how would this work in asia 

i take it  noone from the usa has been to south east asia  and noticed on every single street corner there  are  100' if not thousand of pirates  selling games dvd's and blue ray's

even major supermarkets sell pirated movies and  cinema's show pirated films with heads all over the screen

if you really  wanted to reduce piracy you need to tackle asia and guess what

this  bill wouldnt get past  the airport

Originally posted by Ikeda

Originally posted by Meltdown

Originally posted by Ikeda

I desperately wish people would understand how their government functioned so they could understand how the process works.  Even if they just sit down to watch schoolhouse rocks just one more time.

Do you mean how it's supposed to work like the ol' Bill sitting on Capitol Hill? Or how it works in reality? 

A little of both.  But honestly, people have the right to VOTE for people.  These people say "I choose this person to be MY representative in the nations capital".  To be uneducated and be allowed to vote seems like the greatest travesty.

It would be TOO much to expect people to understand the entire system but I do expect people to understand the difference between Veto'ing and Shelving a bill.

Another big problem is people don't understand how line-item veto's work.

It makes me shake my head in disappointment.

Meh, everyone feels that way about things they understand and the common-man doesn't. I feel the same way often about computers and the ingorance of something that probably more people use than vote in my country. If everyone was educated on all the issues and all the inner-workings of the government, we could abolish the representation system altogether.

Yes. The temptation for abuse of power is simply too much. Self regulation and removal of illegal material,  instead of a nanny state is preferred.

I find it interesting that most of these guys who back this are older than me(thats old). This is the 3rd attempt under another name they have tried to slip this into law without anyone noticing.

The very "free" internet we have right now is the only thing that stopped it from getting signed in the middle of the night. Which is why they want it. Dont kid yourself, Wall street corps want this, they will keep changing its name till one day no one pays much attention. Then one morning you will wake up and say WTF happend to my websites.

Originally posted by Cacaphony

I guess no one noticed this

Shelving is a tactic they use to get things pushed through with little fanfair when everyone stops paying attention.  This does not mean SOPA is dead.  It must be nuked from orbit.

Originally posted by Meltdown

Meh, everyone feels that way about things they understand and the common-man doesn't. I feel the same way often about computers and the ingorance of something that probably more people use than vote in my country. If everyone was educated on all the issues and all the inner-workings of the government, we could abolish the representation system altogether.

I could accept that response 30 years ago where figuring out how things worked required a trip to a library.

With Google (prior to SOPA), you can find the answers in a simple google search.  Hell wikipedia has a GREAT section on how a bill gets passed.

Ignorance with Google makes things willful and deliberate.  The info is at your fingertips EASY peasy.  To not know means they don't care enough to GOOGLE it.

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Originally posted by MindTrigger

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Originally posted by Cacaphony
I guess no one noticed this

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Shelving is a tactic they use to get things pushed through with little fanfair when everyone stops paying attention.  This does not mean SOPA is dead.  It must be nuked from orbit.

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Yeah, I know. I agree with you as well. See the vid I linked earlier.

Stopping online piracy...bah! Almost anybody willing to download a torrent and install a game they did not pay for is more then likely not going to buy the game anyways. So either way the publisher and devs loose out. This may not always be the case, but coming from personal experience I would say this is not to far from the truth.

I would love to see offenders prosicuted. Millions of people act in online piracy in some shape, form, or fashion daily. Are they going to slap thousands of dollars worth of finds on everybody and send the big offenders to federal prison? I think not. The USA prison system is already overcrowded with minor drug offenders (most of which were marijuana offenders).

Sadly the US Government doesn't seem to give a s**t about the people anymore... "We the people" has changed to "We the corporations". Would appear the Government is turning us into a communist state.

SOPA and PIPA should scare the hell out of anyone that wants to make a career from the Internet. The simple fact is that currently under the Safe Harbor Act, websites and online services are not responsible for the actions of the users. This means that if someone posts a pirated video on mmoprg.com, or posts pictures from a game in closed beta, mmoprg.com is not responsible. SOPA and PIPA would make it so that any site that COULD potentially have copyrighted material can be blacklisted and taken down. Scary stuff.

Originally posted by Lexin

Sadly the US Government doesn't seem to give a s**t about the people anymore... "We the people" has changed to "We the corporations". Would appear the Government is turning us into a communist state.

 

You have it backwards. Fascism is the marriage of corporation and state.

i feel for the ppl living in USA if this goes through, but internet gonna live on. companies like google/facebook etc are just gonna move to another country so it wont do much impact tbh. only thing is that US gonna loose a lot of jobs and income that it despretly need.

the individual issues highlighted in SOPA are only there to confuse the public.  This bill is actually about the corporate takeover of the world governments.  the US govt is bought and paid for by the entertainment industry.  Hollywood calls the shots folks and this is their flagship.

Originally posted by Cacaphony

I guess no one noticed this

Glad to hear it!

Originally posted by Lexin

Sadly the US Government doesn't seem to give a s**t about the people anymore... "We the people" has changed to "We the corporations". Would appear the Government is turning us into a communist state.

Well see, that's the problem, they do still care about people, but unfortunately they only seem to care about a very specific segment of people... Said persons are corprorations.

Well, any sane and reasonable person knows that corporations not by any means people. But legally they are, which is a large part of the problem.

That's not to say corporations are inherently evil. They do what they're meant to do, produce goods and create profit. The problem is that they strive for this at the expense of all else. It's supposed to be part of the government's function to reign in and keep corporations under control through proper regulation. But corporations are being afforded too much freedom due to being considered "persons", and also in part of this they are also allowed to have too much political influence through lobbying and donations... so instead of the government keeping corporations under check and keeping the interest of the people in mind, we instead have corporations keeping the government in check and keeping the interest of the corporations in mind.

And SOPA and PIPA are borne from this corruption of the political process. These bills were solely created with the purpose and intent to benefiting large corporations who have inordinate sway over the US government, and it's all being done at the expense of the people.

So to answer the articles question of, "should SOPA be stopped?" I'll respond with the following question which should have much the same answer... do we value freedom against oppression?

Piracy cannot be stopped. SOPA will do nothing other than make things for legit users more time consuming, difficult, and annoying.

Even second-hand websites like craigslist and eBay are effected by this:

EXAMPLE:

"

Corporate supporters of HR3261 (SOPA) and S968 (PIPA) demand the ability to take down any web site that affects their profits -- without due process or judicial oversight -- in the name of combating "online piracy." Hoping you won't notice or care, quite a few of our Public Servants want to give them that right.

Believe it or not, Monster Cable (remember "Monster Park"?) considers craigslist a "rogue site" for blacklisting and takedown under PIPA - apparently 2nd hand sales of stereo cables by CL users is reducing Monster's sales of new cables. (reddit)."

Max Kaiser would argue that these bills are illegal in the first place, lol.

Some time ago, a study was conducted to determine how many laws America has and the results were unable to be established.  I think a law needs to be passed stating that no further laws can be passed....ever!  Or for every new law passed, they have to remove five others.  Don't get me wrong, I love my country but I'm starting to think communist countries have more freedom.

Originally posted by Lexin

Sadly the US Government doesn't seem to give a s**t about the people anymore... "We the people" has changed to "We the corporations". Would appear the Government is turning us into a communist state.

Um what?

I'm with you on the 1st sentence. The 2nd seems to indicate a sentiment contrary to the first. Communism is the most anti-corporate governing system.