[Fenris]

While I would of loved to participate, Trisphee can not afford to be down for the day and with all I have and other artists have had to of been doing we had no time to do anything terribly substantial for it and I didn't know when or if this was happening due to the sheer amount I have been pixeling.

I personally have many worries about the bill. I do believe there is no way Trisphee would be able to exist. Not to mention all the other things we use. I think the bill has not even been thought out. How do you administrate something like this? It is ridiculous. I am completely for stopping Piracy. I have never been against it. But I am completely disappointed in all the things this would limit. From what I have read and seen this would kill the art market (online art commissions main source of income is FANART). What would it do to a used game market?, What would it do to online forum sites in general. Would it limit user names, user art? The whole thing just seems poorly thought out. I can only imagine all the business closings it could cause. What happened to the push for jobs? As stupid as it sounds for some of us online business is our only source of income. The country is having enough problems without adding more to it. What will happen to any standing business that sells used cards, used games, fanart, or anything copyrighted period? I may be wrong but if PIPA and SOPA together just seem to kill anything that has to do with selling copyrighted material. What would we have to do, have a license from each separate company to do this on the net? To do that on the net? How will it affect us outside of the net? I find it highly unconstitutional and I do not think that any such bill should EVER be passed.

[Renegade]

"Anything that has to do with copyrighted material"...

....Uh. That's like...my whole freaking internet life.

[Fenris]

Also those were my personal opinions so please if you disagree do not reflect them to Trisphee. I am an artist, and the last thing I want to do is to have to shut down because of a law passed that limits everything we do on the net. I hate to say it and I know I am wrong, but I honestly think it would be more constitutional to shut the net down period than to make us watch our backs at every possible millisecond to make sure I don't break any rules.

[Funkduder]

Hollywood and their lawyers didn't do enough, I see.

[Ashy]

what do you mean funk?

[Funkduder]

CNN observes this as a dispute between Hollywood and the Silicon Valley. Hollywood is losing millions in piracy, but most of the internet gets screwed if this one passes.

In other words, the pro: Hollywood was careless.

[Renegade]

I--I just don't...auuuuuuuuugh why do we have douches for senators and reps and gov't shit and whatnot and do they like never use their brains or maybe they're just lacking brains...is that like a biological defect?...but seriously they don't freaking think when they should be thinking and just down out tax money like food from the pantry and shit someone should go yell at them or something because their brains should be taken to an autoshop to get freaking fixed.

....Live streaming from Espy's brain brought to you by Espy's have-their-own-thought-process fingers.

[Belial]

Originally Posted by Renegade

I--I just don't...auuuuuuuuugh why do we have douches for senators and reps and gov't shit and whatnot and do they like never use their brains or maybe they're just lacking brains...is that like a biological defect?...but seriously they don't freaking think when they should be thinking and just down out tax money like food from the pantry and shit someone should go yell at them or something because their brains should be taken to an autoshop to get freaking fixed.

....Live streaming from Espy's brain brought to you by Espy's have-their-own-thought-process fingers.

And they never seem to read what they vote on even.

They just vote.

How much money did the lobbyists/Hollywood give them for this? If Hollywood wants to combat piracy, there are different ways to do so without resorting to something so draconian.

[Poggio]

Originally Posted by Coda

#I'm avoiding any discussions on ethics here (not going to get into whether anything is "right" or "wrong") but Tiva's example is a good one. SOPA/PIPA would require Trisphee to hire a zillion mods and censor every single post before we allow it to be visible if we don't want to run the risk of having our PayPal account frozen because someone posted an image of Mickey Mouse.

Actually this is quite untrue. Trisphee would just have to change its rules for image posting. They would just have to not allow art unless it could be traced back to its original copy right and proved that it was payed for. It would mean more site artist getting commissions for character designs, limited youtube posting and linking.


Its sites like Gaia and Ernya that would shut down since there is no way to police and find where all of those images came from. Also Photobucket since there is no way to track down the orginal copy right of images such as anime hotte with white hair.


@Tiva: While that is also true, Tokyo pop might have went out of business purely because people arent reading books any more. Libraries and book stores are suffering two. Boarders has finally closed its doors. Its only a matter of time before books a million and libraries do the same. Most of the content on Manga fox and manga reader. That I read were unlicensed manga you could not get in the US. And Viz is still in business despite three of its biggest titles being free on the internet. Bleach, Naruto and D Grey Man and once piece Just because its free on the internet doesnt mean people will not want to own a hard copy themselves. What happen to Tokyo pop was that they let Americans into the business and instead of publishing pure manga they did things like Dramacon and Peach Fuzz, and while this was good for American Manga-ka it hurt Tokyo pop a little. Added to the fact that they did not own some of the popluar titles like Bleach and Naruto really hurt their revenue. It took a lot of employ a team of translators, editors, and then to pay artist for their work and comics. If they payed the artist with a basic contract, the book sales would have to make up for what they pay the artist. If that artist book isnt selling then there is no revnue to be had. You also have to take into account the explosion of webcomics which is a self publishing business. You get comics like Mega toyko and then Homestuck, which pardon the expression but... why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free?. Since the webcomic explosion and no titles to keep people interested where was Tokyo pops market? Its the same thing why Marvel is now owned by Disney. They're Market was going down. Disney saved them. No one saved Tokyo pop.

As a side note why would you shut down Trisphee for a day?
It as far as I can tell isnt in violation of copy right laws.

[Sadrain]

I must admit that I am a 'pirate' (but not from my free will - in the situation of how I live and where I live, many things, such as most books, mangas, music that I like, and movies to be watched on laptop, are not available to me - if they were, I would buy them and gladly support the artists), although I liked the explanation the 'big guns' are actual pirates.
But even looking over the fact that the places that help me keep in touch with lot of things, might get shut down, I am against this SOPA thing. It is rather ridiculous, even forbidding linking. It's like forbidding people to speak, cause, in the end, then even words and sentence that has been typed years before somewhere in net, like "I like you" could be copyrighted. Although, last bit could be exaggeration. But indeed, forbidding to link is forbidding people to discuss and that is just plain wrong. All the policies that would be added indeed would remind of a dictatorship.
Now, if they turned against porno sites, those who spread and download cruel porno movies that often show real murders, etc... That could be some censorship that should be supported, but that's the side that gets forgotten.
Anyways, I am not from USA than I can really affect this in any way, just dropping my 2 cents.

[Coda]

Originally Posted by Poggio

Actually this is quite untrue. Trisphee would just have to change its rules for image posting. They would just have to not allow art unless it could be traced back to its original copy right and proved that it was payed for. It would mean more site artist getting commissions for character designs, limited youtube posting and linking.

No, Trisphee couldn't just change its rules. We would have to MODERATE EVERYTHING. We would have to pre-screen every post for infringing material before we allow it to be visible. If an "infringing" post were up for, say, twelve hours (let's say that the section moderator went to bed), and that thread got 25 views in that time... Well, what happens if a spambot comes by and posts a bunch of links to movie downloads? Let's say there were links to five different Disney movies. If each of these movies costs $20 to buy on DVD, then 25 views times 5 movies times 20 dollars means that under SOPA section 201 we would be guilty of $2,500 in copyright infringement. Presto, Fenris is now a felon, because she knowingly chose not to make Trisphee pre-filter infringing content.

[Poggio]

@Sadrain: Lets Get ready to rumble is a copy righted sentence xD.

@Coda: Ah. And there is no way to explain that she had no way of controlling what is pretty much a advertising virus?

[Coda]

That's just the thing -- she DOES have a way to do it. It doesn't matter that her decision not to pre-filter is because it would destroy Trisphee to slow down social interaction that much, or because it would cost way too much to keep that much of a moderator staff online around-the-clock. It doesn't matter that we have moderation policies in place to take infringing content down when it's discovered. (This was sufficient under DMCA; it would not be sufficient under SOPA.) All that matters is that Fenris knows that it's POSSIBLE to post infringing content and didn't do anything to prevent that from happening in advance.

Edit: You can't copyright a sentence. It's de minimis. You can TRADEMARK it, but that's a completely different set of laws.

[Poggio]

ah and now that this has been explained to me in terms I can understand all I have to say is son of a bitch. I can understand how censor ship would be a repercussion of this bill. I thought it was simply a matter of removing copy righted materials such as images and video. Even if no one clicks the links trisphee would still get fined for posting the content?

My question now is. If they know which sites are the problem like pirate bay, why not just remove those sites instead of trying to police the entire internet. In fact if I recall they did a pretty effective job of stopping one manga and having manga fox take down all of its licensed content.

[Coda]

It's not an impossibility. The courts would have to fight out whether or not just links could be considered infringement, but the precedent is there.

To answer your question: DMCA handles domestic sites just fine. SOPA is primarily targeting foreign websites that DMCA doesn't cover, in sections 102 and 103. The big deal for US domestic sites is SOPA section 201, where the very definition of what constitutes infringement is broadened -- SOPA's true purpose is to give big companies a weapon to criminalize what would usually be a civil matter, under the guise of making the definitions broad enough to cover "loopholes" in existing law.

[Fenris]

Simply put as coda said. Trisphee can't afford it. It kills small internet businesses like this.