SOPA and Protect IP Act

My fellow clanmembers it is time that we raise awareness about the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act that are currently in Congress.


But what are these bills that are being discussed in the American congress?

Well what they basicaly do is it allows corporations or organisations to censor websites, block them from search robots, shutdown services by forcing the providers, barring online "banks" like Paypal to send money to these sites or sueing the person responsible. If you live in America there is a chance that you can get sent to jail for up to 5 years. This is corporate censorship working the internet!

This is a major issue right now that not only affects America but the world as a whole. Lets take IGN as an example, IGN reviews games. What if it reviews a game in a bad way. The publisher could demand to take down the review or the entire website. You could argue that IGN and its reviews are protected by Free Use. Nope, that is gone!

Any website that is suspected to harbor copyrighted material like screenshots could be used to take down a site. Websites like Imgur ,Imageshack or even forums are effected by these two bills. Lets take another example, YouTube. YouTube is a service that allows you to upload almost everything or discuss anything. These bills would allow corporations to get a far better grip on YouTube or even take it down entirely. But YouTube is being protected as a "Safe Harbor" under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act! DMCA protects sites if they remove any copyrighted material as soon as it brought to their attention as a sign of good faith. Not anymore if any of those bills get passed.

Firefox and Chrome are also affected. What would they be doing you might ask? Firefox and Chrome have an open-source plugin available for free called Mafiaa that allows websites to circumvent DNS blocking. Google has their own DNS service which I have to use now because a particular site got DNS blocked in my country. And so the list goes on. SOPA and PIPA are too draconic and malicious to be allowed to pass.

Now here you might say that the fine men and women at Congress are bright people and they might be but let us not forget that they might not know how the Internet works. Most of them even admitted that they didn't how anything about how this would affect America and those who actually knew what could happen spoke against SOPA and PIPA. There were people that had enough experience like system engineers and lawyers on this subject that would speak in Congress but they never had the chance. Hell, the entertainment industry is lobbying to get one of these 2 bills passed.

Lets not forget the legitimate businesses in America who are going to have it allot harder. Now this is only the introduction to it.
Here is a question to you guys. Do you approve of the censorship in China or Iran? If the answer is "No" than it is best to speak up against the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act!



I just found a more comprehensive explanation by TotalBiscuit.




I urge everyone to have a readthrough the Wikipedia page or have a look at the TB video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act


If you are willing to participate in actions against this censorship please sign this petition.
This one will allow Senator Wyden to read every single petition name to block the voting for as long as he can.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet


EDIT: I quickly drafted this up so people can have a basic understanding of what is happening currently in America.

Now is anyone surprised? All kinds of new laws limiting freedoms, adding surveilance and cencoring internet. All this in the name of safety or something.
Btw this would have been locked on PRforums as conspiracy tread. They locked the entire section becoase people had opinions that moderators dint like.

didn't 'they' try this a couple of years back ?

seriously i wouldn't worry about it, 'they' are just after those premium pay to watch stream sites, as 'they' always are.

IP is not a definite object, even at the highest levels of science and art IP needs lawyers and court time to usually come to no agreement at all.

(this opinion is NOT aimed at anyone but is a general statement) if however your opinion of IP is simply people complaining that you're trying to get something for nothing then you should grow up, why should a band play for free ? why should Hollywood employ hundreds of thousands of people just for your free entertainment ?

look i understand that much in the entertainment (and scientific for that matter) industry is over priced but until we reach the situation were everyone recognises IP for what it is (a moral agreement to pay people for their ideas and work) then the present over pricing policy will continue.

it's simply a question of some people paying for all of it or all people paying a smaller percentage.

as for the original text in the OP most of that seems to be scare mongering the 'smaller people' into thinking that 'they might be next' and whilst that might be technically true it's not what this sort of legislation is about, it never has been.

just my opinion

Da-Fort
I understand your post, however I feel that this thred will spiral out of control and for that reason I am locking the thread, as this is non related to *NwA* hope you understand

/locked