Hardware 2.0

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

WTF is SOPA?

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | December 18, 2011, 9:52am PST

Summary: John “TotalBiscuit” Bain, a UK Law graduate, professional gaming commentator and journalist, has put together a great video on the subject of SOPA.

I’m getting an increasing number of questions relating to SOPA bill introduced in the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011. The subject is well outside of my domain, but John “TotalBiscuit” Bain, a UK law graduate, professional gaming commentator and journalist, has put together a great video on the subject.

I highly recommend that you take 22 minutes out of your day to listen to it.

Note: Activision are not on the list of supporters for SOPA, but EA is a supporter.

It’s worth noting that Representative Lamar Smith, the creator of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), has been consistently receiving donations averaging $50 000 from the TV/film/music industry for each of his re-election campaigns for the past ten years.

This, my US friends, are the reason why you should care about SOPA.

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Do you support SOPA

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Question, WTF, Stop Online Piracy Act, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

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RE: WTF is SOPA?

bucketwarrior 28th Dec

SOPA is an idea to stop online alternative media so we remain conditioned by mainstream media, This alone is the one reason i vote against it ,It takes free speech away big time. Someone that views points against the ideas of the or a government then they can be held for an act of terrorism.

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This is ...

P. Douglas Updated - 18th Dec

... madness! Not only should these bills be stopped, there should be watchdog groups looking continually at the lobbying activities of old media. These watchdog groups should be actively trying to destroy old media's efforts to impose restrictions on the Internet. Why are we continually playing defense against these companies? We should be launching PR campaigns, which cast these guys as greedy opportunists who refuse to change with the times, who are more than happy usurp the rights and freedoms of the citizens of this world, in order to marginally boost their corporate profits.

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RE: WTF is SOPA?

rhonin 18th Dec

Thanks for the audio!
I did my own research and this is a great audio presentation of the highlights and impact.

Nice!

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RE: WTF is SOPA?

Extremelydangerous 18th Dec

It is way to kill jobs and business in USA. Internet was built to be fault tolerant, if you try to block a path, another is easily setted up. They are planning to mess with the root name servers, if they do, another set of, will be setted up by users, not by the dozen, but by milions, and worst, withou any control. This have not been done for only one reason:it works as is. By the time it is not working any more, anyone can set up a ner rootNS. USA will loose control of internet, less business, more p2p, more online videos, "alternative google" .. Less jobs in USA, no secure transaction, meaning in less on-line business.. And remember, once this "alternate" internet is running, there is no return...that is what they want, that is what they will get.
Remember when they divide the world in 5 dvd regions? They did not learn the lesson and tried to crypt the blue ray. Another fail, today you can find rip of blue ray much better than dvd... Well be prepared to new internet....

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That's seems to be the way

thx-1138_@... 19th Dec

@Extremelydangerous .. things are headed. The problem is with the bureaucrats is that most haven't the foggiest idea of how the "real technology" behind the Internet works.

As you allude to, who's to say there aren't groups already working on a alternate plan that will eventually render the super-regulated, SOPA / RIAA / DoJ controlled mess that is the existing 'Net irrelevant .. and eventually replaced?

Revolutions aren't confined to the streets anymore ... they'll just as easily be carried out in cyberspace. And there's another thing these capitol-hill plebs haven't a clue about either .. as much as they like to kid themselves into thinking they do.

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Thank You

meefs 18th Dec

Excellent video! Feel free to post the audio portion to http://soundcloud.com/groups/sopa .

Best,

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As a non-American...

wright_is 18th Dec

The basis of SOPA seems to be, they will not touch US websites, or .com, .org or .net, but they will go after sites where the USA has no legal jurisdiction!

Given their track record of taking down innocent sites, I don't really see how this is even defendable.

Oh, and if they stay by what they said last week, they won't be able to touch Pirate Bay! :-D

Whilst I am against pirating of content, this is totally the wrong way to go about it - and if the sites are outside US jurisdiction, they should apply to the local courts to have the sites taken down - and by "they", I mean the copyright holders; copyright infringement is a civil action, why the heck is the government getting involved?

And if they take down / block my non-US site by wrongly flagging it as a source of piracy, do I get compensation for lost business and reputation, when it gets reinstated? Didn't think so.

And Americans wonder why foreigners often have a bad opinion of America...

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RE: WTF is SOPA?

opcom Updated - 19th Dec

SOPA is a mixture of greed, encouragemnent of incompetent judgement, and insanity. It can only lead to the eventual control of the internet by big business interests, which is likely one of the hidden agendas of these kinds of legislative attempts. Money interests have long wanted to eliminate interesting free and free+ads sites as well as 'second hand goods' sites like eBay (and similar thousands of very small and hobyist sites) from the web in order to 'drive' consumers to their own marketing sites where people will have no choice but to pay for interaction. At that point the "internet" per se will become uninteresting. No internet user wants to be cast in the role of a supplicant to the digital robber-barons. (insert image of www user as a beggar before a desk filled with money bags, behind which rich men smoking cigars sit, looking down at them and demanding money and obedience) Unfoirtunately, with the ever-encroaching controls being pushed, one by one, it can all happen so slowly than no one really feels like the poor guy in the image above, and the freedoms of the past, when spoken of by the older generation, will have already been, in the minds of the present generation, taught against and considered evil or wrong. Now marks a critical fight for the freedom of the internet. Will it become a series of walled gardens and locked doors and "bridge out" signs or will it remain free? If the 'powers that be' try to step on it, the results will be total anarchy and ruin folowed by fascism. No thanks we already have enough fascism, full-up with it, thanks for asking.

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Paulmor909

paulmor909 23rd Dec

Basically what they want to do is to control the internet the same way they control physical media like CDs, DVDs, software. containing music, movies, games, TV shows, and so on. They consider pirating of CDs, DVDs, and so on an act of piracy. So any website that promotes or makes available copy-written music, movies, TV shows, anything owned by the networks, record companies, they can blacklist those sites. This also includes streaming of any material, like what Netflix is offering now for a subscription fee. There are a lot of websites where you can stream movies, even ones in theaters or not yet released on DVD. And of course torrent sites, Rapidshare, downloading sites where a website hosts the material or users share it. The bill would give control to censor and control this material the same way they did with the physical media. Imagine streaming a movie online could get a person 5 years in prison same as if they copied a DVD they rented or offered a public broadcast! They want to control what we watch or see and make sure everyone has to pay for every video we stream, every song we download, every show we watch, every movie, every game, every software! It's about absolute control and the companies and corporations getting each dollar from their material!