Thread: SOPA and PIPA - Why you need to oppose them

Surprised I didn't see a thread already, and search didn't turn up anything. If you haven't heard by now, there are two bills up in Congress that will be getting voted on on the 21st that aim to pretty much ruin the Internet for Americans, and by extension the entire world.

Essentially, the two bills would allow big corporations (i.e., MPAA, RIAA, etc) to shut down entire websites through DNS denial (you know, the same shit China does) if they could make a copyright infrigement claim. That means instead of a single video being removed from YouTube, the entire website would be "removed."

TotalBiscuit did a video on it that explains it much better than I could:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM

After you're done watching it, visit some of the links in the video and in the description. Start at the Techdirt article The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas | Techdirt to really learn what these bills are aiming to do, and why they're so bad, and go from there. Write your representatives and senators. Sign the petitions.

Some really, really bad shit is gonna go down if these things make it through Congress, and with the way our reps are being bought out by lobbyists, it's actually a real threat of happening this time. Remember the shitstorm that erupted in Egypt when their goverment messed with their internet? Yeah, imagine that here, except we've got more guns than they do.

(Oh, and fucking EA is supporting the SOPA and PIPA bills. Just one more reason to never, ever touch any of their products ever again for me.)

This is beyond stupid. How can anyone think that this is a good thing?

Originally Posted by Guyver

This is beyond stupid. How can anyone think that this is a good thing?

Indications are that the only people supporting the bills are the big corporations like the RIAA, MPAA, VIACOM... and EA. Pretty much everyone who knows anything about the internet realizes these bills are bad mojo. Unfortunately, the RIAA, MPAA, etc have a LOT of money backing them up.

Hell, even Joe Biden spoke out against the SOPA bill. Given Obama's somewhat geeky personal life, I wouldn't be surprised if he spoke out against the bills himself, though I doubt we'd ever see it happen since it'd alienate the Senators and Representatives that have been bought off by those corporations if he did.

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

I thought this already got shot down.

No, it won't be done until they meet again on the 21st. Anyone who knows anything about how the internet works from a tech standpoint thinks these are both a crock of shit, but there is a lot of money behind the side supporting it - remember, this about the RIAA, MPAA, and other big businesses trying to keep their old, outdated business model, not necessarily stop piracy. Services like Netflix and Spotify have already been shown to curb piracy by simply being better than piracy.

This is just a sleazy way for the big, rich corporations to stay big and rich without changing anything about the way they do business.

hackers > industry i imagine like why no one messes with 4chan

Originally Posted by moving-target

hackers > industry i imagine like why no one messes with 4chan

It's not even about that. It's just a bunch of old, fat, dumb CEOs refusing to change their ways when it's becoming more and more apparent the old way of doing things just doesn't work well these days.

They really just need to have Gabe Newell show up and lay out the facts to people: piracy happens not because of cost, but because of convenience.

There's hard facts that services like Netflix and Spotify (and Pandora, and Steam, and...) have cut down piracy dramatically in their sectors. Why go through all the bullshit and trouble of pirating something when you can just pay a small monthly fee and get unlimited access to all of the songs, DVDs, and streaming content you could possibly need?

The big thing here, though, is that SOPA and PIPA won't even fix piracy, so what's their fucking point in the first place? To give those stubborn, dumb CEOs the power to censor whatever the fuck doesn't earn them more money, basically.

Surprised I didn't see a thread already, and search didn't turn up anything

we did New censorship law

Like I said they're just in it for the MORE power, which we will grant them unless people do something about it.


Firefox already created an addon to bypass DNS blocking- Add on DeSopa