The Strike Against SOPA

"Maybe you'll love me when I fade to black"
 - Jay-Z


As this site is dressed in all black and some of you might wonder "hey, where did those annoying bubbles go?!?!" the Internets is fighting to protect what is there's - freedom. Congress seems to be on a roll with their idiocy of ending online piracy by completely ignoring everything that made the Internet great in the first place.

How can something so generic be so tightening on the lungs of the Web?

We featured the Free Justin Bieber campaign recently, but Congress doesn't seem to get it. I understand, though, as I've been part of the movement to help bring together the colliding worlds of entertainment blogging and bloodthirsty lawmakers. Seeing the various interaction, runarounds, and other slippery slopes of being a watchdog makes me realize that the term evolution (at least when it comes to harmonizing and balancing the two aforementioned worlds) is an understatement.

That's why this site is in its all-black-everything phase.

Basically, the government is enforcing that every website polices third party links from everywhere that includes anything regarding all forms of copyright infringment. That was not a sarcastic statement. Due to generic terms used in the bill, S. 968, that is the way it must be examined. Well, at least to avoid catching a flippin' felony!

Here's the Skippy on why SOPA has a dangerous capability of screwing over everything the Internet stands for:

1. Like mentioned about S. 978 (the Commercial Felony Streaming Act) earlier, the incidentals and accidentals will be entirely too vulnerable. If So And So wants to post her favorite song on Facebook because it explains the complex status she posted earlier about being "the baddest btich" (or however the misspelling goes), then she is liable to shut all of Facebook down. Yes, because the site allowed her to post content that enables pirate sharing, all of Facebook is liable to be shut down. Under SOPA's blanket-covering/suffocating definition, sites like YouTube, Facebook, Gmail, Dropbox, Soundcloud, and a big ass etc are sites dedicated to "theft of U.S. property." The thing is that any site with a comment box or upload form of any sort - whether the site complies with the DCMA or not - has the potential to be punished for infringement.

2. Any countering on infringement becomes far more difficult than previous copyright laws. For example, if an artist sends me a direct song they want "leaked," and the attorney general finds out then my ass is grass. Alone. In the bill, there is no clear statement of how they go about notifying the artist or their label - let alone whether or not the government has to! The responsibility is placed in my hands to get in touch with an already nearly untouchable party to send a counter-notice stating that I am allowed to "leak" the track... or picture... or video (just to make sure you understand what all's at stake here). After five days of the site being shut down, if no counter-notice is issued, guess who's going to jail?!

3. Still this term "FELONY" puts an awful strain on an already economically struggling field(s). Here's an explanation from Mashable's Opinion page of how quickly casual whoopsies become three years in prison:

Section 201(b)(1) expands criminal copyright infringement to include:
"At least 10 copies or phonorecords, or of at least 10 public performances by means of digital transmission, of 1 or more copyrighted works, during any 180-day period, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500."Now, the way that the value of a work can be computed in court is the very crude (value of the work times number of views).
"Total retail value may be shown by evidence of the total retail price that persons receiving the reproductions, distributions, or public performances constituting the offense would have paid to receive such reproductions, distributions, or public performances lawfully."This means, for example, if you upload a video to YouTube of you singing a popular song, and that song might sell for $1, and your video gets 2,500 views, you are guilty of felony copyright infringement. Furthermore, you can tack on “willful infringement for commercial gain or valued at more than $1,000.”
This would make you a felon, and if a copyright holder were to bring a suit against you, would give you a criminal record that would make it virtually impossible to fain future employment, and may subject you to up to three years in prison for singing a song. You don’t have to receive any money. You don’t have to gain anything from your video. Simply receiving 2,500 views on a song you sung, which happens to have copyright held by someone else, makes you a felon.

 4. This isn't just happening to folks in the U.S., this is for EVERYONE. The power has been put in the attorney general's hands to fully censor - from shutting down the site to cutting the site off from AdSense to cutting the site off from Paypal - any site that isn't even in the jurisdiction of the U.S. Folks first think of WikiLeaks, but what about other sites? Let's not forget about entertainment sites like SoulCulture, Daily Mail, Every Day A Great Song, etc that could be shut down for good. Not only that it's just shut down in their country, but worldwide (they don't call it that for nothing)!

If SOPA passes, then we'll be out here looking like China. Flat out. Big Brother's monitoring will just grow more and more brolick, brolick to the point where any slight instance of opposition is silenced - whether it be opposition of government policy or opposition of society's choice of entertainment.

A Justin Bieber Movement We All Can Agree On!

Congress is at their anti-music freedom antics again. Does the corrupted ever sleep?! Plus, this is looking like it could sweep anyone off of YouTube cover fame, including Justin Bieber.

It's S. 978, the bill that can lock up folks for up to five years for using copyrighted material on the Web. OpenCongress summarizes it like this:

The Commercial Felony Streaming Act (S. 978) makes unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted content a felony with a possible penalty of up to 5 years in prison. Illegal streaming of copyrighted content is defined in the bill as an offense that "consists of 10 or more public performances by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copyrighted works" and has a total economic value, either to the copyright holder or the infringer, of at least $2,500.

While I feel like Justin Bieber should not be as popular as he actually is - in fact I would give him Jeff Cohen's fame over Sean Astin's fame (or as much as I could relate his musical content to Sloth from The Goonies as possible) - he should not be locked up for covering his favorite songs. Neither should Karmin, Greyson Chance or Melanie Fiona.

Thanks to the open-ended language of this bill, three hots and a cot for five years can go to not only YouTubers but to Tweeters, Facebook(ers), MySpace(rs), Google+ers, Pandora(ers), AmazonCloud(ers), GrooveShark(ers), SoundCloud(ers), folks who own iPhones, Androids and email accounts because it's the sharing of streaming media that could be illegal.

Thinking about it, and maybe stretching it a little, bumping the stream of the Danny Brown and Black Milk album on speaker phones and then someone joins in on the tunes could come with a five-year sentence. How awesome is that?!

Here's another slightly-stretched scenario: those who want to make their own variation of The Wobble, The Wu-Tang, The Artichoke, or whatever the hot new dance craze can get the silver bracelets too. Oh, and that cute video of the eight-year-old singing Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass?" Illegal.

While the pressure to protect artists from other people making money off of streaming music without the artist's permission is understandable, the impulsive extremity of this act is foolish. If someone were to steal anything I've written off this blog and post it on their sites as their words, I would be pissed. However, to do it with an adoration for my voice (and attribution), or to do it on the grounds of some editing of some sort, I would understand.

Here's what's being done. Fight for the Future has launched a Free Bieber campaign and a petition people can sign to stop the bill from going forth. Once you visit FreeBieber.org, the petition will pop up asking for your email address. The petition is spread throughout the website as well.

The idea of penalizing folks like Karmin, Beiber, etc for the same reasons (and then some) is radical. Given most musicians feel like they are as good as - if not better - than the next man, most folks who cover other artists do not look to profit off of their adoration. More than likely, they want to place themselves in their favorite artist's shoes in their covers. Show me a band that wants to purely profit off of covering another artist, and I'll show you the Wiz Khalifa costume Billy Gardell (Mike from Mike & Molly) plans on wearing this Halloween weekend.

Something Old, Nothing New: Black Folk Music as "Innovative"

I ranted a little bit on my Tumblr about this topic before, but this issue hasn't been toppled enough.

Black folks and Americana music seen as "game changers" - as the Huffington Post's Black Voices calls The Carolina Chocolate Drops - just because they tote a fiddle or a banjo discredits the word innovation.

Not that this band lacks creativity or talent, but the article came off as "oh look, Black people with banjos. That must be alternative," which gives Black culture yet another pounding against our foundation. The definition of innovation, change, remix, etc does not necessarily root in the right now, but if you let Black media (and really all folks of the press) tell it change comes as a matter of what's present. While that may be true for some things, that cannot hold true for music because of how far back the existence of music dates.

Now, if HuffPo placed emphasis on CCD's abilities to merge beatboxing with their Americana sound, this would be a different article. Additionally, if the rest of the selections weren't based on what simply looks different, this blog post probably wouldn't exist. However, this mindset has run rampant far too long.

Black culture right now, at least according to the media, is centered around the rap and corporate game. This short-changes everyone else and everything else Black folks are capable of doing: playing guitar, singing opera, harp and other ambient music, and so much more.

I get it. Singing and rapping is hot in the community. I get it. Blogs revolve around popular keywords, Google trends and social media topics. However, when will Black media expand to other audiences and cultures, not expose what's already here and what we already know?

Overall, Black media in general have cornered the term innovation to what is alternative and downright gimmicky. Looking at Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All and CCD, one would think no Black people spit Atheist rhymes or can play a mean fiddle. That's far from the case because, if we wanna be real, we were among the first people ever to do those things.

While I don't wanna start a complete history lesson (because it's way too easy to look up the history of my points from this blog), I still worry about the cycle of our culture. I already know the world and cultures we live in acts in a chronological circle, but the circle seems to be getting smaller and smaller.

To read the story I'm talking about, click here!