U.S. Congress Shelves SOPA
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
The bill is in a coma, what we need is a one-eyed assassin to come along and jab it with a needle full of poison to make sure it won't come back and hack us in to tiny chunks of flesh.
The nice part here is that he didn't have to keep any promises. He just made a threat and people jumped to attention and fell in line.Genuine Evil said:
But in this case, I really don't know what would have happened if it got to his desk. He probably has corporate sponsors who would want this thing passed, much like every politician. This being an election year, he probably would listen to them over us, the unclean masses, for funding purposes.
So... does this mean all the sites aren't shutting down tomorrow? Awww, I'd have liked to see the public outrage 
Though: Jay, no SOPA. Now on to that IP act...
Though: Jay, no SOPA. Now on to that IP act...
Well explained, but I think you missed my point. I was trying to show that just as the people who would flood stores to get something for free on one day do not flood the stores to buy it at full price the rest of the year, unpaid viewing does not prove that any sales were lost. That's not 20,000.00 that's been stolen from you, it's 1 million views of your work seen by people who deliberately chose not to pay you for it. Even though the store had the work available at full price (or even on sale) all year, all of those people went to the store on "free day" instead, so it's a far more certain conclusion that they never would have bought it at all.alandavidson said:
In that situation, the only thing you can definitely say was on the table to be gained was publicity for the work, which at least is a measurable and positive effect. I'm not trying to defend the practice of unlicensed viewing, even though in an earlier post I admitted to it for the purpose of determining whether I wanted to buy the work. I'm just trying to debunk the (imo) completely false premise of equating unlicensed use of content to lost sales.
...The Cool Kid said:
Ahhhh...
You funny.
Scientists are people too.
They have human brains.
Explain to me quantum physics.
In your own words.
Well, this has been fun hasn't it?
Also, stop making up stuff i haven't said.
1) Didn't avoid the question, because the US government haven't lied to me.Jimbo1212 said:
They're just corrupt.
Also, i never said they had lied.
You made that up.
But then again, i'm tired of dealing with trolls now so...
Nothing is inherently evil- only man-kind.
Interesting how Gamespot and IGN, who are owned be CBS and Fox, didn't have anything really to say about SOPA.
I've been meaning to comment on this for a while. I've been reading various debates about this SOPA Act and I feel that I can stand firmly on the issue with a hearty and confident "Wait a minute."
It seems to me like both sides for and against the act overreacting WAY too much about something that in theory is supposed to be beneficial to everybody. I mean, it's called the Stop Online Piracy Act. Who would be so firmly against something like that besides the thieves that benefit from it?
But we've got screaming mouthpieces on both sides caring only about how it directly affects them. The proponents think the others are cold-blooded thieves that are stealing peoples' hard work and ideas and flinging it out to the masses without the owner's permission. Then you have the opponents who think that those on the other side are nothing but totalitarian dictators who are out to censor all free speech with scare tactics.
I have a YouTube channel under the same name. I have a music video posted there that I edited myself. I chose the music; I placed the scenes in the order presented. It came from my own mind. But I didn't create the footage (that's from the Darkstalkers anime). I didn't create the music (that's a song from a TLC album). I used two creations from other people to create that video. Like it or not, I'm specifically showing off their creations in a way they did not originally intend. And if they don't like it, they've got a right to tell me to take it down. But there is a difference between that and taking down a 30 second video of a baby dancing just because you can make out a Prince song playing in the background for half of it.
If you all are truly believe that online piracy needs to be dealt with, but that SOPA is the worst idea in the world, come up with a better one. And for those that say the safeguards that are already in place are good enough, they clearly can't be if a decision was made to try and make new ones. Here's an example: Your friend has mice running around in their house. They've tried to get rid of them using mouse traps, but they're still present. Now you've just talked your friend out of their crazy plan to get rid of them by burning their house down. What is your friend going to do? Go back to using the mouse traps that didn't work before?
It seems to me like both sides for and against the act overreacting WAY too much about something that in theory is supposed to be beneficial to everybody. I mean, it's called the Stop Online Piracy Act. Who would be so firmly against something like that besides the thieves that benefit from it?
But we've got screaming mouthpieces on both sides caring only about how it directly affects them. The proponents think the others are cold-blooded thieves that are stealing peoples' hard work and ideas and flinging it out to the masses without the owner's permission. Then you have the opponents who think that those on the other side are nothing but totalitarian dictators who are out to censor all free speech with scare tactics.
I have a YouTube channel under the same name. I have a music video posted there that I edited myself. I chose the music; I placed the scenes in the order presented. It came from my own mind. But I didn't create the footage (that's from the Darkstalkers anime). I didn't create the music (that's a song from a TLC album). I used two creations from other people to create that video. Like it or not, I'm specifically showing off their creations in a way they did not originally intend. And if they don't like it, they've got a right to tell me to take it down. But there is a difference between that and taking down a 30 second video of a baby dancing just because you can make out a Prince song playing in the background for half of it.
If you all are truly believe that online piracy needs to be dealt with, but that SOPA is the worst idea in the world, come up with a better one. And for those that say the safeguards that are already in place are good enough, they clearly can't be if a decision was made to try and make new ones. Here's an example: Your friend has mice running around in their house. They've tried to get rid of them using mouse traps, but they're still present. Now you've just talked your friend out of their crazy plan to get rid of them by burning their house down. What is your friend going to do? Go back to using the mouse traps that didn't work before?
Yet again, you avoid the question.Sizzle Montyjing said:
So... if we were all lied to, what would SOPA do?
Because, y'know, i'm pretty fine about it not being enacted even if i believed you."
Read the bill.
It is very clear in its powers and you are going on rumours over truth.
And having an unsubstantiated argument in which you are unwilling to part from is far closer to trolling.
Well they had the problem of 99% of people being ill-informed about the bill and unwilling to change their view.For.I.Am.Mad said:
It left them in the position of either saying " You are all wrong -learn to read", or say nothing.
I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make with the analogy above, but it does paint a good picture of what many opponents claim SOPA is. Burning the house may clear out the mice, but it also leaves you without the house, defeating the purpose you set out to do in the first place. The arguments arrayed against SOPA are IMO similar: a piece of law that could potentially do more damage than good, mostly through being a precedent for further legislation. With the difference that from what I can gather, SOPA would be largely ineffectual at stopping piracy.goliath6711 said:
I'm no fan of piracy, but I'm not with the authorities on this one either. No lawsuit or bill has ever succeeded at stopping pirates from distributing their goods. They've always just moved on to other methods, always leaving the law one step behind. Cut off one head and two more grow in its place, so to speak. I've read the Bill and nothing in it convinced me it would be the exception to the rule. In fact I cannot escape the thought that any direct approach to ending piracy is doomed to fail, regardless of any good intentions involved.
Maybe a different approach is required. Instead of fighting piracy head-on, companies and governments could try to beat the pirates at their own game. For example, find out why piracy exists and remove that reason. Or offer something better than the pirates can provide. Essentially, make them obsolete. Might sound stupid, but if it works, then it isn't stupid. At the very least trying something new seems IMO more sensible than stubbornly trying the same old methods that don't work, as the continued existence of piracy appears to prove.