Thoughts on the Protect IP Act/ SOPA

[GossipTGirl]

I think that congress is voting on the bill tomorrow. Do you guys think that the bill will pass? What repercussions do you think it will have on internet usage?

If you haven't heard of SOPA, here's a quick video explaining it:



"Now the government and corporations could block any site, foreign or domestic, just for one infringing link. Sites like Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook would have to censor their users or get shut down since they become liable for everything users post. And ordinary users could go to jail for five years for posting any copyrighted work - even just singing a pop song."

Does this mean that sites like KATG.com could get shut down because one person posts a link that violates copyright infringement?

I know that they want to pass this act to stop online piracy and save the poor CEOs in the entertainment industry some money but that can't be the only reason... If this bill gets passed, the government and corporations would have the power to block access to any website that they believe 'violates copyright infringement'. It would be a great way for them to control the information that reaches us. I don't get my news for watching tv/reading the newspaper - I get my news from the internet!

Anyway, I’m not super knowledgeable on this topic so I would love to hear other people’s opinions!


More info on the Protect IP Act/SOPA:
Stop American Censorship
House takes Senate's bad Internet censorship bill, tries making it worse
Dozens of law professors: PROTECT IP Act is unconstitutional
Avaaz - Save the Internet!

[jnilsson]

Well SOPA has gotten moved now for a month or something as there are alot of people petitioning to stop it.

This will give companies and government ways to block / steal any DNS (domain name) and if thats not possible, have the ISP filter the results. This means that the ISP would have to firewall the site, just like IRAN & CHINA etc.

Europe just passed ACTA which is the same shit, just for Europe. There had been a lot of talking about it etc, and then from one day to another they voted it in to the 27 European states.

SOPA will be able to stop websites like KATG without any court order and if someone takes a website offline it will probably be vary hard to get off (like FBI watch list). So its not something good for the people, its something for the corp world we are living in.

[Incognito]

Another link, Stanford's Law Review: Don't Break the Internet - Stanford Law Review

Protect-IP/SOPA is a death kneel to the Internet and it's being masked as a feel good measure of controlling piracy. "We want to discourage piracy and encourage legitimate consumerism." "Oh really? That sounds good, I support it." And of course no one will read the full bills, only be enlightened by the veneer.

Furthermore, Congress doesn't understand how the Internet works or how it is utilized. They hear "piracy" and "illegal trading" and they go, "Oh, that's bad! We must stop this! Where is this happening?" and sign their name on the line without thought. If you don't understand even at the basic level of how the Internet functions, then you shouldn't be allowed to vote on something that will directly affect it.

Point is, people aren't going to stop trading music and movies and other files deemed illegal no matter what the government does. However, that's not the core issue here; it's how it will affect the millions of other sites and users who haven't done anything wrong at all.

Some other useful resources:

Firefox add-on DeSopa to bypass DNS blocking: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/desopa/

A 20-minute video that goes deeper into this bill (it's easy to grasp and the accent is British and that just sounds better):

[fluxquanta]

Originally Posted by Incognito

A 20-minute video that goes deeper into this bill (it's easy to grasp and the accent is British and that just sounds better):

Pretty sure he's Australian.

Regardless, the video's okay at explaining the whole deal, if not a little douchebag-ish.

Being someone who spends a lot of time online, I can see nothing good to come of SOPA.

[Alekseyev]

There are certain corporate interests for whom this bill is nothing but the same line of lobbying pressure they've been applying for almost a decade. But average users and really technical people without connections to those companies/groups? I haven't heard a single one saying this is a good idea.