# Sopa/protect ip



## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

Sorry guys, but this is a political post. I'm sure many of you are aware of SOPA/PIPA bills.This bills, being considered in the US Congress, pose a threat to the way the Internet currently works. They allow US companies to decide which sites are violating copyright law, and to take down those sites, WITHOUT a court order. It also extends the ability of the US law enforcement to take down the domain name of foreign sites that are determined to violate copyright. This poses a big threat to any site with user generated content (ugh hem.... FishForums). 

Today you will notice many websites protesting the bills, and several even shut down for today. If you are against internet censorship, then I ask that you stand up against it. If you are an American, contact your district's representative and let them know you are opposed, then contact your state's senators and let them know you are opposed. If you are not an American, contact your government/representatives, and tell them that you do not wish for this form of censorship to happen in your country. 

Websites that are protesting/shut down:
http://www.Google.com 
http://en.wikipedia.org
http://craigslist.org
http://wordpress.com
http://destructoid.com
http://vimeo.com/
http://www.flickr.com
http://www.wired.com/
http://mozilla.com
http://minecraft.net
http://imgur.com
http://icanhascheezburger.com/
http://www.eff.org
http://www.reddit.com
http://4chan.org
http://www.fsf.org

And many more (check out http://sopastrike.com/ to see the full list of participants).

Lets stop internet censorship!

This post is my personal viewpoint, and not necessarily that of FishForums.


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## funlad3 (Oct 9, 2010)

I've already signed the Google petition. It's quick, easy, and it's through Google, so no spam.

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/


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## snyderguy (Feb 9, 2010)

I signed it already too. I can't imagine that this will actually pass, but who knows...


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## OhYesItsMe (Oct 1, 2011)

i signed it through google right before i entered this site, don't worry its chances are like the chances that packers could have beaten the giants... ohhhhh giants rule


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## phlyergirl (Nov 6, 2011)

Yep, even the co-sponsors are backing away from it. As if they didn't know this would be massively unpopular.


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## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

Yeah, and the White House announced that it would not support bills that compromise the freedom of the Internet. However, the White House did not say that they would veto the bills.


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## phlyergirl (Nov 6, 2011)

I feel confident he would. That's just my feeling though.


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## Amelia26 (Aug 6, 2011)

just signed it on google!!!!


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## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

Well until all the websites decided on the blackout, President Obama made a point to not take a side on these bills. Remember, PIPA is Democrat sponsored.

The politicians are playing games with these bills. SOPA was delayed indefinitely, then it was almost immediately reopened to discuss again in February. This seems like a way to get people to let their guard down about it, then give it just enough time for some people to forget about it.

PIPA could be used as a door-in-the-face tactic. They offer SOPA, and its so horrible, people will settle with PIPA as the lesser of two evils. I don't think that tactic is going to work on the public.

It's pretty obvious to me that these bills were not drafted by congress, but by an outside entity. There is so much technical jargon, that only a person from an IT department would really understand it. There is a lot about DNS, domain hosting, IP addresses, etc, that I doubt these congresspeople even know what they are supporting. It seems to me that they are being told "oh it will stop copyright infringement", but they weren't told about how it happens.

For people interested in a much less harmful way to stop copyright infringement, take a look at the bill Google helped write. Its called the OPEN Act (Online Protection & ENforcement of Digital Trade Act). It is being proposed in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. http://keepthewebopen.com


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

I blacked out my author website yesterday. You have to consider that if authors (who should be beneficiaries of such a bill) are adamantly opposed to it, there must be something wrong with the bill.


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## Albino_101 (Aug 14, 2008)

Somewhere I heard on the news obama said he would veto either of the bills if they came to his desk in their current state.


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

It will go in favor of the group that gives the most money to the politicians, Silicon Valley or Hollywood. The report in this mornings paper showed the contributions from both sides to be about equal.


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Well, voter pressure will have an effect, too.
Boycott effect would pack even more punch. if everyone everywhere just completely stopped buying all music & movies for a few weeks, SOPA & PIPA would both vanish into thin air.


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## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

On a related, but slightly off topic note. :???:

The US Department of Justice took down MegaUpload.com and arrested 8 employees of theirs.

In response, Anonymous, a well known hacktivist group, took down Justice.gov (DoJ's site), RIAA.com, MPAA.org, Copyright.gov (US Copyright Office), UniversalMusic.com, and BMI.com (BMI Music)


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

And to think everyone believed World War III would be nuclear...


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## hXcChic22 (Dec 26, 2009)

A - don't care that megaupload got take down, because I don't agree with illegal downloading. 

and B - Anonymous' antics are funny sometimes, like when they hacked into Westboro Baptist's website, but the rest of the time, it they're like a bunch of children. I know a lot of people that are highly into all things internet can be major illegal downloaders - and it's wrong of them - but the fact remains that a site that exists to help them in that venture is also wrong and ought to be shut down. 

And as a friend of mine pointed out, the fact that they got taken down without SOPA and PIPA even being active proves that those laws would be unnecessary in that regard.


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## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

MegaUpload did contain a lot of copyright infringing material, but so does YouTube. MegaUpload was completely compliant with the DCMA, and they should have been protected under it. Under the DCMA, if someone feels that their material has been stolen and posted to a website, they may contact the website requesting that the material be removed. If the website complies with the written request, then the website is protected from copyright infringement laws. It was not uncommon to see "Video removed due to copyright claim" on MegaVideo.

In fact, MegaUpload is actually being charged with two other charges. "Conspiring to commit copyright infringement" and "Conspiring to commit money laundering". In other words, they hadn't even broken the laws yet. I have a feeling that the MegaUpload sites will be back online after a short break.


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## blindkiller85 (Jan 8, 2011)

bmlbytes said:


> MegaUpload did contain a lot of copyright infringing material, but so does YouTube. MegaUpload was completely compliant with the DCMA, and they should have been protected under it. Under the DCMA, if someone feels that their material has been stolen and posted to a website, they may contact the website requesting that the material be removed. If the website complies with the written request, then the website is protected from copyright infringement laws. It was not uncommon to see "Video removed due to copyright claim" on MegaVideo.
> 
> In fact, MegaUpload is actually being charged with two other charges. "Conspiring to commit copyright infringement" and "Conspiring to commit money laundering". In other words, they hadn't even broken the laws yet. I have a feeling that the MegaUpload sites will be back online after a short break.


MegaUpload will be back I have no doubts.

Obama, veto'd SOPA, and PIPA no longer has the backing in the house to be passed.



> The Pirate Bay released this Wednesday in cooperation with the blackout attempts by many sites.
> 
> Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for
> the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person
> ...


This was another thing that I found hilarious as well, by the writer of SOPA. 










Overall, I have no issues what so ever with the laws to attempt to stop illegal trading of video's, programs, music, etc. It does need to stop, because it's not right and hurting the industry for the numbers that do it. But these bills were ridiculous. Facebook, myspace, youtube, wikipedia, and many other sites would and could easily be shut down and erased. Google would lose a ton of money because their entire search engine would be limited and not as productful and informative. More or less I'm right there with what Pirate Bay said. That some growth, and innovations are made only and more often than not of breaking rules and taking risks. It's like the good ole quote goes " If you want an omelet, you have to break some eggs". And it's true, some people get into harms way, some people don't but innovations are still made out of breaking rules a lot of the time. Does it need to be 50% of near everyone downloading movies, absolutely not. Can it be a few thousand people or a few hundred thousand to help with their minds and innovations or their level of ingenuity? Sure, out of close to 300 million, that won't matter too much.


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## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

Just wanted to point out a few things. Having your facts straight makes you sound more credible. 

First Obama did not veto SOPA. It has not even been voted on in either house yet. The President can only veto bills that have passed both houses. The White Hoise did announce that they would not support bills that compromised the freedom of the internet. However, SOPA is still alive. It has been shelved until February when they will reintroduce it. 

Secondly, Lamar Smith is not the writer of SOPA, he is the primary sponsor. Bills are often written by outside parties. They are submitted to individual congress members. If one congress member likes the bill, they can introduce it. The person who introduces it to the rest of congress is the sponsor. Lamar Smith is the sponsor of SOPA. 

Finally, the problem is not pirates. If there was ever a perfect example of this, it was the game industry. People were pirating video games just as much as anyone else not too long ago. Then along comes Steam and turned that all around. Now don't get me wrong, people still pirate games, but total piracy has gone down a ton since Steam. I actually find it easier to buy games now, than I do to steal them. Sure it costs money, but Steam offers games at a reasonable price, and I get the added benefit of always having an online copy of the game. The movie/music industry needs to learn how to make the Internet work for them, not shut it down. There is no possible way to win against pirates, so they need to start finding a way to compete with pirates.

Sure, I can buy music and movies online, but I still deal with the hassles of DRM. It's also pretty expensive. Right now it's easy to just go to a website and stream a movie for free. No DRM, no long download times, no payment. The music and movie industry just need to make a better Hulu. I would watch my TV on Hulu every day, if they released the episodes on it at the same time they air the show. I also should not have to pay to watch it on my mobile devices. Ads? I'll watch through them. I don't think people care that much. As long as they are not overwhelming, I think people will watch them, just so they are following the laws. They can offer the paid service to people who can't stand ads. 

Music could be handled a similar way. Offer music for free, but riddle it with ads, or premium benifeits and you have profit.

The entertainment industry is a weird one. Every other business in the world has adapted to compete with the Internet. The entertainment industry instead shoots themself in the foot and refuses to modernise. They did this with the audio cassette, the VHS, the CD, and now with digital media. They need to learn to grow with technology instead of wasting their money on a futile attempt for control. They would make a lot more money if they just grew up with the rest of the world.


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## phlyergirl (Nov 6, 2011)

Good post, bmlbytes. And don't even get me started on publishing companies and ebooks. It's even easier to pirate those because of the small file size, and yet they think they should charge more than the price of a hard copy book when I can't give it away when I'm done with it, or trade it to a used book store, or rip up the pages and make art with it or do whatever the heck I want with the THING I BOUGHT.


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

Except that every author I know is opposed to SOPA, the very people whose interests the bill is supposed to protect. As an author, I track this industry very closely, and what you are touching on is part of a very bitter war going on inside this industry between the house authors and the independent authors, some of whom walked away from six and seven figure advances.

The thing that is the real gotcha is that these major publishing houses want to charge the same as a hardcover, but they want the authors to take less of a cut. In fact, much of the battle is over how the author's portion is being squeezed. When you see quality product self-published, where the author can keep up to 70% of the cover price, it makes you think what value is added by the other parties. 

Publishing is very different from even two years ago. Back then, if you told me I would self-publish, I would have laughed. Today, I am getting close to releasing my second novel. I dare say the cover art is equal to anything New York can produce.










This is getting off topic, but it touched a nerve.


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## Albino_101 (Aug 14, 2008)

To agree with what bml just said, due to the invention and massive spread of the internet, piracy is just now a necessary evil you have to compete with, a good 3/4 of piracy can be gained back just by making the product/service easier or more beneficial to purchase legitimately. There will always be those people who pirate stuff regardless whether or not they would pay for it, so to spend soooooo much money to stop all of piracy just eliminates any potential profit you had. Hell even in africa where the internet is really scarce out in the rural areas, there is massive file sharing going on between bluetooth devices and laptops, so even taking away the internet does not stop piracy.


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

How many of us over the age of 40 put songs from the radio onto cassette tape, or copied a friend'a album? How many of us have now purchased that album in the past 20 years?


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## Albino_101 (Aug 14, 2008)

Fishpunk, the record labels dont care. to them piracy is piracy and doing that just once they say it incurs them thousands of dollars of damages you have to pay.


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

I think that there is really only so much that We, The People are going to put up with before something major happens. If they shut down Youtube over this, I'm pretty sure that we'll see a revolt.

To tell the truth, though, I think that they're trying to shut down Youtube for far more sinister reasons. PIPA/SOPA is just an excuse.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

and some of us bought the album again on CD and mp3 (because it was cheap and ripping takes time).

The major flaw I see in the anti-piracy argument in the "we are losing billions to piracy" is the basic assumption that if only piracy were stopped, everyone who downloaded something would've gone to the store and paid the full industry price. That I would spend $29.95 for each episode of anime that I watched subbed online (that was shown free on Japanese TV) is just ridiculous. If it wasn't available or was a serious crime, I wouldn't watch it at all. I wouldn't buy tie-in merchandise, I wouldn't go see the movies, etc. Without "piracy", they would've gotten less of my money, not more. I have stopped bit-torrenting anime now that I can watch streaming (with ads) on crunchyroll. I'm sure the ad revenue is low compared to $29.95 , but far more people watch it, legally. And I bet more people buy the DVDs because people actually see it. 

How many downloaded songs are just deleted because they suck? Would you have paid $1.99 just to listen to it once? The industry numbers are all messed up. If you had to pay full price for an industry song, you'd have likely downloaded a free song from on up and comer instead. 

I think fishpunk has it right. The industries (movie, music, publishing) are afraid of going extinct if artists can market directly to the customers, thus all the middlemen will be out of a job. The people who once had the god-like power to choose which chosen few artists would get to reach an audience are sore losers to the competition of an open (low barriers to entry) market. They want to use the boogeyman of piracy to regain control of distribution by shutting down even legitimate (the artists want to give it to you free or cheap) downloading channels. 

Real piracy is almost impossible to stop. There are counterfeit DVDs indistinguishable from the authorized ones. Distributing content affordably online in an easy way that customers want will do more to reduce piracy than any piece of legislation.

ePub needs to look at Steam. A game comes out at 59.99, but eventually you can get it for 2.99. Real books are like that, too. 29.99 for new, 7.99 for paperback, 40% of cover at used book store, $1.00 in store bargain bin. $0.25 in the used bargain bin. Why does a e-book cost as much as a hardback after the paperback is out? Making another copy costs the publishers nearly nothing. Publisher's must own rights to republish thousands of books. Why not e-pub them all for the price of used paperbacks?

I do see a disturbing trend away from stuff you "own" to stuff you can use as long as "they" say you can. The licenses for some software uses the term "lease" and reserves the right to make the software vanish from your computer if you don't anti up however much they want to charge you next year. 

It may be that the industries want to get away from the consumer buying anything, but instead charge you full-price for every read, listen, or viewing.


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

ePub is a file format. It can't be blamed for anything. I create my own ePub files for my novels. The one I released last year is for sale at $4.95. That is not an unreasonable price for a 120,000 word novel. The author still deserves to get paid.

The real issue in publishing is you have an obsolete business model and publishers are trying to keep it alive. They do this in a number of ways, most of which are more friendly to the publisher than to the reader and author. The publishers that figure this out are going to survive. The thing is, publishers (and by extension agents) are terrified because everything is changing so fast, and it is not at all certain what their place in the new environment is. They are worried about extinction.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

I should've said the electronic publishing industry. I know epub is a file format, I downloaded a library book in it to my nook. $5 is a great price for a new book, but the greatest revenue (area under the curve) is when you sell to everyone at the price they are willing to pay, usually by slowly dropping the price over time to capture the patient cheapskates. I suppose e-books are staying high priced because new e-readers are sold every day and introduce a new customer who is hopefully still willing to pay full price. When Amazon tried to lower the price of e-books, some publishers pulled all their books.
They just don't get it. Eventually consumers will buy the lower priced of the e-book or the used book.


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## phlyergirl (Nov 6, 2011)

When I first got my Kindle you could buy best sellers for $6.99-$9.99. I bought a lot of them. Now they're $12-14 for most of them and some even up to $25. Forget that noise. Now I read almost exclusively from the library or cheap/free independently published books. Everyone has their personal threshold of what they'll spend and hopefully more and more people will reach that threshold and the publishing companies will stop blaming piracy for their lost revenue and start blaming themselves.


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

There is a lot of evidence mounting from independent authors that the 99c price point is too low to be profitable. My price point is in the general area of compromise between volume and pricing. I don't want to go into all the details of why as this has been covered extensively in other venues. See, for example, the blogs of Dean Wesley Smith, Michael A. Stackpole, Tobias Buckell, and several others. 

If you really want to support reasonable prices that pay the authors what they deserve and not the hyper-inflated prices of major publishers, I suggest you look for independent authors. Unlike as recently as two years ago, the stigma is gone and some excellent writers are going directly from manuscript to market by paying editors and cover artists out of pocket. No publisher to trust on numbers, no agent taking 15% if the agent is honest, and no rights grabs. Support the independent writer model and you will get quality fiction for a reasonable price. 

Many independent authors have free or 99c short stories so you can sample their style without making much of an investment. Most indie authors do not use DRM, so you can make as many copies as you want, share with friends, and convert via Calibre to any file format you want. This is an entirely different business model than New York's, and it's working well enough that New York is reacting to it.


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## phlyergirl (Nov 6, 2011)

You're preaching to the choir dude. One of my _best_ friends is an author, one who is actually with a publisher but not one of the big boys, and most of their titles are in the $5-7 range. I think that's more than fair, especially considering all the work she puts in besides writing, since she has to do a lot of her promotion herself. I don't know where you got $.99 from. That isn't where I said my threshold was. In fact, I am pretty sure I said it was about $10.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

For an author I like, I think $10 is fine for a novel. $0.99 for a first book or a story with good reviews is a decent way to hook new readers. It just bugs me to see $20 e-books out after the paperback is out. I buy very few hardbacks because I read so much I wouldn't have any money left for food. Why should I pay more for something that costs less to make? I know author's don't get any more money from the books I get at used book stores, but often it is the only way to collect a whole series or read author's that are now "out of print". I don't see why books should ever go "out of print" in the on-demand and electronic book world. New fiction books should come out between $5 & $20 and prices should drop down after a while to a sustainable, but affordable, level, but books should never be unavailable. Authors should still have money trickling in 40 years later when a new generation discovers their writings.


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

People do sell ebooks novels for 99c. I think it's dumb. Authors dont mind if you buy from used book stores because they want people to read their books. That said, many writers are independently publishing their backlist electronically.

My pricing strategy is 0-99c short story, 1.50 novellette, 2.50 novella, 3.50 and up for novel depending on word count. Most short stories go for 99c on Amazon because it's difficult to go lower. It's easier on other sites but Amazon has a clause about underselling them in their author/publisher agreement.


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## iheartfish:) (Jan 19, 2011)

I love my Kindle, but I hate buying a book and not liking the author. Pixel of Ink is great to download one book from an author. Then, if you like it, you go and buy a bunch more off of Amazon from that author. 

Don't get me started on music, though. Those "talented" artists (oh oh oh... two words... Repeat twenty eight times... Pop hit!) do concerts for how many millions of dollars? And then they want 1.20 for each song?? I don't think so. Music is a passion, and you have to face it that not always is the thing you love the most profitable. However, in the music industry, it's ALL about money (and drugs and all that good stuff) and who is in the news TODAY and who will be TOMORROW.

What about those street corner broke people with actual talent? Yes, Justin Bieber isn't wonderful, but you have to hand it to him that he has a way with instruments (at least drums). The music industry should be as it always was. A good artist makes a song. The public likes it. Word of mouth, bla bla bla, hey, they're a hit! They make a concert, everyone comes because they love them, a couple million dollars in the pocket, they're set. 

No need to make a couple more millions charging 1.20 for a song.


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

How much do you pay for a CD with 8 songs on it?


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## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

iheartfish:) said:


> Don't get me started on music, though. Those "talented" artists (oh oh oh... two words... Repeat twenty eight times... Pop hit!) do concerts for how many millions of dollars? And then they want 1.20 for each song?? I don't think so. Music is a passion, and you have to face it that not always is the thing you love the most profitable. However, in the music industry, it's ALL about money (and drugs and all that good stuff) and who is in the news TODAY and who will be TOMORROW.


Just wanted to point out. Most artists make very little off the actual label. In many cases, they actually pay the record label to publish their music. Artists make their money on the tours they do. The CDs make them popular, the live shows make them money. The really big names make their money off doing ads and TV appearances. The artist couldn't care less if you paid for the album. Popularity makes them money, even if you get their music for free.

Its the record labels that are the ones suing and pushing these laws. Record labels make their money by selling and licensing the music. 

A band I listen to, NOFX, often times sings about how corrupt the music industry is, and how they treat their artists horribly. Many of the contracts they have an artist sign says that the next 3 or 7 albums the artist makes, the record company owns. In some cases, the bands are not even allowed to play their own music live because it would be copyright infringement (record company owns the rights). 

The RIAA, in my book, is one of the most evil and exploitative organizations out there. They should not be able to pressure our congress this much, but they have so much money already, that they manage to get bills like SOPA and PIPA to the congress floor. Someone needs to take away their ability to do that.


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

bmlbytes said:


> A band I listen to, NOFX, often times sings about how corrupt the music industry is, and how they treat their artists horribly.


They join the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd...


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