I’m a pretty conservative person most of the time.  Just ask any of my friends.  There are very few issues where I completely split from a conservative viewpoint, but the Republicans are completely blowing it when it comes to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) going through the House of Representatives now.  Now, MSNBC.com reports that the “White House voices concern over online piracy legislation”.  In essence, some very large IT related companies have come out in opposition to the bill, while the greedy and already overpaid entertainment industry is trying to claim that the bill will save US jobs.

In a blog posting, three advisers to President Barack Obama said they believed SOPA and other bills could make businesses on the Internet vulnerable to litigation and harm legal activity and free speech.

"Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small," said the officials, including White House cyber-security czar Howard Schmidt.

This bill will become a boondoggle for any online company, and it goes against the Constitution of the United States because it presumes an individual guilty until proven innocent.  You would think that people who love to wrap themselves in the Constitution would see this bill as the heavy handed dictatorial legislation that it is.  Yet, what MSNBC.com reports instead is that the Republican party intends to do just the opposite:

"It is not censorship to enforce the law against foreign thieves," said Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. He estimated intellectual-property industries provide 19 million high-paying U.S. jobs and account for more than 60 percent of American exports.

…

Smith, in an interview with Reuters on Thursday, had vowed to press ahead with the bill in spite of criticism from Google and others and said he thought it would pass the House, where Republicans have a majority.

Foreign copying of intellectual property is nothing new.  It is a red herring.  Legislation has not ever been able to stop it, nor will it ever.  What will happen is that more and more web hosting companies will begin moving their operations – and the jobs – overseas in order to avoid the potential conflict.

No, it is all about greed, and it is time for the entertainment industry to figure out that it is no longer the powerful oligarchy it presumes itself to be.  In the end, they will either innovate or lose out completely.  If it is the latter, I do not plan to shed any tears for them after the antics they’ve been involved with in recent years.