Valient Himself on SOPA/PIPA & Megaupload

valient-himselfAfter all the hoopla regarding the SOPA/PIPA stuff last week, and the takedown of Megaupload, we’d heard a lot from the likes of media pundits and analysts, but nothing really from the folks supposedly affected by the whole piracy thing against which SOPA was supposed to defend.

That was until Friday, when Valient Himself, frontman for Venusian boogie-metal rockers Valient Thorr, took to his Twitter feed (@valientthorr) to lay out what might be the most rational deconstruction of the whole thing I’ve seen thus far. The Pirate Bay’s screed is funnier, but this is far cooler and personal. I’ve taken the liberty of assembling all the tweets into an easy-to-read couple of paragraphs below.

Everyone is guilty of illegal downloading. Me including. Since Napster was invented. But its out of hand. There are still tons of sites up. I wanna ramble for a sec here- don’t wanna clog feeds too much, so hopefully you won’t unfollow, but I wanna address something:

there’s a big difference between censorship & piracy. I’ve been against SOPA & PIPA from the beginning, but not because they may take away my ability to download free movies or music. That (hopefully) is NOT why MOST artists are against it. We are against it b/c the bills are written SO poorly as to allow corpos & the gov’t to BLOCK or CENSOR our sites & therefore our thoughts & freedom much like in China, etc.

Downloading flicks & jams that are not free is illegal, & REALLY takes bread out of all artist’s (big & SMALL) pockets (read: mouths). I’m still against SOPA & PIPA & I think the MPAA & RIAA are fucked up. But if Megaupload goes down, that’s not censorship. They were pirates. I’ll not shed a tear for megaupload. The point of this ramble is this: SOPA & PIPA were written poorly. Most in gov’t couldn’t tell you why. If they were purely anti-piracy they may not have been that bad.

But they were full of flaws that would have endangered our freedom. BUT piracy endangers plenty as well. Many artists have spoken out about this. Gillionaires may not care, but hundredaires can’t afford rent! Just wanted our Anonymous friends to know that while we’re mostly on their side, All stories aren’t black & white. Thanx for reading… sorry for the ramble. Hope yall dig that. now back to your regular scheduled horseshit. #peace