Switzerland has declared it will not amend its law that allows the downloading of copyrighted materials, provided they are for personal use. Following complaints from the entertainment industry, the Swiss government had launched an investigation to study the relationship between online piracy and the alleged declining revenue of copyright holders. The conclusion is similar to the unpublished report by the Society for Consumer Research (GfK). While the entertainment industry doesn't profit directly from the so-called pirates by selling copyrighted media, they are still making money from them in concerts and the sales of merchandise. That's because the disposable income allocated by consumers for entertainment is almost constant, whether or not they're downloading. The report also comes with an invaluable lecture:

Every time a new media technology has been made available, it has always been "abused." This is the price we pay for progress. Winners will be those who are able to use the new technology to their advantages and losers those who missed this development and continue to follow old business models.

In contrast, the United States, sometimes also known as the Land of the Free, some are pushing for a bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The name of the bill is pretty self-explanatory, but it goes beyond just that. Major technology companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Zynga and AOL, along with many concerned Internet users, are opposing the bill. The concerns by these companies and their users are not unfounded. Not unlike a cancer chemotherapy, SOPA may or may not be effective in combating piracy, but it will definitely put perfectly legal companies and website operators at grave risk. AmericanCensorship.org has put up an easy-to-understand video and infographic to explain the adverse effect of SOPA and PROTECT-IP. Check them out to see why you should care. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/31100268 w=580&h=326]