SOPA / PIPA

[Solar]

Those US citizens among you not already aware of this should check it out. It's your gouvernment, and your legislation.

http://americancensorship.org/

[TylerH]

Ha! I wish that was the worst of it. S.1867 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, a bill that turns all citizens into enemy combatants, passed the house and senate. It literally gives the military the right to treat any US citizen like they treat "suspected terrorists" from other countries, as in, to imprison them with no real definition of what justifies suspicion and to deny them their constitutional rights. (I realize it's screwed up how we treat other people, but to unleash that on our own is an unprecedented level of stupid.) However, Obama said he will veto it.

If it weren't for that bill giving the government the ability to royally screw me for no reason, I would think it's hilariously ironic how we're rewriting our legal system into a (democratic) dictatorship, which is all that America supposedly hates.

[chase]

As the domain renewals come up I'll be switching away from GoDaddy because of their SOPA support.

[quok]

I'm not even waiting for my domains to come up for renewal, and I've got some that don't expire for years from now.

[Love4Boobies]

Heh, censorship has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on, unless we're talking about censorship of illegal content; people just like throwing that word about because they hope others will react to their invalid arguments. Generally speaking, I am a supporter of both SOPA and PIPA but have a couple of problems with their implementation:

• It's very difficult for certain types websites to keep track of their user-uploaded content (e.g., YouTube).
• The DNS bit is technically ridiculous because it can easily be worked around in a variety of ways.
• P2P communication is not directly covered.

[CrypticalCode0]

I bet there could be cases with choice of avatar pictures too.

I don't see how this is going to Alleviate the current problems the copyright holders have with the current system since they would turn it in a none maintainable situation.

The internet as a whole (eco system) is too complex to see and find everything on even with google.(google would need to cut in it's indexes if this bill passes)
Besides that we still have the Gopher protocol standard too, and that is not the only one.

[Love4Boobies]

Technical details aside, I expect something similar to real life. It will just make piracy more difficult to do and more easy to deal with but it won't be not impossible.

[CrypticalCode0]

Forcing things into anonymity doesn't make it disappear.
With the current system they can at least see what happens and act accordingly upon it.

With current technology piracy is something we cannot stop however we can try to keep it to a minimum.

This law has further adverse side affects, besides it's ability to deal a blow to piracy.

-A lot of people have a avatar this is usually a image of something from pop culture. (this is enough to bring down a site)
-Linking to illegal materials can bring down a site. (a fun thing for Google they do nothing else but linking to pages, same goes for all other search engines)
-The ability to make a online parody goes out the window. (making stuff like this impossible in the future)

And the list goes on and on.

[Love4Boobies]

Forcing things into anonymity doesn't make it disappear.

What do you mean? That's not what SOPA does...

With the current system they can at least see what happens and act accordingly upon it.

Same with SOPA/PIPA. If the copyright owner doesn't complain, nothing happens...

With current technology piracy is something we cannot stop however we can try to keep it to a minimum.

Those are just empty words. How would we go about trying that?

This law has further adverse side affects, besides it's ability to deal a blow to piracy.

Yep, I already mentioned the implementation problems and the fact that I think they should be worked out first either by coming up with a new system for websites (can't think of anything but that doesn't mean there is no solution) or on the bill's side, by not taking out the domain for one little issue (although it's hard to say what should happen exactly---what's clear is that it should come from a source outside the website).

[CrypticalCode0]

Forcing things into anonymity doesn't make it disappear.

What do you mean? That's not what SOPA does...

It is one of the most likely results i can think of.
Just because something is illegal doesn't mean things stop let's look back to the 1920's before the era of computers there was prohibition of alcohol in the US.

History tells us how that ended and still in some counties they have prohibition but that has another reason.

[Rusky]

Heh, censorship has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on, unless we're talking about censorship of illegal content; people just like throwing that word about because they hope others will react to their invalid arguments. Generally speaking, I am a supporter of both SOPA and PIPA but have a couple of problems with their implementation:

• It's very difficult for certain types websites to keep track of their user-uploaded content (e.g., YouTube).
• The DNS bit is technically ridiculous because it can easily be worked around in a variety of ways.
• P2P communication is not directly covered.

This is horribly, horribly wrong. Precedent and the motivations of the involved industries both point to SOPA's use for far more than combating piracy. As you point out, it will do virtually nothing to actual copyright violation. What it will do instead is give an enormous amount of power to disgruntled corporations whose business models are slowly dying.

SOPA's problems are not just technical- all it takes is a "good faith" request from ANY party and a website can be cut off with no process whatsoever, including an investigation into the legitimacy of the claim. We already have this problem in a more mild form with the DMCA, but SOPA would remove existing safe harbor protections and make many websites completely untenable.

The best explanation of SOPA I've seen so far is from Tom's Hardware. SOPA moves the burden of policing copyright (which is of debatable usefulness in the first place) to site owners, without really providing any reassurance that they can actually be safe, effectively making any website with or without user-contributed content (here included) subject to random takedowns just because someone claims copyright violation in "good faith."

If that's not unconstitutional censorship I don't know what is.

[Love4Boobies]

SOPA's problems are not just technical- all it takes is a "good faith" request from ANY party and a website can be cut off with no process whatsoever, including an investigation into the legitimacy of the claim.

That's not true at all. In fact, websites are even notified and given the chance to explain whether their content is indeed a violation or not.

copyright (which is of debatable usefulness in the first place)

I am aware that, in many cases, piracy helps advertise certain products. Most people who get bootleg copies of something would likely never have payed for the original in the first place. Add the fact that that we're talking about copies of the author's work and not taking the original away and it will really get people talking about how copyright is terrible.

My reasoning behind supporting copyright, DRM, and proprietary software is the following: Authors should be free to put whatever restrictions they want on their work given the fact that they don't force anyone to use it. Complaining is like saying "I want SomeWork but I want the authors to distribute it using the terms I want." Well, that's just silly and morally wrong.

[turdus]

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
/Benjamin Franklin/

I suppose you know who he was. I'm glad that a few of you began to realize why the rest of the world hate your country. It means there's still hope.

[Love4Boobies]

No one's giving up any liberties. I can post unrelated quotes too, if you like.

[Jezze]

In my world piracy is not a bad thing.