SOPA - where is the porn?

OK, SOPA is supposed to be front money for the recording industry. I mean, Elvis' estate is still going big guns, making big money for a cherished few. Disney properties continue to reap the "re-release the thing every seven years to keep the market fresh and lucrative" windfall of ever-renewed copyrights.

But think back to cell phones receiving video. Think back to what made the internet grow.

It was dirty pictures. Pornography. Pics of folks frolicking like a day-time soap, with the sheets pulled down. It was porn that drove the new technology, that created the mass appeal that brought the prices down, so that Mom can hand 8 year old Junior his cell phone and wander off across Wal-Mart without the tyke bothering her.

Now we don't hardly (many of us) think of the internet as a place for porn. We think of news stories, and favorite blogs. Real, homey kinds of stuff we share with Mom. Well, we might show her P!nk's 'clean' version of Pretty Pretty Please video on YouTube.com, rather than the original "Fuckin Perfect" lyrics. Same song, different sensibility/market.

Now the internet tracks the sites we visit, so that marketers can better whack each of us with whatever they are pushing, from pirated purses to that getaway vacation on an Italian cruise ship. Oh. That was last week. Anyway.

The suits, lawyers, and marketing wonks have moved in and sucked up the landscape to make their careers and profits. Some of us remember when you couldn't see the traffic road signs for the billboards, as marketing jumped onto that marketing opportunity. They just moved to the so-called "information superhighway". Of course, most of us just take side-trips, but that is another story.

Fighting copyright crap is really fighting marketing crap. Marketing takes old, fossil ways of doing things, trying to capture the market and revenues, and usually in a piratical manner to cut the opposition's throat. That is what we are seeing with SOPA and DMCA and other sops to marketing. They have nothing to do with family values, with benefit to America except to enrich those with deep pockets and an intent to capitalize on whatever they can get away with.

So, where is the porn? Where is the interest of Americans that isn't driven by marketing. It isn't made by Apple. At one time is was the fishing pole, or the hot rod impromptu race car. Another time it was the bicycle, or the motor car, or the steam locomotive burning wood and pulling two cars if it was a bigger engine.

It might be the garden that Ferry-Morse and WalMart (cute packages this year, with only slightly higher prices than last year) aren't planting. Maybe RareSeeds.com (Baker Creek Nursery) or Richter's have a clue about gardening with heritage (sustainable) seeds and perennial vegetable gardens, were flowers are planted not for landscaping but for supporting bees and spiders (nature's bug predators).

It might be the John Michael Greer's ArchdruidReport, and GreenWizard.com, in planning for the long descent from economic affluence as the wealth generation from burning cheap fossil fuels dwindles as the fuels become less accessible and less cheap.

But it won't be protected by SOPA.