Graphic Artists Guild Changes Mind: Withdraws SOPA Support

from the good-for-them dept

Tue, Dec 27th 2011 10:10am — Mike Masnick

It seems that many of the supporters of SOPA blindly signed on thinking things like "gee, protecting copyrights sound good," but without looking at the details (or recognizing the implications). The latest to change their position is the Graphic Artists Guild (sent in by Ross Pruden), which has put out a statement saying that, after hearing from a number of concerned members, it no longer supports SOPA:

We have been closely following online anti-piracy legislation since we submitted a Comment Letter to the study conducted by Victoria Espinel, the Intellectual Property Enforcement Commissioner, in 2010. We supported the IPEC�s recommendations in her 2010 report. The �Stop Online Piracy Act� has different terms that we can no longer support.

We are concerned that the bill may have unintended consequences that may do more harm than good.

At this time, we are withdrawing our support for SOPA. We don�t see the Committee making significant changes during the mark-ups that would narrow the scope and process outlined in the bill that so many of you are concerned about. We�re doing our best, watching out for you.

The key point is that a big part of what caused them to change their minds was that they heard from many members questioning the decision to publicly support the bill:

We further want to thank everyone who has emailed or Tweeted the Guild expressing dissent. Your comments helped us decide to take another look at the bill and to withdraw our support at this time. For the record, we have not spent a dime on any lobbyist in Congress for this bill.

Looks like all that hyped up "support" for the bill continues to crumble.

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Filed Under: graphic artists, pipa, protect ip, sopa
Companies: graphic artists guild

21 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:21am

There never was support for SOPA to begin with. What's really crumbling is the COC & RIAA, etc's illusion of widespread public support for SOPA.

Groups like the COC & RIAA may not have enough members who can force them to change their minds, but that's not the case for most of the other groups they got to claim support for SOPA.
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- actually, 27 Dec 2011 @ 12:07pm
  
  Re:
  they KNOW nobody supports there retarded ideas. if people did they whould not be spending millions to bribe a bunch of currupt leeches in congress to pass there crap.
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Ninja (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:27am

Trolls
Mafiaa troll disdaining GAG (pun intended) importance in 3, 2, 1....
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- Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:32am
  
  Re: Trolls
  Gag is what I get when I read Mike's posts on SOPA. they generally make me gag.
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  - Ninja (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:34am
    
    Re: Re: Trolls
    Forgot to mention personal attacks on Mike, going completely off-topic because the trolls have no real arguments, lack of reading comprehension and lack of life.
    
    It's kind of implicit already.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:04am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Trolls
      Considering you are calling from a trolling, that is what you get.
      
      Perhaps you might consider your initial comment as just flame baiting, and maybe next time you won't bother with it.
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      - Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:10am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Trolls
        Stop attacking his free speech rights! You'll cause a chilling effect...or something!
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      - Ninja (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:19am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Trolls
        Look how worried I am with what I got... Not.
        
        And I don't consider flame baiting. It is flame baiting. Shows how pitiful the TD trolls are.
        
        Last time my "3, 2, 1..." post was prophetic. This time it was just flame bait ;)
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  - Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 12:41pm
    
    Re: Re: Trolls
    "Gag is what I get when I read Mike's posts on SOPA. they generally make me gag."
    
    Then don't read them, boy.
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Ima Fish (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:33am

"We are concerned that the bill may have unintended consequences that may do more harm than good."

The naivety is so refreshing. Guys, the consequences have all been thought out in excruciating detail. It's just that the copyright industry doesn't give a rip about our first amendment rights or the integrity of the infrastructure of the internet.

Where you see problems, they see profits.
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Larry, 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:37am

Oh no! The guild membership and others have squashed the guilds free speech rights! Don't you know that the Constitution and the bill of rights expressly prohibits the people from doing this to corporations, companies and guilds?
/sarc
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anonymous, 27 Dec 2011 @ 10:48am

'For the record, we have not spent a dime on any lobbyist in Congress for this bill.'

such a shame that there are so many that have spent (wasted) money on this and similar Bills. shame also that those in power will continue to accept 'campaign contributions' and support big industries and corporations instead of doing what they were elected to do, ie, listening to the people and doing what is best for them.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:13am

What about ProtectIP/Pipa?
Did they mention their support of that version?
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Gwiz (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:15am

It's not surprising to me that yet another group is jumping off the SOPA/PIPA bandwagon.

What really surprised me was the fact that there is a Graphic Artists Guild in the first place and that's exactly what I do for a living.

It's also kind of interesting that the Graphic Artists Guild holds a strong pro-copyright stance. From my day to day experiences as a graphic artist I would have to say that 90% of what I produce is remixes or mash-ups of what has been done before.
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- Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:20am
  
  Re:
  jumping off the SOPA bandwagon, I didn't see them address their support of PIPA
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- ExistentialThreat (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 1:18pm
  
  Re:
  I'm with Gwiz on this. 10 years + as a graphic artist and I've never heard of them either. We constantly have to play copyright/trademark police. Every other day somebody comes in with official NFL or corporate merchandise wanting us to reproduce it. They always leave mad that we won't accommodate them. Whenever someone brings in a design that looks too good the first thing I do is a Google image search. I often wonder how many times we "infringe" with fonts alone. It's getting to the point where if you want to kill your competitors locally all you would have to do is send in someone to order something that infringes and if they don't catch it, you run and tell on them.
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Violated (profile), 27 Dec 2011 @ 11:41am

PIPA
My real concern now is not SOPA but PIPA. Everyone hates SOPA but politics may run with PIPA due to it being not quite as bad as SOPA.

They pulled PIPA out of the Senate deep freeze when it became clear that SOPA would not pass before the New Year.
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AJBarnes, 27 Dec 2011 @ 12:07pm

Another one
GoDaddy, a large hosting company in Arizona, stated loudly and proudly they fully supported SOPA. An blog on reddit and then on Ars pointed this out and GoDaddy was designated the recipient of a boycott by people not liking their very public and loud pronouncement on how good SOPA was. Someone followed up and GoDaddy said the boycott had absolutely minimal effect and they were standing by their proclamation. This too was rebroadcast on Reddit and Ars. Within 24 hours, the response was so great (apparently) that GoDaddy reversed their position, eliminated all their online position papers on why they supported SOPA and then did a lame "We really didn't mean it" set of posting in their forums. Word has it their legal counsel was part of the entertainment community pushing this crap on the public. See http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/victory-boycott-forces-godaddy-to-drop-its-support-f or-sopa.ars for more details.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 12:22pm

Nope, sorry. As an aspiring graphic artist in college, I have to say that I'm severely disappointed. This decision was obviously made without democratic consent from their own members, and the fact that they only listened when they were "tweeted" is an obvious sign of that. I don't know where this union gets off being the MPAA and RIAA's bitch, but they don't represent me, and unless they make major changes, they never will.
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- Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2011 @ 12:46pm
  
  Re:
  As an retired aspiring artist I have to say they represent my interests perfectly, I would be disappointed if they started to support censorship.
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Gagiscorrupt, 27 Dec 2011 @ 7:39pm

GAG is a problematic organization. They take artist foreign royalties, use them for their expenses, they sue artist for telling the truth and they claim to be a union of independent contractors with no power. They need to be looked at.
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