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FRONTPAGE Much Ado About SOPA and PIPA

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Glad OCF put up an article about this, wasn't sure if people were aware a site like OCF, as well as many other forums and tech sites could be shut down if this bill passes. It's too bad the thread in General Discussion got closed.....
 
Good to see awareness raised, as this is an important issue. Unfortunately, the following comment on slashdot rang pretty true to me.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2626382&cid=38738236

Problem is they all bask in this zero effort activism and then will ignore it when SOPA has a name change and is passed attached to the "its bad to smash puppies and kittens with a club" Act of 2012

They will simply change it's name and slide it quieter next time because the public will stop paying attention in about 5 days.
 
Despite movement away from the extreme ideas in the original bill I chose to black out my personal site to join in this movement. The legislation as written is far to dangerous and would allow corporate interests to dictate who gets a voice on the internet.
 
Glad OCF put up an article about this, wasn't sure if people were aware a site like OCF, as well as many other forums and tech sites could be shut down if this bill passes. It's too bad the thread in General Discussion got closed.....

I agree I thought that move was a bit premature, this bill is not yet a dead issue.
 
GD thread is open now as well on this issue.

I think the core problem of these bills, from what I understand, is that they essentially say - "don't worry, we'll only use this against the bad people." But when you ask, "who decides who the bad people are?" It appears the answer is, "the corporations decide".
 
I find it highly disturbing that people who don't understand technology are making technological decisions with no understanding of what they are doing other than 'protecting intellectual property'. This is clearly evident with Lamar Smith violating the same acts he wishes to impose on everyone:

http://www.dailytech.com/Obama+Admi...Author+Caught+Stealing+Work/article23783c.htm

SOPA and PIPA should be shot down out of the sky with a full barrage of Internet powers. Keep big business out of telling me what I can and can't see based on what they think I need to know. If these pass, there are going to be some real fireworks - foreign hackers will be the least of worries for Lamar and his gang of dummies.

Lamar proposing SOPA and PIPA would be the equivalent of him going to CERN and telling them how to use the LHC to find the Higgs-Boson - he doesn't understand technology, any of it, yet is making decisions that affect us all.
 
I'm kind of surprised the GD thread didn't stay closed, this being a political topic.
Still, it is a very important one!
Check out "namecoin" if you have a chance, it's an alternate, p2p, DNS type system.
 
I'm kind of surprised the GD thread didn't stay closed, this being a political topic.
Still, it is a very important one!
Check out "namecoin" if you have a chance, it's an alternate, p2p, DNS type system.

Matt gave the main thread a reprieve based on the fact that the issue is more about legislation and how it affects us than it is about the politics behind the legislation.
 
Everything about this SOPA/PIPA billing is bad news for the internet, civil liberties, and freedom of speech/expression. The only good I could see in it may be to catch some congress-critters downloading copyrighted material and put them in prison (since we can't seem to get them there by any other means.

Way too much regulation and legislation in our country as it is.
 
I don't know about everything about it being bad. There isn't much discussion going on about solutions, so the discussion these bills are causing may turn out to be a positive in the end. Right now though, the bills are poorly created and everyone is just talking about them not being the right solution.

What is a better solution to enable IP enforcement in a safe way, where our liberties are not threatened?

If I start up a website, and then it begins getting enough traffic that I can make a living off of it, but then I find some loser scraping my content, reposting it on their own site, and giving me no credit - I should have legitimate recourse. Right now my only protection is filing a DMCA claim, and I am at the mercy of their ISP - I just have to hope they do something about it. If not, I'm screwed.

There is a need for better legislation, and some form of actual enforcement. It will be interesting to see if anything positive comes out of this.

...It got people's attention, so that alone could lead to something good.
 
True, but I can't say much positive for the right to go broke trying to sue all the financially insolvent people stealing your content. It also does no good for international bandits where you have no legal recourse.
 
SOPA seems like it'd have a hard time touching domain names registered on servers in foreign counties too, unless it's going Green Dam style.
 
I'm no expert, so I'm not sure I understand it completely, but from what I have read I believe the provision that addresses foreign registrations/hosts is they could force domestically operated DNS servers to not resolve given domains. So while they may not be able to take the site offline, they would not need to deal with foreign ISPs or registrars - just tell the US DNS operators to not resolve the domain name, and virtually no one in the US would be able to access the site any longer.
 
Ridiculous

The U.S government shouldn't be able to make a decision that will have such a massive effect on the WHOLE WORLD. And its not like these websites dont already have their own copyright policies :mad: :screwy:
 
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