Originally posted by slickbizzle

Originally posted by Cambruin

Oh come on. Freedom against oppression? When people/companies invest time into a project, expecting to be able to make a living of it, do you consider it normal for a bunch of college-dropouts and teenagers to simply download their products? You're not only stealing from these multi-billion $ corporations. You're also stealing from their employees, who may run out of jobs because their titles didn't sell well enough. You're stealing from small-time independant artists who may not get enough revenue for their next project, forcing them to quit their line of work.

 

Freedom against oppression? If violent thugs start having daily raids on whatever area, would you be surprised when law-enforcement applies zero tolerance? Freedom against oppression?

 

These illegal activites have to be stopped. If 'SOPA' is what it takes to do it, then so be it. Blame your fellow leeches for it. I know I am. I don't like that SOPA any more than they do, but I have it enforced upon me because of their selfishness and downright stupidity.

 

I agree with this.  

 

On the other hand:  I wish I lived such a drama-free life that I could convince myself that this is the most important cause I can take up.    I kind of envy the "They are trying to oppress us!" people.

 

What you and people like you are completely missing (which means you didn't read this article, since it addresses it) is that SOPA is worded in a way that creates a gray area for censorship beyond the scope of piracy. Very, VERY few people are complaining about the piracy portion of it. Most don't care. What people are concerned with is how this affects the internet and, ironically, the entertainment industry as a whole. Reading about the things you are defending is a good idea.

To all involved.

May all who are concerned about this issue should meet

together and realize that the very code, word, and sequence of

ideas are never your own to begin with. Should we pay the programmer's

who developed the language, the developers of technology etc.  These are of a

commonality of Human endeavor/ Origin of endeavor. Your disagreement flies in the

face that all this  is contained on a room that is a rock in the middle of a spiraling

carousel (galaxy). To resolve diffferences by a paper that says one ought to  be this way in ....

is to say that the living do not live and are stuck not breathing a commonality of

the sequential coherence. If that so then there is at least a seed/identity-kernel of agreement

commonality of breath to speak,breath to hear, breath to be in common. Paper and pen cannot bind because it no longer is alive. The living is in the common bond of breath, beat

and syncopation.     Agreeement /nix disagreement.

Thank you,

Livewen Hallvean

Originally posted by livewen

To all involved.

May all who are concerned about this issue should meet together and realize that the very code, word, and sequence of ideas are never your own to begin with. Should we pay the programmer's who developed the language, the developers of technology etc.  These are of a commonality of Human endeavor/ Origin of endeavor. Your disagreement flies in the face that all this  is contained on a room that is a rock in the middle of a spiraling carousel (galaxy). To resolve diffferences by a paper that says one ought to  be this way in .... is to say that the living do not live and are stuck not breathing a commonality of the sequential coherence. If that so then there is at least a seed/identity-kernel of agreement commonality of breath to speak,breath to hear, breath to be in common. Paper and pen cannot bind because it no longer is alive. The living is in the common bond of breath, beat and syncopation.     Agreeement /nix disagreement.

Thank you,

Livewen Hallvean

okay. right. um.... what?

not to be rude, but what are you talking about? that doesn't make any sense.

I messed up who i wanted to quote, but basically "Why do we keep allowing the uneducated to vote?"

What if they are educated, but they only vote for false issues like gay marriage and abortion rights?  These issues really don't mean anything (sorry social issues are just cited to get you angry and you're being played.)

There are very smart people who are basically 1 or 2 issue voters (which is sad btw) because they let their emotions take over.

The bill got quashed because it was largely misinterpreted from the public.  Whenever any freedom or right is challenged people always compare it to a country with little to no rights.  China censors their Internet to prevent foreign cultures and influences from hitting their people.  Japan most noteably has become hyper American and lost its sense of culture.  Why would China want the same?

China is by no means the only country in the world to DNS block.  As a matter of fact most countries other than America and third world countries DNS block.

In the late 90s and early 2000s there was a rise to two types of evils that had to be stopped.  The first was more obvious because it was a consumer demanded evil, piracy.  Piracy allowed people to get things that was once inaccessible to them as well as steal things that are accessible to them.

The thing that would cause Britian, Australia, and Canada to setup a DNS blocking system wasn't piracy but instead... child pornography.

Currently the only people who are not blocking child pornography in the world are America and the people who make it.  The demand for child pornography would not be curbed if America blocked, however their funding would be cut to shreds and they would not be as large of an industry as they are.

Honestly, a vote against SOPA is a vote for child subjugation and slavery, two industries greatly supported by an unmoderated Internet.

This is what the American Congress was sold on and this is why they supported it so strongly.  When the Internet's neutrality was attacked everyone came forward.  The developers of the Internet even came forward and lied stating it would "break" the Internet.  Really?  Break the Internet?  The Internet has not been broken in any of the 200 countries that use DNS blocking.

Overall this was a very powerful scare tactic deployed small studios and companies against giants.

Originally posted by 69Cuda

No SOPA needs to be shredded utterly. It's a music and movie business smokescreen for the real reason of control and money. Unfortunatly our congress is to stupid to inderstand anything in the bill , and that is assuming they would read it anyway since they normally don't read the legislation. They just vote how they have been paid to vote.

On the flip side if it does go through Facebook will be destroyed overnight which would be a good thing.

 

PS I bet Activision is all for this. If this passed it would be a wet dream for Bobby K. If it isn't COD or WoW BANNED!!!!. It has elves ...omg look at the UI!!....you have a riding mount? banned baned banned lol. The Acticrap Lawyers would be in party mode.

 

{mod edit}

Originally posted by troublmaker

The bill got quashed because it was largely misinterpreted from the public.  Whenever any freedom or right is challenged people always compare it to a country with little to no rights.  China censors their Internet to prevent foreign cultures and influences from hitting their people.  Japan most noteably has become hyper American and lost its sense of culture.  Why would China want the same?

China is by no means the only country in the world to DNS block.  As a matter of fact most countries other than America and third world countries DNS block.

In the late 90s and early 2000s there was a rise to two types of evils that had to be stopped.  The first was more obvious because it was a consumer demanded evil, piracy.  Piracy allowed people to get things that was once inaccessible to them as well as steal things that are accessible to them.

The thing that would cause Britian, Australia, and Canada to setup a DNS blocking system wasn't piracy but instead... child pornography.

Currently the only people who are not blocking child pornography in the world are America and the people who make it.  The demand for child pornography would not be curbed if America blocked, however their funding would be cut to shreds and they would not be as large of an industry as they are.

Honestly, a vote against SOPA is a vote for child subjugation and slavery, two industries greatly supported by an unmoderated Internet.

This is what the American Congress was sold on and this is why they supported it so strongly.  When the Internet's neutrality was attacked everyone came forward.  The developers of the Internet even came forward and lied stating it would "break" the Internet.  Really?  Break the Internet?  The Internet has not been broken in any of the 200 countries that use DNS blocking.

Overall this was a very powerful scare tactic deployed small studios and companies against giants.

i'll bite. first: china's great firewall is up to keep the public uninformed and moveable with propaganda. seriously. if you believe that "keeping our culture" thing then, well, you must live in china. second: cp and theft have existed long before, and will exist long after the internet. nothing new there. people do that. it's called human nature. third: america is supposed to be the home of the free remember? the place where people can go to escape suppression. but if this bill passes, and this sort of censorship and corporate domination is allowed to become the status quo for america, what then will happen to the rest of the world? if the land of the free has this sort of draconian law, then it is no longer striving for the ideals it should be.

SOPA does not mean fighting piracy, the companies that distributed andinjected softwares like Kazaa, Limewire, bittorrent and many many other sharing websites and software programs, the ones that made profit out of indulging people to share copyright music, videos and so on, are the same companies now the main contributors to SOPA, so that they can make even more profit by sueing people sharing files, mainly by using their own distributed software. 

If SOPA ever goes through, it means that you cannot upload a video to youtube with music or video in it, you cannot post a link in your facebook, sites like google, youtube, twitter, facebook, game streaming, even this one, would have tremendous ammounts of legal issues, some to the point of shutting down.

Even actual piracy being bad, SOPA won't stop it and that is not the intent either, SOPA is not about a moral concern on piracy, SOPA its about companies profiting with sueing people and controlling the internet.

In the USA we need more amendments to the constitution to counter everything in SOPA so that this dies forever!  We need to prevent other stuff like net neutrality, fair use and satire rights, business are not people and money is not free speech.  We must cut the money out of funding political campaigns so add limits such as:  only people (remember business are not people) can donate and then only to someone they can vote for and to a limited amount of money.

Originally posted by Dragonantis

As usual, The American Federal Government trying to control everything in the world.

 

Down with Sopa!

There, fixed it for you. I'm an American citizen and want SOPA to die, and fast.

Originally posted by troublmaker

The bill got quashed because it was largely misinterpreted from the public.  Whenever any freedom or right is challenged people always compare it to a country with little to no rights.  China censors their Internet to prevent foreign cultures and influences from hitting their people.  Japan most noteably has become hyper American and lost its sense of culture.  Why would China want the same?

China is by no means the only country in the world to DNS block.  As a matter of fact most countries other than America and third world countries DNS block.

In the late 90s and early 2000s there was a rise to two types of evils that had to be stopped.  The first was more obvious because it was a consumer demanded evil, piracy.  Piracy allowed people to get things that was once inaccessible to them as well as steal things that are accessible to them.

The thing that would cause Britian, Australia, and Canada to setup a DNS blocking system wasn't piracy but instead... child pornography.

Currently the only people who are not blocking child pornography in the world are America and the people who make it.  The demand for child pornography would not be curbed if America blocked, however their funding would be cut to shreds and they would not be as large of an industry as they are.

Honestly, a vote against SOPA is a vote for child subjugation and slavery, two industries greatly supported by an unmoderated Internet.

This is what the American Congress was sold on and this is why they supported it so strongly.  When the Internet's neutrality was attacked everyone came forward.  The developers of the Internet even came forward and lied stating it would "break" the Internet.  Really?  Break the Internet?  The Internet has not been broken in any of the 200 countries that use DNS blocking.

Overall this was a very powerful scare tactic deployed small studios and companies against giants.

Actually, the Internet IS broken from it's original intent in the countries that do practice oppressive levels of DNS blocking and other Internet restrictions. Look at the censorship in China. Free speech is being oppressed on the Internet via the filtering done on subject matter that does not run in parrallel to the government's way of thinking. Not to mention that in Canada, many ISPs try to throttle down any and all torrent traffic, despite the fact that there are many legitimate and legal uses for torrents -- many MMOs patch using torrents for example.

Yes there are many undesirable things on the Internet, but there are already laws in place that allow for these things to be dealt with and the persons responsible for them to be pursued. The difference however, is that these current laws require due process. SOPA and PIPA would bypass due process, which breaches the fifth ammendment of the US constitution.

SOPA and PIPA will not stop the undersirable things from being on the Internet. All it will do is sweep them under the rug and make them much more difficult for law enforcement to track down and apprehend those who are actually commiting crimes facilitated by the Internet. The damage will be to the myriad of legitimate sites and services that rely on the openess and freeness of the Internet to thrive.

SOPA was the foot in the door, PIPA is the primary target. Honestly how is this even a topic after I've been banned twice for trying to raise awareness?

What is sad is that half of this community has given money to EA in the past 3 months so that EA can further fund the lobbying these bills.

Here I found a better link explaining the SOPA situation than the one linked previously:

http://gigaom.com/2012/01/16/house-shelves-sopa-but-blackout-protests-continue/

SOPA delayed until consensus can be reached and PIPA goes forward to a vote in the Senate, which PIPA has been referred to as SOPA's twin. Still sounds like a bait and switch to me.

Why is it ok NOW to discuss SOPA. when 2-3 weeks ago you guys were locking/deleting any SOPA thread? What a joke. I even made a topic to plead MMORPG to allow its discussion but mike B said he wouldnt allow it because he was affraid it would allow for future "well you let them talk about SOPA" arguments on future political discussions.

I am glad we can talk about it now, but would you guys make up your mind? This hyporcritical nonsense is far from proffesional.

Edity tomorrow wikipedia will blackout in protest of SOPA and PIPA. I wish Facebook would do the same, then millions of people would be effected

It seems to me that the problem is more a lack of competitive spirit with movie studios and the industry in general.  Why can redbox give me a physical product for a dollar that costs 4 dollars to stream on amazon?  It makes no sense.  Who's going to bother pirating if they could stream a movie for a dollar instead of the current ridiculous rate?  Not that many, and if they do, then they weren't going to rent it in the first place even if that torrent wasn't available.

For music, people use itunes and other online retailers now, the problem of piracy in music is really very overstated.

Gaming, people rent if they don't want to pay full price, and everyone I know who really is a fan of gaming buys games that are high quality with a lot of content just to support the developers.

And finally, online gaming, live concerts, and good quality movie theater experiences should be what the industry focuses on for profits, things that people can't get at home free or not.

---

All that being said, I'm not up on how magnets work, but I know torrents rely on many simultaneous connections.  It's in fact the only commonly used application that does.  ISP's could restrict how many different IPs you can connect to in a certain period of time, and that would more or less destroy the technology responsible for most of the piracy.  All without having to invade privacy or censor websites.

I'm getting a lot of conflicting info about these bills.

I've read the Wikipedia entry on it, and it doesn't jive with all the claims and fears of what people are saying it will allow. But I'm not sure, and of course Wikipedia can be abused at times (even though they make a remarkable effort against that).

I guess I need to read the bill itself and do some studying to be sure of any conclusions I come to.

Originally posted by moosecatlol

SOPA was the foot in the door, PIPA is the primary target. Honestly how is this even a topic after I've been banned twice for trying to raise awareness?

What is sad is that half of this community has given money to EA in the past 3 months so that EA can further fund the lobbying these bills.

This, of all the reasons to quit SWTOR this might be the best one.

Kinda regret buying it if its supporting EA, which I know it is...

Man I love Bioware... sadness overwelms me.

Just wanted to say thanks MMORPG.com for allowing and even fueling discussion of SOPA in it's two news topics!  My thoughts and concerns  have been said by Richard and others in this thread already. I feel I would just be repeating what they've said. 

I say we Boycot the ESA and all the members and everything that benefits them.

They own E3, we should protest it this year.

We can't let them get away with their greedy nefarious plot.

Originally posted by Amaranthar

I'm getting a lot of conflicting info about these bills.

I've read the Wikipedia entry on it, and it doesn't jive with all the claims and fears of what people are saying it will allow. But I'm not sure, and of course Wikipedia can be abused at times (even though they make a remarkable effort against that).

I guess I need to read the bill itself and do some studying to be sure of any conclusions I come to.

Yea I just read over the wikipedia articles and did some digging into the bills themselves. My interpretation is that SOPA isn't nearly as bad as they are making it out to be, essentially saying any site which hosts content, or supplies services to the host sites which infringe on copyrights can be liable for damages and facing U.S. courts with fines in the millions and jail time 10-20 years. 

So maybe you can't listen to copyrighted music on youtube anymore, but I'm pretty sure they already have a way to legitimize this. 

However PIPA looks like it says that ANY site which facilitates the movement of these illegal goods, finding these goods, or paying for illegal copies of these goods can be blacklisted through a court order and blocked from all ISPs. This is what starts infringing on freedom of speech. And puts Google on the list of possible blacklist sites as a search engine...

But what I find amusing is that ANY site which has some sort of comment system, or any forum could be used to trade information about illegal goods. So you could go to cnn.com and start looking for people to share software for Peer-To-Peer stuff... so that makes CNN a liable target able to be blacklisted by the ISPs? lol

That was a quick overview of looking at the Bills and the wiki article, so I'm sorry if I got anything wrong, I highly recommend everyone try to take the time to look over the Bills themselves since these things are always up to "interpretation".