My friends, the internet is in great peril. Right now, there is a bill making the rounds in Washington D.C. that will destroy the internet we know and love. It's called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), or as it's known by its more freedom-hating name, the Internet Blacklist Bill. This bill, if made law, will grant rights holders the unprecedented power to shut down any site that is "devoted to copyright-infringing activities". This may sound all well and good. After all, piracy is a huge problem. But the problem is that this bill is so vague and broad that any troll or asshole with an axe to grind can easily shut down any site he doesn't like simply by claiming that the site is host to copyright-infringing material. Let me explain it like this: let's say there's a person who holds a grudge against Metal Storm. Perhaps he was banned for being an asshole. If SOPA is made into law, he could shut this site down by claiming there is copyright infringement going on. He doesn't even have to present any proof. There is no due process. Under this law, a website is guilty until proven innocent, the exact opposite of how our justice system is supposed to work.

Read up on this, my friends. Arm yourselves with knowledge.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111122/04254316872/definitive-post-why-sopa-protect-ip-are-bad-bad-ideas.shtml
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/244011/the_us_stop_online_piracy_act_a_primer.html
http://techland.time.com/2011/11/17/sopa-wont-stop-online-piracy-would-censor-everyone-else/
http://consumerist.com/2011/11/consumer-groups-the-stop-online-piracy-act-goes-too-far.html
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-how-the-stop-online-piracy-act-will-kill-innovation/
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/sopa-why-the-broken-web-should-stay-broken/63724

This bill must be stopped at any cost. If you're a resident of the United States, e-mail your elected officials in congress, call them, do anything that will give us a greater chance at stopping this bill from becoming law.

The online petition to prevent this had over 100 signatures in the first 60 seconds. This is literally the worst imaginable thing anyone could do.

Doesn't it violate the first amendment?

Written by Troy Killjoy on 24.11.2011 at 04:58

The online petition to prevent this had over 100 signatures in the first 60 seconds. This is literally the worst imaginable thing anyone could do.

Doesn't it violate the first amendment?

Indeed, it does violate the first amendment. Any effort to block content is censorship. But the lawmakers don't give a shit. Luckily, voicing our opposition is starting to have an effect. In just the past few days, one of the largest supporters of the bill, the Business Software Alliance, pulled an about face.

Written by Guest on 24.11.2011 at 05:59
In just the past few days, one of the largest supporters of the bill, the Business Software Alliance, pulled an about face.

That's the only good news I've heard about this entire fiasco thus far. Nice to see something positive come out of it.

The sad truth is, if this bill passes, very few people will actually attempt to vote the politicians out of office, the politicians will get re-elected, and continue to ignore the peasents. Sad but true. Also, can the United States govt. really police the WORLDWIDE web? What authority does the U.S have to shut down a website run by some 59 year old dude from Zimbabwe?

Written by Guest on 24.11.2011 at 08:08
Also, can the United States govt. really police the WORLDWIDE web?

That's an area I'm confused about as well. I'm thinking, even if they had the right to shut down servers in Americaland, what right do they have to shut down a site like Metal Storm, whose server is based in Estonia? Estonia. Half of the American population doesn't even know what the fuck Estonia is.

Looks like they're trying to do to internet what Stalin and Hitler did to the society during WW2. I do hope this act is stopped.

Yeah, I heard about this already. It's all over the web.

Silly little mortals, you can't destroy the internet.

But if you touch my BitTorrent, I'm gonna go all Molotov barman on Al Gore's ass.

Bumping the thread with this video. I'm not about to let this issue fade into the night.

I think there is a better solution to piracy than this... Not that I know what it is it's just that this could fuck the internet up if it happened ever.

I always thought that one day someone would do something drastic about illegal downloading, but I can't believe that they'll run a policy where no proof of illegal sharing is required to close a site - that's insane.

Written by Guest on 24.11.2011 at 08:08

The sad truth is, if this bill passes, very few people will actually attempt to vote the politicians out of office, the politicians will get re-elected, and continue to ignore the peasents. Sad but true. Also, can the United States govt. really police the WORLDWIDE web? What authority does the U.S have to shut down a website run by some 59 year old dude from Zimbabwe?

What authority does the US have to carry out most of its foreign actions? We already act as the world-police. would it really be that blasphemous to add cyber to that?

[By the way, if anyone is still doubting how harmful these are, consider this. Metal Storm, being a website located in Estonia(....?), could not only get blocked but also prosecuted by the billion-dollar entertainment industries that gets their copyright infringed upon by Youtube, simply because I, an America user, linked a video to Youtube(which we do all the time, and i did in this post), a website that potentially encourages infringement.]

I mean, SOPA & PIPA are censorship in their most dangerous forms. They give the government, and large corporations the power to block nearly any website in the world, whenever they want. That is how vague it is. The revolution in Egypt never could have happened with these in place.

MPAA boss Chris Dodd said that America should copy China's habit of censoring the internet.

Chris Dodd, you are...

China?! Copy China?! The only thing we should try copying from China is their ability to mass produce items of vast necessity for supreme profits and inherent world domination.

It seems Anonymous already took a stand.



as for China, I thought the people already bypassed that by login on boats and whatnot.

and then you have the congress pov

Written by Edmund Fogg on 10.12.2011 at 04:12

I find it funny how the bill they tell you to support is in tiny font at the end.

Written by Guest on 10.12.2011 at 05:38

I find it funny how the bill they tell you to support is in tiny font at the end.

Yuppe and no effort at pointing the voters to any info about the bill. I'm soo waiting for Googles responce on that.

I can't believe how retarded these people are. Are they kidding me? We're putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work?

Ya, well let's censor the internet. That should help.

Anonymous are a flock of assholes who randomly sprawl around and infiltrate the fuck out of things at will. Most are just passive followers, few are actually skilled enough to coordinate the attacks.

Nevertheless, I'd like to see 'em shove it up Big Brother's ass.

Written by Guest on 10.12.2011 at 20:23

South Park clip

Exactly what I had in mind when I saw the video. And that was one hell of a long minute watching this.

This bill is a pretty bad idea. First of all, it is impossible for the US to actually shut down any websites that are not on servers that fall under their jurisdiction. Instead, SOPA will be a filter that censors the web for Americans. In other words, USA will not have access to as much information on the Internet as the rest of the world.

Furthermore, if this bill gets passed, it will only act as incentive to make fully anonymous websurfing systems such as Freenet more mainstream, not to mention how easy such DNS filtering techniques have been to bypass in countries that employ them (China, Turkey etc.)

This bill will not affect the rest of the world at all. If anything, it might make piracy easier since offending sites will find it harder to become notorious in the USA on account of being invisible.

I liked TotalBiscuit's video on this:

Written by Troy Killjoy on 24.11.2011 at 06:00

Written by Guest on 24.11.2011 at 05:59
In just the past few days, one of the largest supporters of the bill, the Business Software Alliance, pulled an about face.

That's the only good news I've heard about this entire fiasco thus far. Nice to see something positive come out of it.

I hope there's more positives coming..

They are delusional of they think this bill will stop piracy. In fact, I just read that there are tools being created already and especially to bypass SOPA in addition to the proxy servers and other programs which are already available.

Written by Empty Spaces on 23.12.2011 at 07:55
In fact, I just read that there are tools being created already and especially to bypass SOPA in addition to the proxy servers and other programs which are already available.

Consider me interested. Do you have any links to those articles?

Written by Troy Killjoy on 23.12.2011 at 07:57


Consider me interested. Do you have any links to those articles?

Well, This is the article I read that mentions "DeSOPA" near the end. I just looked it up and found this article about it. Looks like it's just a Firefox add-on.

Well, assuming that 99% of what people say on the internet is either complete hogwash or shameless promotion, maybe it's not such a bad idea

Obviously people will start finding methods to bypass it. It's not like they hired John fucking Carmack to program this bullshit.

For people interested, you can put a blackout on you site for tommorrow. This will support the anti-sopa mouvement and showw people how a bill like that might affect them. Of course the more sites blackout the better.

http://sopablackout.org/

MA be down tommrow and this is stupid , I think qll ppl in world shood not go to workd one month , this is no way to act it means some asshole post in MS something ghey can shut down site , what next , I post song lyric coppy in FB I get life sentence
I hope some crazy will kill SOPA owners