Kevin SmithScholarly communications officer, Duke Universityhttp://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/Smith, a lawyer and librarian, is an expert on copyright, intellectual property licensing and scholarly publishing.Quote:"My own opinion is that the threats to online commerce are severe, and we should not take actions like this unless we are sure how they will impact the economy as a whole. It is seldom a good idea to make sweeping changes that benefit only one segment of society without considering other consequences as well. This seems to be the gist of the White House statement from the past weekend, as well."In general the debate about IP enforcement seems to suffer from a lack of hard data. The entertainment industry presents astronomical numbers to quantify its losses, but it is difficult to take these numbers seriously. It is simply hard to believe, for example, that each illegal download would translate into a legitimate sale if enforcement measures were sufficiently draconian. "And in any case, I question why it is the role of the federal government to alter the rules for enforcing IP claims in order to make the process more inexpensive and streamlined for one segment of the economy. In my opinion not enough attention is being paid to another segment, the Internet economy, where real growth is very likely if regulators do not choke it off."If the critics are even half right about their claims regarding SOPA, everyone who depends on the Internet for daily transactions and communications should probably care about this bill, even if it is only assuring oneself that the consequences would not be as bad as critics fear."
