Paul's Comments

I have gone along with the public blackout by posting a stop page ahead of the normal view of this blog. I agree that these sort of draconian anti-piracy laws are woefully excessive, unnecessary and a threat to free speech. Even if they were declared unconstitutional, which might not be the case, it's an expensive battle that might be lost.

Those who disagree with the situation need to take action, and I have done so. As I posted from the article two years ago in the politics section, "The Last Words of Lasantha Wickrematunge", that man repeated from Martin Niemuller, from his famous poem, "First they came for the Jews / and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew," that even if it doesn't directly have an effect upon us, we need to oppose this sort of thing.

I made a comment on Wikipedia about supporting their putting up a blackout page in response.

The (clearly unnecessary) increase (from life +50 years to life+70 years or from 75 years to 95 years for pseudononymous works and works for hire) in copyright terms was forced (by the copyright industries, especially Disney, they got the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act because they were going to see Mickey Mouse go into the Public Domain around 1998 when Steamboat Willie was 75 years old) for the purposes of "harmonizing" copyright terms among countries in order to force those with shorter terms to lengthen them (thus giving the copyright owners a huge benfit and gives nothing to the public; adding 20 years to the end of a copyright term doesn't give us new works and the difference is not enough that if it wasn't there that it would discourage new developments); this sort of garbage, if it starts here, will be forced on other countries by the copyright industries claiming (a completely false premise, of course, just like the alleged "need" to "harmonize" copyright terms, but always upward) that this sort of draconian legislation is necessary in all countries. It isn't and we have to oppose this. Paul Robinson, 19:27, 16 January 2012 (UTC)