Sopa and PIPPA

[deano_ue]

look i know politics is a big no no here, but honestly with the boards content and history this is something that really affects all of us and if passed could really bite everyone here right in the arse

[GogglesPizanno]

I've been contacting my rep's for weeks.
Luckily they are very much opposed to it.

And it's true, while this site is small and for the most part outside of the notice of the powers that be, a lot of the content that people post here (skins, character examples etc...) runs afoul of the wording of the bills.

[Reepicheep]

This is like destroying Alderaan to get a rebel base.

And look how well that turned out.

[The Hitman]

I contacted my reps as well. Unfortunately, they are in favor of the idea. Thanks Ohio!

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

The thing is, this isn't a political issue in the normal sense.  There are Democrats and Republicans both supporting and opposing the bills.  There are both extremely conservative and extremely liberal organizations going against it.  It really has nothing to do with the normal lines of division.  It's the case of a few large companies and some well meaning folks that don't really understand what's going on versus everyone else.

The good news is the everyone else is winning for now, I think.   We can beat this.

[Tomato]

I KNEW there was a reason I hated this state.

But in all seriousness, I don't understand how people in congress can support this bill in good faith. It's incredibly easy to misuse given the wording of the bill, it knocks giant basketball sized holes in the already tenuous security of the internet as a whole, and it flys in the face of our constitutional right to free speech.

But even disregarding all that, even looking at it from only the narrow-minded, idiotic perspective that this open-worded mess of a bill might put a stop to piracy... it's full of donkey droppings. The method these two bills propose to block access to a particular website is to cut off it's DNS address... in other words, "freedomreborn DOT net" or "youtube DOT com." It's not ACTUALLY going to remove the website in question, it's just going to block the website url. But if you're say... a hacker, an internet pirate, or pretty much anyone with a moderate knowledge of how the internet works, you can still go to the website via the ip address. So the claim that this is somehow intended only for the "worst offenders" is laughable... because they can easily get around it.

[BentonGrey]

Let me say that, though this is a political issue, I think these acts certainly can and should be discussed here.  As TUE said, this directly effects us.  Let's just be careful to stay focused on the matter at hand and not stray too far into what idiots our leaders are....

For my part, I've been growing more and more disgusted of late, and this is just one more thing.  I wish I could say that I'm not surprised by this legislation's success.  I shouldn't be.  I've been paying attention enough that this should be par for the course, but despite that I'm still blown away by the arrogance, stupidity, and immorality of these bills.  The way these bills can impact freedom of speech alone should be enough to have everyone in America howling mad...despite that, here we are. 

Heck, even if you don't think about it from a moral or legal perspective, this is bill is setting us up to spend billions more at a time when we are trillions in debt and getting worse.  This is a great time to take on a huge spending project.  That's not to mention the billions in tax income and the thousands upon thousands of jobs these bills will cost us as internet companies and the like flee the US in drove.

[lugaru]

I'm a big league of legends player and I was thrilled to find this:

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1696462   (you need to scroll down a little).

Hi, this is Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado. As a member of the League of Legends community (partial to Anivia and Maokai), and as someone who made his living as an Internet entrepreneur before being elected to Congress, I'm greatly concerned about the future of the Internet and gaming if Congress doesn't wake up. You may have heard that Congress is currently considering a bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. While SOPA has a ton of problems, there are some significant issues that I thought fellow gamers might want to know about.

I'm particularly concerned that SOPA might stifle the kind of innovation that brings us games we love, such as LoL. The bill makes it far too easy for angry competitors to sue good law abiding companies out of existence. It threatens any company or website that depends on user-generated content, even companies like Riot. Instead of coming up with great ways to keep making games like LoL even better, companies will have to spend their money hiring lawyers. That's why companies like Riot, who want to protect the games they create, are opposed to SOPA.

I've been working on alternative legislation that would protect the games companies create while also fostering innovation. But we also need you to call your members of Congress and let them know of your opposition to SOPA. This bill has a very real chance of passing, and it is up to all of who want to protect the Internet to take action. More information is available at http://keepthewebopen.com/. Please make your voices heard in this debate! I will be happy to respond to your posts below, and will check back every few hours today and respond to as many as I can.

That is right, Congressman Jared Polis plays Maokai. That is a thinking mans champion, I hope he runs for president one day.

[Tomato]

A gamer president? has my vote.

So, I've spent a few hours looking up articles on SOPA and PIPA via google, and I've been floored by more than one of them. Some of these articles are claiming (based on statements by the MPAA) that the public outrage regarding these bills is entirely manufactured by the internet companies participating in the blackout. One article in particular tried to claim that "Five days ago, almost nobody knew or cared about SOPA.". Now, I'm not exactly the most avid person in this whole fight (I haven't even contacted my representatives yet, truth be told) but even I know that's BS. I personally had a discussion with my dad about this bill during christmas break, and I'd heard about it weeks before that. I remember how this started as people spreading the word person to person, informing them about the wording of the bill and breaking down what it all meant. I remember people, PEOPLE, not companies, breaking godaddy nearly a month ago, forcing it to switch from a pro to anti stance on the bill. And I remember those same people mobilizing the internet behemoths to get out and do something drastic.

I've got news for you, MPAA. This isn't the internet companies fighting you. It's human beings who actually read your dumb bill and unearthed the flaws you tried to sneak past them. It's the information age baby. You try to sneak a bill in, the one person who notices will have that spread to thousands of people before the week has passed.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Uh Oh.  I just got worse.

The hollywood folks are not happy about vague statements from the President that may hint that he might be against it maybe.  Depending on how you interpret it.

Anyhow, they are now boycotting all donations to his election campaign, cancelling all fundraisers. That's a MAJOR source of funding for him and may be enough to force him to start pushing it, even though he has mostly stayed out of the debate.

[MJB]

Eff the "Hollywood folk".

SOPA & PIPA need to be shot down. Any "Hollywood folk" that support it should be outed & shunned by the internet using public.

[Tomato]

Just wanted to commmennt on the president thing, without going too deep into it (I would advise others not to jump into it either... let's keep this bipartisan, k?) It's a desperation move, nothing more. The president might have to come out and make a vague statement about piracy, but I doubt he'll tempt the same beasts that are currently enngaged with congress to shut this bill down. The whole ppoint of reelection funds is to get votes, and he won't get very many going against this IMHO.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

It turns out he already has a billion dollars in his campaign fund, so yeah, it may not make much of a difference, especially not now.

In addition, I just learned that during the protest yesterday, 50 senators and congressmen officially came out against SOPA and PIPA, including many that had previously been for it.

[oldmanwinters]

And now Megaupload.com has been shut-down by the Feds.  This is a big blow to the FR community since so many downloads are hosted there.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Yeah, but there was a TON of illegal stuff on their, particularly full movies and tv shows freely available on their video site.  They appeared to be doing nothing about it, so I can't really fault the government for that, particularly if they followed all the rules and such.  Which SOPA would remove.

I am, however, sorry for the many, many people who had totally legit download available.  There is a certain catlike FR member who will provide alternate hosting on request, however.

[thalaw2]

it seems that SOPA and PIPPA would make the US no better than "The Great Firewall of China"....maybe worse according to some experts.  The big push will be to force people to use their real names when posting in social networking sites, it's working in Iran. 

Anyway...no SOPA, no PIPPA, No XL

[Tomato]

it seems that SOPA and PIPPA would make the US no better than "The Great Firewall of China"....maybe worse according to some experts.  The big push will be to force people to use their real names when posting in social networking sites, it's working in Iran. 

Anyway...no SOPA, no PIPPA, No XL

See, to me that's kinda dumb. I make no secret of my real name, especially with you guys, but I grew up during a time period where you just don't post your real name on the internet. Not because of big brother watching you or whatever, but because there are legitimate dangers in opening yourself up to anyone who could possibly want to find you. To me, it's like painting a giant red target on your back.

That, and getting an email for a "Tobias Red" is a pretty good indication that the email isn't from someone who knows word one about me.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Some of PIPA's co-sponsoers have now turned against it, as has the minority leader.  This version of the bill now does not have enough votes on its side to go to a vote as is.

[stumpy]

The bills as they are currently written will definitely not pass in their original time frames. There has been too much outcry. As Tomato noted, the pro-blacklist people are already trying to spin the reaction against SOPA/PIPA as "fake" protest by internet weirdos, something that politicians and the media should ignore. But, the protests worked and it's done for the moment.

This is an issue that will require vigilance because of the concentrated benefits versus diffuse costs issue. While the average person may not understand how much impact this bill will have on him, there is a relatively small group that will benefit greatly from being able to use a law like this to bludgeon its competitors and that group really wants this to pass. And, they have the former 5-term US Senator (with all of the accompanying inside access) leading their charge. What's happened over the past several weeks is a setback for them, but they have the advantage because they are willing to wait. This bill will help them if it passes now and it will help them if it passes in the future.

So, they will wait and they will probably approach the battle next time with somewhat less arrogance. (This time, it was largely pushed through committee while ignoring technical issues and offering very little chance to amend it.) In all likelihood, they are going to start making noises about being open to "reasonable compromises" and "fixing" the bill, but what they really are likely to do is pull back and then try to sneak an extremely similar bill through at a time when it will attract less attention. They may try to tack on some good-sounding provision that will be politically difficult to oppose, like adding a section about keeping children safe from internet predators and coming up with some new mangled name for the bill whose acronym is SAFE KIDS or something. And, they will do their best to buy the silence of some of the louder critics in some way or other, such as finding a way to make the bill less onerous to Google, for example.

BTW, I went to EFF's action page on SOPA/PIPA a while ago and used their system to let my rep and senators know that SOPA is a disaster. I also pointed out how irresponsible and unacceptable it was to vote in favor of complex bills where there is no solid understanding of what the bills outlaw or the impacts of compliance with them. Too many of these guys are proudly clueless on the technology about which they are legislating. They are derelict in voting for something without understanding it, glossing over the details and assuming that the enforcing agencies and courts will deal with the consequences. When  a legislator can't say with any certitude what a bill will do, advocating its passage and actually voting for it descends to the legislative equivalent of stumbling around blindfolded with a gun and pulling the trigger, then saying, "I didn't take the time to learn that it was loaded or where it was pointing, I just wanted to do something." 

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

The senate majority leader has announced that the bill is being posponed and will not come up for vote on Tuesday.

Also all current Presdential candidates have come out against it, and the current President has at least hinted that he might oppose it too, which means that a veto seems likely no matter what happens with the election even if the thing could get passed.

It looks to me like it may be dead in the water, at least for now.  I'm sure it's not the last we'll see of it though.

[Tomato]

I think that the MPAA is grasping at straws right now for this, but I'm starting to see a new trend in how they're trying to twist the public in their favor. Going into some of the more recent articles (the ones intent on exuding the misinformation about how all this was fake outrage started by google) I'm seeing a lot of mention of these bills being meant to stop "foreign" thieves" and "foreign" pirates... in other words, "them OTHER people."

First of all, these bills do affect citizens in the US as much, if not more, than anyone in other countries. If there is anything we have proven as a nation, given an opportunity or loophole that we could possibly use to sue the ever loving monkeys out of one another, we will use and abuse those loopholes until the universe explodes.

Second, even if there was some mystical provision in there (which, BTW, there ISN'T) that kept this bill only to foreign criminals... that, to me is worse. If a man is murdered in another country, the US has no right to impose our legal system upon that crime (for better or for worse). Why should we suddenly have the right to police what someone does in another country? Because the person who made the content happens to live here? That's like saying we have the right to invade a third world country and confiscate iPhone ripoffs because Apple is based here.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

In theory, you are right Tomato, but the internet was based on US military technology in the first place and is still under the control of the US government at its roots, although most of unaware of this.  In a sense, the network structure is US owned, although the network itself is worldwide. This complicates this issue.

[stumpy]

It is somewhat complicated, historically. A big part of what has become the internet, ARPANET, was started as a project for the military, but ARPANET is long gone and the whole system expanded to include development by non-military research and private commercial entities. For many years it has long been a mostly civilian endeavor. The name "internet" includes the ability to connect different networks together, which is how it grew so quickly beyond its more limited military and academic research origins.

Meanwhile, the network backbone of the internet is largely privately owned. ARPANET and NFSNET were government-sponsored network backbones in the early days, but neither is a going concern today (though the government still maintains some of the equipment that connects its computers). In the US, the big telecom companies pay for and maintain most of the hardware that the data is transmitted on. There are countries where the government runs the telecommunications networks, but it isn't accurate to say that's the case in the US. For instance, if the US government wanted to "shut down" the internet (which is a power some politicians have asked for), it would require the coercion/cooperation of the private companies that actually run most of it. Even the assignment of IP numbers and domain names isn't a government function, though there have been (and will be) attempts to legislate the process.

And, of course, even if the relevant networks and hardware in the US were government-owned (they are not), that would not be the whole internet. The rest of the world isn't generally using a network provided by the US government. The infringers allegedly targeted by SOPA/PIPA are largely outside the US (though, as noted, there is little in the legislation that limits its reach to those targets), and the difficulties in going after them aren't really addressed by these bills. That's why the bills include provisions to force US search engines to exclude results that point to targeted sites and attempts to force US DNS providers to clear those targeted domains from their lists. As many technologists have pointed out, some of the things these bills want to force internet companies to do would introduce new security issues and still wouldn't really prevent access to blacklisted sites.

With present technology, there simply may not be a great way to securely protect all intellectual property from infringement. IMO, politicians implementing costly and draconian schemes in hopes of gaining some marginal improvement in IP protection is a bad idea. (Ben Franklin's 200+ year old nostrum about liberty and safety is as appropriate now as it was well before anyone had thought of an internet.) Those schemes are particularly poor when the "bad actors" are largely outside the proper jurisdiction of US law. A better approach might be working diplomatically with other countries to come to agreements on what IP is and how to protect it and improve enforcement of those rules. But, ultimately, grown ups need to accept that there is not likely to be a perfect solution and then they need to deal with that reality.

[Figure Fan]

It is somewhat complicated, historically. A big part of what has become the internet, ARPANET, was started as a project for the military, but ARPANET is long gone and the whole system expanded to include development by non-military research and private commercial entities. For many years it has long been a mostly civilian endeavor. The name "internet" includes the ability to connect different networks together, which is how it grew so quickly beyond its more limited military and academic research origins.

Meanwhile, the network backbone of the internet is largely privately owned. ARPANET and NFSNET were government-sponsored network backbones in the early days, but neither is a going concern today (though the government still maintains some of the equipment that connects its computers). In the US, the big telecom companies pay for and maintain most of the hardware that the data is transmitted on. There are countries where the government runs the telecommunications networks, but it isn't accurate to say that's the case in the US. For instance, if the US government wanted to "shut down" the internet (which is a power some politicians have asked for), it would require the coercion/cooperation of the private companies that actually run most of it. Even the assignment of IP numbers and domain names isn't a government function, though there have been (and will be) attempts to legislate the process.

And, of course, even if the relevant networks and hardware in the US were government-owned (they are not), that would not be the whole internet. The rest of the world isn't generally using a network provided by the US government. The infringers allegedly targeted by SOPA/PIPA are largely outside the US (though, as noted, there is little in the legislation that limits its reach to those targets), and the difficulties in going after them aren't really addressed by these bills. That's why the bills include provisions to force US search engines to exclude results that point to targeted sites and attempts to force US DNS providers to clear those targeted domains from their lists. As many technologists have pointed out, some of the things these bills want to force internet companies to do would introduce new security issues and still wouldn't really prevent access to blacklisted sites.

With present technology, there simply may not be a great way to securely protect all intellectual property from infringement. IMO, politicians implementing costly and draconian schemes in hopes of gaining some marginal improvement in IP protection is a bad idea. (Ben Franklin's 200+ year old nostrum about liberty and safety is as appropriate now as it was well before anyone had thought of an internet.) Those schemes are particularly poor when the "bad actors" are largely outside the proper jurisdiction of US law. A better approach might be working diplomatically with other countries to come to agreements on what IP is and how to protect it and improve enforcement of those rules. But, ultimately, grown ups need to accept that there is not likely to be a perfect solution and then they need to deal with that reality.

Stumpy, these posts have been amazing and well written. I just had to say so.

[Mr. Hamrick]

Love how you worded it, Stumpy.  Have to say that I am a bit skeptical that SOPA is completely gone away despite what has been said otherwise and the same with PIPA being "stalled". 

Despite being in the industry, or because of it perhaps, I personally have been very much against it.  I won't get into the details of why but it largely has to do with personal beliefs. 

[ow_tiobe_sb]

Despite being in the industry, or because of it perhaps, I personally have been very much against it.  I won't get into the details of why but it largely has to do with personal beliefs.

Aye, I feel the same way, Mr. Mr. Hamrick.  While I do not believe MPAA exists, I still fear it. 

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Whirled Braker

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Opponents to SOPA and PIPA have now introduced OPEN which seeks to do the same thing while preseving freedom.  There would be an investigation and appeal process and if found willfully violating copyright, a website would have its funding sources cut off.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248525/sopa_pipa_stalled_meet_the_open_act.html#tk.rss_news

The bill can be read here

http://www.keepthewebopen.com/

Hollywood had already come out in opposition to it saying it goes too easy on pirates.

[Tomato]

Yes, because SOPA and PIPA would have done sooooooo much to them, what with not actually closing down the "criminal" websites and breaking the internet with sheer ignorance. That'd show em!

Seriously, MPAA? You need to be happy with what people are giving you. Seriously, right now people could very easily be like "no anti-piracy laws! They all is bad!" The fact that people are still trying to work on a proper bill (one that doesn't, y'know, break the internet) should prove that this isn't a conspiracy against you... your bills just sucked.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

There's actually a group that has concluded that Hollywood needs to go and is now actively trying to bankrupt them.

Not through anything illegal.  They are instead determined to fun start up companies to provide alternate entertainment to run Hollywood out of buisiness.

I myself don't think Hollywood need to go away entirely, but they are going to have to change and adapt, and perhaps be a smaller operation then previously.

[Tomato]

I don't even think they need that necessarily... I'm not going to begrudge an industry that employs hundreds of people per movie the opportunity to make money... heck, I'll personally go out of my way to buy blu-ray copies of films I enjoy, even if I don't personally think the quality is worth the extra money 80% of the time, just to support the movie. But the movie industry, as well as a significant portion of the gaming industry (I'm looking at YOU EA Games.) needs a good, old-fashioned, Gibb slap. It's like Stumpy says... there comes a point when you have to realize that whatever you do, someone is going to rip you off... whether it be running torrents of pirated video, or some guy in mexico selling iphone ripoffs, or that dude who sneaks a pack of gum out of the store in his pocket because he doesn't want to take the trouble of going through a line. You grit your teeth, try and make an example of some of the worst of the thieves, but generally accept the loss in profit as normal and calculate it into your budget.

What you do NOT do, however, is punish those who buy your product legitimately. Nowadays we have games and movies so heavily caked in DRM and other such nonsense that people will buy it, then go out and pirate that same movie/game ANYWAY just so they don't have to deal with the ads and copyright protections on the standard disk. When you have reached that point, there is something seriously wrong with how you are choosing to do business.