How SOPA (as written) might kill ATS and free speech online (UPDATED)

reply to post by satron


My guess is you are right because the Internet is Big Corporations/Big Government's biggest enemy.

The natives are now able to communicate what is really going on and that takes away control of the propaganda being spoon fed by the big Kahunas.

The people are beginning to WTFU and unite and for TPTB that ain't good.

Any hackers or computer wizards out there.............now more than ever we are going to need you.

If this passes, this is in my opinion a declaration of war.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

A slave that has no idea he/she is enslaved will never rebel.

A prisoner that has no inkling he/she is imprisoned will never try to escape.

I've been a net surfer since it's infancy and with each year now each week more and more good information is drying up.

I support SOPA because:
I don't want my birth day and bio on Wikipedia or on IMDb if I become a celebrity. My biography is mine, it's not public property so I have the right to keep it private. I want to be able to sue people that insult me on message boards.

I think the ATSers afraid of SOPA are the political junkies that ruined ATS. Yeah, that's right -- it was a time when ATS was more about UFOs, aliens, time travel, paranormal stuff and now it's mostly about politics; Obama this, Ron Paul that. It's not what it used to be!

If SOPA gets passed the boring political stuff will disappear and the focus of ATS will go back to aliens, UFOs, the paranormal stuff, like it used to be long ago when this wasn't turning into a political/religious board.

We'll just see...........found this article yesterday.

The growing anti-SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) support that has swept through the gaming and Internet community found a very big ally today. With websites like Reddit and Wikipedia and gaming organizations like Major League Gaming prepared for a blackout on January 18th – the same day that the House Judiciary Committee hearing on HR 3261was scheduled in Washington, DC – President Barack Obama has stepped in and said he would not support the bill.

Rest of article here; www.forbes.com...

Author and date of article: John Gaudiosi - 1/16/2012 @ 3:47PM

Originally posted by happy2003
I support SOPA because:
I don't want my birth day and bio on Wikipedia or on IMDb if I become a celebrity. My biography is mine, it's not public property so I have the right to keep it private. I want to be able to sue people that insult me on message boards.

I think the ATSers afraid of SOPA are the political junkies that ruined ATS. Yeah, that's right -- it was a time when ATS was more about UFOs, aliens, time travel, paranormal stuff and now it's mostly about politics; Obama this, Ron Paul that. It's not what it used to be!

If SOPA gets passed the boring political stuff will disappear and the focus of ATS will go back to aliens, UFOs, the paranormal stuff, like it used to be long ago when this wasn't turning into a political/religious board.

If this law passes, a lot of the internet will become useless

So what?! Are you an internet addict or something? Life was a lot better before the Internet anyway. It's mostly the nerds, geeks and web junkies that oppose SOPA.

Clearly you are crazy! I don't understand how anyone coming to ATS can approve of SOPA and want it to be in place, if it goes into law ATS probably won't be here anymore!

I hope you were joking!

"if it goes into law ATS probably won't be here anymore! "
No, it will still be here!
ATS is not a piracy website. And I have nothing to be afraid of, since I'm doing nothing illegal online.

reply to post by happy2003


Of course ATS will have issues!! If someone on here links to a page that has a link to a pirate page, ATS could get a notice to stop it, and then they get shut down! Maybe you need to read up more on SOPA/PIPA, because it would certainly affect ATS, and many other sites!

You may not be doing anything illegal, but lots of people are and do, and you would be affected too! I don't download illegal things either, I have Netflix, I buy songs from iTunes etc, but it would certainly affect me, if my favorite sites were blocked because somebody posted a link to something!

This bill would kill the internet!

or maybe you work for the government!

Nope, I'm not even American, so I have nothing to do with the US government. I agree that SOPA is quite severe and it needs to be 'trimmed down' a bit.

Anyway, my names are still indexed at Google without my permission.
A guy wrote some disgusting posts on an anonymous message board signing his posts with my full name.
And the guys at Google refuse to remove those insulting links. I can't even sue them currently, they say "It's not our fault, sue the guy!" How can I sue him when I am not a hacker and I cannot find his IP? And the website he posted on is anonymous and not supported (the admins of the website cannot be contacted). That poo about me is going to be forever on Google. And my name is very rare, mind you! I don't want prospective employers to see such things about me. I hope SOPA will help solve cases like that.

That being said, SOPA needs a lot of reworking and I mean A LOT.

reply to post by happy2003


Well I'm sorry to hear that, but SOPA/PIPA wouldn't affect what is written about you on the internet ..... I don't think anyway. I could go to a page right now and say Happy2003 likes to dance with monkeys, and there wouldn't be much you could do about it, except go on there and say WhoDat09 has two heads, and 12 toes!!!. I don't know what the solution to your problem is, but SOPA/PIPA are not the solutions you seek. I'm pretty sure the person who has wrote nasty things about you on the internet is a troll and has done this before, maybe you could contact others who have been affected by this person.

If you are not in the US, well congrats but it would affect you too, what happens when your country decides to use our passed bill to make a similar law in your country?

This is a horrible bill that doesn't need to get passed!

reply to post by Invariance

Signed it and thank you for providing this link that i did,nt know about..i will get my husband to sign,and he has buddies in Australia and NZ,maybe he can get them to sign also..every bit helps,hey?

reply to post by WhoDat09

Do you really think defeating SOPA/PIPA will resolve it?

Just look at history to see how unpopular legislation gets established as law.

They can pass it by attaching it to an unrelated bill that gets passed quickly and no one even reads the bill.

The president can issue an executive order that has been recognized as force of law.

Bottom line is this: The US is ruled by a cabal of elites who call the shots and will eventually get what they want. US citizens are far too busy watching "Dancing With The Stars", etc to care.

Proof? Checkout these "regular citizens" and their "knowledge level":

_____________ NO HOPE ______________

EXCLUSIVE: Hollywood Moguls Stopping Obama Donations Because Of President’s Piracy Stand: “Not Give A Dime Anymore”

www.deadline.com...

The moguls are reminding Obama et al that, in the words of one studio chief, “God knows how much money we’ve given to Obama and the Democrats and yet they’re not supporting our interests. There’s been no greater supporters of him than we’ve been from the first day and the first fundraisers continuing until he was elected. We all were pleased. And, at its heart institutionally, Hollywood supports the Democrats. Now we need the administration to support us. This is a very important time for Hollywood. The issue at hand — piracy — is a legitimate concern. But Google and those Internet guys have been swiftboating the entertainment industry by saying we’re trying to shut down the Internet just because we don’t want them to advertise pirated movies. As for other claims, we make 24. We don’t make national security problems.”

As of September 2011 these 357 elite bundlers were directing at least $55,900,000 for Obama’s re-election efforts — money that has gone into the coffers of his campaign as well as the Democratic National Committee,

This version of the bill as been killed but,we still need to remain watchful.We still have PIPA in the Senate and the bill's sponsor Joe Liberman is desperate to get this passed,expect to hear his usual claims of "National Security." and how the opponents are misinformed.

reply to post by Stormdancer777

Originally posted by Stormdancer777
EXCLUSIVE: Hollywood Moguls Stopping Obama Donations Because Of President’s Piracy Stand: “Not Give A Dime Anymore”

Thank you for sharing that report.

My word, these studio chiefs are thinking so narrowly. They have put on blinders and refuse to read what has been held up in writing before them. They refuse to truly contemplate the meaning of the words in the legislation they ignorantly think is in their best "business" interest. People associated with studios please understand this, love many of your movies, but what you are failing to understand is that SOPA and PIPA will ultimately kill your industry too. Your short term business interest will lead to your own only slightly longer term business destruction.

Just because you have given what you obviously consider excessive amounts of money on either side of the aisle does not guarantee that whatever idea you have is actually the best idea ever. I'm sorry, but SOPA and PIPA will make even what you do (movie executives) criminal. Read what it really says. Talk to people before you blindly believe that SOPA and PIPA are right for any interests beyond your short-sighted business interests. Stand aside of your "professional duties" for a moment and consider the full ramifications of the path SOPA and PIPA create. They are wrong for almost every interest other than your "lowest hanging fruit" profit margin interest. Every solution is not necessarily the right solution. Maybe you need to work on that new century business model a bit. A LOT more thought and inclusion and discussion needs to happen before any legislation of this sort is officially considered.

Come on. Man up. Mom up. Woman up. Whatever you are but get the hell over yourselves for a moment.

If the ONLY reason you are involved in politics - financially or otherwise - is to represent a singular business interest, then government and politics in general are better off without you.

No really, put your wallet away. We got it.

This release from the founders/owners of the pirate bay, is copyright free and contains some excellent arguments that run directly into the face of the Hollywood industry.



INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012.
PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for
the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today callHollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent.
There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - likeFantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works,without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of thestudios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create.
If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing
other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented therules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allowpeople to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases takeover 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).
It's all based on the fact that we're competition.
We've proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech.
We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws
should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we've stayed out of theUSA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this:
The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence.
They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to therest of us obedient consumers.
The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you'll learn that noone wants to be fed withtrash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope thatyou will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top level domain from our current .org to one of thehundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs tomind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.
To fix the "problem of piracy" one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they're
creating "culture" but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls
become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching
movies and tv shows that make them think that they're fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful onesis Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and hadno problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he's complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he's jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you'd get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that.

THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

reply to post by The X


Bad premise. They're arguing that just because Hollywood fat cats stole content and ideas, it's okay for others to do the same now (in a nut-shell).

Stealing someone else's content is wrong... no matter the historical justification.

The issue here is two-fold, and deeply systemic.


Politics

US politicians are a gridlocked mess of partisan name-calling and divisive rhetoric... so much so that the entire country is suffering because of the politician brinksmanship going on.

However, one fat-cat source shows up to shower money over the idiots and fools in Washington, and suddenly we have bi-partisan support for something that will decimate the only industry that represents economic growth.


Buggy Whips

Movie theaters and DVDs are a dying distribution model for media entertainment. Just as buggy whips were once a dying necessity for personal transportation. The slow-moving and change-averse media companies cannot conceive of an alternative distribution model, so instead of investing $100 million in innovation to invent a solution, they spend $100 million lobbying politicians to keep their slow death lasting a bit longer.

What new Internet-enabled and economically-just distribution system could have been invented, developed, and deployed with $100 million? Just think about that.

Or, at the least, if "Hollywood" never spread that $100 million among politicians, they'd not need to pressure Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu for higher content licensing fees on streaming movies.

My Middle Schooler just found out about Sopa on UTube last night and he got really angry. He loves UTube and feels Hollywood is just plain greedy, and the Gov just wants to control all our thoughts. I said "Honey it will never happen. Everyone will get really angry and boycott those responsible for this behaviour."

Remember how NETFLIX got greedy? Their stock plummeted over 60% last year. (From $300 USD to $60 USD) People became really angry, and quit. I am quitting at the end of the month and switching to BLOCKBUSTER online dvd renatls/ game rentals. I get the new movies from them right away... no waiting for months like at NEXT FLIX to see their new (old) dvd releases.

This reminds me of the book burnings, censoring libraries, etc... We are not really a free intellectual society with all these limits on research and creativitity. All the fun and joy of the internet will disappear.

Tradgic step backwards for all of mankind.

What about this!!?it states that Lamar Smith is using copyright infringement on his website ( which I'm sure will be changed any second!)






reply to post by SkepticOverlord

reply to post by mongoheady


Old news. Politicians are not honest or trust-worthy.

Originally posted by Raxoxane
reply to post by Invariance

 

Signed it and thank you for providing this link that i did,nt know about..i will get my husband to sign,and he has buddies in Australia and NZ,maybe he can get them to sign also..every bit helps,hey?

No problem, I kind of stumbled upon it

I think it's important for everyone to do our part... it affects us all

Being a new member here at ATS, I have just come to understand whats going on with SOPA because of this website. Let me just say I am taking full action, signing petitions, and telling everyone I know and work with about this and getting them involved as well! This is MAJOR, and worth taking a stand against!! I am gonna be in the fight with everyone involved until the end!! I began to hear about it on here first, but now other websites like google are involved now and have petitions as well.