The reason why the government is trying some shit like this because of the lobbyist in DC putting money and ideas into their heads. They want something done so they'll bribe until it's heard by the majority. It overall undermines the voting processes the majority, the USERS don't get a vote at all. The vote goes to idiots that are too busy counting their money to really care.Johnson McGee said:I don't understand why the American government would even consider letting this pants-on-head retarded bill pass. At the same time, where is the legislation that protects OUR privacy? Just today I had the Shazam app ask me 5 times back to back for access to my personal information. Pissed me off so much I uninstalled it right there.
Not to mention that the instant a law like this passes every server farm and web based business that could be affected will instantly move offshore to avoid the law and access to foreign websites from within the US will be severely restricted by ISPs fearing lawsuits. America's economy will take a huge hit from this if it passes and it will affect everyone else. I encourage any American citizens on this board to write your congress-person on this issue.
Interestingly enough, Hong Kong is technically not Chinese. When the British handed it over to China it was stipulated it remain independent (sort of anyway) and that they have their own laws, parliament and money. It's also separated from mainland China (which is what the poster was talking about)Volf99 said:I was under the impression that Hong Kong is a nice place to live and given their history, I think it might be some what "free" of the CCP's rules.maxmanrules said:Yes, except China is a horrible place to live. China censors the net anyway, but yeah, they probably encourage piracy, and god knows we've seen enough state-sponsored cyberattacks directed at everything from google to the pentagon.Volf99 said:well if you really wanted to go somewhere that doesn't give a f*ck about intellectual property rights, you could go to mainland China, lol. Seriously I don't think you would have any trouble over there as long as none of your videos say anything bad about the CCP.Versuvius said:I'm just wondering. If this passes and everyone who hosts themselves in the US, hop country and host their servers elsewhere, how long it will take the US to flop its dick around and extend its big floppy juridstriction to other countries? And how long it will take them to be told to fuck right off.
Yeah, I mean look at what happened to Star Trek online, which has completely bombed out and gotten totally screwed. New Zealand is slightly better than America about this stuff, and so are lots of European countries, which don't seem to like the fact that companies can sell something broken and then force the user to waive their rights BEFORE they can tell whether it is broken or not. The problem is most anyone in government has no real idea about copyright or IP, not in a sense related to internet, in fact many profess their ignorance when voting about such topis (but they vote anyway, and make the stupid vote. Retards) And so they really don't care about such things, cause they do not affect them awfully. Most gamers are fairly young, a large proportion being under voting age, which blocks off their views(not saying EVERYONE is, but a fair few) and it may take many years before balance is achieved, but some retarded version of SOPA or Protect IP is going to be passed before that by people who don't know and are only informed by those with big pockets.Therumancer said:Well, we need to change the laws in regards to purely intellectual properties to include more consumer protection. Right now the entire problem is that games exist in a sort of limbo where you are basically giving them money for the right to use something (a liscence) which they can revoke for any reason while keeping your money.maxmanrules said:[First up, excellent essay dude, but your last point really seems to emphasise that we need to make proper fair use laws that regard things such as this. Though, if we did, hey would be fucked up by the large companies with lots of money *sigh*
The reason why the laws were written that way was to prevent someone from buying a game and then saying they owned the entire game, and the people who made it can't sell it anymore because it's no theirs and there should only be one working version of it anywhere (theirs) because it was the product they bought.
Really the entire style of law was not conceived to begin with, with thigns like video games or the internet, or digital distribution in mind. Nor was anyone expecting it to be so heavily exploited by people playing games with contract law through EULAs or companies wanting to basically demand customers waive any and all reasonable protections in order to use their product.
I doubt it will happen in the near future, especially seeing as a lot of companies that like to play god would be "hurt", but the goverment DOES need to step in and create laws governing liscences and virtual properties that protect the consumer and actually give them ownership/full rights over, at least a single copy of a game. Then you can work from there.
I've also been of the opinion that things like MMOs and services that provide virtual goods should legally be required to be backed by a trust. That is to say a pile of money sufficient to pay for continued operations indefinatly through interest... sort of like what rich, irresponsible, kids get from their parents, where they can only withdraw so much money from the pile at one time based on how much it makes so they effectively have an inexhaustible pile of cash. Someone who invests a ton of money in say "league of legends" and then sees it go down loses all of their virtual property at that point, thus I feel to operate something like that a company should be required to ensure it's indefinate existance through having a trust sufficient to maintain servers and office space and an employee or two from now until well... the sun goes cold... it can actually be done. This would effectively make virtual property something fairly "real" which it should be if people are accepting money for it. Of course in reality I imagine this would just cause the collapse of virtual cash shops and the increasingly ridiculous "free to play" model.
I could say more on it, but it's increasingly irrelevent to reality. The bottom line is the current system sucks, I think a fair one could be created if anyone wanted to take the time. I suspect this kind of thing is probably going to be a hot button issue in years to come. As time goes on I imagine we might very well see politicians running on a platform of reforming virtual trade and working on creating such a system though.
that maybe true but I don't think that they are aloud to criticize the CCP.maxmanrules said:Interestingly enough, Hong Kong is technically not Chinese. When the British handed it over to China it was stipulated it remain independent (sort of anyway) and that they have their own laws, parliament and money. It's also separated from mainland China (which is what the poster was talking about)Volf99 said:I was under the impression that Hong Kong is a nice place to live and given their history, I think it might be some what "free" of the CCP's rules.maxmanrules said:Yes, except China is a horrible place to live. China censors the net anyway, but yeah, they probably encourage piracy, and god knows we've seen enough state-sponsored cyberattacks directed at everything from google to the pentagon.Volf99 said:well if you really wanted to go somewhere that doesn't give a f*ck about intellectual property rights, you could go to mainland China, lol. Seriously I don't think you would have any trouble over there as long as none of your videos say anything bad about the CCP.Versuvius said:I'm just wondering. If this passes and everyone who hosts themselves in the US, hop country and host their servers elsewhere, how long it will take the US to flop its dick around and extend its big floppy juridstriction to other countries? And how long it will take them to be told to fuck right off.
Look at it this way: All of the companies that have signed to support SOPA deal in international business and have branches of their company spread out among several countries across the globe. If this bill proves to be successful in the USA by their perception, the bill signers may be so inclined to start something similar in their own countries.garjian said:How would this effect sites based elsewhere?
...couldnt you just move your business... somehow... if this only effects america?
im not really read up on it... ... ...lets do some research then :/