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what does SOPA mean for RunUO?

Vorspire

Knight
The thing that pisses me off most about SOPA is that it was entirely written by fools in the entertainment industry, with absolutely no input from any technology sector professionals.
 

tass23

Page
God, it was bad enough when all that Napster shit went down.....OMG, can you imagine if Metallica got behind THIS too, buncha effing sellout assholes that they are *cough, cough*. I think the US government just needs to face the fact hat in today's digital age, they will ALWAYS be piracy. There has to be, without piracy, the movie/music industry would truly be dead. You hear a song on the radio, you come home, download it, tell your friends, share it with them, maybe someone buys the album, maybe not. Some CDs these days are more expensive than a Blu-Ray DVD, what's the deal with that? Back on topic; Regulating the Internet is one thing, controlling the Internet is an entirely different story. So "they" resort to things like this when they don't know any better. Can you imagine what would happen to the entire online industry if this came into fruition? It wouldn't just cutback on piracy (notice I said cutback and not prevent or stop) it'd effect every single thing that happens online. I can easily see going back to the old mIRC days and filesharing the "hard way". For some people, that's still the way to go. I'll get down off my soapbox now. /rant off
 

clark71822

Sorceror
I really don't think SOPA will do much to piracy except slow it down a little bit until a way to circumvent it comes along, which wouldn't take long. It will never prevent or completely stop piracy, cause as long as content of any type can be created, there are always going to be people that will duplicate and distribute that content among the masses.
 
What irritates me about this subject, is that the American's think they are the owners of the internet, IMO, a bill would have to be passed globally when it comes to the internet, as we all know, there are no borders on the WWW.
 
What irritates me about this subject, is that the American's think they are the owners of the internet, IMO, a bill would have to be passed globally when it comes to the internet, as we all know, there are no borders on the WWW.

tell that to Iran, China, North Korea...they seem to do a pretty good job at blocking their countries internet access......
 

tass23

Page
Dan Buro said:
tell that to Iran, China, North Korea...they seem to do a pretty good job at blocking their countries internet access......

Can't say I totally agree with that since most annoying hacking attempts come from some of those areas.
 

Pure Insanity

Sorceror
I really don't think SOPA will do much to piracy except slow it down a little bit until a way to circumvent it comes along, which wouldn't take long. It will never prevent or completely stop piracy, cause as long as content of any type can be created, there are always going to be people that will duplicate and distribute that content among the masses.

It's not even in effect yet, but there are ways to get around it already. All it does it make it so you don't need the dns, pretty much visit the site by IP. Host file fix would actually be enough to do it for windows.

I believe SOPA will fail big, all their main backers have already started backing out because of their customers and shit giving them major hell over it. Godaddy alone lost a shit ton of domains hosted through them, for being dumb enough to support it.

The idea of SOPA, would be the end of the internet as we know it. But there are too many great minds out there for something like this to work how they want if it was to go how they want.

As for other countries blocking access. China does it pretty well with a firewall that everyone is filtered through. Although this hasn't stopped the Chinese from reading the news and shit they wanna know about. People have resorted to making crazy messes of blogs that aren't filtered. Where there is a will, there is a way.

I don't believe the US would ever make a firewall for the US and control access like China does in our life time. At least I hope so. D:
 

Thagoras

Sorceror
Jefferson had a lot to say on the subject of copyrights. Like, you can't copyright an idea, and so on. Windows 3.1 is locked up until 2050, or so. What good will it do anyone in 2050? That should already be public domain so it can help the society, but it won't because that would be giving and rich corporations don't give unless there's a huge pay off (or unless it means huge losses if they don't).

People have always been pirating ever since we've found a way to record. I'm sure that Og the caveman stole cave painting from Glog.... When we invented the recordable cassette, I'm sure that the record industry was sweating. Cheap downloadable mp3s were a step in the right direction...but we need to go further. People want what they want when they want it.

Things like this will continue to happen until we evolve as a society. We need to change our perception of possessions and ownership and the economy needs to adjust.

But these are just the rants of an idealist.....
 

PappaSmurf

Knight
Jefferson had a lot to say on the subject of copyrights. Like, you can't copyright an idea, and so on. Windows 3.1 is locked up until 2050, or so. What good will it do anyone in 2050? That should already be public domain so it can help the society, but it won't because that would be giving and rich corporations don't give unless there's a huge pay off (or unless it means huge losses if they don't).

There are other reasons, so much of Windows and Apple's technology is robbed from the Open Source Community that they do this to protect themselves to an extent. Those who originally worked on this stolen tech, will probably be dead, or too old to care by the time it goes public domain.
 

Xeevis

Sorceror
Except SOPA was just a diversion to pass ACTA which effectively was deemed passed 5 years ago. I for one wouldn't care to work 5 years with all my enemies on bill that could and would be trampled by democratic systems. ACTA is US initiative so I highly doubt they'd create SOPA out of nowhere that so strongly resembles their other work. And they made sure SOPA takes the beating and ACTA passes unnoticed because one of them was extremely top secret (guess which) and they totally kept it that way (only wikileaks and anonymous informed about it like 2 years ago, but noone gave shit). Now its signed and lies on European Parliament. Which isn't democratic in any fashion, they pass what they are told to by member countries which all signed ... and can give a shit what public thinks about them. Welcome to inevitable world orgy of copyfucking -- WorldWide. Democracy is a jest, they can circumvent it any time they want. They can even now close and prosecute anyone they want even without this new crap (MegaUpload huh?), which just puts ultimate power into corporate hands. One fucking song worth $0.99 downloaded boom $100 000 fine (why even bother selling it, this is far better). Carrying phones, laptops, CDs whatever across border? You'll have better chance to pass with TNT in your pocket.

There is one positive however, this gives global public common enemy, and I love mobs running on corrupt institutions.
 

Thagoras

Sorceror
Thank you Xeevis! I was trying find links which explain ACTA but it's not in the news. Wiki explains what it is but that's about it. I wasn't sure how else to make the point that SOPA was just a smokescreen. Why else would MPAA openly be against SOPA but privately be for it?

Rule #1, Always read laws that have good sounding names. (i.e. The Patriot Act, The Keep America Safe Act, etc...)
Rule #2, Never support laws that are vague because they can and will be abused. (i.e. The Patriot Act, The Keep America Safe Act, ...and pretty much every law passed in the past 1000+ years)
Rule #3, Never vote for candidates who have any legal experience, because lawyers CAN'T be trusted to do things in the public's best interest...ever. They follow the money.
Rule #4, Be cautious of candidates with ANY experience. It means they know how to work the system.
 

Thagoras

Sorceror
Yes, and it's international. And it was made behind closed doors. And the EU is currently voting on it (or maybe it already passed and their waiting for us).

If you read about its intent, it's not all bad. Unfortunately, because of how everything is worded, it leaves way too much that can/will be abused. The purpose of acta (from my understanding) is to give copyrights to previously public domain materials from other countries. The idea is that the materials from these countries still have copyright status in their homelands but don't here because there's a time difference in copyright laws. The law is supposed to fix that so these materials have copyright status in all countries equally.

The problem with copyrights in general is that they are a legal monopoly and the more the copyright is extended, it's that much longer until the material becomes public domain and that much longer until it can actually benefit the society. Copyrights have their place, don't get me wrong...but most copyright holders are big entities (production companies and their share holders), and not individuals. Extending the term of the copyright has but one purpose...to make the copyright holder rich.

If you look up copyright laws you can see that the term was initially 14 years. We're currently at 120 years. Copyrights benefit who? The purpose of the copyright was to make it so an entity (individual or company) could come up with an idea and market it and make some money and not worry about the idea getting stolen by a larger entity with more resources just to have them market the idea as their own. This already happens. Current copyright law is to protect the larger entity from the public.
 

Thagoras

Sorceror
!@#$, that one slipped by me. It's the name thing. Doesn't get any press because it sounds clear enough what it's supposed to do...but it totally breaks rule number 1. It's all about controlling us.
 

anybody

Sorceror
They'll change the names of the bills and reword them. We'll see different versions of these same bills in the near future and they are going to get passed.

By the way the US Senators are just as ignorant as us United States Citizens. If it wasn't for the organization of Google, Wikipedia, etc those bills would have been past. It was them who informed us ignorant United States Citizens to inform our ignorant US Senators of the potential threat to free information that PIPA and SOPA posed.

The world wide web is the largest and best free source of information. Without the world wide web, the only source of free information we would have is our under funded public libraries here in the US. In fact if it wasn't for foreign news, which PIPA and SOPA intended to block, none of us United States Citizens would know what the United States Government is up to.

Sad part is, we can't trust our own news here in the United States 'cause they lie to us all the time.

Yeah, I made a statement and I know I have to prove it. Fox News' Lies Keep Them Out of Canada. You can find many more sites on this from Google (fox news canada - Google Search).
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The rest of this is off topic and I'm adding it for a very good reason. It is about what foreigners refer to as Americans. It bothers me 'cause I continually keep being referred to as a part of a group that I'm not a part of and have no control over.
What irritates me about this subject, is that the American's think they are the owners of the internet, IMO, a bill would have to be passed globally when it comes to the internet, as we all know, there are no borders on the WWW.
When you specify Americans you are specifying everyone in America, North and South. To be exact, it is the United States of America. You can call a Canadian an American as well 'cause Canada is on the North American continent.

What I am is a United States Citizen. I am not the United States Government and I do not support the United States Government. The United States Government does it's own damn thing, regardless of what the United States Citizens have to say. I've already stated this and my point of this is to separate my self from the United States Government and what they do 'cause I have no control over it's actions.
 
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