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SOPA Simplified: Why Youtube is Worried About SOPA and Why You Should Be Too

PS Team — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:02:27 +0000

SOPA Simplified: Why Youtube is Worried About SOPA and Why You Should Be Too

There’s nothing like a proposed law that has a good intent that everybody agrees on, but which at the same time, is poorly written. That being said, if you’re one of the millions of people who is barely aware of the existence of SOPA and that it has something to do with copyright infringement laws, this article will give you a quick overview of what it is, and why Internet giants like YouTube, Wikipedia and Google went dark for a day to protest SOPA and its negative repercussions.

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act and was designed by a committees in the U.S. House and Senate to combat the illegal use of copyright works and different forms digital intellectual property such as movies, music, digital books and software. There is a legitimate concern and the companies that publish digital products have a right to protect their products from theft to prevent prevent the erosion of profits from the sales of these products. Protecting newly released movies from being copied and freely distributed via Torrent or file sharing sites is no different from if someone counterfeited BMWs and sold knock-off 5-series Bimmers for $20,000.

Movie pirating costs the movie industry millions of dollars a year. As the health of multiple companies in both entertainment and high tech is negatively impacted, so then are entire industries. That in turn hurts the American economy and harm trickles down to harm the interests of every U.S. citizen. It has been estimated that up to 13% American households now watch movies that have been illegally downloaded.

So the legislators stepped in designed a bill called SOPA that, if passed, would give the government the expanded to block access and even shut down foreign website that engage in online piracy.

As we stated before, those are good intentions. But there are huge flaws in the way SOPA is written. Here’s why the giant Internet companies are pushing to send the current version of SOPA back to the drawing board. Basically, it gives law enforcement agencies such as the FBI to shut down sites like YouTube and Wikipedia for unknowingly hosting illegal content. As it stands today, you can browse through YouTube and find many instances of material that appears to be illegally posted. YouTube’s core business model forbids this and they try their best to take down pirated videos. But SOPA would give the FBI the right to shut down YouTube for a single violation. That is like shutting down McDonalds if an “labor law” poster is not properly posted up in the one of its lunchrooms by its HR department.

The piracy of intellectual property is problem that everyone should care about. We hope that a proper and practical solution for combating is created. SOPA in its current form is not it.

Why the U.S. Should Stop Worrying About What Happens in Europe

PS Team — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:52:41 +0000

With the cost of borrowing for Italy and Spain dropping, as reported on January 12, 2012 some are breathing a sigh of relief, seeing this as a sign that the European Central Bank’s measures to re-mediate the debt crisis is paying off.

So what does that mean for U.S. power shares market in the long time? On a short term basis,we know what has recently happened. Since October of 2011, severe repercussions out the growing debt crisis in Europe caused the U.S. markets to behaved erratically, making 100+ swings both to the upside and downside on a regular basis. Even though 10 out of the past 10 years the U.S. market has been up from Veterans Day until the end of the year, that decade-long trend appeared to be a severe danger because of how Europe impacted the psychology of the U.S. investor. As it happened, the market’s barely closed even by the end of the year vs. how it opened in January 2011.

But now we come to the larger question of what the long-term impact that these recent signs of greater stability and restored confidence may have on the U.S. economy and capital markets.

The answer is that it probably doesn’t matter in the long run. Just put the U.S. markets and the European markets along with their respective economies side by side. The obvious reality is that the US markets below the surface are stronger than the European markets because all the liquidity is in the US. The Europeans come to us to bail them out. Because of the American’s long history of innovation and less fettered spirit of entrepreneurialism, the U.S. will eventually bounce back strongly regardless of whether the situation in Europe play out for the better or for the worse.

Europe is philosophically a different animal.

Europe with the socialist policies of its nations, continues to stifle innovation and stunt the growth new start-ups to grow who could otherwise make a major contribution towards strengthen the European economy. Both the U.S. and Europe have massive debt. But whereas U.S. has spent itself into a massive hole, the Europeans, by comparison have spend themselves into infinity and beyond.

Yes, both good news and bad news can impact the psychology of the U.S. investor in the very short-term as we saw in the final three months of 2011, but we don’t see that has anything that can knock America off the path to his next big cycle of prosperity.

Power Share Trading Online – Crafting a Better Trading Experience

PS Team — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:54:04 +0000

A Simple, Yet Powerful Way to Invest ( lyxor , Claymore ETF , BMO ETF )

Many of today’s stock investors, looking for steady growth in the value in are frustrated. In many cases, they are devastated when the discover that stock investing is far more difficult and dangerous than they imagined.
For investors looking to grow a college fund, invest for retirement or derive a second income, losing money instead making it can be especially painful.
If you are one of those investors, you might consider Powershares. While they are not a cure-all, but they can reduce the severity of the challenges investors face.
THE MAJOR PROBLEM THAT STOCK INVESTORS FACE
Since the early-1900s when the modern stock market was organized on Wall Street, investors who want to grow their money have faced a three major challenges.
1. One cannot simply buy a stock and assume that they will grow in value in the long run. The reason for this is that while the overall trend of the stock market has been up, it regularly goes through prolonged periods of deep declines. During these declines, the accumulated of years of stock investing can be wiped out in a matter of months.
2. Stocks often undergo sharp and unpredictable short-term fluctuations which also can inflict major setbacks to an investor’s stock holdings.
3. Investing and trading is in itself, a difficult pursuit, not merely due to the skill level involved, but also due to its impact on one’s emotions.
WHAT ARE PROSHARES?
Proshares are Exchange Traded Funds. These are typically baskets of stocks that combined into one security. For example, one can purchase Proshares that track the S&P 500 index or Gold.
There are other ETFs that do this. Proshares , takes it to an event higher level by providing investment vehicles that simulate the returns on a wide variety of investment at are normally available to the wealthy. For example there is Profund that simulates the return hedge funds.
The reason that Proshares give the average investor the opportunity grow their money with potentially reduced risk is that they reduce the volatility that often occurs when holding individual stocks.
When you buy a stock, no matter how rapidly it seems to be appreciating in value, it is subject to sharp and, sometimes shocking plunges that occur when different kinds of economic events happen. A company might announcement poor earnings after the market closes. The next morning the stock plunges 30%. A company might announce that a new product is performance far below expectations. The same thing happens.
With Proshares, you are able to own, what is essentially the equivalent of a large portfolio of stocks. There valuation of the your Proshares holding are not subject to the fortunes or misfortunes of an individual company, but rather the aggregate performance of multiple companies.
HOW PROSHARES CAN HELP THE INDIVIDUAL INVESTOR.
Proshare can provide investors with growth that trends with more predictability and less volatility. That’s not say, that investing suddenly become easy or free from risk.
It is still very important to have a methodology for investing in Proshares which is able to move in and out of the market at key times, so that money is only in the markets during good times and out during times when the market is declining.