[Funkduder]

Ultimately the decision belongs to Fenris, but I figured it should be brought up as a topic of discussion if nothing else.

Details found here:
http://americancensorship.org/

But on a summary note:

SOPA or the Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill to censor the internet. :/

I'll edit late if needed.

[Ashy]

well the 18th is almost over here >.>

[Echo-chan713]

January 18th is here >.<

[Tiva]

I guess we aren't though I must say that some sites are 'closed down' like craigslist. It is an annoyance but for a good cause.

[Alpha]

That it is. Fortunately there are other things in life to keep us occupied.

[Coda]

We're in full support of the anti-SOPA movement but given that we're in the middle of a posting event it seemed like a bad idea to bring Trisphee down and nobody had time to put together anything less invasive like a censor bar.

As my own personal statement (this doesn't reflect the views of Trisphee, just Coda) I think the blackout isn't really a good idea anyway; I have substantial doubts that it's going to make a difference, and it just disrupts normal day-to-day activity for the average user. I know that's the POINT of the protest, but I don't think the protest alone is going to change a single congressional vote. The petitions might. The letter-writing campaign might. But I think the protest's primary effect is going to be annoying the crap out of the average citizen (especially non-US citizens who don't even have a voice in the matter) -- any politician who would have been swayed by the blackout would have been swayed by all of the other protests leading up to it, and any politician who has chosen to keep their vote regardless of public opinion will be ignoring the blackout.

If this blackout has any benefit, it'll be to alert the citizens who have been ignoring the news that there's something going on, but the reactions so far have been continued, willful ignorance. (Go search Twitter for "wikipedia wtf" and you'll see what I mean.)

[Coda]

Well, I'm going to have to retract my opinion. XD Apparently there HAVE been a (small) handful of congresspeople who have changed their votes in response to today's protests.

[Poggio]

If America wanted to move towards a fascist government that is fine,(sarcasm) but at the moment I think congress has other things they should be worrying about like health care, and perhaps education. If this bill goes through they will soon see the repercussions themselves as the American people losses one of their largest revenue streams. Sites like Tumblr, youtube (advertising) and Amazon (trade of materials), pinterest, and twitter would have to be shut down because they post nothing but purely copy righted material in the hopes to sell it. If they know anything about Keynesian economics, well just say I am thrilled about another great depression under the shackles of limited speech. Way to cut american confidence congress. So I signed it on Google and wonder if any of the people that I vote for, and pay their salaries will actually listen.

[Lucid:]

The man who wrote SOPA has a SOPA violation on his own website. I don't think many, if any, of the congressmen supporting SOPA really understand the effects it could have. SOPA would completely bring down the internet, and I think the blackout helps people understand that, through SOPA, these websites wouldn't exist anymore.

[Poggio]

I kinda wish youtube would black out. I think if that site did it and the vast network it controlled many americans would be upset and see how bad the bill is.

I do love that bit of irony XD it amuses me.

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_XBgig_ZQM

[Coda]

As far as I understand, people who support SOPA haven't actually read the bill (or can't understand it; it's written in pretty opaque legalese) but instead are in support of the idea of passing legislation to deal with foreign pirate sites (or at least don't want to be seen opposing it). And there's nothing wrong with wanting to deal with piracy. But SOPA doesn't even follow the precedent from DMCA (which despite its initial critics has actually turned out to be a pretty good way of handling it) -- SOPA doesn't require that the defendant even be informed that there's action being taken against them. THIS, really, is the biggest LEGAL problem.

There's a lot of commentary about censorship. The fact is that SOPA doesn't actually enable direct censorship (at least not for US sites), and there are no first-amendment rights at stake. This is a common misconception, and it's intentionally supported by a lot of knowing parties for the sake of raising awareness of the problem. The censorship is INDIRECT -- by being subject to a SOPA claim, a site can have its funding and support and search results stripped away, which may lead to the site's closure. The reason this comes up as a "censorship" issue is that the lack of notification and the unreasonable appeals process means that someone who wishes to censor you can make a FALSE SOPA claim against you and you won't know about it until you're already screwed.

The "end of the Internet" hype is all about what a website would have to do to eliminate all risk of a potential SOPA claim -- to remove itself from being considered a site that supports piracy (and therefore immune from SOPA claims), a site would practically have to remove all sources of user-contributed material or it would have to moderate all user input for copyright issues before allowing them to be made visible. As doing this would destroy most social/crowd-sourced sites, most sites would therefore have to endure the liability of being subject to a false SOPA claim. This isn't a problem with DMCA because the site receives notice to remove the infringing content, but with SOPA the only clue you have is that your ad revenue check suddenly stops coming in, at which point it's too late to appeal because those checks only come in every month but the appeals window is only a week.

The technical problems with SOPA are of course a big deal too, and requiring every DNS server and search engine in the country to obey a certain blacklist is commercially impractical for smaller ISPs and technically difficult for most search engines. But as this isn't an actual LEGAL problem with the bill, complaints in this direction are practically outweighed by the strength of "it's worth the cost" arguments.

[Illusion]

I'm against SOPA.
My reasons
1. It's a step up to government Internet filtering, and with that being in place some silly adults will try to "destroy" the Internet by trying to ban sites because they think the Internet is far to adicting.
2. Manga reading sites, and anime watching sites will close down, I would literally kill A LOT OF PEOPLE when this happens. I will no joke drop support to ALL companies supporting SOPA. >.>
3. As the Manga/Anime sites go down businesses that translate Japanese will have a hard time selling Manga/Anime or even knowing what's popular in the United States because teens won't know what's new.

I bet I might over eggagerate a bit on some things, but I'm highly against SOPA. So far everyone I know who supports it only know that it's supposed to stop piracy. :/
Luckily I can vote during election time. <3

[Renata]

I'm against it as well I have been since it was first introduced I think it was a year or two back now. I honestly think that if it was going to pass it would have by now but seeing the reactions from some of the sites that I use to acquire things I doubt it will pass. This blackout of some sites is a good way to bring attention to congress however there are better ways they could have done it instead of just shutting down some of the more used sites that some people thrive on their existence which thats sad in it's own way. I'm assuming that Spa will not get passed since it's pretty much giving the government a kill switch to the internet and that's just going to slowly stop us from being a democracy.(Do note I might have some of my facts wrong if so i'm sorry.)

[Illusion]

I started hearing about this during October :/
I should talk about this with my teachers it should be a fun conversation.

[Rem]

i support the blackout mainly for raising the issue and highlighting it for people who wouldn't have known about it -- of course it's up to those people then to follow the links provided by every blackout'd site to find out what's going on (which considering some of the responses to the Wikipedia blackout apparently is impossible for some people to do 9_9) but I'll take some angry confused upset users if it gets even a handful of people to find out more, and call their Congressperson and protest. I sure did (even before this) - the response today was actually kind of amusing, my local representative's office actually said to me, before I even said anthing - "Are you calling about SOPA? We're aware of the issue" lmao I bet you're aware... Didn't stop me from speaking my piece though haha. You can't control people's reactions or whether they care of course but if it did change some Congresspeople's votes then - mission accomplished! I don't think the bill will pass but I am really disappointed at some of the companies that have supported it :(

[Coda]

Illusion, I'm speaking here as a user and not as a moderator, because saying this as a moderator would get me kicked off the staff...

Shut up.

What you just posted says "I hate SOPA because it'll stop me from getting copyrighted stuff for free."

That kind of attitude is exactly why a lot of people are ignoring the SOPA protests -- there's a sense among people who aren't Internet-savvy that anyone who would oppose SOPA supports piracy. And people who say the things you have said here are then cited as support for that belief.

Now, with my moderator hat back on, I'm not going to censor you, because you haven't officially broken any rules (though if you were to have given examples you WOULD have) and because I believe that you have the right to say it even though I think you're wrong.

But mod hat back off... statements like that make SOPA opponents look bad.

Now then, Renata, I wish that reactions alone were enough to say "it'll never pass". Sadly, Congress makes unpopular moves all the time; being unpopular doesn't stop laws from being passed, especially if the legislators voting for it believe that it's for the public's own good. :(

The blackout hasn't really raised awareness in Congress at all. Everyone in the House already knows about SOPA and everyone in the Senate already knows about PIPA. After all, they're expected to vote on it. Furthermore every representative and senator has already received a flood of e-mails, paper letters, and phone calls about it from the OTHER protest drives that have happened before today. This is why I say the blackout itself really isn't going to change the minds of very many congresspeople... though a new flood of people who have complaints about it MIGHT have an effect.

Finally, the US isn't a democracy. It never was and it was never intended to be. It's a republic. The whole reason we have a Congress, the whole reason we have an Electoral College, the whole reason that we elect representatives instead of voting directly on issues is because majority rule hurts minorities. If the US were a democracy, a lot of the protections that have been passed to help minorities wouldn't exist. The system works by allowing a small group of people (Congress) to be able to IGNORE the majority for the sake of finding a better solution.

But it also means that there are fewer people who need bought out to make things happen. A republic only works if the representatives are willing to make impartial decisions to pass laws that benefit the public. When politics interferes with doing what's right, that's when the system has failed.