Out here in the Southwest desert we have a puffed pastry called Sopapilla.
Per our friends at Wikipedia (the only large scale NON-PROFIT engine of Information exchange)
“It is generally served as a dessert with honey poured between its two layers…(sometimes served) in place of bread, or filled with ingredients common to tacos and enchiladas.”

I can see how one could easily confuse this confection with the hot air filled Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate companion the Protect Intellectual Property Act, because both are  loaded with tasty pork.  But trust me, SOPA PIPA will be very hard to swallow.

About 15 years ago, we began a journey into the world of FREE information exchange.  Alvin Toffler spoke of it years before, telling us that an information based economy would be VERY different from a goods based economy.  If I give or sell you my Book or car or chair, you now have the book or car or chair and I do not.  If I give or sell you my information, you now have it and so do I.  Additionally, in each exchange of my information, by virtue of simple feedback , I am very likely to have even more information than I had before.

But this is crazy talk, say the congressional lobbyists for the Music, Movie, Print and Video publishing houses.  You cannot just copy our “intellectual products” and give them to the world.  Oh but we can.  And this is the fundamental dilemma, if ANYONE can copy your product and mass produce it, how does ANYONE make money off of it?  And if the publishers can’t make money off of it, not only will they cease to produce it, they will cease to exist.

Making it illegal for any individual to make a copy of  a song, a movie, a book or a video(and it always has been illegal) has had little or no impact on the practice.  Does anyone really believe that making it MORE illegal is going to deter the free exchange of information?

I have long advocated a simple solution, “Make the right thing the easiest thing to do”.  Steve Jobs tried this with the iTUNES, “hey-it’s-only-99-cents-and-it-is-built-in-to-your-IPOD” approach.  This worked okay, but the multi-billion dollar recording industry is now a shadow of it’s former self AND if you don’t want to deal in an all things Apple, there are multiple ways to copy without fees.  While this put a lot of recording execs out of work, the Artists who actually produce what we are supposed to buy, suddenly started making more money from Live Events using their free viral music as a publicity generating MONSTER.  I have two words for you “Justin Bieber”.

This story will be repeated over and over as each Media giant faces with their own mortality.  They must find a way to add value to their product so that consumers will want to buy it (bootleg quality is always suspect) or, more likely, embrace the Information Economy for what it is and produce events and experiences that the consumer will  pay to attain.

The three most important words an Artist, Author, Movie Maker or Performer can hear from their fans are “I want more”.  I say this all the time when it comes to Sopapillas, but when it comes to SOPA PIPA the three words being uttered in the direction of consumers are “You’re under arrest”.  Not a really solid marketing strategy for the Information Economy.