SOPA/PIPA/CISPA Awareness

Kuroneko

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While we're not taking part in the blackout itself, I'd still like to say a few words. H.R.3261 "Stop Online Piracy Act" and S.968 "PROTECT IP", which could radically change the landscape of the Internet. These bills provide overly broad mechanisms for enforcement of copyright which would restrict innovation and threaten the existence of websites with user-submitted content, such as youtube, tumblr, and reddit.

Please take today as a day of focus and action to learn about these destructive bills and do what you can to prevent them from becoming reality.

Important Upcoming Dates

January 24, 2012 – Senate votes on PIPA
February – House Judiciary Committee continues its markup of SOPA

FAQ

What is the intent of SOPA/PROTECT IP?

The stated intent of the bills is to provide tools for law enforcement and copyright holders to protect their intellectual property rights.

What’s wrong with protecting copyrights?

Nothing! The devil, as they say, is in the details. PROTECT IP and SOPA will cause too much collateral damage, have a high potential for abuse, and won't even be that effective at stopping the crimes they target.

I'm not in the U.S. Why does this affect me?

Many of the sites that you may use (e.g. Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc.) are all affected by this law and will be required to hide offending domains from you.

If a non-U.S. site is blocked in the U.S., the site could suffer financially or even be bankrupted by the loss of U.S. traffic and revenue.

What are the differences between PROTECT IP and SOPA?

At a general level, the bills are very similar. SOPA, the "Stop Online Piracy Act," is from the House of Representatives, while the PROTECT IP Act is from the Senate. Either or both bills may pass a vote in their chamber of congress on their way to becoming law. Both must be defeated to end this threat.

What about ACTA?

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is a multi-national agreement with similar goals to the U.S.-only PROTECT IP and SOPA bills. It is criticized for many of the same reasons that PROTECT IP and SOPA are, but is also concerning because it has been drafted in secret. ACTA is not the focus of this blackout but please take the time to learn more about ACTA.

I'm not a U.S. citizen. How can I help?

You can still call or e-mail the U.S. representatives (sponsors of the bills would be a good choice). However, you may want to turn your attention more towards ACTA or other over-zealous copyright bills in your country.

Read More

Information on H.R.3261 – Stop Online Piracy Act
Information on S.968 – PROTECT IP Act
Keep track of where your congressmembers stand
A simple explanation in video form
 

zeus9860

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

In a way it's good, since it will be forcing some of us to be less depent on the internets for stuff, it's something i would likely do if this crap actually happens... but that's the only positive thing i see, the negatives are alot more that i can't even bother to count/compare.

Now's a good time to travel to the USA and make a riot on the streets.

Whoever started this crappy anti-piracy-movement, i hope he dies of cancer or with an arrow to the knee.
 

jon50559

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

zeus9860 said:
In a way it's good, since it will be forcing some of us to be less depent on the internets for stuff

That is a ridiculous positive, the reason why humans innovate and advance technologically is to depend on that technology, to further advance our species. I mean, gosh, we're so dependent on the wheel now-a-days :?

Also, stop with those arrow to the knee jokes
 

Thothie

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

SOPA will mean the end of MSC.

Private hosting companies, like Cirtex (which hosts this site), simply won't be able to afford the liabilities for every link we post here (nevermind all the copyrighted material in MSC itself), and the thousands of other privately created sites they host. Youtube has already announced that, if SOPA passes, there will be a blanket ban on all video game photage, save that provided directly and officially by the big game releasers. Mods will be a thing of the past, as in the long run, no one will be willing to host images of potentially copyrighted materials. Private hosting, arguably the largest part of the internet economy after porn (which, needless to say, is heavily reliant on private hosting itself), will be wiped out in the span of a few short years.

This is an effort to do what they did to radio in the 20's and 30's. When thousands of tiny private radio stations began to crop up, and nearly every block had its own radio broadcast, CBS and NBC demanded regulation. Shortly after, radio licensing, fees, and FCC related liabilities were introduced that created a broadcast medium that cost millions of today's dollars to maintain. Now we have a radio broadcast spectrum with just a few dozen stations in each band, nearly all locked down by big media corporations, and a smattering of universities. Here in SoCal, we have but one, truly publicly funded radio station (KPFK), in addition to two PBS stations that receive their primary funding from big government, big pharma, big energy, and the agricultural companies that control our food supply, in addition to our news diet. The rest are completely in the hands of the same media companies that are now trying to take over the internet.

PIPA, additionally, will mean an end to the DNS redirect system. Further inhibiting the public's ability to use the domain names. Even e-mail providers will be liable for the content their users may send to one another.

No more privately hosted forums.
No more privately hosted files.
No more privately owned domains.
No more free e-mail.
No more free video hosting.
No more blogs; No more movie reviews, save those approved by the media companies; No more alternative news sources.

Truly the end of the Internet as we know it.

...and SOPA and PIPA are just the beginning. There are, literary, dozens of similar bills being lined up to assault Congress after these two. It's going to be a long and epic battle, eternal vigilance, defending freedom against an onslaught on a scale that we've never seen before.

To make matters worse, this was the plan from the beginning. Most of the piracy software this was designed to stop was actually created and hosted by Viacom and Disney, and by the various other media companies that are now backing SOPA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc

To add insult to injury, this only affects DNS based piracy (such as torrents), it has no affect on eMule, DC++, and the like. Clearly, stopping piracy is not the goal. Controlling the Internet by making sure only huge media companies can afford to use it as broadcast medium, is.

So do whatever you can, even if it's only e-mailing your representatives in the House and Senate. Remember that only 13 Senators voted against the NDAA, and of the smattering members of the House that did, less than half were Republicans. They aren't on your side. Make it clear who you'll be supporting in 2012, if they don't start representing the interests of the general public who put them into office.

[/sopabox]
 

Srgnt Rehab

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

I've made an effort to show that I don't support SOPA/PIPA in any way for over a month now.

Even today as I go to college and walk along the campus and bring it up when people in my classes were saying things like "Wiki down today, can't cheat :' (" okay, maybe not word for word, but whatever. Back to my point, there were hundreds of people I talked to today that had no idea what SOPA/PIPA is. Considering how close this thing has gotten to being passed I'd say it is incredibly scary that it is not known by such a large percentage of the public. I thought about it earlier today and realized how sad it is that people haven't heard about it because the people who support it are the ones that control a lot of the media and are trying to gain more control. :?
 

Jelly

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Maddox

In the bottom of the page there's a list of companies supporting SOPA & PIPA. Join the boycott.
 

Red Cell

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

When has the internet not been serious business?
 

Jelly

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Way back when people clamed down and stayed in their holes[\sarcasm].
 

Thothie

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Someone give me a heads up as to whether this QRL is good on an iPhone:

qrl_SOPA.jpg

Seems to work on an Android.

If so, maybe I'll see about getting a PDF sheet of these, so you can print em out and stick em up all over campus. ;)
 

Monika's_BFFEx0256

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Worked for me, brought me to a Jeeper's Media video on SOPA. (This guy reviews kids toys, and kinda creeps me out. :? )
 

Thothie

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Yeah... Gay activist is gay. :( Kinda hard to get right wingers on board with your cause with a spokesman like him...

Maybe we can find a hot chick to do the same presentation... HOTFORWORDS SAVE US NOW!!!
 

Sabre

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Both bills are now shelved for the time being.
 

FER

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Any idea how to support anonymous on this?
 

The Man In Black

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Support what? The DDOS attacks? Seems like the kind of thing you DON'T want to get involved in.
 

Red Cell

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Yeah I feel like the lawmakers and corporations could point to the DDOS attacks and be like: "See? We need to keep da interwebz safe!" And people would totally buy into it.

Plus, do those DDOS attacks actually effect the corporations that much? An honest question here, not totally sure.
 

Thothie

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Sometimes... It has caused corporations to change policy before. Sometimes corporations will counter with DDOS attacks of their own. Corporations even setup dummy EDK/eMule servers that generate bogus search results, that require huge expensive boxes and pipes to maintain (basically can't be done without a full-grade data center). Plus, as I mentioned (and demonstrated), about 20% of background internet traffic is AP2P snoopers, sniffing all over the net for pirates. It's really ridiculous, all the underhanded things corporations are doing to attempt to stop piracy (or at least catalog it), many of which are every bit as illegal as the piracy itself, and even detrimental to the average user (that AP2P crap, for instance, is generating a *lot* more bandwidth choke than the worms that Microsoft got sued over back in 2001.) Many of the viruses we encounter today have been traced back to software companies that packaged them with pirated copies of their own software (there's even been a lawsuit or two resulting from that).

DDOS attacks are but one tool in the Anonymous bag of tricks though. They do a lot of political and protest work, and coming up with various "operations" that the average Joe can chip in on.

Black March is one of the latest... Though that one might be asking resisting temptation akin to "No Fap Febuary" :p That sort of wallet-based protest may not seem like much, but I should point out that it is simply the reverse of the same method my ex successfully used to get the remaining seasons of Sailor Moon aired, and it worked like a charm. I'm not sure what What is the Plan has in mind for the various legislation that's coming up after SOPA, but no doubt something. I won't go onto that web site unless I'm behind at least seven boxxys though, as the fact that it makes you register, screams catch the "leaders" of Anonymous FBI dragnet.

As I said elsewhere, SOPA and PIPA are but the first of many we're going to see this year... The Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 is the next one starting its launch (another dandy by Lamar Smith). That one, just with that name, is going to be next to impossible to stop though. There's a terrorist related one not too far behind that.

From the tally, it looks like Congress is just going to be clogged with a deluge of bills designed to allow CBS/Viacom to take over the internet and turn it into FM radio this year. Suspect the future of the net is just going to be the equivalent of a few corporate owned channels you can switch between all too soon.
 

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Remember, we have to fight ACTA now.
 

Thothie

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

*sigh*... It's baaa-aaack.

Really, I dun see how we can win, if they are just going to keep reintroducing these bills until we can't possibly care anymore.
 

zeus9860

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Thothie said:
*sigh*... It's baaa-aaack.

Really, I dun see how we can win, if they are just going to keep reintroducing these bills until we can't possibly care anymore.

The f*ck, why don't they just give up? They are asking for a serious revolution, it's like that one line "Great power comes with great responsabilities", these morons are powerhungry or something? We should just shove up a baseball bat on their enormous ***holes.

This is like cyber-terrorism or something, spying on everything that people do and whatnot, then comes the threats...
 

FER

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

Come on its North America! theres are lot of people going on killing sprees in christmas so why cant some psychos appear because of this and scare the living crap from the people supporting this bill?
 

Kuroneko

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Re: SOPA/PIPA Awareness

zeus9860 said:
Thothie said:
*sigh*... It's baaa-aaack.

Really, I dun see how we can win, if they are just going to keep reintroducing these bills until we can't possibly care anymore.

The f*ck, why don't they just give up? They are asking for a serious revolution, it's like that one line "Great power comes with great responsabilities", these morons are powerhungry or something? We should just shove up a baseball bat on their enormous ***holes.

This is like cyber-terrorism or something, spying on everything that people do and whatnot, then comes the threats...

They believe that the American people are too stupid to keep fighting. Ultimately they will get tired and give up. It took a massive coordinated effort to stop the previous bills, and it is unlikely that anything less will help here. I actually had some fun with my letter to my congressmen this time. I took the previous letter, crossed out SOPA/PIPA and hand wrote CISPA above them. I also added a little note at the bottom saying that it is just the same thing, but a different name. I hope they get the idea.
 

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(Nearly a decade later...)

Well, speaking of tired and about to give up, I figured I'd at least do something and link ya'll to the latest chapter in this endless struggle:
https://www.battleforthenet.com/

Lord K was probably right - given that they've somehow gotten the GOP to support the idea of censoring the net (seems even the most nobel of causes can be shut down, provided you can associate them with the opposing party these days). As if it's somehow okay, so long as private industry doing it - as if it wasn't always ultimately private industry doing it. I suppose we will, eventually and inevitably, lose this fight. They did it to radio, they did it to TV, sooner or later they'll do it to the Internet - every media platform eventually becomes a monopolized environment where only a few giant broadcasters can afford the liabilities and licensing and dominate all content. Nonetheless, enjoy the net while you can, even if it never did really fulfill its promise. Maybe you can help keep it alive long enough for your kids to at least get a glimpse of some semblance of the days when www stood for wild wild west.
 
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