While hollywood pays, they throw try to screw up a lot of things as soon as the payment(s) stop, they turn around and admit crap like this - so tell me. What good does this guys admission of being stupid do to other bills like PIPA?
It shows the negotiating power of the Internet to the world. After all, the bill was defeated by online communities like Reddit, Wikipedia or HN right here. If anything that's an admission that online communities should be listened to, much more often.
And I like that. When people ask me where I'm from, I often jokingly answer "From the Internet", I'm sure a lot of people here can relate to this feeling. I'm not a US citizen, but being from the Internet I am directly impacted by these laws. I am glad to think that my "people" (fellow interneteese) and I can make ourselves heard.
Many people simply believe that the government and these lobbyists are fighting for their interests, after all they are honest taxpayers that go to vote. Which in the case of SOPA/PIPA is simply not true and the world needs to know that this was a mixture of malevolence and incompetence.
And despite what some people on HN think about the power of lobbying with money, raising awareness is the most effective tool at our disposal. SOPA was stopped on tracks because the likes of Wikipedia and Google and dozens of others got the message out.
I have off course no proof, and he might very well be honest and sincere about admitting his error (although he would not have committed this it, I think, had he done his job properly).
I'm sure if you fumble around the arithmetics enough, and include anyone who produces or depends on anything that could fit under the increasingly vague label of "IP" (this company has a movie night every month, they depend on IP!), you can probably even boost that made-up number to 75% or 90% of GDP!
Unless Bieber got authorization from the rights holders, which is (I'm guessing) both impossible and something no 8 or 9 year old would try properly. (see also: this Wired article on the issue: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/05/opinion-baio-criminal... )
In one way the PIPA protests were a resounding success. In another way, copyright laws in the US - regardless of PIPA - need some serious looking into.
When birthday parties everywhere violates copyright law (by singing the canonical Happy Birthday song), and face potentially large fines because of it, something's broken.
While protesting is good, I hope there will also be a solution which takes away that power from them - so that anyone can put up a website without fear of being taken down (or of having RIAA knocking at his door for referring to a website which has link to some where else from where you can download a movie that no one else would anyway buy).
Shame on legislators everywhere that follow the same pattern.
Of course face value probably does not entail all that may have been orchestraded out of sight.
