Actually, this topic trended in Twitter and Google. This SOPA thingy is the reason why there were blackout of sites such as Wikipedia. A little introduction here, SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill introduced by US Representative Lamar S. Smith against online piracy and trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.
This SOPA has a scope from videos to files. There are even more reports that if SOPA is implemented fully, sites like Flickr, Tumblr and such will also be affected.
For a surfer like me, I’m very AFFECTED by this SOPA crap. Come on, I won’t be seeing my favorite anime and TV series because of this SOPA bill. There’s also this PIPA (PROTECT IP Act or Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act), but the hell I care about that too.
Imagine having no Piratebay where we get our Torrent files? What kind of life would we live having to spend every download? Would you become happy with SOPA? Share what you feel about this, and become one of the fighters against SOPA! SAY NO TO SOPA!
I understand the idea of SOPA but it’s useless. xD; People will do everything to change it. I prefer to download so yeah, I’m not a big fan of it.
No longer having access to illegal material is not the main problem (though I would miss fansubs).
What is getting everyone worried is how draconian the current wording of the bills is in allowing the complete shutdown of a site if it is suspected of having any content or even linked content that infringes copyright including user-submitted material. That is why forums and sites like Youtube that allow anything to be posted without review are in danger if these bills get approved as they are.
Sorry to say this, but Pirate Bay hosts links of torrents that are clearly illegal. The site is not a good example to bring up when trying to argue for these bills not to pass since these are the very sites companies are trying to get rid of.
Torrenting copyrighted material should only be done privately between friends and not the entire world. Torrenting should be like sharing physical media and not like a local neighborhood pirate center. Only torrents that should be public are user-created original works like on Mininova.
For these bills, the politicians are just having a hard time of addressing piracy yet not severely censoring the users of the internet.
Though people do advocate free speech when going against these bills, censorship, in this case, is appropriate for illegally distributed copyrighted material.
However, it would be bad to punish the sites because of its user-generated content. The user/uploader, and not the site, should be punished unless the site owner clearly allowed the infringement to happen.
There is also the debate that the same companies that are suing for copyright infringement are the ones that promoted the enabling of the general public to pirate using torrenting software.
I like that the government is trying clean up the internet. However, it should not have to “break” the internet as well.
In all of this, I just wonder where AMVs’ fate lie. Would the fair use clause still protect them?
Definitely NO TO SOPA! The bill has been temporarily shelved, but even without this bill, FBI is still trying to censor the Internet. I hope that somehow there’ll be a stop to this!