271 replies to this topic

[king mark]

I don't download movies but it's more how the rest of the internet will be affected

Here's a list of what could be affected based on what I read


Sites like ffshrine with links
If you want to share a score edit or recording sessions leak and Megaupload and similar services are gone (or automatically filter block anything that resembles an MP3 or music file)
Will Internet message boards still have Private Message functions ( because people can possibly share copyrighted material in secret)
Will all copyrighted pictures be gone from websites (screencaps, movie photos..) .I don't think big sites like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB will be affected but smaller ones who don't ask permission for every little thing
Will videos like Mr. Plinkett's reviews be shut down because they contain copyrighted clips and destroy a movie.
Will it be a lot harder to find concert performances and little music bits on YouTube
Will gaming video guides be gone from YouTube
Celebrity gossip / fan sites that upload photos that aren't theirs
Will free game walkthroughs (like Demonsouls Wiki) be yanked because they somehow infringe copyright (use of game pictures, logos...)
Will review sites be afraid to give games or movies a bad review because big media companies have the power to shut down sites with no due process (just file a fake copyright claim)
Will software like DownloadHelper be outlawed
Will streaming porn be gone
Will this law force your ISP to monitor your internet connection to check if you share a link over an email or uploaded copyrighted files somewhere
Will people be scared of doing anything on the internet besides looking at webpages by fear of breaking some law and getting sued by some random company or person you never heard of

[Drax]

What I'll find most interesting is how the supporters of the guy who may sign this bill into law will react.

[king mark]

He's from Texas where most people still don't use the Internet

[Chaac]

I'm convinced the piracy thing is a mere excuse and the real purpose of something like SOPA is basically censorship and controlling information.

[king mark]

Well that too, although I care more about the points I listed above

[Drax]

He's from Texas where most people still don't use the Internet

Don't you mean Illinois?

[Marian Schedenig]

That's a pretty poor article.

Not exactly sure how Stallman's (admirable) free software philosophy would help us with SOPA.

Not with SOPA specifically, but free protocols, open source tools and decentralised network architectures guarantee that restrictions like SOPA cannot technologically be built directly into the internet.

[king mark]

There's something I don't understand .

Pretty much the entire world is opposed to SOPA/PIPA and it seems the fate of the worldwide Internet rests on 50 old geezers in the US Senate paid off by the MPAA and RIAA.

Aren't there "fail safe" mecanisms in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening?

[Datameister]

You're assuming it will actually happen. Maybe the entire world is the failsafe.

[Wojo]

There's something I don't understand .

Pretty much the entire world is opposed to SOPA/PIPA and it seems the fate of the worldwide Internet rests on 50 old geezers in the US Senate paid off by the MPAA and RIAA.

The majority must live with rules created by an elite oligarchy, regardless of how correct, fair, or popular the laws may be. This is the way a legislature works.

[gkgyver]

I'm convinced the piracy thing is a mere excuse and the real purpose of something like SOPA is basically censorship and controlling information.

You don't say!

[Blumenkohl]

Meanwhile in Spain, under US pressure:

http://www.bbc.co.uk...nology-16391727

Bye Luke! It was nice knowing you!

[Quint]

Fuck me that's bad.

[king mark]

Well it's time you guys are getting the impending doom of the Internet

Unfortunately Regular Joe doesn't have a clue yet since this news is (purposefully) not talked about on network TV

[Chaac]

Meanwhile in Spain, under US pressure:

http://www.bbc.co.uk...nology-16391727

Bye Luke! It was nice knowing you!

Ironically, sharing files through the Internet is supposed to be legal here, and that has been stablished several times in court. That law makes no sense whatsoever.

[Datameister]

Fuck me that's bad.

This is pretty bad, too:

A later IDC report - The Observation of Piracy and Consumption of Digital Content Habits - commissioned by a coalition of Spain's rights-holders suggested that piracy in Spain cost legal content rights owners 5.2bn euros ($6.8bn, £4.3bn) in the first half of 2010.

It claimed that 97.8% of all music consumption in Spain was driven by illegal downloads, with 77% of movie downloads and 60.7% of game downloads taking place illegally in the first six months of 2010, according to a study conducted by IDC Research for the Madrid-based Coalition of Content Creators and Industries.

The villains here are the millions of consumers who've switched from buying content legally to downloading it illegally. If people were just doing this for out-of-print or otherwise unavailable material, it wouldn't be an issue, but people are downloading stuff for free that they easily could have bought. Legislation like SOPA is misguided, heavyhanded, and frighteningly vague in its execution, but it's ultimately an understandable response to a real problem.

(Incidentally, it's a problem that I don't think can be fixed. Digital media formats make it easy to copy material ad infinitum, without any degradation in quality or cost to the parties involved, and so there's always going to be illegal sharing somehow. If the Internet gets locked down, it'll just happen through other formats. Sadly, it's human nature.)

[king mark]

I'm sure those statistics are false

Just like the RIAA claims how much money is list to piracy

I figured if the big media studios could not control file sharing, they would try to "own" the Internet, which is exactly what this law is.

[Datameister]

The figures strike me as being a bit high, as well. Regardless, it's clear just from firsthand experience that paying for one's media (music in particular) is becoming exceedingly rare. Even if the figures are half of what's been suggested, that's still a big problem.

Again, I find the way this bill is written to be scary, simply because of the excessive ways it could potentially be interpreted and executed, but the idea is sound. People who sell their intellectual property have a right to be paid for it.

[Chaac]

I'm sure those statistics are false

Just like the RIAA claims how much money is list to piracy

I figured if the big media studios could not control file sharing, they would try to "own" the Internet, which is exactly what this law is.

These statistics are made by a Madrid-based thing that belongs to a local industry that is always complaining that people don't want to buy their products.

[Blumenkohl]

Again, I find the way this bill is written to be scary, simply because of the excessive ways it could potentially be interpreted and executed, but the idea is sound. People who sell their intellectual property have a right to be paid for it.

As a person who works for a company that creates and sells intellectual property that generates hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue with each release and attracts a great deal of piracy:

No, the idea is not sound in the least bit. Even if you exclude something like SOPA.

Piracy is a symptom of outdated business practices in the 21st century, the band aid of government intervention and penalizing law-abiding citizens in *any* way does not hold the answer.

The people behind things like SOPA/PIPA are incompetent companies desperately clawing and grasping in their effort to retain control over a market they cannot adapt to.

[king mark]

The thing is I think the RIAA and big studios aren't interested in "reducing piracy", or bringing it to a level where it wouldn't matter to them and the internet could go on as it is. They want ZERO piracy and not a single dollar lost to illegal downloading and will pass every law they can in the future to get to that point, even if it means completely trashing the internet.... they do not care.

And once they pass SOPA, I expect DRM'ed proprietary formats and digital locks to return in full force, because free sharing of files is what made companies back down from DRM in the first place. But with a "reborn internet" the media companies essentially control, they can get back to finding ways of forcing you to play files the way they want to.

And you guys made fun of me when I said I didn't trust services like icloud to store your music. If this thing is passed you seriously think you'll be able to upload anything without proving you purchased it?

[Chaac]

There'll probably never be zero piracy.

[king mark]

Of course not. But they will try to make the internet unusable to all but the most tech saavy geek who can bypass all these measures

So lets say they make all P2P's illegal, shut down Megaupload and all other file locker sites (that's the first thing that goes if this thing passes) plus all torrent sites. ISP's start monitoring what you upload and download on the internet (because they are held responsible for user contents and granted immunity if they rat you out) . Also that bill makes illegal all "circumventing programs" to all this so you can't find any online either. Are there way around that? I'm sure some people will say yes, but very few will be able to

I'll be easier to return to trading cdr's in the mail like in 1998

[Chaac]

What I'm wondering is how could oneself distribute his/her own creations on an Internet like that. It's a setup for internet collapse and completely fucks up new artistic creation.

No one should be able to shut down websites just reporting them. One is left with downloading or uploading material to sites like Project Gutenberg and all public domain scientific material. Which could be gone just like that as well, just because.

[king mark]

Well, that's why even the founders of the internet are appaled by this

[Chaac]

Just imagine. Religious fanatics shut down rationalistic websites. Political freaks shut down all information they don't like. Governments shut down all truths that come up. Companies shut down all that's wrong about what they do. All information about the bad state of living people are shut down thanks to interested people. Random people shut down information uploaded by people they dislike. Copyright holder entities shut down everything that has copyrright or hasn't. Information on the Internet decreases until final collapse. Only material on the Internet maintained by people with enough money to do so is left.

Sounds like a cool story though.

[king mark]

Well, that's pretty much it. About 5 years from now if this law passes

[Chaac]

Damn. I'm both amused and worried now.

[BloodBoal]

The real problem here is that King Mark is trying to raise awarenesse among JWFan members by putting a link to an article regarding SOPA/PIPA in his signature. But the picture of the toilet paper draws more attention than the link. Shame.

[Datameister]

Again, I find the way this bill is written to be scary, simply because of the excessive ways it could potentially be interpreted and executed, but the idea is sound. People who sell their intellectual property have a right to be paid for it.

As a person who works for a company that creates and sells intellectual property that generates hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue with each release and attracts a great deal of piracy:

No, the idea is not sound in the least bit. Even if you exclude something like SOPA.

Piracy is a symptom of outdated business practices in the 21st century, the band aid of government intervention and penalizing law-abiding citizens in *any* way does not hold the answer.

The people behind things like SOPA/PIPA are incompetent companies desperately clawing and grasping in their effort to retain control over a market they cannot adapt to.

I'm curious how you believe those incompetent companies should adapt to the challenges of this digital 21st century - and I truly mean that. If you have some solutions, I'd like to hear them, because I've had a tough time figuring out how to fix the situation.

What I'm wondering is how could oneself distribute his/her own creations on an Internet like that.

If SOPA did pass, and if people used it to shut down all the sites like Megaupload (two big "ifs"), it'd simply open up a new niche: file hosting sites that undertook rigorous precautions to ensure (within reason) that all uploaded content was original. SOPA couldn't be used to shut down such a site.

Generally speaking, keep in mind that doomsday rhetoric isn't very persuasive. It just sounds like paranoia. Even if your actual claims are pretty reasonable, dressing them up in overly dramatic language is a surefire way to dissuade people from listening to you.

[Chaac]

Generally speaking, keep in mind that doomsday rhetoric isn't very persuasive. It just sounds like paranoia. Even if your actual claims are pretty reasonable, dressing them up in overly dramatic language is a surefire way to dissuade people from listening to you.

I was purposselly wording it like that because it sounded like an scifi plot in my head.

[Datameister]

I was speaking more to KM than to you, but fair enough.

[Henry Buck]

The figures strike me as being a bit high, as well. Regardless, it's clear just from firsthand experience that paying for one's media (music in particular) is becoming exceedingly rare. Even if the figures are half of what's been suggested, that's still a big problem.

I imagine figures like those don't take into account that there is a vast deal more music collecting going on now than there was in the days of physical media. I don't think a lot of people twenty or thirty years ago had hundreds of albums. Mostly it was just a few well worn records. So, yeah, most downloading is illegal, but most downloading wouldn't be happening legally anyway. No figures to prove my hypothesis, but think about it...

[Chaac]

Exactly my point.

[Datameister]

I'm afraid I'm not following your point, Henry...

[Marian Schedenig]

Here's a nice post on Google+ by Tim O'Reilly (founder of one of the biggest computer-related publishing houses) about the questionable impact of piracy on the economy as a whole.

[Chaac]

I'm afraid I'm not following your point, Henry...

He means it's either (imaginary figures) 90% downloading and 10% buying, or probably less than 10% buying.

[Marian Schedenig]

And commenting on Henry's point, which I agree with to at least some (probably a large) extent: The point is that mere piracy doesn't hurt anyone. It only does when you copy something *instead* of buying it, or something similar. I've mostly stopped copying CDs for myself, simply because I like having the originals, and for the same reason I'm even replacing my old CDRs with cheap original copies when I can find them, but even when I was shorter on money, I was still spending as much on my music collection as I could afford/justify. The fact that I also copied music in addition to that couldn't have had any economic impact, simply because I wouldn't have spent more money in any case. Basically, I was enjoying the ability to listen to more music than I could "legally" acquire (in quotes, because mere downloading/making copies for personal use is perfectly legal where I live). And nobody lost any money through it, because I didn't copy stuff to hoard my money or spend it on something entirely different.

[crocodile]

So that's what the 2012 Mayan prophecy was all about...

Karol

[king mark]

Looks like the tide is shifting


http://news.cnet.com...n-drivers-seat/