If you don't know about the bill (if you do know, feel free to skip this)
HR 3261 (or SOPA) is an anti-piracy bill going through legislative branch (in the US) at the moment. It essentially allows the government to force censorship on search engines and ISPs, confiscate local web domains from foreign owners who deemed to be breaking rules (such as The Pirate Bay), would make unauthorized streaming a felony (streaming intellectual property from youtube, for example), and some other odds and ends. Corporate site owners, such as facebook or youtube (e.g. google), would never be held responsible for content on their site so long as it was removed a certain amount of time after it were brought to their attention. Any infraction would be legally the fault of the poster and/or user.

This legislation is supported by many entertainment industries, including the RCAA and various aspects of the film and television industry. John Conyers (a democrat from my state of Michigan) has stated that regulation like this is "critical to our economy’s long-term success."

The bill's opposition has called the bill "draconian" and a "massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation."

Back on point

What are your opinions on the bill? I'm curious to see if anybody here supports it, and if so why. I tried to make my summary as reasonably unbiased as possible, but this legislation seems unimaginably poor to me, on an economic, legal, international, enforcement, and philosophical level. If anybody here supports it, I'd love to see some thoughtful dialogue on the matter. There is a piracy thread for general observations or opinions on piracy. This thread should try to revolve around SOPA.

I think it'd be hard to find someone who supports this but then again there are always those who wish to simply watch others suffer and die. I suppose some just want us to suffer even more. Then again, I actually wouldn't mind the day the internet died. The day when we were more restricted. The internet is beautiful. But some parts of it are ugly.

This bill, I believe, is pretty draconian, I have no love nor support for it, even though it's specifically targeted at America, the ramifications of censorship in America, the home of most modern pop culture and the internet itself, would be world wide.

I don't believe the bill comes from a bad place, the intent is "protecting the rights of artists and companies," but it gives large organisations a whole lot more power than I think is fair. There are already a few bills and policies in place to prevent illegal piracy and downloading. Not long ago a website designed to share american television and sports internationally was shut down (though it was moved to a new domain shortly after), and so this bill is really unnecessary and in a lot of ways unjust. It gives too much power.

One of the most dangerous aspects of this bill, I think, is how it allows the government to remove the right to speech from non citizens. That right is supposed to be unalienable, provided to citizens and noncitizens who aren't committing a crime in their own country. By censoring other nations according to whatever laws we pass, we give permission for them to do the same.

Yea, they can shaft me despite not being in your country.

Ok i don't believe that I have heard of this bill but from what you say about it i can see why people don't want it to pass. I don't understand why "The Pirate Bay" hasn't been taken down already considering everything on there is pretty much illegal. Im not sure how I feel about piracy, I understand that the bands and record companies loose money but i feel like music is often overpriced (and yes I know that it's considered stealing and it's wrong). It might be slightly off topic but I'm just wondering how people feel about the piracy of music in general, whether it's outright wrong or in your opinion justifiable. sorry if this is off topic.

I'm afraid that if SOPA were passed, most of the things I love about the internet would die.

Like the ability to post our ideas freely on a forum, such as here and Facebook. I dislike it very much, I believe that the people making this bill don't understand fully how the internet works (not as bad as the "series of tubes", but still), and need to get their heads around the fact that people need a free outlet somewhere. The internet regulates itself.

How do you think SOPA would affect that ability?

Facebook doesn't have censorship? You sure?

Facebook censoring Counter-Jihad content
Facebook censoring homosexual content
Facebook censoring Occupy Wall Street content
Facebok censoring anti-Facebook content
Facebook generally censoring religious and political content it doesn't approve of
Facebook censoring Twitter content

^ Tangential point FTW

Edit: This thread is interesting and doesn't need to be derailed by off topic shit. Commence LoveinVein's response.

If I'm reading the Wikipedia article correctly, it seems that a foreign site that is alleged to have infringing material would be rendered inaccessible to US residents even before they notified that site. I hope I am wrong about that, though. However, if the site is unable to pursue action in US court (say due to financial reasons, language barriers, etc.), they have no recourse. I do not see any penalties for fraudulently filing copyright claims - it would not be difficult for a company to basically lock out foreign competition from small vendors (especially start-ups without much cash).

Seems like a massive consolidation of power. The largest entertainment businesses could effectively shutdown ANY site that doesn't have the means to monitor it's user's content. While that is a responsibility of a website it certainly increases costs and limits the output of the community. The One Site Internet is here. Yield to the New Net Order!

LadyGrinningStardust introduced Facebook to the thread. If it's okay for her to make a point about Facebook, it's okay for me to respond to it. The thread is about a bill which seeks to censor the internet, existing internet censorship isn't completely irrelevant. The thread has hardly been "derailed" by a single post in response to an existing post; I think you're over-reacting.

She introduced facebook because she thought it would be affected by the legislation. Your point has nothing to do with the legislation, it is strictly about facebook censorship. This thread isn't about facebook censorship(or censorship in general, please see Gorgon's original post), it's about the change that SOPA could bring to censorship on sites, such as facebook.

Edit: I'm really bad about common splices. PLEASE DONT JUDGE ME! Also, I'll argue about dumbshit with you in the private message section.

To Everyone else: Please see Gorgon's post if you have lost track of the topic.

Then why aren't you similarly berating LadyGrinningStardust? My point about existing Facebook censorship was entirely relevant to her concerns, because I demonstrated that Facebook censorship already exists. If anyone's derailing this thread, it's you.

Because she was addressing a CHANGE that might happen due to the legislation. Obviously she thinks that Facebook is a medium that one can use to freely exchange information, regardless of how much censorship there actually is there. Your point addresses the fact that it isn't free, which is a different topic. That is why I'm not berating her about it.

Edit: All future replies related to this dispute will be in PMs. If anybody wants a copy of this sexy convo hit me uppp!

And I demonstrated that it wouldn't be the change she thought it would be, since Facebook already has a censorship problem.

False, you demonstrated that it wasn't free. You did little to specify why the change she expects isn't an accurate expectation. Get out here with that shit, broski.

Edit: Actually a mod should just delete all of this, I feel like a coward when it goes to PMs.

I dislike this bill. With the Facebook thing, I don't see how censoring it is going to help anything.

Basically the entertainment industry in the states can shut out anyone and anything on grounds of copyright infringement. And screw over us in foreign countries. They can bar both US citizens from foreign servers and foreigners from US servers from what I can make of it, there already exist bills to prevent copyrighted information being shared. Once again, Napster was sued and almost shut down, Atdhe.net was shut down Albumbase was shut down, it's only a matter of time before they get to warez-bb.org.

They can't get to foreign sites because copyright laws all over the world don't work the same way as in the US, but I think that's a small price to pay for browsing a free web. A lot of people on my cousin's facebook were comparing it to Iran, North Korea and China. Which effectively made their internet and intranet.

So what if someone just uses a non-US proxy?

That's part of the problem with the bill, in that it's incredibly easy to get around a DNS block, if you know what you're doing. In the end, foreign sites like The Pirate Bay would still be just as easy to get to, which makes that portion of the bill completely ineffective. At the same time, there will also be unnecessary censorship of sites that are based within the United States.

Yea. It'll change the way the world uses the internet. With this bill even Tumblr or soundcloud could be taken down. The bill fucks over everyone but pirates

That's usually the effect of all anti-piracy attempts. -_-