American censorship?!

[dechristimo]

Hey I'm not sure if everyone knows about this yet or not, but this is actually real and the government will be attempting to pass a law censoring the internet, and no one will really be happy about this so check out this site and join the fight against it! I know these rarely ever have an effect, but we have to at least try! Don't let the government pull this crap!

American Censorship Day November 16 - Join the fight to stop SOPA

[Yerf Dog]

[C.Linton]

I would never base my opinion on something like this relying solely on one website's obviously biased opinion. Read the law itself, before you go off signing petitions and the like. Don't just go by this one website's interpretation of the law. Do your research and THEN make up your mind.

[Jinro]

There has to be some website that makes an unbiased summary of various laws and bills. I'm not a lawyer, and neither are most people. Laws and bills are written in such a way that even the politicians voting for them don't even understand what's really in there, so how would a regular Joe like myself and 90% of the population understand it?

[cjmodulus]

I hope this doesn't pass. Granting the entertainment industry that much power can't be good. I don't support pirating by any means, but this just seems like overkill.

[jmattbassplaya]

Originally Posted by C.Linton

I would never base my opinion on something like this relying solely on one website's obviously biased opinion. Read the law itself, before you go off signing petitions and the like. Don't just go by this one website's interpretation of the law. Do your research and THEN make up your mind.

Actually, go read the wiki on this bill and determine what this law means for yourself. You'll quickly see that it is as cut and dry as this petition makes it to be.

[lostinbnw]

I would need to read the bill entirely to get a better picture, however in general the bill has the ability to ere on the side of giving very large fees to minor offences. I believe the true issue is that under this bill a site like youtube is liable for what its subscribers post. As a person who does not make a lot i understand the need to make what you can off of your own intellectual property but in the end all the government is really saying is either be sneakier or be scared and don't do it. this does not fix the problem. In this day and age you can't actually believe that you will be paid 100% of what you feel you should be for content that can be digitized. IMO the only way to fix this problem is to rethink your ideas on commerce.

[Jinro]

If this is targeting piracy and stealing intellectual property, how will this impact things internationally? There are many Japanese artists that I listen to whose CDs are not available in the States because a) they simply aren't imported or b) Japanese business rarely does international transactions because they prefer CoD and wire transfers over there--which causes a payment muckup when an American with a credit card or PayPal account wants something. So I go to the internet where I can actually get it.

[PSPookie]

Congress trying to legislate technology in this way is just a bad idea. IMO, 1) the lawmakers lack the technical knowledge necessary to make something like this work and 2) those interested in getting around the legislation will be able to change their methods more quickly than the lawmakers can react.

[capnjim]

Are we still gonna have free Porn?

[PSPookie]

Originally Posted by capnjim

Are we still gonna have free Porn?

They didn't say they were getting rid of the whole internet. As we all know, the internet is ~95% porn; therefore one would expect free porn to stick around.

[seventhson]

Already, Homeland Security has the ability to take down sites (who knew this was part of their jurisdiction?) without ANY due process to prevent it in the first place or after the fact.

This is well documented. They tried to strong arm the Mozilla foundation to reject an add-on. Read it here...

Homeland Security's ICE Threatens Open Internet

[PSPookie]

Topical link

[L-A]

I understand the skeptical answers in this thread, but you guys would be getting the full China treatment with this.

[jmattbassplaya]

Curious as to why more people haven't commented on this.

[L-A]

Originally Posted by jmattbassplaya

Curious as to why more people haven't commented on this.

The fear of the comment being a felony?

[seventhson]

The EU Parliament has adopted, "by a large majority," a statement warning the US to refrain "from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names" due to the "need to protect the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communications." This resolution highlights both the practices prescribed in SOPA/PIPA... but also the actions of Homeland Security and ICE in seizing domain names. By adopting a resolution against domains seizures the European Parliament recognizes the dangerous precedent the pending SOPA legislation would set, and it wouldn't be a surprise if more foreign criticism follows. No country should have the ability to simply take over international domain names, and surely the US would feel the same if this plan was put in motion by a foreign country. Or as some 60 press freedom and human rights advocate groups put it in their letter to the US representatives: "This is as unacceptable to the international community as it would be if a foreign country were to impose similar measures on the United States."

[seventhson]

Look at the coalition of companies that took a full page ad out in the NYTimes to fight this bill.

Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT - Boing Boing

Here's a form that you can fill out that will go to your rep.

http://act2.freepress.net/sign/sopa_letter/

[A-Step-Towards]

Originally Posted by jmattbassplaya

Curious as to why more people haven't commented on this.

As stated 95% of the internet is porn, we have been busy.

[Thor]

Should we move this thread to www.talkalldayaboutstupidpolitics.com cause that where politics belong. Not sure why this message fails to hit home after years of it being taboo here.

New OP, rule reading FAIL.