freedoms, but you can't take away our Game of Thrones.
Except in the US we already have most of those regulations. Seeding torrents is already a criminal copyright violation. It is just not being exploited as a means to supress users as much as it could be, probably because the power base is not centralized enough yet to suppress the revolt it would cause (not a physical revolt, just a cultural one, and it would obviously not be pervasive, but isolated to those of us who actually even give a damn).
Just curious; how does Game of Thrones make money? Do they get paid when their content is shared on torrents? If they don't, then why would they continue to produce the show if they aren't getting paid? I fail to understand how stealing content is a "good" thing. It seems no different that sneaking into the theater without buying a ticket.
It's produced by HBO and has incredibly high viewership, so I imagine it's paid by (1) the increase in HBO subscribers, (2) other networks that want to run it, and (3) advertising run during the show.
Stealing content is good because otherwise, the content isn't available. I'm pretty sure that in countries like Poland or Slovenia, shows like Game of Thrones arrive with a substantial delay, if at all.
Plus, requiring the people to subscribe to the whole of HBO and dozens of shitty shows just to see Game of Thrones is essentially an abuse of the market, like a monopoly (which copyright always is).
HBO doesn't show advertising, but they have incredibly lucrative DVD/BluRay/streaming distribution networks. Also they have HBO Now gaining significant steam, and people will gladly pay just for Game of Thrones.
SOPA had opposition from companies like Google. From what I understand, companies like Google had input into TPP, whereas organizations like the EFF were ignored.
I suspect something similar will happen here.