its also not just the internet - its a LOT of art and other things. For example, if Hasbro decided to be mean they could have you arrested for customizing a pony.

Creating any art or music that's related to someone else's work (like sampling in music, or designing pony characters based on the Hasbro shape) would be a felony. Fan fiction would be a felony!

For heaven's sake, cosplay would be a felony.

SOPA is absolutely terrifying to me and we all should be afraid of its consequences. It is a direct attack on our right to free speech.

It won't pass.....

Here's why....


Back on '08 John McCain's campaign woke up one morning only to find that their You Tube clips of his interviews had been taken down due to a complaint of copyright violation. Eventually it was sorted out but for a while it blacked out part of his political campaign.

So let's say SOPA passes:

Now imagine this....you're a senator, running for re-election and your site has clips to interviews that you did or ads you ran. One day you wake up and you're entire site, YouTube channel, Facebook page, PAC pages and etc. are all shut down due a mysterious copyright claim. It takes you days to go through the red tape of removal and checking and so on. So that's a few days of lost donation pages, press releases and so on...that can cripple an election.

SOPA brings on a whole new level of dirty election politics, that can cause major disturbances in the "force"

Seriously name one Congressman who wants to make their campaigns any harder?

Now of course...some government hack will figure this out and right a provision that excludes political sites but that would only be grossly political suicide.

Actually any congressman who votes for it will face the wrath of Silicon Valley (which has like countless billions in it's war chests) and about 90% of the general population....which means we may get a chance to have that revolution and kick those bums out of office ^_^

maybe but i don't want to get too hopeful... *sigh*...

Still not worried. I should be. That's what they want. This is an idiotically unenforceable bit of legislation and we all know it. The point is to scare us. Then WHEN it passes, and does so in a typically watered down form, we will all breathe a sigh of relief and wipe the sweat from our brows, happy in the knowledge that we've escaped a more horrible fate. That's how they'll pass what they probably wanted to from the start. Nobody wants this, I would dare say, not even those who wrote up the bill. They want it to seem like our world is ending so we'll more readily accept what comes in it's place. It's called negotiation. You always start with a position that even you know to be absurd in hopes that the middle you meet at is as close as possible to your actual position.

Echo, I used to think that's what they're doing too, but most of the amendments to SOPA were rejected. Even getting them proposed seemed like a huge challenge. I think they're actually serious about this.

Elisto wrote:

Echo, I used to think that's what they're doing too, but most of the amendments to SOPA were rejected. Even getting them proposed seemed like a huge challenge. I think they're actually serious about this.

If they are serious, all the better for us. It cannot pass as is. If they try, they will only embarrass themselves. If by some miracle it passes, it cannot be made practical use of. There is nearly no one on the internet that would not fall into some category of possible prosecution. If they try to make practical use of it, they will end up spending more money than is currently allotted to national defense. It is an idiotic proposition that cannot succeed on any level. Currently, it serves to entertain the cynical and frighten those who are easily spooked. May it continue to do so for that is the only purpose it will ever serve.

I hope you're right, but I tend to disagree.

Has anyone read the constitution lately? You know, that little document that our forefathers wrote to protect our country and the rights of its people? Well guess what. Anyone reading that nonsense of a bill can be directed straight back to that document which they SWORE to uphold when they were elected into office, and bing badaboom, BILL IS DEAD. BECAUSE IT IS COMPLETELY UNCONSTITUTIONAL! It has no hope Especially not with all the uproar it's geting from the people. There would be downright riots, followed by lynchings if the thing passed. This isn't China folks, and we loudmouth Americans won't stand being silenced or censored I'll sign petitions against the thing, simply because it's important to make sure legislators remember that we the people are watching their dumba..butts. And we won't stand for any shenanigans! And we certainly won't stand for anyone taking away our facebooks or twitters.

Everypony grab a broom, it's Shenanigans!

What's more disturbing about recent bills is that corporations wrote them! SOPA was written by a combination of a bunch of the Hollywood movie people, and then they got some guy to put it for a vote. It's not the only bill corporations wrote, either!

I hope the Supreme Court will kick some congressional booty =P

To Echo Shell:
The thing "after SOPA" will be PIPA.

It is as you say: they try this sopa shenannigans that outrages everyone so they can hopefully rush PIPA through after it because "well its not as bad" and they hope "everyone is tired of fighting" after defeating SOPA. Sopa's original intent was to be a red herring but it did better than they thought because a lot of reps/congress/wherever are really ignorant. They're old folks who don't know what the internet does. Phrases like

"Google makes all its money with illegal downloads"

doesn't make them blink an eye because they don't know "what is a google" but they do know "a pirate is bad".

Why you havn't heard of it much except on the internet?

*The news companies are owned by the entertainment/tv people who want this thing to pass.
*NewsPAPERs hate the internet because it stole their biz so if the internet dies, they'll profit. No reason for them to inform the public.
*TV STATIONS regardless of owner, also hate the internet and so does Cable TV because it steals people away from watching their horrid shows/the internet is too much fun. They won't inform the public either.

The Jeepers Media video referenced earlier shows the whole thing to be some sort of bizzarre conspiracy.
They create the software to pirate with > tell people to pirate > get mad when people use their software JUST as they said to > attempt to pass law to send everyone back to the 1980s

Its 15 mins but well worth the watch cause its so strange
youtu.be/WJIuYgIvKsc

But why? My job would go away if there are no hosts left. If they want money, putting half of America out of a job is not the way to get it.

If you want to help out there are these buttons you can push really easily to help get rid of it. There's one's for non-USA people too because everyone can help. They are counting on people being 'too lazy' to do anything about SOPA and PIPA. Watch out on Jan 23rd....

You can use this page
americancensorship.org/

and this one
fightforthefuture.org/

to protest it. Any voice helps go vs both of these things.

Echo_Shell wrote:

Elisto wrote: Echo, I used to think that's what they're doing too, but most of the amendments to SOPA were rejected. Even getting them proposed seemed like a huge challenge. I think they're actually serious about this. If they are serious, all the better for us. It cannot pass as is. If they try, they will only embarrass themselves. If by some miracle it passes, it cannot be made practical use of. There is nearly no one on the internet that would not fall into some category of possible prosecution. If they try to make practical use of it, they will end up spending more money than is currently allotted to national defense. It is an idiotic proposition that cannot succeed on any level. Currently, it serves to entertain the cynical and frighten those who are easily spooked. May it continue to do so for that is the only purpose it will ever serve.

That's what I thought about the NDAA (that they'd never get it through), and it passed (and is, in my opinion, about the scariest thing to come out of our government as it has a provision which allows arrest and infinite imprisonment without trial). I thought it would be vetoed at the presidential level. Now the only hope is for the provision to be deemed unconstitutional and removed before it is applied. It's surprising what they can and do enact.