Safe once more

Or is it? If you have been living under a rock for the last week then you either don't know or don't care about SOPA. SOPA is the brain-child of politicians trying to make the internet more politically correct. Yep. That's right. No more cute cat pictures, no more pron...

In my opinion, SOPA wasn't about copyrights. It was about trying to sneak politically correct censorship around the general public. Adding copyright infringement on was just a way to be able to give reason for shutting down a site. It would have given the 'powers that be' a reason to stop by a crappy little blog if they used a trademarked picture or a song and talked poorly about anything other than the aforementioned cats and pron. It was a sneaky trick that backfired.

Now don't get me wrong, as an artist I believe in copyrights and trademarks, but I also don't expect my work to be kept off of the internet. If I post a picture of any of my work on sites like Deviant Art, Etsy or Facebook, I expect that someone will like and hopefully be inspired by my designs. But I don't expect them to not steal my shit. I realize that once I place something in the public forum, that even though I maintain the copyright because it is my original design, I give up the expectation that people may be as honorable and not steal designs. But alas, people are people. And given the proliferation of different ways to put things on the Internet, I don't think that you can expect anything to be kept off the 'net.

So we are at a point where we can decide, do we want our freedoms on the internet, or do we want our intellectual property rights protected? Because I don't think there is any way you can have one without trampling over the other like a herd of stampeding buffalo. The only way that anyone can have their cake and eat it too would be to bake a freakin' cake and dig in. And as for stopping the piracy, has anyone been out to the flea market lately? There is more pirated shit out there then there are legal immigrants. People will always find a way to steal others ideas. Yes, even though we have laws that say you can't do it.

So agree or don't agree, but the only place I think you can expect people to respect your trademarks and copyrights is in your mind.