Love him or hate him, Bill Maher has made a career out of poking fun at serious issues. A recent episode of his HBO comedy show "Real Time with Bill Maher" found the divisive comedian playing devil's advocate for the recently sidelined anti-piracy legislation SOPA.
Maher called piracy "Caucasian looting," citing personal frustration with how his comedy documentary "Religulous" was rampantly shared online.
"I remember when [Religulous] was out and they were pirating it and putting it online and all the money we lost on that," Maher said. "And I was like, you know what, somebody has to bring up that there's a moral dimension to this."
Maher also suggested that the idea SOPA would throttle digital free speech was diversionary to the larger problem of copyright theft.
"Now I know that they're saying that apparently [SOPA] would somehow infringe on free speech," said Maher. "I haven't read the bill, I don't know if anyone who has read the bill can predict that. But it seems like it might be a red herring because people just want to steal because they can."
"Just because you're sitting at your computer in your pajama bottoms doesn't mean you're not stealing," Maher added.
Maher's panel didn't disagree that piracy is an issue that needs to be addressed, but overwhelmingly criticized Congress' recent attempts at doing so.
"Eighty percent of the piracy in the world happens in China," said Republican presidential nominee Buddy Roemer, correcting Maher's implication that piracy is mostly a domestic issue. "[SOPA] took the most creative part of our economic world, the Internet, and tried to manage it from Washington, D.C. It's a mistake. We have options in our justice system to do it."
Matt K. Lewis, a senior contributor at The Daily Caller, noted that SOPA could have hurt and possibly killed sites that rely on user-generated content.
"We could have someone who posts a comment on my blog that somehow infringes on a copyright," said Lewis, "and if someone complains to the government about this they would act first and ask questions later and shut down The Daily Caller."
A clip of the discussion can be seen here.
SOPA and PROTECT IP were both curbed last week following a massive outcry from both major Internet-based companies and web denizens. Sites including Wikipedia, Craigslist and Reddit intentionally blocked their content in protest.
Critics feared that the anti-piracy legislation would have provided the government and copyright holders overly broad site closing powers. The bills' proponents, however, argued that foreign rogue sites which illegally distribute copyrighted content were the primary target. (via Techdirt)
