The SOPA Bill [YOU MUST READ THIS! NOW! DONT IGNORE THIS!]

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DHeadshot
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Post by DHeadshot »

Cereal has joined the internet strike. If possible, I suggest PCKF should too...
Cereal Board!
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Post by kuliwil »

DHeadshot wrote:Cereal has joined the internet strike. If possible, I suggest PCKF should too...
I think that all the people on here know what's going on already.
"Hi, I'm Tom Sellick's moustache."
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DHeadshot
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Post by DHeadshot »

kuliwil wrote:
DHeadshot wrote:Cereal has joined the internet strike. If possible, I suggest PCKF should too...
I think that all the people on here know what's going on already.
Even so...
Cereal Board!
Deltamatic wrote:Prepositions are things I end sentences with.
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Post by kuliwil »

DHeadshot wrote:
kuliwil wrote:I think that all the people on here know what's going on already.
Even so...
Oven se...
"Hi, I'm Tom Sellick's moustache."
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Post by Grimson »

DHeadshot wrote:
kuliwil wrote:
DHeadshot wrote:Cereal has joined the internet strike. If possible, I suggest PCKF should too...
I think that all the people on here know what's going on already.
Even so...
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Roobar
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Post by Roobar »

This covers the ridiculousness of this situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3cKvBVa0qA

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Poor bastards. Don't you feel sorry for pirating? :(

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I can has cat SOPAED!

Wow... A few corrupted congressman and few backward thinking companies against the whole internet. Epic fail.
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Post by thehackercat »

Don't you hate successful businessmen?
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Post by VikingBoyBilly »

they're funny because they're old :lol
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Post by Paramultart »

wiivn wrote:This covers the ridiculousness of this situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3cKvBVa0qA

Image

Poor bastards. Don't you feel sorry for pirating? :(

Image

I can has cat SOPAED!

Wow... A few corrupted congressman and few backward thinking companies against the whole internet. Epic fail.
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Post by Lava89 »

The underlying premise I am getting from that pic is that its ok to steal from people as long as their rich. Which I find to be a weak argument and can't agree with.

Instead I think there's much more room to argue whether digital piracy is actually stealing.

The video was really informative, wiivn, thanks for posting! Its amazing how these companies created this to stage the situation for SOPA to be used. I think once the internet can be controlled, then any government can stop its citizens from speaking out against wrongful actions done by them.
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Post by KeenEmpire »

Lava89 wrote:The underlying premise I am getting from that pic is that its ok to steal from people as long as their rich. Which I find to be a weak argument and can't agree with.
So there's absolutely no room for arguing that it's somewhat more acceptable to steal pennies ("hundreds of dollars" per song is a grave exaggeration) from someone with $7,400,000,000 than the type of theft we usually have to deal with?

I'd say anyone who agrees with progressive taxation probably disagrees with that black-and-white view of stealing.
Lava89 wrote:Instead I think there's much more room to argue whether digital piracy is actually stealing.
That's actually quite elementary: it's not stealing by definition. Theft (by the laws of the UK and a Supreme Court judgment anyway) requires the victim to actually have been be deprived of the property in question. Having your song, game, etc. copied does not deprive you of it; therefore, it is not theft (and is merely copyright infringement, a lesser crime for obvious reasons).
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Post by kuliwil »

This gif (from http://theoatmeal.com/sopa ) sums the actual issues up well:
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Oh, and this song too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p-TV4jaCMk
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Post by Lava89 »

Good point about the precise definition of theft :)
KeenEmpire wrote:So there's absolutely no room for arguing that it's somewhat more acceptable to steal pennies ("hundreds of dollars" per song is a grave exaggeration) from someone with $7,400,000,000 than the type of theft we usually have to deal with?.
I find the idea of "more acceptable theft" ironic. The term "rich" or the idea of wealth is very relative...exactly how rich does someone have to be until stealing from them is ok?

Taxes are a different story, if you live in a country where it is common knowledge that you are obligated to pay taxes in that country (in other words, the government isn't doing sneaky stuff to get money from you), then there is no theft being done. If someone doesn't like the tax rates they should either vote or leave the country...if you can't do either one of those, well... there's a larger problem with that country than high tax rates, LOL.
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Post by Grimson »

Because related.

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Post by Galaxieretter »

That comic is not even remotely funny.



Well, I read in the paper last night on lunch break that the bill did not pass, and in fact there was such a loud outcry against the bill, that the ones who introduced the bill turned their back on it in the end.

Most in Capitol Hill agree that while something needs to be done (as I also agree with) that this resolution was inadequate. They wish to rewrite a new bill which might work a little nicer.


What I have to say, is by censoring http:// addresses is, as I said in an email I sent to my congressmen, a "Band-aid solution to a bigger issue."

What the people in government do not understand is that the "WWW" or "World Wide Web" is only just a portion of the internet. A lot of file sharing goes on with torrents, P2P networks, IRC communication channels and new avenues recently created. The only thing censoring HTML sites would do would create even more elitest avenues for which digital piracy and cyber-crime to exist. These new avenues, now no longer raw data, will be encrypted, proxied and much more difficult to track.

Because the ease of "piracy" via public routes on the internet will be gone, those avenues left will actually start to make money.
As it stands right now, yes, there are videos, movies, so-called "garg in a bag" um, I mean "Music" and videogames available on the internet; no one is really making any money off of it.

Stopping the public avenues of distribution WILL actually increase piracy, dare I say, ten-fold.
Because now there will be no free ways to obtain media.


So instead of paying 40 dollars for some AWFUL... AWFUL movie that isn't worth a dime, that's slathered upon media outlets as "The gretest blokbustr of teh centurie" people will be much more inclined to purchase $5 for a copy that might not be of high quality.

As it is right now, "pirating" takes time and bandwidth. Take that away, only internet "elietists," the true 1337's left over from yesteryear will have access to the piracy outlets, and they WILL start making a profit. Distribution will be much MUCH harder to detect when one person downloads a movie once, then turns around and distributes it via burned disk as opposed to thousands downloading it separately, from each other via torrents, P2P networks and even from direct steams or FTP. It will be much faster and easier to buy a disk for 5 - 10 dollars from "My guy" rather than downloading the media anyway.


What needs to happen is rather than shutting down HTML sites, the government needs greater control over tracking who is doing internet software piracy in its original form, who's being duped by having their IP address stolen via a hacker's proxy-
The government SHOULD BE concerned with what is being sent through the internet, not about web-pages. It's high time those uploading and distributing the illegal media be held accountable. The criminal activity on the internet begins with the user of the computer, not with the website allowing the user to do such criminal activity. Take away the website, the user will just try to find another way to do exactly what they were doing.

The REAL issue here is "media cybercrime" and other such issues, that mainly have to do with elitist paranoid hacker scum, not some 13 year old downloading "Seether's" new album because he is told by culture and popular media that it's "cool" to listen to this ultra-lossy, low-bitrate, noise-garbage after you get home from school.






The other side of the issue is, the industries state that every single downloaded instance of their media is piracy, taking money away from them.
They do not take into account that it is far easier for me to hop on the internet on my favorite P2P client, search for and download the one song that I want, in a few minutes, rather than rooting through my belongings looking for the CD, that-I-don't-remember-where-I-put-it-but-I-know-I-have.

It's easy to justify what many do as "not pirating." Arguing over the validaty of if you are actually stealing or not is a lie. YOU ARE STEALING
Period. That's the simple fact of what it is. If you argue, if you make loops in logic to justify what you are doing, then fool yourself that you aren't actually stealing, you still are; no matter how you slice it.

What I realized, and the reason why I stopped downloading, is that the reason why I was pirating software, mainly videogames, was because I didn't give a garg about the computer game in the first place and was never going to buy it.

The last game I pirated was "Bio Shock 2." I pirated it just to see how lousy it was. The truth is, the game was so lousy it wasn't worth the bandwidth it took to download it. It was so bad that it was nothing but a complete waste of time, bandwidth and hard drive space.

Just face it, the reason why you download the media you do, is because you're never going to buy it anyway, because you don't care.
If you weren't able to "pirate" the video, music or game, you probably wouldn't ever play, hear or watch it. Because you're certainly never going to buy it. That's why you're pirating it in the fist place!

Let's face it, popularized media SUCKS! It's not worth ANYONE'S money and the only reason why you are downloading this movie is because the corporations come and SCREAM in your face, to make sure YOU know that their pathetic, lame and stupid movie is COMING OUT IN THEATRES IN JULY!!!11oen!!one1 THIS SUMMER IN AUGUST!1 SECOND!
Yet when you decide to view the media, that you probably aren't interested in in the first place, as you became inevitably curious, the corporations, whos marketing budget is larger than the GDP of your entire life, comes and SLAPS you in the face, pushes you on the ground, kicks dirt in your face while calling you a criminal.


Yes, it's easy to justify stealing from the rich (downloading software) and giving to the poor (you) but just like Robin' Hood, you're still breaking the law.

If you want to play a game, go buy it. Support the companies of the games you like.
If you want to own a copy of a song, go buy it. You can purchase iTunes song cards in every single gas station around the country.
If you want to see a movie, borrow it from a friend, buy it or rent it on digital distribution via Zune or on your XBox-

because the truth is, it sucks and you don't care. That's why you're doing it in the first place.
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