What are your thoughts on SOPA and PIPA?
By tehmoneydude
@tehmoneydude (149)
Belgium
December 31, 2011 1:51pm CST
So what are SOPA and PIPA?
SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act which gives the governement the power to stop the DNS servers of pointing to a domain name in the USA when the website just contains 1 vulnerable link to something illegal. The site doesn't need to have posted it themselves. If they fail to delete the link within 5 days, that would give the governement the power to censor the full website.
Pipa stands for Protect IP Act. It allows the governement to block direct IP connection to servers for the same reasons as explained above. The poster of the illegal material / link, even if it is a cover of a song, can get 5 years of prison.
Almost the whole entertainement industry wants this law to pass.
But the problem is who would be blocked because almost all the sites have a link like that! It would be for the companies and governement to decide.
In my opinion this is a very dangerous law idea because it gives the possibility to block all websites that they don't like! This would also target freedom of speech! Since a lot of petitions and revolutions are on the internet. This pruposal is like blaming the car company and shutting it down because 1 driver drove into another car. And on top of that give the driver 5 months of jail! I signed the petitions against it! What do you think about this pruposal?
5 responses
@ReViewMeMedia (3785)
• United States
2 Jan 12
I'm all for stopping piracy, but it affects people who are amateur hosts of webshows about copyrighted materials, like movie reviewers or videogame reviewers and it would make karaoke performances that are taped illegal. It could make those shows that are promoting things that people might buy illegal. It could also mean that the government could spy on what people are downloading because it MIGHT be illegal, and that's what I disagree with.
1 person likes this
@knoodleknight18 (917)
• United States
3 Jan 12
Actually does exactly that. I allows the government to look at everything you do and have done on the internet if they have probable cause to believe you've downloaded or posted copyrighted material illegally. It basically nullifies any remote right to privacy on the internet.
What furthers the insanity is that the penalty for such crimes. They want to prosecute it as felony piracy. The same as they would if you sold bootleggeed movies. 5 years in prison, 500,000 fine and a felony record. This is completely insane and unparalleled. If you went to the video store and got caught stealing a stack of DVDs (roughly the same crime) you would only be subject to misdemeanor shoplifting. Maximum of 1 year and the fine is somewhere around 1,000. I don't see how downloading a digital copy is a greater crime than stealing an actual disk from a store.
@polaroidsredwine (509)
• United States
4 Jan 12
I can't get it either - I guess the digital copy is easier to distribute and thus causes a greater loss or something. One of the worst thing about this is that any companies who point at someone and say "This, this work they have is stolen from us," it doesn't even need to be checked for validity before that person gets tossed in jail, and even if they were to try and refute the claims, how could they afford a lawyer who'd be able to stand up to the company?
@polaroidsredwine (509)
• United States
3 Jan 12
Adding insult to injury, for these offenses that are so minor to us, a person could be jailed and/or fined such a huge sum of money it would effectively ruin them, and it seems like it would cause indie artists trying to break out into the scene more harm than good and prevent them from even trying with such threats looming over them.
1 person likes this
@andy77e (5156)
• United States
31 Dec 11
Hard to say. At one time in my past, I planned on being a programmer. I wanted to write software. But while I was working on that, I came to realize what would happen if I created anything worth having.
The moment I created a program that anyone actually wanted, it would be uploaded to the internet, and everyone would just steal it, and I'd remain impoverished while everyone enjoyed my programs.
After two years in programming, I quit. Why bother? Why do something when everyone is going to steal your hard work, and it's very hard to program.
So honestly, I can see the other point of view on this.
Either we need to change the law so that all media is free, and can't be patented, or we need some way of collecting money for stolen property.
I don't know if this law will help or not, but something has to be done. Of course it would be better if people simply STOP STEALING STUFF.. worthless thieves.
@tehmoneydude (149)
• Belgium
1 Jan 12
Well the problem with this law is that everyone can be targetted, even you could be sued because someone posted something on your forums. You would remain impoverished and also shut down for something you didn't even do. And besides that, maybe a lot of people would steal your program. But you need to try to be better than the uploaders. Do updates for your program. It can't be noone pays you for your program right?
1 person likes this
@TheMetallion (1834)
• United States
1 Jan 12
@andy77e: You do realize that people pay software publishers literally billions of dollars every year for software, even before looking at shareware models, right? This seems like a really silly reason to have stopped programming!
2 people like this
@andy77e (5156)
• United States
1 Jan 12
They do. You are correct, they do pay billions of dollars for software.... to big companies. See, Microsoft has their own piracy division, and million dollar lawyers to go around and sue people for pirated software.
I don't see much success in small software firms.
But perhaps you are right. I wonder how many on this forum right now, have paid for every bit of software they have. Or any.
1 person likes this
@chiyosan (30184)
• Philippines
2 Jan 12
This is for the US IP Addresses? I am not familiar with how the internet searches, downloads, etc work... but my concern is that if they would be given access to block anything, then i think all would have to be back to the "text format websites in the world wide web... i mean almost all things we do over the net can be related to these media. what worries me is that they can always tell that someone is guilty of downloading a copyrighted item... when in fact we could have just passed by some site or mistakenly searched for something.
@connierebel (1557)
• United States
1 Jan 12
I think the government is overstepping its bounds again. They are trying to censor the internet, and the piracy is just an excuse. like you said, it gives them the ability to stop any website they don't like. How can I sign the petition against those evil laws?
