RIAA Admits SOPA Wouldn't Have Stopped Piracy 153
jfruh writes "One of the arguments against the now-dormant SOPA legislation was that, in addition to eroding Internet freedom, it would also be ineffective in stopping music piracy. Well, according to a leaked report, the RIAA agrees with the latter argument. The proposed laws would 'not likely to have been an effective tool for music,' according to the report. Another interesting revelation is that, despite the buzz and outrage over P2P sharing, most digital music piracy takes place via sneakernet, with music moving among young people on hard drives and ripped CDs."
Um... (Score:1)
Portable HD with 25K+ CDs worth of music. (Score:5, Funny)
I almost feel guilty every time I make a copy for someone. Almost.
Gotta upgrade to USB3. Copies take days.
Re:Portable HD with 25K+ CDs worth of music. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't.
Make the labels feel guilty for making such a system possible by not upgrading their ways.
They are the ones who actually came out and straight-up said they don't give a damn about the digital age and won't support it, and will do anything in their power to destroy it.
Megaupload was the most successful thing they have ever had against such a digital service.
Of course, now the evidence is piling up that the entire case was illegal to begin with and not a single shred of evidence was in their favor in the slightest.
Just keep spreading around that the labels are corrupt, make as much noise as possible and let the artists themselves know about it.
They are the ones who need the most help.
They are the ones who are duped in to thinking the labels are even needed anymore. It was true over a decade ago, not so much now.
The labels job as-is is completely useless for any artist. You could take them out and artists, choreographers, singers, bands, CG modellers, stores, printing companies and so on could still find each other pretty damn easily.
Maybe one day we will have a world where creative content is free of these restrictions and it is loyalty that is rewarded.
Re:Portable HD with 25K+ CDs worth of music. (Score:5, Insightful)
The labels are not needed for the artists, but they are needed for the entertainers. Do you really think Justin Beiber would have gotten anywhere without a billion dollar marketing machine? With independent artists, music would be about the music and people would find the music they like. The marketed entertainment industry dwarfs the music industry, and that is what they are fighting for.
Re:Portable HD with 25K+ CDs worth of music. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Here's another thought: maybe some people out there are different from you, and prefer different forms of entertainment. Nah, crazy idea. We all love NPR, don't we? Every last one of us. I mean, if you don't love Peruvian hick music...I mean folk music...then you're hardly a person, eh?
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And yet, if marketroids were geeks, they'd be hailed as successful culture hackers.
Only if they actually hacked the culture in a fun and interesting way.
Based on their past and current performance, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
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Seeing how little effort is required to get people to do amazingly stupid things quit being a source of merriment for me about 20 years ago. Since then, trying to bowl a perfect game has proven more interesting to me (lifetime high 284, average 187, if you're interested).
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If marketroids were 'successful culture hackers' they would pick on adults.
All they do is sell junk to dumb children. Southpark nailed it. Don't mess with Mr. Mouse.
Re:Portable HD with 25K+ CDs worth of music. (Score:5, Insightful)
Justin Beiber wouldn't be popular unless a lot of people actually liked his music, as hard as that is to believe. A result of marketing he may be, but they are marketing something people clearly want. The fundamental problem is most people have terrible taste in music. The labels are just pandering to that.
Re:Portable HD with 25K+ CDs worth of music. (Score:5, Insightful)
People do not want good music. People want to be popular. Entertainment marketing is about convincing people they will be popular if they like (and purchase) a particular kind of entertainment. The trick is producing entertainment watered down enough that you can get a large number of people to not hate it.
Re:Portable HD with 25K+ CDs worth of music. (Score:5, Interesting)
Its way more than that.... they will be popular, they will be young and beautiful forever, they will never die, have bad breath, fart, or be embarrassed. The machine whispers in your ear and tells you anything for the privilege of lightening your wallet, and locking down a few more neurons. Its ultimate goal is to rob the world of the capacity to form individual thoughts or make rational decisions. Is it not time to kill the machine.
Re:Portable HD with 25K+ CDs worth of music. (Score:5, Insightful)
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They are TELLING people what they want. The people are just too alarmingly retarded to tell the difference. Sad truth
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And Pavlov was able to get dogs to drool when they heard a bell... your point is?
Re:Portable HD with 25K+ CDs worth of music. (Score:5, Informative)
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This is because the labels didn't think music from a 16 year old boy would sell, especially from a person that was previously unknown for anything.
And this after how many decades of "boy bands"? One could argue that The Beatles are the original boy band, although they actually had some amount of talent. Certainly it wasn't much less than 20 years ago when boy bands really became popular.
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The Beatles _barely_ played their instruments. To be fair George eventually learned to play his. Ringo still can't keep a beat.
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Justin Beiber wouldn't be popular unless a lot of people actually liked his music, as hard as that is to believe. A result of marketing he may be, but they are marketing something people clearly want. The fundamental problem is most people have terrible taste in music. The labels are just pandering to that.
Exactly right. If you went to some English-speaking desert island where they've never heard of Justin Beiber and you played a teenage girl his music, and some 'indie' artist's music and you asked her
Re:Portable HD with 25K+ CDs worth of music. (Score:4, Informative)
Nobody liked Rebecca Black. People liked making fun of Rebecca Black.
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Another would be to get an indie artist's song, and show it to a group of girls - this time show Beiber singing it.
Re:Portable HD with 25K+ CDs worth of music. (Score:5, Insightful)
Justin Beiber wouldn't be popular unless a lot of people actually liked his music, as hard as that is to believe.
No, I think most people dislike Justin Bieber. It just happens that the very specific demographic that likes his music is also a demographic that has nothing but disposable income, oodles of time to waste listening to bad music, immature musical tastes, and a greater need to follow the crowd than any other age group. Their customers are fools with nothing they're saving their money for. That makes it the most profitable sector of the music industry, and that's why they're the most influential.
It has nothing to do with popularity among most people.
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The point of music is music (and to get laid). The great artists will be remembered and the art will be enjoyed for years.
The point of entertainment is to part fools from their money (and to get laid).
Sometimes artists get rich, sometimes not.
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Exactly. It's better to feel guilty when you actually pay for stuff. That gives the MAFIAA money.
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Don't.
Make the labels feel guilty for making such a system possible by not upgrading their ways.
Labels, feel?
Pull the other one.
Right now in Australia there is an inquiry as to why the Australian prices are far higher than prices in other nations, Especially for digital goods. Publishers are still trying to claim tax, duties and wages. Most of which (especially tax and duties) is much lower than the UK yet prices are often twice (or more, some times as much as 4 times) what they are in the UK (Taxes get my goat, GST in AU is 10% whilst VAT in the UK is 20% how the fuck is that more?). Wages do n
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Go away RIAA! You are not taking him down.
Logic (Score:3)
Next up: Legislation requiring all hard drives, thumb drives and other storage devices to be registered with the government. You will need to transfer ownership of all devices and must submit monthly logs of any device your storage medium has been connected to regardless of whether or not it was accessed or even powered on.
Additional fees may apply for concealed carry SD cards.
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Next stop: Wetware and stacking your brain.
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No, the parent has it right, they want to stack you brain. Any time you have a thought, think of a song, remember a movie, or a passage from a book, a small bit of money is deducted from your account. Since you account will be completely empty within about 4 minutes of your receiving a pay check, and since you'll still be having thoughts, the powers that be will inform you that you are now a ward of the state (a wholly owned subsidiary of the folks who stacked your brain.) You will do as you are told, or th
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And you are not allowed to memorise any song or film. Your memory must be erased after exposure, or else you might commit piracy by singing the song or telling the plot to someone.
Didn't they try that with 'Men In Black'? They even had the tagline 'See it again for the fist time". It worked better for "Men In Black II". The movie simply wasn't as memorable.
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Re:Logic (Score:5, Funny)
The title of the bill will feature both "child pornography" and "terrorist".
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I just can't wait for the legislation sponsered by the RIAA that simply allows the labels to send armed gaurds to anyone's home and hold them up for wallet cash and loose change at any time.
Won't happen, the government doesn't like anyone infringing on their monopoly.
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Why not, the BSA already does it.
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Nah, no need for any of that. Just bully manufacturers into building a backdoor into their products, include something in the EULA that states that the big 5 media companies can access your device at any time for any reason. No need to spend all that money on lobbyists or deal with that pesky publicity.
Lousy logic, as an old person, I can do better (Score:2)
Outlaw young people, round them all up and put them in work camps. That will teach them and get them of my lawn too!
On a more serious note, Brein (dutch RIAA) knows its block on the piratebay is meaningless. It is just the first small baby step to get politicians to swallow the poisoned pill. They know what they want to achieve in the end, a completely locked down society where every bit of content is payed for repeatedly and all creation belongs to the 1% no matter who created it or when it was created or
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In Italy we already pay the local performing right organization for every hd we purchase to cover the costs of piracy. Would that mean we can put a lil pirate stuff there? nope.
In Finland, we already pay a levy on all external media (SD, CF, USB sticks, external drives, media players, etc.). Does this mean we can legally copy - for private use - any material published in Finland? Hell, yes, of course we can! [hyvitysmaksu.fi] The levy is distributed among rights holders by a number of copyright societies.
Yes I must agree (Score:1)
Piracy only happens because hardware permits it...
We must out law sneakers.
The real sneakernet (Score:1)
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Re:The real sneakernet (Score:4, Funny)
I believe you need the following display to assist with proper sneaker net age determination...
AGE .................... MEDIA
............. Clay Tablet ............ Papyrus .................. Parchment .... (What's a sneaker?) ............ Reel Tape ................... Paper punch card deck ........ 8" 180 KB Floppy .......... 360 KB Floppy ........... 1.44 MB Floppy ..... Tape Cassette .......... CD ............. DVD ............... Flashcard ............... Flashdrive
Babylon 1 Star
Beyond Farting
Farts Dust
Forbidden Planer star . Printed paper
Star Trek star
Old Fart
Star Wars star
Middle Aged
STNG Star
Babalon 5 star
Young Man
Youngun
Todler
Infant
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>>>Middle Aged .......... 360 KB Floppy
(looks-around). Is there a camera in my parents' basement watching me? I'll have you know these C64 SIDs of Axel F and Madonna are quality entertainment.
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I believe that would be the "Zygote" rating.
No? No! (Score:3, Funny)
Of course not. The point was NOT to endlessly funnel more money towards the RIAA, the MPAA and their respective legal teams, but to take the modest and humble earnings from lawsuits and return all of it to the artistssshhhahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa.
Man I crack myself up sometimes.
Re:Man I crack myself up sometimes. (Score:2)
That's a pretty good trick.
1. Take the "propaganda meme" (money to the artists)
2. pull in a slashdot story from a few days ago, http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/07/29/0555208/ifpi-wont-share-pirate-bay-damages-with-musicians [slashdot.org]
3. ??
4. Karma Profit!
No category for free legal downloads? (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's how I find new stuff, free promotional downloads (samplers on Amazon, creative commons DLs on artists' sites). Then I try to buy direct from the bands I like at performances (cash for CD, direct) if they perform nearby. If not, I'll purchase through CDBaby, Amazon, etc. Hoping to see more Humble Music Bundles [slashdot.org], too!
Yeah, it still left too much internet Freedom (Score:2)
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"SOPA wouldn't have stopped piracy... It wasn't powerful enough! We'd need legislature that takes away even more internet freedom! The new bill we're going to be lobbying for will allow us to stop piracy once and for all. In addition, it'll stimulate the economy, create new jobs, and combat terrorism."
Outlaw this pesky internet thingy. And all forms of writable media including paper.
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Does it provide unlimited orgasms to those that submit to it?
SOPA (Score:2)
Momentarily Dormant (Score:1)
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DON'T PICK IT UP!!!!!!! Aaaaaahhhhh, poor bastard!
Damn you (Score:1)
What assholes! (Score:2, Insightful)
So we knew RIAA were assholes, but up until now i always thought they were just deluded idiots who bought research that supported their imagination. After seeing the percentage slide from that ITWorld article, I'm still brimming with viking rage.
Assholes, every one of them - they just lost my one last excuse to at least feel a tinge of sympathy for them. Sympathy for their illness, mind, but sympathy nonetheless.
foresight (Score:2)
MPAA backed SOPA (Score:3)
From what I've heard, it was the MPAA that really pushed SOPA. The RIAA didn't think it would help them much, but, of course, weren't going to say no if given SOPA-powers. (Yes, I notice that looks like "super-powers." Does this make the MPAA a "SOPA-villain?")
Don't think for a second that the RIAA has gone all cuddly and pro-sharing, however. With SOPA defeated, the RIAA is making themselves busy pushing laws that they think would benefit them at the expense of customers.
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Just plug your iPod into a computer... you can drag and drop apple's files and if needed, convert them to an mp3.
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that's how they learnt their lesson with iphone/touch ipods.
no standard moving of data around or 3rd parties uploading music without itunes.
seriously, itunes sucked soooo much for setting up 160gb classics..
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So 1990s ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The RIAA wants us to repurchase our media collection every few years to change formats so they can include DRM. It was bad enough that my 500+ cassette tape collection needed to be repurchased as CD audio. I was pissed, but the difference in audio quality really did matter to me for most of them. OTOH, my Judas Priest tapes weren't repurchased.
Around 1996, I converted my thousands of music CDs bought during the years of BMC Music club membership into MP3 files. It took me over a year doing about 5 CDs every day to finish. Usually 2 before work and 1-3 in the evenings. Computers were much slower back then, so doing a rip/lame was about 45 minutes per CD. It was like eating an elephant one bite at a time.
Every few years, I need to move those files to new storage media. Of course, they are backed up too - there's no chance that I'll be redoing all that time and effort again. When I need to move the data, I don't use a sneaker net. I have a real network, thank you.
I was unhappy with some of the prices of those CDs, but at least I "own" it. Clearly I was confused. I'm unhappy with current pricing for electronic music and don't believe I "own" anything afterwards. It isn't exactly "property". It feels imaginary. At least the question whether a music file will play on my systems today or in 50 yrs from now has finally been answered - no DRM.
SONY's attempt with a rootkit convinced me to never put a music CD into a mainstream OS again AND it proved to me never to trust big content companies AND never to buy software or hardware that is required to support their business failing DRM models.
I've tried a few different DRM-encumbered music files over the years through free samples.
The "Plays-for-Sure" stuff never played.
The Apple stuff never played.
Those failures convinced me to never buy music electronicly.
RIAA - "You've Got Another Thing Comin'"
I'm not "breaking the law" here.
1996? Really? (Score:3)
Around 1996, I converted my thousands of music CDs bought during the years of BMC Music club membership into MP3 files. It took me over a year doing about 5 CDs every day to finish. Usually 2 before work and 1-3 in the evenings. Computers were much slower back then, so doing a rip/lame was about 45 minutes per CD. It was like eating an elephant one bite at a time.
Every few years, I need to move those files to new storage media. Of course, they are backed up too - there's no chance that I'll be redoing all that time and effort again.
1996? Either you're off by a few years, or you were a very early adopter...and at an average of 50MB per CD, you would've needed at least 100GB for "thousands" of CDs (i.e. 2000 CDs minimum). Hard drives that large weren't commonly available for another five years.
Plus I'd imagine those encodings sound dramatically worse than what you could get five years later at the same bitrate. Moreover, 128k was the custom at the time (onion on belt, etc.), and the old 128k files I have from the late '90s sound tr
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Oh, MP3 (and MP2) were certainly around in 1996, as well as a couple competitors that never went anywhere (anyone remember VQF?). But I don't remember MP3 taking off until the late 1990s, and I certainly don't remember anyone with consumer-grade HDs big enough to store the equivalent of thousands of CDs, even at 128kbps, until at least 2000. In 1996, a 2 GB hard drive was still a big deal.
And like I said, encodings from 1996-1998 are likely to sound terrible by today's standards, and I'd be inclined to
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You may be correct. Perhaps it was 1998?
I know that I started ripping around 1996 ... I was at a specific job that year and other guy showed me how. I may not have ripped everything in a systematic way for a few more years.
Initially, my MP3 player was a audio/data CDROM device from iRiver, so every 5-10 ripped CDs were burned to a data CDROM. As HDDs sizes increased, I made more and more of the audio files "live" on the network. BTW, I still use those same CDROMs in my 2001 vehicle to listen for hours at
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Oh and "thousands" in my marketing class taught me that is 1001 or more. ;) Anything over 1000.00000 is "thousands."
Ha! :) Thanks for your detailed and good-natured reply. I think 1998 would make more sense, as it started to become more feasible then. Still, you were definitely ahead of the curve!
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It's much easier to rip now with modern amenities like batch rippers (dbpoweramp), online tag databases and USB where you easily support 6-10 drives per box.
It may even be worth it if you are fussy enough to want essentially error free rips.
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I had a pentium 100 in 1996 and it took me much longer than 45 minutes to encode a CD's worth of music. First I had to dump it to WAV files which back then dumped at near regular playback speed. Then i setup a batch script to run the command line client to convert the wav to an mp3. Due to limited disk space, I couldn't queue up too many at a time. My PC only had an 850MB HDD and it was only 5400RPM. That was before I had winamp too.. playing back an MP3 used like 25% of my CPU in stereo. For disk rea
Agree with you on buying electronic music (Score:1)
That was a couple of years ago. Now, i hate these greedy bastards so much that i would pay more for music just to bypass them.
Fortunately, as long as i can access mp3million.com, it's a non-issue.
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RIAA (To us...): "Bend over...here it comes AGAIN!!"
In truth, they (RIAA and MPAA members...) have very, very little I've any interest in anymore. I've not bought anything for years from those bastards and I've pretty much quit seeing movies over the last 3-4 years because it's tripe in the large and buying into it just simply fuels/powers them taking rights away from you and I.
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Maybe not the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Call me paranoid, but sometimes I think that some of the anti-piracy proposals are not about stopping piracy. SOPA, for example, could have made it impossible for a site like YouTube to exist, which in turn would make it difficult to share user-generated content. Because it made it dangerous to host user content and content from independent sources, it would risk forcing sites to only allow content being distributed from major corporate sources who could be verified to own the content.
It's not certain, but it could have been viewed as pushing us back towards broadcast networks where ISPs and large media companies act as gatekeepers on what information and entertainment you have access to.
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I don't know if that's true. Apparently one of the complaints that SOPA was meant to address was that people were posting content on Youtube and Google wasn't necessarily taking it down until the copyright holder requested a takedown. One of the big parts of the bill was that it took the legal responsibility from the copyright holder to seek out and police violations of their property, and instead placed it on the web host to be policing their sites for violations of other people's copyrights.
So essentia
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Call me paranoid, but sometimes I think that some of the anti-piracy proposals are not about stopping piracy.
Paranoid? You're delusional if you think some of the anti-piracy proposals ARE about stopping piracy. The media industry associations want to have full control over production, distribution, and promotion of the content in their industry so the barrier to entry is too high for any competition to enter. They want everyone consuming their content on approved devices from verified sources so everyone gets used to being a passive consumer who happily pays and pays without thinking of whether they're getting an
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I always found it interesting that they only shut down mp3.com after they started selling artist's music direct to the consumer. A lot of artists used their platform. After mp3.com was shut down with a bombardment of lawsuits no one else tried the model again.
Does mp3million.com [mp3million.com] have a different model to mp3.com? They are based in Ukraine and claim to be legit. They appear to charge 10cents per track, which might almost be reasonable...
what would stop Hollywood Accounting? (Score:2)
Too late for that... (Score:2)
At this point albums are promotional materials for concert tours, where most bands make their money.
At least until Ticketmaster and Live Nation get bought up, at which point musicians may as well go back to flipping burgers....
Sneakernet piracy? (Score:1)
Is it really piracy if you copy music from friends? Isn't copying between friends and family members completely legal in most jurisdictions?
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please tell me you are not serious.
Serious? In Finland one's rights go even further: it is legal to copy [hyvitysmaksu.fi] any published material for private consumption, even if it's material obtained from the public library. We already pay a levy on blank writable CD/DVD disks and on all sorts of external media (SD/CF/USB drives, media players, etc.). This levy is distributed to rights holders in lieu of copyright fees or attempts at extortion through the legal system.
In my case, the levy is more than generous enough, considering that my SDHC cards are f
Who's the real pirate here (Score:1)
Yeah... right. (Score:5, Insightful)
And if SOPA had passed, we'd be hearing from the MAFIAA all about how it was a decisive, history-making victory for artists.
MPAA / RIAA were scapegoats. (Score:3)
My theory is that the US Government was using the RIAA/MPAA as a proxy to get this rammed through.
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Those grapes would have likely been yummy. SOPA...not so much.
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[...] SOPA...not so much.
For you and me maybe, but for the fox(RIAA), it wouldve been delicious.