websites to shut down for SOPA online protest

[winston89]

Posted: 1/17/12 at 11:12pm

Tomorrow, the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) bill will be discussed before the senate. And, as a result, there are some websites who will shut down for the day as a result. I know that the english Wikipedia site is the one that has been the most vocal about the shut down. Facebook, another site that has been vocally against the bill never said either way if they will shut down. However, they have scheduled a press event for that day. Google, yet another site that is against the bill has yet to say either way if they are going to be part of the protests or not.

In a nutshell I feel that if this thing gets past it will destroy the internet as we know it. Let me use Youtube for an example. If someone posted an episode of a TV show (which violates copyright) and Youtube was made aware of it, so long as they took it down, they weren't held legally responsible. The big change that SOPA will make is that it will start holding sites like youtube responsible for their being material that would be considered pirated even if they weren't aware that they were there.

The point of the protests is to get people to realize what things would be like for one day if Google ( or Facebook, or any other popular site) weren't around. And, to get them to realize that this is what things would be like if the bill gets passed and to have people take action. Hopefully this works.

[thetinymagic2]

Posted: 1/17/12 at 11:32pm

Hate to burst yyour bubble Winston, but life really did exist before
FB, Google and Wiki.

(It's a joke, W....before everyone starts yelling at me






Updated On: 1/17/12 at 11:32 PM

[winston89]

Posted: 1/17/12 at 11:39pm

Oh I know. I am very much aware of that. I used to run team building groups upstate. And, the one thing that would bother me and my co workers is that we would be leading a hike or facilitating a game and a group of high school kids that we were working with would have their smartphones out trying to talk to their friends on facebook rather then listening to us. It was rude and rather annoying. However, since the schools were paying, there wasn't much more that we could do then tell them upon arrival that taking their phones with them outside of the cabins increases the odds that they will get lost. If they do, then they wouldn't be getting them back.

I can live without Facebook or google etc. The scary thing is that there are more people who couldn't than people who could.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 1/17/12 at 11:42pm

When I was a kid I rode my bike with my friends for fun. If I was going to be late I had to find a quarter to call my parents and let them know. I even looked some stuff up in the Encyclopedias we had if I needed to know or I went to the library. And I'm actually still alive.

[Plum]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 12:07am

Right, yes, and when I was a kid Israel only had 1 television channel, yet I managed to survive. I'm really not clear on how that somehow makes this BS blowup of intellectual property enforcement okay.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 12:12am

LOL. I have no idea.

[givesmevoice]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 12:15am

Did you use the card catalogue, Jordan?

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 12:17am

Yes! I remember them taking us out of class in groups to go to the library to learn about it. We had worksheets and everything to help us learn.

[Kad]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 12:24am

Good for the sites involved in the blackout. It'd be even better if some of the giants, like Google, were involved, but alas.

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 1:45am

SOPA is fundamentally flawed, and may not survive a 1st Amendment challenge. There are legitimate fears that its overreach could cripple the Internet as a tool for the expression and expansion of free speech, as well as further innovation. Entire sites could be shut down for one allegedly offending post.

Copyright laws entitled fair use, but often times, those owning intellectual property try to limit such use and only courts end up determining what is fair use and what is not. Under SOPA, no court would first have to determine that there was any infringing content before triggers are pulled, only the allegation of infringement is necessary. This fundamentally changes the playing field in terms of First Amendment discourse.

SOPA poses obligations for monitoring not currently found under the DMCA, and the DCMA safe harbor may just be blown apart by SOPA. I would hazard to guess that if it passed, a lot of content that is currently shared would no longer be available because hosting sites would fear being held accountable for monitoring that which currently are not obligated to.

I am by not means intimately familiar with all of its provisions, but those that I have looked at scare the crap out of me. The law could be used to target political sites that regularly post clips under a fair use exception. As the Internet has become a very important tool in the flow of information, it looks to me like one more attempt by corporate America to control the flow of information.

SOPA in its current form to me at least, is the Patriot Act for the Internet Age, and instead of your 4th and 6th Amendment Rights, this time they are going after your 1st Amendment rights: the law allows private parties to force content to be removed, sites to be taken down, and advertisers to be starved of proceeds because they contend that their intellectual property is being infringed. Not proven, not determined, just alleged.

It is a bad law that is not going to solve the problem it is supposedly targeting (piracy), and could be used for much more problematic purposes.


If You Care, Tribe on SOPA.

[Kad]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 1:51am

Both SOPA and PIPA could cripple the Internet and people's ability to create and submit content. Anything from blogs to cat videos could be denied simply because they contain a copyrighted song or image.

These laws are also notable for blatant they are in their preservation of the interests of the entertainment industry- mostly because lobbyists of said industry have pumped 94 million dollars into the campaign to get them passed. Rupert Murdoch can tweet all he wants about how Obama is siding with "Silicon Valley paymasters", but the entertainment and media industries are much worse.

[nygrl232]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 2:05am

The internet's become too much of an unhealthy habit as it is. Censoring and controlling it will just make it all worse.

It's all a series of addictions. People's addiction to the internet, corporations' growing addiction for control over ev-er-y-thing. Yeah, we need to nip a lot of things in the bud before we find ourselves needing a Neo. Updated On: 1/18/12 at 02:05 AM

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 12:55pm

Pirating, like hacking, will never be eliminated. Even if SOPA is passed, people will find a way around it. They always have and they always will. Internet made sharing pirated content easier and faster, but the act of pirating entertainment has been around since the technology for portable recording equipment has existed as well-illustrated by Rerun on What's Happening. They might be able to slow down the process a bit, but this is not going to halt the practice or put any significant amount of additional income into the pockets of the artists.

[uncageg]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 3:05pm

Love the one about Marc Zukerberg

http://www.wafb.com/story/16546048/do-not-assign-wiki-free-day-causes-new-fact-source

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 4:13pm

I love living in the land of Pirate Bay.

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 1/18/12 at 10:44pm

I saw this on Twitter, so I can't take credit:

Under SOPA, uploading one of Michael Jackson's songs to the internet can land you in prison for 5 years, one year more than the doctor who killed him.