SOPA

[Mal]

[Apech]

Move server to outside US? or have they thought of this?

[Chang]

It is an unfortunate fact that our governments are not necessarily our friends.

 

They do not necessarily represent the best interests of their countrymen.

 

Realising this as a fact is the first step.

 

The SOPA bill is the perfect bit of government legislation as most people would not even be aware of it until it is too late. Its effect would also reverberate far beyond the shores of the USA.

[zerostao]

i am gonna look up the voting record on this one.

brothers, sisters make those connections that you would like to make while you still have the chance.

[zerostao]

http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/13/10151672-opponents-to-anti-piracy-legislation-sopa-gaining-momentum

 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/01/white-house-sopa-pipa.html

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/14/idUS245775808320120114

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/sopa-anonymous-january-18_n_1201397.html

 

just say nopa to sopa

[Desert Eagle]

[konchog uma]

for those that aren't aware, tomorrow, jan 18th, is an internet blackout in protest of sopa/pipa. hundreds and thousands of websites including wikipedia are going black with links to info about sopa. So get your wiki fix tonight!

 

and a ray of hope for you http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/white-house-blasts-internet-blacklisting-bills/

[Aaron]

Those worried about the SOPA bill should seriously check out the Fascism thread I started. This is just another cog in the machine towards total censorship and government control. The internet is their biggest threat and they know it. When you hear that it's not patriotic or honest to oppose it, then you'll start to understand what's really going on here.

 

Aaron

[zerostao]

so last thursday i sent an email to one of our senators. seems like anyone with concerns can contact a senator or congressman.

they do work for you btw.

i expected one of those immediate auto-responses, but nope didnt hear anything until yesterday.

some excerps from his reply.

 

. Rest assured that I will do everything I can in order to stop these bills from becoming law."

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

Rand Paul, MD

United States Senator

 

Edited April 23, 2012 by zerostao

[Gerard]

Please sign here:

 

http://americancensorship.org/

 

 

Below, there is also a petition for Non-US residents.

[joeblast]

[Protector]

[Protector]

SSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/

[Gerard]

Updates.

 

I received this e-mail from Fight for the Future:

 

Today was nuts, right?

 

Google launched a petition. Wikipedia voted to shut itself off. Senators' websites went down just from the sheer surge of voters trying to write them. NYC and SF geeks had protests that packed city blocks.

 

You made history today: nothing like this has ever happened before. Tech companies and users teamed up. Tens of millions of people who make the internet what it is joined together to defend their freedoms. The free network defended itself. Whatever you call it, the bottom line is clear: from today forward, it will be much harder to mess up the internet.

 

The really crazy part? We might even win.

 

Approaching Monday's crucial Senate vote there are now 35 Senators publicly opposing PIPA. Last week there were 5. And it just takes just 41 solid "no" votes to permanently stall PIPA (and SOPA) in the Senate. What seemed like miles away a few weeks ago is now within reach.

 

But don't trust predictions. The forces behind SOPA & PIPA (mostly movie companies) can make small changes to these bills until they know they have the votes to pass. Members of Congress know SOPA & PIPA are unpopular, but they don't understand why--so they're easily duped by superficial changes. The Senate returns next week, and the next few days are critical. Here are two things to think about:

 

1. Plan on calling your Senator every day next week. Pick up the phone each morning and call your Senators' offices, until they vote "no" on cloture. If your site participated today, consider running a "Call the Senate" link all next week.

 

2. Tomorrow, drop in at your Senators' district offices. We don't have a cool map widget to show you the offices nearest you (we're too exhausted! any takers?). So do it the old fashioned way: use Google, or the phonebook to find the address, and just walk in, say you oppose PIPA, and urge the Senator to vote "no" on cloture. These drop-in visits make our spectacular online protests more tangible and credible.

 

That's it for now. Be proud and stay on it!

 

--Holmes, Tiffiniy, and the whole Fight for the Future team.

 

___

 

P.S. Huge credit goes to participants in the 11/16 American Censorship Day protest: Mozilla, 4chan, BoingBoing, Tumblr, TGWTG, and thousands of others. That's what got this ball rolling! Reddit, both the community and the team behind it, you're amazing. And of course, thanks to the Wikimedians whose patient and inexorable pursuit of the right answer brought them to take world-changing action. Thanks to David S, David K, Cory D, and E Stark for bold action at critical times.

 

P.P.S. If you haven't already, show this video to as many people as you can. It works! http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/

 

 

Internet = Freedom.

 

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

Long live freedom!

 

 

But... uh.... how do we access it offline?

[zerostao]

over the last ten years or so, washington(the govt) scolds other countries like china and iran for censorship of the internet

and now washington wants to censor the internet in america.

hmm, there is a word i am looking for

[Gerard]

PirateBay's press release:

 

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 call Hollywood. 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 - like Fantasia, 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 the studios 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 the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 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 the USA. 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 the rest 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 with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you 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 the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, 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 ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no 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

 

http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/sopa.txt

 

 

 

Hackers take down Justice.gov, threaten to block WhiteHouse.gov:

 

 

"Hacker collective Anonymous on Thursday evening apparently took out the Justice Department's website and is trying to knock out WhiteHouse.gov in retaliation for the feds taking out movie-trafficking site Megaupload.com. The action comes in the middle of a global debate over U.S. anti-piracy legislation that critics, including the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, argue would reduce the Internet to a surveillance tool that facilitates the type of content-blocking seen in dictatorships.

 

More than 5,000 hacker activists are using a software program to overload with useless traffic the servers running Justice.gov and entertainment companies' sites, according to people associated with Anonymous and messages posted by the group on Twitter.

 

Justice officials on Thursday night issued a statement acknowledging their site is suffering from heightened traffic.

 

"The Department of Justice web server hosting justice.gov is currently experiencing a significant increase in activity, resulting in a degradation in service," a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement." The Department is working to ensure the website is available while we investigate the origins of this activity, which is being treated as a malicious act until we can fully identify the root cause of the disruption."

 

Justice officials earlier in the day announced they had charged seven individuals affiliated with Megaupload.com and related sites for uploading films prior to their release and other online intellectual property. The alleged ringleaders of the conspiracy were from Hong Kong, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Turkey and Estonia.

 

Anonymous also claimed to have shuttered sites belonging to the music and movie industries, as well as other supporters of the pending legislation -- the Senate's PROTECT IP Act, or PIPA, and the House's Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.

 

Protect IP sponsor Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary Committee chairman, applauded the Justice department's move on Thursday and said it underscored the need for a law to control the theft of U.S. intellectual property abroad.

 

"Unfortunately, there are no tools in the arsenal to protect that same American intellectual property from theft by websites hosted and operated overseas," he said in a statement. "Meaningful legislation to stop online infringement and piracy by foreign rogue websites will protect American workers, American consumers and America's economy. The PROTECT IP Act would close this gap and offer a meaningful solution to this costly and corrosive problem."

 

Late Thursday, a note on a blog maintained by Anonymous members indicated hackers are now targeting the Oval Office.

 

"Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, [Recording Industry Association of America] and Motion Picture Association of America," the message stated. "Many members of Congress have just changed their stance on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. The raid on Megaupload Thursday proved that the feds don't need SOPA or its sister legislation, PIPA, in order to pose a blow to the Web."

 

Anonymous members may be plotting another gambit "for dealing with all of the senators supporting Protect IP," said Gregg Housh, a computer engineer who follows Anonymous, but denies involvement in the group's activities.

 

The masterminds behind Megaupload.com cost copyright holders more than $500,000, Justice officials alleged. The suspects were indicted on Jan. 5, and accused of, among other things, racketeering and conspiring to commit copyright infringement.

 

For more than five years, the culprits apparently distributed movies, music, TV shows, e-books and other copyrighted software on a site that accounted for more than 4 percent of traffic on the Internet. Megaupload.com allegedly raked in more than $175 million in illegal profits through advertising schemes and premium membership sales.

 

If confronted by a copyright holder, the collaborators would disable a single link to the file, deliberately leaving the infringing material available for millions of users through many duplicate links, according to the indictment. They masked the impropriety of their work "by not providing a public search function on the Megaupload site and by not including popular infringing content on the publicly available lists of top content downloaded by its users," according to Justice's announcement of the charges."

 

 

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20120119_9317.php?oref=topnews

[konchog uma]

Thanks Gerard. Informative...

[Mal]

PirateBay's press release:

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.

 

Exactly, here's a personal example.

 

I read that the software industry doesn't like the 2nd hand games market. For a legitimate reason - while they get money from a $89 new copy of Skyrim, the programmers who put in the effort to make it get nothing from the $79 second hand copy that's on the shelf competing against the new copy.

 

So after I was Skyrim'ed out I decided I'd enjoy being a cowboy, having never got around to playing red dead redemption on the PS3

 

Now I could have brought a 2nd hand copy for $29

Or a new copy for $39

Instead I brought it off the offical playstation store which cost $49 and it took over 12 hrs to download.

 

So the offical version costs more money (it also costs more because I'm Australian, the American online price is cheaper) and took longer to download via playstation than a torrent.....

 

[JustARandomPanda]

Exactly, here's a personal example.

 

I read that the software industry doesn't like the 2nd hand games market. For a legitimate reason - while they get money from a $89 new copy of Skyrim, the programmers who put in the effort to make it get nothing from the $79 second hand copy that's on the shelf competing against the new copy.

 

This is the exact same reason Publishing Companies are in favor of moving to ebooks. Especially when it comes to the lucrative college textbook market. If you buy the ebook version of a required textbook you can not resell it. And it's typically only a few dollars less than the print version. But the publishing houses love the fact that it will eviscerate the used book market since they - like software companies - don't get a dime on any resell. Their new books keep competing with used ones. As ebooks take off - the used book market will become less and less of an issue as the decades roll by.

 

 

Back to the SOPA and PIPA issue - I was one of the many who tried calling my reps and senators. I called too late. Their voicemail boxes were so full no more messages from their constituents could be recorded.

[Friend]

Well you can also go and buy a book with your village and the village is only reading

by passing it, I forgot it is called Libary. Even games and programmes are in the libary. These companies must dislike Libaries.

[zerostao]

yeah librarians are pretty much up there with moonshiners and pirates.

[joeblast]

Back to the SOPA and PIPA issue - I was one of the many who tried calling my reps and senators. I called too late. Their voicemail boxes were so full no more messages from their constituents could be recorded.

given the state that I'm from, I always have stupid excuses and various roadblocks to deal with also. most any contact is responded with a pre-packaged "screw off, this is for your own good" sort of message.

[zerostao]

makes it seem remarkable i got the response that i did from my senator Rand Paul

or else i got a certain amount of pull...naw

 

 

"they were so alarmed that they..."

[joeblast]

yeah, there's a few sane ones. the ones from my state are absolutely delusional and dont want to hear from you unless you're patting them on the back.