[Infowarrior] - The Myth That SOPA & PIPA Will Stop Infringement By 'Educating' The Public

[Richard Forno]

The Myth That SOPA & PIPA Will Stop Infringement By 'Educating' The Public

from the educating-them-how-to-avoid-domestic-DNS dept

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111220/04083317141/myth-that-sopa-pipa-will-stop-infringement-educating-public.shtml

One of the key arguments we've heard about SOPA and PIPA in defending the fact that dedicated infringers will always find their way around the blocks to continue infringing, is that it's really intended as an "educational" mechanism, based on the assumption that people going to certain "rogue sites" don't know they're rogue -- but with a big DOJ banner, perhaps they'll be educated. This has never made much sense, frankly. The entertainment industry has been betting its legacy business model for quite some time on the myth that all it takes is a little "education" to fix things. Multiple studies have shown that nothing is further from the truth. People who infringe know they're infringing.  And they still do it. Education won't make a lick of difference. 

DNS expert Paul Vixie is debunking this myth even further, by separating people into two groups: intended infringers (those who know what they're doing breaks the law, but are still going to do it) and "unintented infringers" who don't realize they're breaking the law. As he notes, SOPA/PIPA are completely useless against the intended infringers, since they'll always find easy ways around the blocks. So what about the unintended infringers? Well, he points to a recent study of college students, about their views on following internet policies. And the short summary is that they all break the policies anyway, for a variety of reasons -- with a big reason being that, even if it's against "policy" they just don't believe they're really doing anything wrong. 

As Vixie notes, "from a high level policy perspective... we really can put "unintended infringer" into the "myth" category." Kids aren't lacking in education or morals or anything like that. They just don't see what's so wrong about accessing what the technology allows access to. If the industry hadn't wasted so many years and so much money on legal tricks and lobbying for stricter copyright laws, and instead invested that money and effort into providing better legitimate and licensed services, those kids would have gladly jumped to those offerings. But the industry decided to go in the other direction...


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