Sopa

[Fujito]

I don't think anyone really cares about censoring a sausagefest community fapping to herrafrush cars.

[morla]

Reddit has been down all day for the blackout. It's painful, but I can suffer through for a good cause

[Chefsp0t]

Originally Posted by Scapegoat

fairly certain all forums violate copyright laws due to the nature of public posts.

open forums could easily be shut down under the bill

Originally Posted by Elliott18t

considering we post content here from other automotive e-Magazines and the such... this forum would be pretty ****ed or boring..

My thoughts exactly. This could be a very dangerous situation for any forum.

[Fujito]

Wikipedia has been down, too.

In similar news all internet forum arguments have halted. Apparently no one knows anything at all.

[the a3k]

My friends email to Howard Gantman (VP of the MPAA - Howard_Gantman@mpaa.org )

Dear Sir,

I am responding to the letter that you wrote concerning the recent blackouts by tech giants.

How dare you? How dare you call blacking out a website or posting a banner on a website an abuse of power?
Abuse of power, you mean like giving ABSOLUTE power to judicial courts (and therefore the Entertainment Industry which BUYS them) the power to shut down a website, force a website not to do business with another, or force censorship on the American Public?

You, and your cronies, want to claim that piracy is costing the American Public millions in revenue, and thousands of jobs from the leading job creator in the country? Where do you get your information from? A quick Google search will show the top 10 job creating industries in 2011. Somehow, and I know this may come as a shock to you, the Entertainment Industry fails to make the list. Another point being, we've been in a recession for a few years now, and the unemployment figures never get any better, my question is: where are these jobs you people are magically creating? Get with the program.

Laws like SOPA were written by lobbyists whose sole interest is stealing more money from the American taxpayer. You people spent over $90 million dollars writing this law by itself. Where do you get the gall to think that you can buy legislation and vilify anyone who has the "nerve" to stand up to something that will take away his/her rights and freedoms?

If SOPA and PIPA pass, Piracy will not go away. It is insane to think that people will not find a way to get around these laws. All the passage of these laws will do is create the world's second greatest Internet censorship: being outdone only by China.

I know you will probably not read this, and even if you do, you will not agree, because you are paid good money to have your mind made up for you by a corporation (by the way, I hope you are very proud of yourself for having zero freewill) and you will probably not respond.

Either way, the voices of people who don't have the money to buy a law STILL NEED TO BE HEARD.

Thanks and have a great life

[rickeo]

Originally Posted by Elliott18t

http://twitter.com/herpderpedia

Omfg...

[JankyS13]

Originally Posted by the a3k

My friends email to Howard Gantman (VP of the MPAA - Howard_Gantman@mpaa.org )

Dear Sir,

I am responding to the letter that you wrote concerning the recent blackouts by tech giants.

How dare you? How dare you call blacking out a website or posting a banner on a website an abuse of power?
Abuse of power, you mean like giving ABSOLUTE power to judicial courts (and therefore the Entertainment Industry which BUYS them) the power to shut down a website, force a website not to do business with another, or force censorship on the American Public?

You, and your cronies, want to claim that piracy is costing the American Public millions in revenue, and thousands of jobs from the leading job creator in the country? Where do you get your information from? A quick Google search will show the top 10 job creating industries in 2011. Somehow, and I know this may come as a shock to you, the Entertainment Industry fails to make the list. Another point being, we've been in a recession for a few years now, and the unemployment figures never get any better, my question is: where are these jobs you people are magically creating? Get with the program.

Laws like SOPA were written by lobbyists whose sole interest is stealing more money from the American taxpayer. You people spent over $90 million dollars writing this law by itself. Where do you get the gall to think that you can buy legislation and vilify anyone who has the "nerve" to stand up to something that will take away his/her rights and freedoms?

If SOPA and PIPA pass, Piracy will not go away. It is insane to think that people will not find a way to get around these laws. All the passage of these laws will do is create the world's second greatest Internet censorship: being outdone only by China.

I know you will probably not read this, and even if you do, you will not agree, because you are paid good money to have your mind made up for you by a corporation (by the way, I hope you are very proud of yourself for having zero freewill) and you will probably not respond.

Either way, the voices of people who don't have the money to buy a law STILL NEED TO BE HEARD.

Thanks and have a great life

^ well written.


maybe a bit far fetched here but I almost want to think that the government is trying the same **** they did with prohibition. Which led to two things state owned package stores and

[JankyS13]

just saw this and kinda laughed.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/01...website-image/

[Fujito]

Someone should take Smith's picture and turn him into a meme.

Let's show him what happens when you challenge the internet.

[JankyS13]

Originally Posted by Fujito

Someone should take Smith's picture and turn him into a meme.

Let's show him what happens when you challenge the internet.

the ice breaker for: LamerSmith

[morla]

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/35r1mf/

[JankyS13]

damn no image link there? try meme generator

[JankyS13]

sure some of you have seen this fruity bastards video before, but he makes a few points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...v=YwQhNE65wmg#!

[JankyS13]

https://rt.com/news/sopa-postponed-a...us-piracy-337/
video in link

Bill Killed: SOPA death celebrated as Congress recalls anti-piracy acts

A controversial American anti-piracy act was recalled on Friday, which came as no small victory for hacktivists who launched history's largest attack on several websites – including that of FBI – in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act.

*Those opposing the controversial law have grown jubilant, with many seeing Friday's news as real victory in a sort of war for online freedom. The vote on the anti-piracy legislation, which was due on January, 24, has been postponed.

The words of House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith – who was the chief sponsor of SOPA – came as a bombshell: he stated that American legislators would delay action on similar proposals until the matter is more widely agreed upon.

“I have heard from the critics, and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith said. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”

“The Committee will continue work with copyright owners, Internet companies, and financial institutions to develop proposals that combat online piracy and protect America’s intellectual property.”

He said in a statement that the Judiciary Committee welcomes input “from all organizations and individuals who have an honest difference of opinion about how best to address this widespread problem.”

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that he decision was taken “in light of recent events.”

“There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved,” Reid said Friday morning in a prepared statement. While he condemned illegal activity on the Web, Senator Reid added that lawmakers will “continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans’ intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the Internet.”

The bills – PIPA (PROTECT Internet Privacy Act) in the Senate and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) – in the House, target access to overseas websites that provide pirated content and counterfeit products like movies and music.

Hacker group Anonymous and its supporters celebrated after the bill's postponement was announced, writing “This is victory!” in their Twitter account following the statement by Lamar Smith. However, they cannot but realize that the fight is far from over. “A small battle has been won with the death of SOPA, but the war has just begun. PIPA & ACTA are still alive,” they wrote in their feed, reminding followers of one more significant abbreviation, for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. In October 2007, the United States, the European Community, Switzerland and Japan simultaneously announced that they would negotiate a new intellectual property enforcement treaty – the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA.
*‘Bills could censor innocent users’

*Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a US-based international digital rights advocacy non-profit, confirmed to RT that the online protests over SOPA and PIPA were the biggest in Internet history, with over 115 thousand sites somehow altering their webpages.

“A lot of them blacked out completely, meaning that users couldn’t even get them – including Wikipedia, which is the sixth largest site in the US. This was a huge message to Congress.”

Timm noted that many in the American public had not even heard about the bills before the blackout day, and once these sites blacked out, a multitude of people began calling and emailing their congressional representatives.

“We had here at EFF sent over a million emails just in one day; Google got seven million signatures on their petition. By the end of the day, we had a huge swing in Congress where in the beginning of the day 60 congressmen supported the bill and 30 were against, and by the end of the day we had a hundred against.”

The analyst called it a major victory for Internet freedom when within the next 24 hours, both houses of Congress agreed to shelve the bills indefinitely. And, as he says, the attacks and online protests turned the tables on legislation that, if passed, would have done little to tackle online piracy, but placed excessive restrictions on the average user.

“The overall goal of these bills was to stop online piracy, but unfortunately the provisions were written so broadly that they would probably end up censoring millions of innocent users who never even thought of copyright infringement.” Timm adds that the bills' biggest flaw is that they wouldn't even stop online piracy since they don't go directly after site owners, but after everything around them. Domain names could be censored or delisted from search engines on government orders, while corporations would be allowed to cut payment processes and advertisers from these sites based only on allegations.

“There was going to be broad immunity for Internet service providers to enforce these bills, so they could end up over-blocking sites and capturing innocent users,” the expert noted, adding that free speech would have been obstructed on a massive scale.
*Do-nothing Congress trying to look busy – political cartoonist

*Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Mark Fiore told RT that what Congress' postponement of the vote really shows, is that the attacks were a successful attempt to slow down the process – Congress can write a better bill. He also noted that the serious funding comes from groups like the Motion Picture Association of America, who have a major interest in keeping pirated material off the Web.

He added that the end result he would like to see is a better – and smart bill. Fiore also pointed out that the bills were an attempt by Congress to demonstrate attention to economic problems, but he believes the state should address some more global issues affecting the situation:

“The Congress in the US is largely a do-nothing Congress in the face of economic calamity, and this has really been their attempt to say: ‘Hey, we’re doing something about the economy: we’re going after all this online pirating,’ which is not really as big a problem as they are making it out to be. Yes, it’s terrible, but they would do a lot better if they went after off-shoring jobs and other things that really made a difference in the economy on a larger scale."

now, we wait to see what other BS the government tries to pull.