Stop Online Piracy Act

[roachcoach]

EDLT said:

No, they won't be able to access foreign sites with dodgy links (similar to how the censorship works in China) and, being America, the government will try to put pressure on foreign companies to do as it says.

That's not the half of it.

The companies will be able to, without real due process, block payment companies processing payments for them (a-la wikipedia).

These assholes already abuse due process and ADMIT to it over the DMCA.


What you'll see is a scattergun approach and a host of companies funding cut off (paypal is in America remember) all because of an accusation.

They've already wrongly seized domains for a year and are not compensating the owners.




To call this 'wrong' is to call gang rape a mild social deviation.

[Rollcage]

What are the realistic chances of success for this Bill, and what will it mean in reality if it is passed?

The Internet in general does seem to be a bit concerned!

[HowMuchLonger]

LeoSayer said:

It's even more annoying as you can't borrow someone's ebook, you can't buy it second hand and often you have little choice about where you buy it from.

You can "borrow" ebooks from various websites for free.

[carmonk]

I think the ebook issue is irrelevant. How many books to people read per month? One? Three? And you resent paying a few quid for the privilege? Pretty sad if you ask me. Authors don't live on fresh air and even paying full price for a ebook the author only gets around 10%.

[DieselGriff]

carmonk said:

I think the ebook issue is irrelevant. How many books to people read per month? One? Three? And you resent paying a few quid for the privilege? Pretty sad if you ask me. Authors don't live on fresh air and even paying full price for a ebook the author only gets around 10%.

I didn't realise it was that low, I mean it's not like production costs are high especially when the infrastructure is in place, so you are left with proof reading and advertising which I know isn't cheap but 90%?

It would seem to me that this being the case then a number of authors would be better off going it alone.

[carmonk]

DieselGriff said:

I didn't realise it was that low, I mean it's not like production costs are high especially when the infrastructure is in place, so you are left with proof reading and advertising which I know isn't cheap but 90%?

It would seem to me that this being the case then a number of authors would be better off going it alone.

I think some are starting to do that with ebooks although I'm not sure how it works out in terms of profit margin. The problem is of course that if you're not a well-known author and you're acting without representation you're going to have trouble selling your book at more than a couple of quid (often not that) so whilst your margins go up, your profit might not be much greater. That said, I think ebooks are a good thing for new authors - people just need to pay for them!

Edit: I just had a look at some figures for ebooks at it's slightly higher than I said, 15% - 18%.

Edited by carmonk on Sunday 18th December 13:06