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To be honest I never take these kind of pieces of legislation seriously.

Something weird happened around in April-May 2011 where newscasts where saying that the government would not be able to carry out its duties and something catastrophic was to going happen within 24 hours if no decision was taken??

But Obama showed up and cured everything. What a handsome man, damn.
 
I posted this article on Facebook and a friend said that didn't mean it was dead; the vote's just been delayed, and Obama's involvement to say "no" means nothing.

Am I confused, or is he?
 
No, it's not 'dead' dead, will just be re-tooled. How much/how far, remains to be seen.

As an aside, I work for one of the very heavily pro-SOPA entertainment companies, and it's much like the music industries full on stupid initial anti-piracy attempts a decade ago, where you've got a few old-world chiefs (and lawyers) up the top of the chain who really really don't get anything in regards to this area - see, for a fairly standard example, Old Man Ruperts tweets on the matter - but you could be sure that an anonymous survey of all the staff from even just the next executive level down would show heavily anti-SOPA sentiment while still being heavily 'anti-piracy'. Shit like this makes it harder, not easier, to find a solution.
 
Perfect reason of how corporate money runs Washington.

I only hope this BS inspires political action in my generation so that when we all become asshole lawyers and decide to run for office to satiate our own egos in the 2030s and 2040s, we'll be slightly less corrupt.
 
I don't understand the problem.....isn't this legislature supposed to protect people from having their intellectual property rights breached? Isn't that a good thing?
 
AchtungBono said:
I don't understand the problem.....isn't this legislature supposed to protect people from having their intellectual property rights breached? Isn't that a good thing?
Click to expand...

Have you read the specifics?. The power it gives the corporations is completely unreasonable
 
AchtungBono said:
I don't understand the problem.....isn't this legislature supposed to protect people from having their intellectual property rights breached? Isn't that a good thing?
Click to expand...

There are already means for protecting property. I've filed DMCA violations several times and always the outcome has been timely and in my favor.

SOPA and PIPA are unreasonable.
 
AchtungBono said:
I don't understand the problem.....isn't this legislature supposed to protect people from having their intellectual property rights breached? Isn't that a good thing?
Click to expand...
this legislature gives corporations the power to shut down any website.
 
Not really, his real name is Kim Schmitz, but Schmitz is a pretty boring name: Kim Schmitz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He gained fame in Germany during the dotcom bubble and, as many others, later was found guilty of fraud and cheating on the balance sheets.
Megaupload, just like torrents and other things, are very useful for so many legal things. I send everything via that site which is too large for e-mail.
 
Earnie Shavers said:
you could be sure that an anonymous survey of all the staff from even just the next executive level down would show heavily anti-SOPA sentiment while still being heavily 'anti-piracy'. Shit like this makes it harder, not easier, to find a solution.
Click to expand...
Vincent Vega said:
He gained fame in Germany during the dotcom bubble and, as many others, later was found guilty of fraud and cheating on the balance sheets.

Megaupload, just like torrents and other things, are very useful for so many legal things. I send everything via that site which is too large for e-mail.
Click to expand...
So what would some smart, doable, effective ways to combat piracy look like? I know a detailed answer could fill a multi-volume encyclopedia, but just a sketch overview.

Part of why I have a hard time working up much enthusiasm for this issue (though I have contacted my representatives about it) is the disheatening apparent reality that--as Schmitz's bio happens to illustrate--so many of the vested interests on both sides are lying, greedy, hypocritical corporate scum seeking to present themselves as righteous protectors of art/culture/ideas/knowledge, to appeal to an audience that in turn often seems to be worried more about loss of petty perks they never earned in the first place than by anything deserving of being called a commitment to intellectual freedom/liberty (look at some of the comments on that article, the usual pathetic dolts shrieking about how the US government is like Mussolini and Hitler because now they can't download their porn for free, etc.). I don't like to see stupid, hamfisted legislation that strangles legitimate opportunities for the many to protect the interests of the few get passed, but I'm also getting the sense there's an awful lot of knowingly insincere and token nods of acknowledgement to copyright going on, by people who have no intention whatsoever of respecting it.
 
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trojanchick99 said:
The founders name is Dotcom. Seriously?

PS. I loved megaupload for boots. How much longer until they get Mediafire?
Click to expand...

Shit, your right, a whole bunch of U2Start's bootlegs just disappeared, at least in their mp3 form, and at least for now. That's a little scary.

Way to shut down a site that has a lot of practical purposes (I would consider hosting U2 bootlegs one, since U2 have said in the past that they don't care about not-for-profit bootlegging) other than piracy when very few people actually use it for piracy, government! The real piracy happens via BitTorrent. The Justice Department, like Murdoch and his pals, seems out-of-touch with what internet culture is actually like.
 
digitize said:
Shit, your right, a whole bunch of U2Start's bootlegs just disappeared, at least in their mp3 form, and at least for now. That's a little scary.
Click to expand...
That really stinks. U2start is among the most amazing sites on the web, I really hope this won't cripple them.

This whole act is ridiculous. First Megaupload, next what? Mediafire, Rapidshare, Hotfile, FileSonic?

Digitize is right: the real piracy is through torrents. I use torrents myself, but it's usually only for bootlegs.
 
yolland said:
So what would some smart, doable, effective ways to combat piracy look like? I know a detailed answer could fill a multi-volume encyclopedia, but just a sketch overview.

Part of why I have a hard time working up much enthusiasm for this issue (though I have contacted my representatives about it) is the disheatening apparent reality that--as Schmitz's bio happens to illustrate--so many of the vested interests on both sides are lying, greedy, hypocritical corporate scum seeking to present themselves as righteous protectors of art/culture/ideas/knowledge, to appeal to an audience that in turn often seems to be worried more about loss of petty perks they never earned in the first place than by anything deserving of being called a commitment to intellectual freedom/liberty (look at some of the comments on that article, the usual pathetic dolts shrieking about how the US government is like Mussolini and Hitler because now they can't download their porn for free, etc.). I don't like to see stupid, hamfisted legislation that strangles legitimate opportunities for the many to protect the interests of the few get passed, but I'm also getting the sense there's an awful lot of knowingly insincere and token nods of acknowledgement to copyright going on, by people who have no intention whatsoever of respecting it.
Click to expand...

Kim Schmitz is quite a despicable person. It's not only for the beauty of the country that he now resides in New Zealand instead of Germany. In Germany people hate him because many people lost their savings in the dotcom bubble partly due to people like him, and he has always been the most arrogant of all. Even after he was found guilty. He's one of those people who'd sell his own grandmother and mother. Until the shutdown, I did not know that he was behind megaupload.
Shutting down such websites, however, is like abolishing cars because they also get used in bank robberies. Services such as megaupload, but also bittorrent, will always be exploited in order to share illegal stuff. But in the case of music, for example, it's been shown that a great number of people is perfectly willing to pay for the music if it's easy to get and there are no ridiculous limitations on the use of the good. There'll always be this residual who don't give a damn and will just download illegally.
The ironic thing is, the number of illegal sharing in the West is just such a tiny drop in the ocean when compared to piracy in pretty much all other countries of the world. Go to any developing or transitional country and on the markets you will not see a single original copy of music, movies or video games. Still, the content industry wants to introduce censorship and doing away with what is effectively the online version of the privacy of the letters to rescue a couple bucks.
As Courtney Love put it already back in 2000, during the heydays of Napster, the real piracy is often that from the industry itself, such as with music: Courtney Love does the math - Music - Salon.com
 
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