Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

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I hate SOPA, but I've got to wonder how much of this is actually driven by concern for the bottom line. Hollywood and Big Media are very happy to work with established, institutional partners. Indeed, the types of partnerships that'd be formed, backed up by federal force, would serve to drive off potential competitors.

Would it really damage advertising revenues that much? If the fear is that Google would be hit by large lawsuits from some twelve year old posting a music video on YouTube, or that Facebook would be liable for a link to it, I expect that media conglomerates would be happy to give de facto immunity, so long as Google or whoever is willing to put Viacom's commissars in charge of which content is allowed and which isn't.

Obviously it's good that Google is on the side of angels on this, but if it's actually in their best interest is a relevant angle for analysis. It also would tell us how hard they're actually willing to fight to block SOPA.

The law doesn't say, Viacom may make a claim on your content, so make a deal with Viacom and you're golden. It says that any rights-holder can make a claim on your content.

There's a big problem with patent trolls right now making totally frivolous claims based on patents that they bought up, right? And yet many companies are paying oodles of dollars to pay them off and to try to avoid future trouble from essentially ridiculous patents. I would expect exactly the same thing to arise under SOPA, but with ridiculous copyright claims instead of ridiculous patents. Entities with no actual concern about their IP will start knocking at the door looking for shakedown money when it allegedly gets posted on Youtube.

I think concern for us(the bottom line) isn't indeed the real drive. Roughly speaking the business of Google is the Internet. If the internet thrives, they thrive. That's one of the reasons why they don't need to treat Mozilla as a competitor. So, this bill could hurt their business model, at least here in the US.

Even if you're right and Google et al can establish institutional partnerships that minimize the impact of SOPA on their current services and business (and, hence, their current bottom line)...

SOPA would dramatically (and negatively) reshape the environment in which new services and business are developed (by startups, individuals, teams within larger companies, etc.). In the long run, that will matter more for the bottom line than anything else.

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