1518: Going Down

[Daemonik]

John Stewart weighs in on SOPA

http://www.viddler.com/mini/5883fa42/

[Keith]

Originally Posted by WittyReference

Well it wasn't a direct quote but it was the gist. 54 minutes in "Okay then stop now. Why do you wait for the government to control you before you do the right thing...." but thanks for explaining your self so eloquently. - insert insult here-

And what was right before that, Moron?

[Subsonix]

Maybe an example to help Keith understand why it's important to stop this version of any of these piracy acts:

If someone was to complain about an image that Keith and The Girl uses for it's Episode Show Notes & Pics, the SOPA and PIPA act has the right to shut down the Keith and The Girl website and block the IP address for use without even contacting Keith and The Girl to take the offending images down before they do it. As the forums are linked to that IP it would also fall. I'm not too sure but it may also be the same if copyrighted material is played on the show and therefore Libsyn might fall into the shit as well. I think this is the main reason why people are so against it.

Hope that helps a little bit.

[Keith]

It doesn't. That sincerely sounds so ridiculous to me.

"And then we, for being on the site, get our computers taken away..."

[Subsonix]

Okay, I know it does, but that is what they are trying to do.

From the CONTENT BLOCKED BY SOPA/PIPA explsom site.

"Don't worry, the site isn't actually blocked. But it could be in the future. Under PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), two bills being seriously considered in the United States, websites which contain or link to copyrighted material (even if posted by a user of the site) can be indefinitely blocked without trial or notice.

Doing Cyanide & Happiness for all these years has been a dream come true for us. But the sad truth is that if SOPA and PIPA were passed 10 years ago, Cyanide & Happiness almost certainly wouldn't exist. The four of us who write and draw the comics met each other, and found our first handful of fans, at the website NewGrounds.com. NewGrounds is an animation portal which celebrates parody and derivative works, and as such often struggles with users breaking copyright.

Usually when this happens it's the job of the offended party to have the content removed, as you've probably seen on YouTube many times. These two bills would instead allow the entire site to be blocked.

Without user content portals like NewGrounds and YouTube, the Internet becomes just another mainstream media outlet, instead of the wild proving ground of ideas that allows regular people like us to find a large audience.

Please, if you live in the United States, do everything you can to prevent this."

And from the only part of Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Learn more - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that isn't blocked, they've written a great FAQ that helps explain it.

[Keith]

But picture how upset all the people who only live on the Internet would be if this really went down. Maybe it should go down! Major sites just get wiped out? We lose our jobs? NOW you have an occupy movement!

I dare the government to do what scares you!

[WittyReference]

Originally Posted by Keith

And what was right before that, Moron?

How far back do I have to go to find the answer, old wise one because 5 minutes wasn't far enough. You know I'm a fucking idiot so can't you just explain it to me? Please? If you're not to busy washing the sand out of your vagina. Zing!

[invader]

Its the potential destructive power that SOPA and PIPA represent, as they are worded now, they can easily be abused by larger corporations and government. If someone posted Keith's entire catalog of standup on Youtube, under the new laws, Keith would still need a team of lawyers and millions of dollars to shut down Youtube for the period of time necessary to get the materials off. Basically the government could find loop-holes in the new law to shut down certain sites especially smaller sites that have little or no financing to defend themselves. SOPA AND PIPA need to be better defined before being made into laws as to not be abused. They also do not give more power to starving artist to protect their own intellectual properties.

Also about the poll, SOPA and PIPA won't "destroy" the internet but it will drastically change the landscape and potentially take a lot of "freedoms" away from the end user.

[Zaumaum]

My simple stance is this: The more efficient communication is, the faster nonsense can be worked out, and the faster things that work can develop. Anything that makes communication less efficient, that isn't absolutely necessary, is a problem.

At the very least, restrictions need to be much more elegant than what PIPA/SOPA seem to be. Daemonik mentioned Youtube has tools to help copyright owners. Here's one of them that's a good example of something that uses innovation to solve a piracy problem, rather than brute force: Margaret Gould Stewart: How YouTube thinks about copyright | Video on TED.com

[dannyhatch]

Originally Posted by WittyReference

How far back do I have to go to find the answer, old wise one because 5 minutes wasn't far enough. You know I'm a fucking idiot so can't you just explain it to me? Please? If you're not to busy washing the sand out of your vagina. Zing!

I'd just like to point out that I'm nowhere near as awful as this guy.