Kill SOPA, bill goes to house December 15.

[ATARI800XLfan]

Bill goes to house late December 15,2011
If SOPA were to become law, there is a long list of reasons why it would threaten the functioning, freedom, and economic potential of the Internet, but here are some of the main concerns:
By short-circuiting the legal system, it gives rightsholders a fast-track to shutting down websites.
By creating conflicts between "DNS" servers, it would make you more vulnerable to hackers, identity theft, and cyberattacks.
By sanctioning government interference with the internet, it would make the internet more censored, akin to that of China and Syria.
It would give extreme power to companies such as Movie studios, cable companies and major record labels that have been railing against copied songs and films for decades. In the '20s, record labels required musicians to sign contracts promising never to appear on a new medium called "radio." Nearly a century later, the Recording Industry Association of America sued a 12-year old girl for downloading children's TV theme songs on her parents' computer. And for the past decade, do we really want those companies to have this kind of power?

Opponents of the bill include Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, LinkedIn, eBay, Mozilla Corporation, the Brookings Institution, That Guy With The Glasses, and human rights organizations such as Reporters Without Borders,[90] the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch.

The Library Copyright Alliance (including the American Library Association) objects to the broadened definition of "willful infringement" and the introduction of felony penalties for noncommercial streaming infringement, stating that these changes could encourage criminal prosecution of libraries.

On November 16, Tumblr, Mozilla, Techdirt, the Center for Democracy and Technology were among many other Internet companies that protested the Stop Online Piracy Act by participating in a so-called "American Censorship Day". They displayed black banners over their site logos with the words "STOP CENSORSHIP".

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has expressed opposition to the bill, as well as Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA) and presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX), who joined nine Democrats to sign a letter to other House members warning that the bill would cause "an explosion of innovation-killing lawsuits and litigation."[95] "Issa said the legislation is beyond repair and must be rewritten from scratch," reported The Hill.[96] Issa and Lofgren have announced plans for legislation offering "a copyright enforcement process modeled after the U.S. International Trade Commission's (ITC) patent infringement investigations."

In mid-November, Washington Post blogger Dominic Basulto, of Electric Artists and formerly Fortune and Corante.com, drew parallels between SOPA and efforts by China, North Korea and Iran to limit internet access and saw an attempt "to push through new anti-piracy legislation by year-end that would benefit Hollywood at the expense of Silicon Valley".
In December 2011, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales initiated discussion with editors regarding a potential knowledge blackout, a protest inspired by a successful campaign by the Italian-language Wikipedia to block the Italian DDL intercettazioni bill, terms of which would have infringed the encyclopedia's editorial independence. Editors mulled interrupting service for one or more days as in the Italian protest, or alternatively presenting site visitors with a blanked page directing them to further information before permitting them to complete searches.
The European Union Parliament has made a statement opposing the act, particulary in reference to the ability of the US to seize domain names.
Although on December 15, 2011 there will be a hearing to resolve some of the concerns with SOPA, many opponents remain firm on their position against the act. NetCoalition, who works with Google, Twitter, eBay, and Facebook, appreciated that Lamar Smith is trying to address the issues with the bill, but nonetheless cannot support the amendment. Darell Issa, a Republican who proposed an alternative to SOPA, stated that Smith’s amendment, “retains the fundamental flaws of its predecessor by blocking Americans' ability to access websites, imposing costly regulation on Web companies and giving Attorney General Eric Holder's Department of Justice broad new powers to police the Internet.

If we want sites like this one and others like youtube to continue existing we must say no to this bill, email and call your representatives. This does relate to gaming.

http://publicknowledge.org/stop-online- ... act-hr3261

http://publicknowledge.org/e-parasite-s ... KgodpG62TQ

[Inazuma]

If this ends up becoming law, sites that have user input such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Wikipedia, and forums such as Racketboy will either be shut down completely or forced to self censor to prevent it. What is the point of these sites if users cannot contribute to them? Not much. >_>

A good analogy for how fucked up this bill is would be shutting down an entire bank, just because a thief used one of the bank safe deposit boxes to store stolen goods. It is completely wrong, unfair and makes no sense.

[ATARI800XLfan]

If this ends up becoming law, sites that have user input such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Wikipedia, and forums such as Racketboy will either be shut down completely or forced to self censor to prevent it. What is the point of these sites if users cannot contribute to them? Not much. >_>

A good analogy for how fucked up this bill is would be shutting down an entire bank, just because a thief used one of the bank safe deposit boxes to store stolen goods. It is completely wrong, unfair and makes no sense.

exactly so do not forget to email and call your representatives. Even the vice president is against it, as well as Yahoo, LinkedIn, Zynga, Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, Mozilla, AOL, and Wiki have all voiced against it. Including one petition that so far has over 3 million signatures. If we all work together we can stop this. As Joe Biden put it "In America we have a saying, if it ain't broker don't fix it."

this explains why.
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here are sites that send messages for your representatives and ability to call them.

http://publicknowledge.org/e-parasite-s ... Kgod4FPLEA
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This week is do or die. The only way we can stop this bill from passing this week is by melting Congress's phone system with calls from constituents

http://americancensorship.org/

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explains problems and major errors with law.

[J T]

I've already called my representatives. Apparently they are getting a lot of calls from people opposing this bill. Keep fighting the good fight y'all!

[YoshiEgg25]

Already have a thread, guys: http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=34332

Anyway, yeah. If you haven't called, it's a little late now, since it goes to vote today.

[AppleQueso]

So nothin' to do now except wait and hope.

I'm fairly optimistic that it won't pass, but I'm still worried.

If this ends up becoming law, sites that have user input such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Wikipedia, and forums such as Racketboy will either be shut down completely or forced to self censor to prevent it. What is the point of these sites if users cannot contribute to them? Not much. >_>

A good analogy for how fucked up this bill is would be shutting down an entire bank, just because a thief used one of the bank safe deposit boxes to store stolen goods. It is completely wrong, unfair and makes no sense.

Don't forget the most fucked up part; all this will do absolutely nothing to actually stop online piracy. It has zero benefit for anybody, including the companies spending who knows how much in support of this bill.

[YoshiEgg25]

You can watch it all here: http://www.keepthewebopen.com/sopa

EDIT: This tweet just came in from EFFLive:

@EFFLive EFF Live Tweets:
"Please keep the calls to the House coming. Reps will likely be checking with their office during the #SOPA markup - eff.org/sopacall"

[GryeDor]

I don't think this will pass (although am a bit fearful it will). Companies like the MPAA and RIAA are ALWAYS up in arms about copyright and piracy. They did the same thing when the VCR came out because they figured piracy would run rampant and destroy their company. They did the same thing when the cassette recorder came out because they figured piracy would run rampant and destroy their company. They likely did the same with CD-R (and the burners), DVD-R, and any other medium that puts an ability in the hands of the consumer to copy and distribute copyrighted properties.

Everytime they brought this up (i.e. with VCR's, Cassettes) it's failed and gained no traction. Guess what? They're still in business and raking in more money than ever. They're using that money to buy a forum into congress to pass their own agendas to protect what money is in their pockets.

A lot of us "grew up" in the electronic and internet age, and seeing things change is never easy. If this does pass, we'll see a different internet for sure, many say a broken one. I for one embrace change but this I don't think is the way to go about it.

[Hatta]

Of course it will pass. If it doesn't, Ron Wydens alternative bill is almost identical. Nobody in Congress is against this bill in principle. If they can't pass it today, they'll wait for people to get distracted by something shiny and pass it then.

[Redifer]

A good analogy for how fucked up this bill is would be shutting down an entire bank, just because a thief used one of the bank safe deposit boxes to store stolen goods. It is completely wrong, unfair and makes no sense.

That is a pretty good analogy. We're already seeing abuse of flagging on Youtube. Spike TV flagging Naughty Dog's own video of their latest thing because it was exclusively aired on Spike TV. Universal Music flagging Megaupload's video advertising their site. It's just ridiculous. If SOPA passed, the entire internet would be one, giant flagging fest. Fuck this.