# Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting July!



## Mircea (Jun 23, 2012)

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/...h-massive-copyright-spying-scheme-on-july-12/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-5...f-isps-to-start-policing-copyright-by-july-1/

http://dottech.org/tech-news/28447/...ing-customers-downloads-starting-july-1-2012/

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/graduated-response-deal-what-if-users-had-been

I just saw those articles in a post. I was shocked to say the least, and decided to post this on several forums I frequent so the word can be spread.

In summary, all major American ISP's are implementing a system to spy on their users in order to police copyright infringement. There was no legal debate let alone any discussion with the users, and this decision was simply taken and will be applied starting 1 or 12 July. Users considered to be infringing copyright will be punished in several ways... such as their internet being cut off, selective websites being censored, their bandwidth being lowered, and if the offense is repeated users will be constrained to go to special copyright lessons to be allowed on the internet again.

I believe that this is the worst attack initiated against internet users in the US, worse than what SOPA and ACTA were meant to be. If what's said about this initiative is true, something worse than SOPA is already being put in practice starting next week. It's clear that the government and / or Hollywood have started another backroom deal, this time asking ISP's to pretend they've taken the decision on their own so they could censor the internet without any debate in the house or senate (which as proven by SOPA would not pass).

I couldn't begin describing how horrible and surreal this is after what I read. It will be used to cut users off the internet, and even worse to purposely humiliate them in spite (copyright lessons required to access the internet, and lowered data transfer rates as punishment). It will also be used to spy on any website you access, and for the first time in the history of America you will be completely watched by your ISP. They might even be able to read private emails you send / receive. Those are unspeakable practices which could only be imagined in countries like Libia or North Korea.

I don't believe I need to point out that users will not be punished for real copyright infringements only, but false negatives will exist and be heavily abused. Technically, if your ISP believes you are stupid for accessing a website they don't like (which they can now spy on) they may easily invent a claim and cut you off the internet without being questioned by anyone. This will obviously be used for censorship on political subjects and worse too.

Every internet user needs to act urgently, more than they have for SOPA / PIPA last winter. If this decision is not undone, I'm even expecting riots to take place. I'm also hoping that major websites like Google or Wikipedia will do another blackout in awareness to this. At this point I strongly support a criminal investigation to see who's behind those unprecedented attacks on internet users, and believe someone needs to be sentenced to prison for both this and what happened with SOPA.

The only thing I ask of everyone is to please re-post this and spread awareness immediately! We need everyone to know about this fast, so we can have time to protest and / or sign petitions against it. Lets hope this can be stopped before the unthinkable happens, otherwise there will no longer be internet for most of us.


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## Duality Jack (Jun 23, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Your sig is disturbing. makes it hard to value your opinion.


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Jun 23, 2012)

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Lead Jester said:


> Your sig is disturbing. makes it hard to value your opinion.


If this is real, I don't even care about that.


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## Mircea (Jun 23, 2012)

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Lead Jester said:


> Your sig is disturbing. makes it hard to value your opinion.



If my signature being disturbing to you (for just further speaking  out against censorship on a smaller scale) is reason to not see the  facts and dangers in the articles I linked, no offense but there's a serious problem with your basic senses and understanding.


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## Duality Jack (Jun 23, 2012)

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Mircea said:


> If my signature being disturbing to you (for just further speaking  out against censorship on a smaller scale) is reason to not see the  facts and dangers in the articles I linked, no offense but there's a serious problem with your basic senses and understanding.


You are comparing censorship to something which has been classified an "Illegal substance".  

Nonetheless, walk into a discussion about something like this with a sig that supports something fiercely unpopular and people with judge your opinions on your /worst/ attribute. Like doing a speech on human rights with a NAMBLA shirt on.


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## Judge Spear (Jun 23, 2012)

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Yes, your sig SUCKS. Inarguable. But, this ongoing relentless push for extreme censorship worries the fuck out of me. If this is _really_ going through...gg. I'm gonna be locked up until the sun goes supernova.


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## BRN (Jun 23, 2012)

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I can't believe you're looking at the worst thing to ever happen to the internet, and as a forum you're going to rabble about the morality of artistic content.


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## Judge Spear (Jun 23, 2012)

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.....I'm sorry. T-T


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## SirRob (Jun 23, 2012)

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[yt]0vAp6U3--Pc[/yt]

Here we go again!


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## CaptainCool (Jun 23, 2012)

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so since the government failed them they just convinced the ISPs to do it anyway?

how come the american people arent revolting yet? i mean, your people have GUNS. who is so stupid to fuck with people who have guns? XD and yet you permanently let the big companies and religion fuck you in the ass! XD
what the heck is wrong with your country? XD


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## Vaelarsa (Jun 23, 2012)

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So, we blackout over SOPA, but not this?
Where are my blackouts.
More blackouts, damnit!



CaptainCool said:


> so since the government failed them they just convinced the ISPs to do it anyway?
> 
> how come the american people arent revolting yet? i mean, your people have GUNS. who is so stupid to fuck with people who have guns? XD and yet you permanently let the big companies and religion fuck you in the ass! XD
> what the heck is wrong with your country? XD


America also has a big ass military.
Plenty of ways to squelch possible revolt.
Also, the general motto here seems to be "don't inconvenience yourself."


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## Judge Spear (Jun 23, 2012)

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SirRob said:


> Here we go again!



The top comment... XD



CaptainCool said:


> i mean, your people have GUNS. who is so stupid to fuck with people who have guns? XD and yet you permanently let the big companies and religion fuck you in the ass! XD
> what the heck is wrong with your country? XD



Oh my fuck. I forgot...this doesn't affect you, you lucky son of a bitch. >: {


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## Duality Jack (Jun 23, 2012)

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SIX said:


> I can't believe you're looking at the worst thing to ever happen to the internet, and as a forum you're going to rabble about the morality of artistic content.


I just understand how such things can be bypassed and dealt with and understand the trend and how its inevitable. Every time we shoot down one of these bills another method will appear. Unless you convince the government to make internet censorship Illegal, but good luck with that, I doubt it will ever happen.


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## Xenke (Jun 23, 2012)

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Hasn't Comcast -already- been doing this?


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## CannonFodder (Jun 23, 2012)

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Oh boy, by July 13th half of the USA's internet users will have to be put into those "corrective" classes.
We have what 3 weeks?
It's possible there could be a big enough shitstorm by then to stop them.

With SOPA, CISPA, PIPA and such still on people's minds all it'd really take is for people to go "it's the new sopa" and bam the forces are rallied again.


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## Judge Spear (Jun 23, 2012)

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CannonFodder said:


> It's possible there could be a big enough shitstorm by then to stop them.



Wanna team up and make a petition for one? :V

I wonder if Anonymous has seen this yet...


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## Artillery Spam (Jun 23, 2012)

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CaptainCool said:


> so since the government failed them they just convinced the ISPs to do it anyway?
> 
> how come the american people arent revolting yet? i mean, your people have GUNS. who is so stupid to fuck with people who have guns? XD and yet you permanently let the big companies and religion fuck you in the ass! XD
> what the heck is wrong with your country? XD



People are too worried about what happens to the internet, but any other issue plaguing the US is put on the back burner. That's what happened.


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## Duality Jack (Jun 23, 2012)

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Pachi-O said:


> Wanna team up and make a petition for one? :V
> 
> I wonder if Anonymous has seen this yet...


 You guys need to go riot or something. (I kid I can't encourage that it would cost me my job)


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## Ikrit (Jun 23, 2012)

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OH NO!

how will i download illegal copies now?


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## CaptainCool (Jun 23, 2012)

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Pachi-O said:


> Oh my fuck. I forgot...this doesn't affect you, you lucky son of a bitch. >: {



well im stuck with all the other bullshit thats going on in europe, politicians who openly call homosexuality a desease based on their religious beliefs and neo-nazis sitting in a couple of parliaments 
we have our fair share of problems as well.



Artillery Spam said:


> People are too worried about what happens to the internet, but any other issue plaguing the US is put on the back burner. That's what happened.



im not just talking about this issue, im talking about that i wouldnt dare to ever fuck with a country that consists of a bunch of armed hillbillies


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## Duality Jack (Jun 23, 2012)

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Ikrit said:


> OH NO!
> 
> how will i download illegal copies now?


You won't learn about back door methods or use proxy networks. Nope. 
Nothing like that!


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## Ikrit (Jun 23, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

this is most likely fake crappy reports...
i never heard of any of these sources but cnet
and i KNOW cnet is a shitty source


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## Judge Spear (Jun 23, 2012)

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CaptainCool said:


> im not just talking about this issue, im talking about that i wouldnt dare to ever fuck with a country that consists of a bunch of armed hillbillies



YEAH! I second tha- heeeyyy... I'm no hillbilly. Screw you, too! >:V


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## CannonFodder (Jun 23, 2012)

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Pachi-O said:


> I wonder if Anonymous has seen this yet...


Probably not yet.  If someone knows a member of anonymous or lulzec you should probably link them to it.  Once they get wind of this it'll be all over the fucking net.


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## Ikrit (Jun 23, 2012)

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CannonFodder said:


> Probably not yet.  If someone knows a member of anonymous or lulzec you should probably link them to it.  Once they get wind of this it'll be all over the fucking net.



SIR, YES SIR!
*heads over to /b/*


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## Judge Spear (Jun 23, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> Probably not yet.  If someone knows a member of anonymous or lulzec you should probably link them to it.  Once they get wind of this it'll be all over the fucking net.



I just sent it to my close friend who's got a contact to them. Told him to forward it.


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## CaptainCool (Jun 23, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Pachi-O said:


> YEAH! I second tha- heeeyyy... I'm no hillbilly. Screw you, too! >:V



i was just exaggerating of course^^ you arent all hillbillies but the amount of guns within the population is rather frightening in my opinion.


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## Judge Spear (Jun 23, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> Probably not yet.  If someone knows a member of anonymous or lulzec you should probably link them to it.  Once they get wind of this it'll be all over the fucking net.



On it. Sent to a friend who has a personal contact to them.


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## Ikrit (Jun 23, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Pachi-O said:


> I just sent it to my close friend who's got a contact to them. Told him to forward it.





Pachi-O said:


> On it. Sent to a friend who has a personal contact to them.



lol


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## Judge Spear (Jun 23, 2012)

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Yeah. I don't know what happened. The first post didn't show up. >.>


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## Namba (Jun 23, 2012)

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They just don't know when to stop fucking with us.


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## Ruby Dragon (Jun 23, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I'm fucked ten-fold.

(okay, Term_the_Schmuck, cool your turbines) There is no reason they are allowed to do this... yeah, America is _a great _crusader for human rights!

Copyright is good and all, but people take it too far. There is a difference between trying to keep people from earning profit off of other's work and invading privacy... this is invading privacy.

I hope this is fake. I really do.

Even more pants-shittingly, I was just typing a story about a dictator-run America. If my story comes true then I hope flights across the Atlantic are cheap!


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## BRN (Jun 23, 2012)

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Augh, people, _you_ are Anonymous. All of us are Anonymous. Anonymous are legion hivemind, not a club. :u


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 23, 2012)

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Ruby Dragon said:


> I am very pissed about this, copyright is useless for anything except executives crying that they have to live with toilet paper made out of 20s instead of 100s. There is no reason they are allowed to do this... yeah, America is _a great _crusader for human rights!



Oh yes totally useless. 

Hey every artist on FA and the Internet!  You selfish pricks!  How dare you think that you should have any control over your work!  If we want to steal it and make a profit off of your talent without you receiving any acknowledgement or compensation then you should just live with it!

Yeah my "human rights" are more important than yours!



There is no :V face big enough to deal with the stupidity of Ruby's statement and shows what little comprehension people like him have on what copyright is and why it's important.

And this is the problem I have with threads like this. That any message of any importance tends to be squashed by the people wrapped up in ignorance and entitlement complexes.


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## Duality Jack (Jun 23, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Face it, your nation and every other nation is no longer of the people for the people.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 23, 2012)

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Term_the_Schmuck said:


> And this is the problem I have with threads like this. That any message of any importance tends to be squashed by the people wrapped up in ignorance and entitlement complexes.


I know it's off topic, but I want to get something off my chest-
And my problem with these sorts of threads is that all it takes is for ONE post out of control to summon you.
I could just make a post in a completely random thread going "america suxs lol" and when I refresh you'll be listed as a active user and then you'll begin to be combative about the credibility of the source and argue the thread into submission.  Like like the SOPA thread, just like the CISPA thread, etc.

Tl:dr; why is it that you seem to only ever pop up on certain specific threads?  Also on certain specific topics?

Tl:dr; of Tl:dr; stop stalking threads you don't like.


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## Namba (Jun 23, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

My advice? Rebel. Buy your music.


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## Aden (Jun 23, 2012)

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Eyal Flurry said:


> My advice? Rebel. Buy your music.



Thing is, I spend a ton of money on music, but rare is the case where I'll buy something without having...previewed it first. If I had to buy every single thing I listen to, I wouldn't have explored as much as I have (and therefore would never have even had the chance to buy half the music I own).

Piracy may not be good for the popular artists that get jammed down everyone's throats all day, but it's great for the exposure of lesser-known acts


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## Aetius (Jun 23, 2012)

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SIX said:


> Augh, people, _you_ are Anonymous. All of us are Anonymous. Anonymous are legion hivemind, not a club. :u



Let the new people make themselves feel important ;v 



Mircea said:


> They might even be able to read private emails you send / receive. Those are unspeakable practices which could only be imagined in countries like Libia or *North Korea*.



They do not even have internet over there, so don't even try to compare the self censorship of our internet to their communication situations.


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## Namba (Jun 23, 2012)

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Aden said:


> Thing is, I spend a ton of money on music, but rare is the case where I'll buy something without having...previewed it first. If I had to buy every single thing I listen to, I wouldn't have explored as much as I have (and therefore would never have even had the chance to buy half the music I own).
> 
> Piracy may not be good for the popular artists that get jammed down everyone's throats all day, but it's great for the exposure of lesser-known acts


I usually wait a few months after an album is out, borrow it, Spotify, whatever, and when I decide it's worth having I fork over the money. And no downloading shit, because Amazon's music is too compressed for my taste. CDs all the way. And it just feels so much better to actually pay for your music.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 23, 2012)

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CannonFodder said:


> Tl:dr; why is it that you seem to only ever pop up on certain specific threads?  Also on certain specific topics?
> 
> Tl:dr; of Tl:dr; stop stalking threads you don't like.



Because I enjoy shitting on your circle-jerks.

And since no one seems apt to point out the clear stupidity of a "all copyright is bad" post then I'm going I do it. 

Now let me ask you this: why do you feel the need to take time out of a thread to challenge me on my posts and their intentions?  

Tl:dr unless you're going to comment on the thread or challenge me on the importance of copyright, cut the shit CF.


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## Duality Jack (Jun 23, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Piracy is bad mkay?


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## Teal (Jun 23, 2012)

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Aden said:


> Thing is, I spend a ton of money on music, but rare is the case where I'll buy something without having...previewed it first. If I had to buy every single thing I listen to, I wouldn't have explored as much as I have (and therefore would never have even had the chance to buy half the music I own).
> 
> Piracy may not be good for the popular artists that get jammed down everyone's throats all day, but it's great for the exposure of lesser-known acts


 I preview the music on youtube and other video sharing sites.


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## Namba (Jun 23, 2012)

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TealMoon said:


> I preview the music on youtube and other video sharing sites.


And this, children, is why SOPA threatens to piss on our internet.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 24, 2012)

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Term_the_Schmuck said:


> Because I enjoy shitting on your circle-jerks.
> And since no one seems apt to point out the clear stupidity of a "all copyright is bad" post then I'm going I do it.
> Now let me ask you this: why do you feel the need to take time out of a thread to challenge me on my posts and their intentions?
> Tl:dr unless you're going to comment on the thread or challenge me on the importance of copyright, cut the shit CF.


I never said all copyright is bad.
Personally I think there needs to be a difference legally between corporate copyright infringement and personal copyright infringement.  Having average joe have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for something they aren't doing for profit is just ridiculous.  However if it's a corporation breaking copyright then a couple hundred thousand dollars is a small amount.

My problem with current copyright laws is that it treats both people and companies like the same thing.  It's not the existence of copyright laws, it's how far they take it.

As for why I challenged you on your intentions you have a track record of shitting on threads almost as bad as mine.  The thing that irks me though is where as my shitting on threads is completely random and unintentional and I rarely go into a thread with the intention of starting a fight, your shitting on threads are deliberate and intentional and you go into it full force knowing full well what you are doing.  While yes your shitting on threads is more civil, you still have a fair number of threads you have argued into oblivion.

If you want me to cut the shit then okay.  I don't find the existence of copyright laws bad, I find how far they take it to the extremes bad.  The fact that we have people sitting in prison serving longer prison terms than pedophiles or rapists or murders is utterly ridiculous.  By no stretch of any sort of logic should a person serve longer prison terms for copyright infringement than violent crimes.  Also how they charge you both on the state level and federal level is double jeopardy.  If it was any other crime and failing a conviction on the state level they just whip right around and charge them on the federal level you would have people screaming double jeopardy, however since it's copyright infringement that makes it a-okay.

Tl:dr; I don't think copyright infringement is bad, I find however the level of punishment they give out and how they ignore double jeopardy bad though.


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## Vaelarsa (Jun 24, 2012)

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I agree that the extremes in which they take this are _fucking_ _retarded_, and I still say they need to put a kind of sensible cap on how ridiculous this shit can get.

It's like charging someone $150,000 for shoplifting a CD.
Once.


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## Conker (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Well, I better download those audiobooks I want sooner than later. Shame too, since I have like three credits on audible.


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## Teal (Jun 24, 2012)

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Eyal Flurry said:


> And this, children, is why SOPA threatens to piss on our internet.


 It's not copyright infringement if it's an artist's official channel.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 24, 2012)

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Vaelarsa said:


> I agree that the extremes in which they take this are _fucking_ _retarded_, and I still say they need to put a kind of sensible cap on how ridiculous this shit can get.
> 
> It's like charging someone $150,000 for shoplifting a CD.
> Once.


At this rate it would not fucking surprise me in any way if decades down the line they introduce something along the lines of "reimbursement labor".
Granted it's not very likely, but considering the penalties for copyright infringement have become just absurd and ridiculous and the sort of direction we're heading towards the chances of something on that level of absurdity is  possible.

Tl:dr; we're going to wind up in a very bad place one of these days.


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## Corto (Jun 24, 2012)

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I'm sorry for always being the grumpy one but can we PLEASE cut it out with the "tl;dr" bullshit?


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## CannonFodder (Jun 24, 2012)

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Corto said:


> I'm sorry for always being the grumpy one but can we PLEASE cut it out with the "tl;dr" bullshit?


Okey dokey loki.


Actually IF I had to take a guess of where copyright laws are going towards, personally the most likely guess I have is that once cybernetics comes about this is what we'll be stuck with-
[YT]IFe9wiDfb0E[/YT]


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> I never said all copyright is bad.



One person did and I directly responded to that person.  I don't know where the hell you're getting this idea that I'm pasting Ruby's comment on the whole, but I'm annoyed that no one steps up and points out the sheer stupidity of someone taking up the platform and going far off into stupidity.



> Personally I think there needs to be a difference legally between corporate copyright infringement and personal copyright infringement.  Having average joe have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for something they aren't doing for profit is just ridiculous.  However if it's a corporation breaking copyright then a couple hundred thousand dollars is a small amount.
> 
> My problem with current copyright laws is that it treats both people and companies like the same thing.  It's not the existence of copyright laws, it's how far they take it.



The question then becomes if they're not using it for profit, what are they using it for?  If I'm doing a not-for-profit documentary film and I happen to need a sample of a song, clip of a movie, or some other piece of media I didn't create, then I have the ability to do so as long as I'm cutting that piece to where I make my point and not just throwing up the entire copy of Jay-Z's Black Album because I felt like it.  If someone's uploading content to a site, like MegaUpload, that they ripped/hacked/copied, then it becomes a problem because when you buy something on a disk, you're not the owner of that content, but on the medium of which that content exists; ie. the DVD, Blu-Ray, piece of paper.  Now in most cases, you're not undermining the artist/actor/director themselves because they sign huge contracts with the production studios before they get involved with anything.  Who gets hurt are the technicians, engineers, IT personnel, mail-room guys, etc who work at said publisher.  That's a lot of overhead that might end up having to be downsized because, for example, a game sells a million copies but is actually played by 3 million unique users who got the game through file sharing.  That is part of the reason why those penalties tend to be high.

Another is perceived damages which no one can argue are outrageous when you consider the cases of 13-year-olds and old people getting sued and losing cases where they're expected to pay back half a million bucks.  But the fact of the matter remains that there are some real issues with the mentality of "they don't deserve my money so I'll just download the content for free and I'll pay if I feel like it."  No where in the real world can you just walk in to a business and say "I want you to give me something and if it's good I'll _consider_ giving you money for it."  That's a pretty fucked up mentality, IMHO.



> As for why I challenged you on your intentions you have a track record of shitting on threads almost as bad as mine.  The thing that irks me though is where as my shitting on threads is completely random and unintentional and I rarely go into a thread with the intention of starting a fight, your shitting on threads are deliberate and intentional and you go into it full force knowing full well what you are doing.  While yes your shitting on threads is more civil, you still have a fair number of threads you have argued into oblivion.



I've argued those threads and threads like this because I feel there are fundamental problems in the thought process people go through to reach certain conclusions.  Though I may agree with their general conclusions, I do often take issue with how they got there or what they end up doing when they reach said conclusion.  Some people, such as Ruby in the post I originally quoted, say things so outrageous and downright absurd that it invalidates anything they may have to say that's agreeable because the glaring issue of saying something like "copyright never helped anyone" or something to that effect.



> If you want me to cut the shit then okay.  I don't find the existence of copyright laws bad, I find how far they take it to the extremes bad.  The fact that we have people sitting in prison serving longer prison terms than pedophiles or rapists or murders is utterly ridiculous.  By no stretch of any sort of logic should a person serve longer prison terms for copyright infringement than violent crimes.  Also how they charge you both on the state level and federal level is double jeopardy.  If it was any other crime and failing a conviction on the state level they just whip right around and charge them on the federal level you would have people screaming double jeopardy, however since it's copyright infringement that makes it a-okay.



They serve those prison terms because of multiple counts and the few times that someone actually goes to prison over something like that is when they themselves are the owner, operator, and beneficiary of said copyright infringement, like Kim DotCom.  Average Joe down the street won't ever go to prison because of copyright infringement.  His case is a civil matter which if he loses will force him to pay off damages, which as previously explored are often notoriously high based on speculation rather than actual research.

As for "double jeopardy" this is nothing new as far as the US Government is concerned.  Back in 1991, an exception to the double jeopardy rule was used during the Rodney King trial, where the cops who beat King were tried once in a state court where they were acquitted and then tried again on the federal level where they were convicted, because state and federal governments are considered different sovereign entities.  This isn't a "because it's copyright infringement" or any specific crime issue.  This is fundamental legal policy of the United States, period.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I've read this entire thread, while people are freaking out and talking about getting out the torches and pitchforks... Do you realize that you have a *choice*, right?  You are consumers and you can choose not to put up with unpleasent services or conditions from a provider and use a different provider.  As consumers you actually have this remarkable power that scares the shit out of companies: The power to say 'I don't like this, I'm gonna take my money elsewhere'.   Yet not once in this thread has I see anyone stating that they would exercise this simple yet powerful right.

Some of you go on about 'rights' and corporations imposing things on you that should be wrong.  Did you read this thing?  You have to agree to those terms and services before they can impose those terms and services onto you.  Just don't agree with them and take your buisness elsewhere.

Why is it that in these situations, this remarkable freedom that you have is beyond you, but when Coke tries to change their formula everyone easily goes 'WELL I AIN'T DRINKING THIS NEW STUFF.  IT'S NOT THE REAL THING ANYMORE.' making Coke go 'OK GUYS, YOU CAN HAVE YOUR COKE CLASSIC BACK, PLEASE DON'T SWITCH TO PEPSI. D:'


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## Namba (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> I've read this entire thread, while people are freaking out and talking about getting out the torches and pitchforks... Do you realize that you have a *choice*, right?  You are consumers and you can choose not to put up with unpleasent services or conditions from a provider and use a different provider.  As consumers you actually have this remarkable power that scares the shit out of companies: The power to say 'I don't like this, I'm gonna take my money elsewhere'.   Yet not once in this thread has I see anyone stating that they would exercise this simple yet powerful right.
> 
> Some of you go on about 'rights' and corporations imposing things on you that should be wrong.  Did you read this thing?  You have to agree to those terms and services before they can impose those terms and services onto you.  Just don't agree with them and take your buisness elsewhere.
> 
> Why is it that in these situations, this remarkable freedom that you have is beyond you, but when Coke tries to change their formula everyone easily goes 'WELL I AIN'T DRINKING THIS NEW STUFF.  IT'S NOT THE REAL THING ANYMORE.' making Coke go 'OK GUYS, YOU CAN HAVE YOUR COKE CLASSIC BACK, PLEASE DON'T SWITCH TO PEPSI. D:'


Consider this, though... There's only one Internet. See the problem? The Internet, while having different ways to get to you, is ultimately just one thing. It's a monopoly in a sense; you either have it or you don't, no alternatives no questions asked. Once you have it and have experienced its usefulness, it's kind of hard to get rid of cold turkey.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Eyal Flurry said:


> Consider this, though... There's only one Internet. See the problem? The Internet, while having different ways to get to you, is ultimately just one thing. It's a monopoly in a sense; you either have it or you don't, no alternatives no questions asked. Once you have it and have experienced its usefulness, it's kind of hard to get rid of cold turkey.



Or you could just switch to an ISP that is not involved in this agreement...  I figure that's a lot less, ya know, stupid, than getting rid of the internet all together.


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## Namba (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> Or you could just switch to an ISP that is not involved in this agreement...  I figure that's a lot less, ya know, stupid, than getting rid of the internet all together.


I'm not as smart as I like to believe sometimes, forgive me.


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## Aden (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Eyal Flurry said:


> CDs all the way. And it just feels so much better to actually pay for your music.



I'm one of those vinylfags, but otherwise can't argue with that. I love supporting artists I'm a fan ofâ€”and downloading makes me a fan when the music is good.



AshleyAshes said:


> Or you could just switch to an ISP that is not involved in this agreement...  I figure that's a lot less, ya know, stupid, than getting rid of the internet all together.



>he thinks everyone has a choice of ISP
:3c


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## CannonFodder (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> I've read this entire thread, while people are freaking out and talking about getting out the torches and pitchforks... Do you realize that you have a *choice*, right?  You are consumers and you can choose not to put up with unpleasent services or conditions from a provider and use a different provider.  As consumers you actually have this remarkable power that scares the shit out of companies: The power to say 'I don't like this, I'm gonna take my money elsewhere'.   Yet not once in this thread has I see anyone stating that they would exercise this simple yet powerful right.
> 
> Some of you go on about 'rights' and corporations imposing things on you that should be wrong.  Did you read this thing?  You have to agree to those terms and services before they can impose those terms and services onto you.  Just don't agree with them and take your buisness elsewhere.
> 
> Why is it that in these situations, this remarkable freedom that you have is beyond you, but when Coke tries to change their formula everyone easily goes 'WELL I AIN'T DRINKING THIS NEW STUFF.  IT'S NOT THE REAL THING ANYMORE.' making Coke go 'OK GUYS, YOU CAN HAVE YOUR COKE CLASSIC BACK, PLEASE DON'T SWITCH TO PEPSI. D:'


The irony is that the last time there was a thread on copyright you were going "well if you use firefox or google in anyway you are supporting a company that uses software from <can't remember their name>"  Why the sudden change?  Last time you were saying that the exact opposite now?


Term_the_Schmuck said:


> -snip, not cause I didn't read, but cause it's a long post-


I'm not arguing against copyright, all I am saying is that the prison terms and such is getting way the fuck out of hand.
Also the problem with the multiple counts charges, considering how much the average internet user illegally downloads they could theoretically put most internet users in prison for the amount of time and sue them for that amount of money.

Don't you think there is something wrong whenever a massive chunk of the populace can theoretically be put in jail and sued for half a million dollars?

While yes you do have a point, BUT when a notable chunk of the populace are considered criminals that can be put in prison for decades for something that has literally no actual effect on sales that is a problem.
Also before you bring up damages-
[YT]GZadCj8O1-0[/YT]
The whole argument that big name corporations are losing massive amounts of money due to copyright theft is a gray area while debating the impact of copyright infringement cause on the one hand you have one side that says it doesn't effect our economy and on the other hand you have the RIAA trying to sue limewire for $45 trillion.  Granted the amount was deemed ridiculous, but when you have companies trying to sue for more money than the gdp that is way waaayyy wwwaaaaaayyyyyy the fuck ridiculous.

I do think it's possible there is a amount that companies are losing money to copyright infringement, but the problem is that when one side is blowing it so far out of proportion to that degree trying to find the middle ground is neigh impossible.  It'd be like if someone stole a $100 from a cash register and then the company who had their money stolen claimed their loses were equivalent to fort knox.


Basically what I'm getting at is you do have a point, but I doubt there is a actually accurate number for the amount of money companies lose to copyright infringement due to how much the estimates get blown out of proportion.


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## Namba (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Aden said:


> *I'm one of those vinylfags*, but otherwise can't argue with that. I love supporting artists I'm a fan ofâ€”and downloading makes me a fan when the music is good.


I want a turntable so bad :C


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> The irony is that the last time there was a thread on copyright you were going "well if you use firefox or google in anyway you are supporting a company that uses software from <can't remember their name>"  Why the sudden change?  Last time you were saying that the exact opposite now?



Because this event you speak of didn't happen...  I don't even know what mystery software you're talking about.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> Because this event you speak of didn't happen...  I don't even know what mystery software you're talking about.


It was a couple months ago during the SOPA debate when someone brought up trying to boycott companies involved and people were listing all the companies that were pushing for SOPA.  Basically what you said was that trying to boycott the companies was pointless and that trying to find competing to buy services from is pointless.


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## Rilvor (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> Or you could just switch to an ISP that is not involved in this agreement...  I figure that's a lot less, ya know, stupid, than getting rid of the internet all together.



So...

AT&T, AT&T, and AT&T

That's a lot of choices. [For people in areas like mine]


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> It was a couple months ago during the SOPA debate when someone brought up trying to boycott companies involved and people were listing all the companies that were pushing for SOPA.  Basically what you said was that trying to boycott the companies was pointless and that trying to find competing to buy services from is pointless.



Google and Mozilla were opposed to SOPA... 

Ya know what?  I'm not gonna do this thing, where you say something vague and stupid, which I counter, which you respond with something else vague and stupid.  Put up or shut up, Cannon Fodder, find the post and link it.  If you can't or won't do that, I have no interest in your blurry and confused memories.



Rilvor said:


> So...
> 
> AT&T, AT&T, and AT&T
> 
> That's a lot of choices. [For people in areas like mine]



http://www.yellowpages.com/reno-nv/internet-service-providers-isp


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## Neuron (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> I never said all copyright is bad.
> Personally I think there needs to be a difference legally between corporate copyright infringement and personal copyright infringement.  Having average joe have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for something they aren't doing for profit is just ridiculous.  However if it's a corporation breaking copyright then a couple hundred thousand dollars is a small amount.
> 
> My problem with current copyright laws is that it treats both people and companies like the same thing.  It's not the existence of copyright laws, it's how far they take it.
> ...


Allow me to play devil's advocate, then.

As I understand it from the most reliable of these sources, the policies generally involve a notification to the parties participating in illegal copyright infringement to cease such actions. These notifications, as I understand from the reading, generally have a "3 strikes" type rule. If they catch you infringing on their ISP after the 2nd or 3rd notice that is the point where the internet may be censored or cut off. A genuine stubborn resistance to these measures, which I'm going to argue are to _prevent_ the ridiculous court cases which you speak of, will result in serious legal action.

Keep in mind that while annoying, these measures are not involving the issues of which you primarily speak. They are not involving the immediate, hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted persecuting the nuisance pirate. That is because while these issues are frightening and speak to discourage the users of the internet with big, scary numbers, this can end up being as much, if not more of a pain in the ass for those asshole corporations. For as assholish as they may be, it is expensive to keep on pursuing unprecedented amounts of copyright infringement cases when most of them are going to be individuals that will never pay it off. The lawyers know it's all a show. It's puffing out the big scary feathers to make themselves look important and threatening. But they don't have the money to keep that disguise up at all times.

These measures are seeking to address the very problems that you speak of when talking about the persecution of copyright infringement, the ridiculous time and money wasted pursuing people that are rather harmlessly but over time affecting their profit margin. This is meant to be be a show, it's meant to scare someone who pirates a Metallica CD and notify them that they are not as anonymous as they appear to be and should stop to avoid those scary big number law suits they want you to be afraid of.

While I must also question the prying into our privacy, I must stress the point of these people not being as evil, and unethical as people may be tempted to paint them as. Quite frankly, I do see the merit in the possibility of being given annoying notices of "please stop pirating our shit" rather than knowing my pirating may or may not end in a multimillion dollar shitstorm of a lawsuit.


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## Rilvor (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> http://www.yellowpages.com/reno-nv/internet-service-providers-isp



It's cute you think that actually means any kind of rebuttal or that even a fraction of those are viable.

Edit: I'm even checking them all out, one of these is even a link to irs.gov! Hilarious.

We cannot determine DSL availability for your phone number through our automated system at this time. Hum. Maybe the ambiguous business "Doodads" has something eh? Hah!


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## CannonFodder (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Neuron said:


> Allow me to play devil's advocate, then.
> 
> As I understand it from the most reliable of these sources, the policies generally involve a notification to the parties participating in illegal copyright infringement to cease such actions. These notifications, as I understand from the reading, generally have a "3 strikes" type rule. If they catch you infringing on their ISP after the 2nd or 3rd notice that is the point where the internet may be censored or cut off. A genuine stubborn resistance to these measures, which I'm going to argue are to _prevent_ the ridiculous court cases which you speak of, will result in serious legal action.
> 
> ...


I highly doubt that the three strikes thing is going to work like how it claims to.  From what it says it's supposed to sound like some sort of them trying to be reasonable, but we all know better than to believe they're going to be reasonable about copyright infringement.  In reality it's going to be more akin to bam bam bam three strikes off the bat you're in hot water.


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## Brazen (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Meanwhile the EU shoots down ACTA.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Rilvor said:


> It's cute you think that actually means any kind of rebuttal or that even a fraction of those are viable.
> 
> Edit: I'm even checking them all out, one of these is even a link to irs.gov! Hilarious.
> 
> We cannot determine DSL availability for your phone number through our automated system at this time. Hum. Maybe the ambiguous business "Doodads" has something eh? Hah!



My point is that there are always options and you should shop around.  Reno, with a population of over 200 000 people isn't exactly the 'middle of nowhere'.  Not to mention that this is one of the very reasons why high speed internet prices are cheaper in the US than in Canada; There is greater competition.  Competition benifits the consumer.  But if you want to be a lazy consumer who assumes their option is a monopoly when it's not a monopoly... Well, you certianly wouldn't be the first apathetic consumer.


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## Rilvor (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> My point is that there are always options and you should shop around.  Reno, with a population of over 200 000 people isn't exactly the 'middle of nowhere'.  Not to mention that this is one of the very reasons why high speed internet prices are cheaper in the US than in Canada; There is greater competition.  Competition benifits the consumer.  But if you want to be a lazy consumer who assumes their option is a monopoly when it's not a monopoly... Well, you certianly wouldn't be the first apathetic consumer.


Of course a lot of areas have other options to choose from, but you also have to be realistic. As I myself found out months ago, not every provider will go to the area you live in. Certainly people should not assume there is a monopoly, it is just that some of us already know better through our own efforts. Of course that isn't a "true monopoly" but it might as well be, to a degree.


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## Judge Spear (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Holy shit...this thread got way more serious! All this is now far beyond my feeble understanding.


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## Bipolar Bear (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Oh boy! Here we go again! \=)


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## Xenke (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Wow, the 'articles' in this thread are weakkkk.

Really, there's only two that are worth linking, the other two are sourced from the CNET article, and second-hand news isn't really news.

As for people having 'options', in a lot of cases they really don't. I believe here I have a grand total of two options that don't totally suck, and of those two we currently have one and I haven't done any further research to see if the other is truly viable.

That said, there's so little to even confirm that this is even a thing that I'm not holding my breath. The large lack of anything credible or current on this matter throws doubts over it's value.

And even so, all most people pirate are luxury items (i.e. you're not pirating stuff you need to live, not even close), so... just deal with it? I'm not sure you need to have your music and games for free, though at least the arguments for why people pirate music makes some sense.



Bipolar Bear said:


> Oh boy! Here we go again! \=)



Nice contribution to the thread. I see we're using our brain today. Clearly.


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## Mircea (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I hope you are right and the information isn't all true. Part of my  worry comes from SOPA, which we all know was real. Not hard to expect  something like it or worse again. If SOPA didn't exist, I might have  found something like this unbelievable... but in year 2012 something  like that law was still possible to propose, and no one was investigated  for all the harm that was caused by even just proposing such a thing.  So I take any such articles with maximum caution.


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## mrfoxwily (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Considering we didn't agree to this, can't current users sue their ass? 

I've noticed in the past that if even the media attacks it, it tends to fail.

I can't find anything about cell phone providers being included. 4g tethering might be a good workaround.

EDIT: This news is from 4 months ago. Aren't there any developments?


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> The irony is that the last time there was a thread on copyright you were going "well if you use firefox or google in anyway you are supporting a company that uses software from <can't remember their name>"  Why the sudden change?  Last time you were saying that the exact opposite now?



Uh, that was me bringing that up, not Ashley. 



> I'm not arguing against copyright, all I am saying is that the prison terms and such is getting way the fuck out of hand.
> Also the problem with the multiple counts charges, considering how much the average internet user illegally downloads they could theoretically put most internet users in prison for the amount of time and sue them for that amount of money.



I'm guessing you must have skimmed my previous post because you're still exaggerating the penalties of copyright infringement. The people who face jail time are the Kim DotComs of the world who are running an operation like MegaUpload where he is directly profiting from knowingly and willingly hosting content that doesn't belong to him for profit due in part to the subscription service he offered. Something like that will land you in prison.  Downloading songs off of torrent sites will only net you a civil law suit where you will be expected to pay back the money allegedly lost or was potentially lost. More often than not, in my profession I've found, if say you're using a copyrighted song in a production, you're more likely to get a cease and desist letter before any sort of legal action is taken. 



> Don't you think there is something wrong whenever a massive chunk of the populace can theoretically be put in jail and sued for half a million dollars?



There's certainly something wrong in exaggerating what the penalties are for copyright infringement. Quit the scare tactics. And now I know you're not bothering to rea my posts because I've already mentioned that the kind of numbers brought up by the RIAA and MPAA on lost revenue are astronomical and take great liberties with the figures. 



> While yes you do have a point, BUT when a notable chunk of the populace are considered criminals that can be put in prison for decades for something that has literally no actual effect on sales that is a problem.



Again with the exaggeration. I guess while I shit on people's parades in these threads, you enjoy being our resident Miss Information. :V



> The whole argument that big name corporations are losing massive amounts of money due to copyright theft is a gray area while debating the impact of copyright infringement cause on the one hand you have one side that says it doesn't effect our economy and on the other hand you have the RIAA trying to sue limewire for $45 trillion.  Granted the amount was deemed ridiculous, but when you have companies trying to sue for more money than the gdp that is way waaayyy wwwaaaaaayyyyyy the fuck ridiculous.



Again, I've already said that. You're just repeating what I previously said but using more words to do so. But copyright infringement on the Internet has had an effect on the industry and when you're talking about say a video game company that's sinking millions of dollars into a project that developers are putting their hearts and souls into, losing out time with their families to make a game for people to enjoy, and we have a contingent of people who say, "well fuck them they don't deserve my money, but I deserve to still play the game" there's a fundamental problem not just with the logistics but with the mentality of that person.



> Basically what I'm getting at is you do have a point, but I doubt there is a actually accurate number for the amount of money companies lose to copyright infringement due to how much the estimates get blown out of proportion.



I believe the accurate number does exist and the numbers are clearly fudged when considering how they come up with the figures, from what I've seen based mostly around the idea of having content on a torrent site amounts to the cost of the content to the nth power because of the potential of that content being downloaded by someone else. And no, the average citizen isn't going to jail, they're looking more at a fine and repaying some roundabout figure for the perceived damages they're allegedly responsible for.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> -long post-


I know most of the time the people don't go to prison and instead wind up in civil lawsuits.  The problem with that is how much the people on average to have is just ridiculous.  A hundred grand doesn't sound like a lot to companies, but for average joe that amount will ruin them for years to come.

As for the amount of money they actually do lose to copyright infringment I doubt we'll ever hear a accurate estimate cause like you said they probably do know the actual amount, but blow it out of the water.

Actually speaking of loses there was a slap fight over Dead Space 3 in three frags left about how EA was claiming they were going to have to rake in 5 million copies to break even and how with the cost of production and everything normally they would have only needed 1.7 million copies.  The most likely explanation is they blew a fuck ton of money on useless shit.
If companies would stop being so paranoid about trying to stop "omg teh pirators r evil" and trying to use all sorts of wasteful expenditures when they clearly have no effect on piracy then maybe they wouldn't have such a amount of loses.  Granted regardless there is going to be loses due to people not buying, but it's like trying to stop a brush fire by burning down the whole forest.

So yeah you do have a point, BUT they're trying to regain their loses to piracy by doing scare tactics to try and stop piracy that put them even further in the red.



Companies just don't know when to cut their loses.


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## Echo Wolf (Jun 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I remember reading something in a big important bill of rights or something that protected against this sort of unnecessary searching. Hmm, I guess it was all just in my head everyone knows nothing like that was ever written. _Sarcasm._


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 24, 2012)

*Terms merged post*



Echo Wolf said:


> I remember reading something in a big important bill of rights or something that protected against this sort of unnecessary searching. Hmm, I guess it was all just in my head everyone knows nothing like that was ever written. _Sarcasm._



Um, since when has the Bill of Rights applied to anything other than the federal government?

The only thing being discussed here are companies engaging with people who willingly deal agree to certain terms to use said company's service. 

Before we start whipping out the "my American Rights" argument it might be nice if you learned a thing or two about them.



CannonFodder said:


> I know most of the time the people don't go to prison and instead wind up in civil lawsuits.  The problem with that is how much the people on average to have is just ridiculous.  A hundred grand doesn't sound like a lot to companies, but for average joe that amount will ruin them for years to come.



100 grand is 100 grand. You should see how difficult it is to get new equipment or send something out to be fixed in some of the places I've worked. Just because something appears to have a shitload of money doesn't mean that they do or that they are willing to throw it at everything. 



> Actually speaking of loses there was a slap fight over Dead Space 3 in three frags left about how EA was claiming they were going to have to rake in 5 million copies to break even and how with the cost of production and everything normally they would have only needed 1.7 million copies.  The most likely explanation is they blew a fuck ton of money on useless shit.
> If companies would stop being so paranoid about trying to stop "omg teh pirators r evil" and trying to use all sorts of wasteful expenditures when they clearly have no effect on piracy then maybe they wouldn't have such a amount of loses.  Granted regardless there is going to be loses due to people not buying, but it's like trying to stop a brush fire by burning down the whole forest.



That 5 million figure has little to nothing to do with any sort of money they use to help combat piracy. This is likely more due to developers demanding higher payouts for their work, advertising costs, overhead and the sort. Same deal happened with COD. You have a franchise that has become extremely popular and has sold well. Now people want to make more because they feel they're worth it, sending the budget up higher. Not to mention separate teams workin on things like multiplayer which didn't exist for the previous game, but that's for another thread. Point is, frivolous spending on anti-piracy campaigns have little to do with rising costs of production. 



> Companies just don't know when to cut their loses.



And certain people just don't want to give up the ability to get professionally created content for free because "my rights".


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## Lukar (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Two words: bull crap. In the past, despite piracy, companies have still been able to make money off of their products and services. People can illegally obtain millions of movies and television shows, but does that mean that services such as Netflix aren't raking in the dough? Hell no. As long as companies and organizations make sure their output is of good quality, people will still pay for it, even if some would rather go the cheap route in obtaining it.

I'm sorry Hollywood isn't able to afford their hoverbikes made out of gold this year, but I doubt their "losses" are anything more than them being butthurt.


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## Echo Wolf (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Terms merged post*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> Um, since when has the Bill of Rights applied to anything other than the federal government?
> 
> The only thing being discussed here are companies engaging with people who willingly deal agree to certain terms to use said company's service.
> 
> Before we start whipping out the "my American Rights" argument it might be nice if you learned a thing or two about them.



I didn't read the article to closely were it said that users must agree to this. My thought process here was if they are going to be policing the internet without the users consent and threatening consequences for actions the federal government would be somehow involved to allow this. Anyway I can see major legal/ethical debates, court cases and most likely boycotts arising from this if they really start doing this, which I highly doubt but I've been surprised before. O' just a note I studied in some law classes a while back so it's not like I have no idea what I am talking about, I just have a bad habit of reading to quickly sometimes.


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## Littlerock (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Brazen said:


> Meanwhile the EU shoots down ACTA.



Okay, off topic, but fuck it: I totally just read that in the announcer's voice from the old Batman show, and it was _amazing_.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Terms merged post*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> 100 grand is 100 grand. You should see how difficult it is to get new equipment or send something out to be fixed in some of the places I've worked. Just because something appears to have a shitload of money doesn't mean that they do or that they are willing to throw it at everything.
> 
> And certain people just don't want to give up the ability to get professionally created content for free because "my rights".


Actually my point wasn't that a couple hundred grand isn't a ton of money, my point was however that if you sue a company for a couple hundred grand they can survive that financially.  However if you sue your average american a couple hundred grand their life is pretty much over.

I'm not arguing about the morality of copyright infringment, I'm arguing that treated people like companies or companies like people under the law is ridiculous and that suing people for the same amount of money one would sue a company is extreme.


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## thoron (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

As a whole, I'm failing to see any real sources being used for these articles. I can't even find any real info on Greg Sandoval, the guy who wrote the Cnet article other than that he's a senior writer for them. The fact that his article isn't able to give any real sources to the claim also makes it weak and not very credible. There's a good chance that this will mostly focus on torrent sites if such measures are put into places. Even then it will be hard for ISPs to tell what is pirated and what isn't.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> If my signature being disturbing to you (for just further speaking  out against censorship on a smaller scale) is reason to not see the  facts and dangers in the articles I linked, no offense but there's a serious problem with your basic senses and understanding.



And there is a serious problem with you thinking Cub Porn is okay. I'm more worried about the likes of you practically promoting pedophillia by saying what your sig says.

As for the topic, So? If people weren't cheapskates and pirated shit so much this kinda thing WOULDN'T be happening because there wouldn't be a pirating issue. I mean, a lot of you are artists and most of you hate when people steal YOUR art and claim it as theirs. So just think how people feel when others obtain their creations illegally.


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Randy-Darkshade said:


> And there is a serious problem with you thinking Cub Porn is okay. I'm more worried about the likes of you practically promoting pedophillia by saying what your sig says.



And I'm worried about people taking decisions who think that if they dislike something, it should be banned. You're crazy if you think I promote pedophilia... I would have said the same about ANY type of artwork were it banned or people trolled over it, just because it's unpopular. If some furs and admins felt that cub art is the best genre of artwork to pick on, take offense over and ban, that's what I will defend until it will be free like any other type of art. I stopped posting about it, but my signature will stay.

Now please, let's get back on topic. It's nearly impossible to post a thread on this forum without it deviating into something totally unrelated, pointless, and that derails it entirely.


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## KigRatel (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

This thread is depressing.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> And I'm worried about people taking decisions who think that if they dislike something, it should be banned. You're crazy if you think I promote pedophilia... I would have said the same about ANY type of artwork were it banned or people trolled over it, just because it's unpopular. If some furs and admins felt that cub art is the best genre of artwork to pick on, take offense over and ban, that's what I will defend until it will be free like any other type of art. I stopped posting about it, but my signature will stay.
> 
> Now please, let's get back on topic. It's nearly impossible to post a thread on this forum without it deviating into something totally unrelated, pointless, and that derails it entirely.



Change your sig then. There is no way it will be unbanned from FA because the law in the state FA is hosted in dictates it's illegal as the law in my country does. 

Also if you support such art then you have no morals.


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



KigRatel said:


> This thread is depressing.


 
Agreed. If we lived in a normal world where people actually had  rights, and interest groups wouldn't be allowed to f--k all of us over and up-front  with laws and practices like this, threads like this wouldn't be needed. That's the depressing part for me.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> Agreed. If we lived in a normal world where people actually had  rights, and interest groups wouldn't be allowed to f--k all of us over and up-front  with laws and practices like this, threads like this wouldn't be needed. That's the depressing part for me.



It's not a stupid law. Granted they are going about it the wrong way, but as I said earlier (which you completely ignored to take your OWN thread off topic) if people didn't pirate music, software and fuck knows what else so damn much there wouldn't be a pirating issue to address and this law most likely wouldn't have come into existence. 

We only have ourselves to blame for being too tight fisted and not actually buying the products. 

Like I said, artists hate when their artwork gets stolen, so why is pirating any different? Pirating is theft and in this day and age a big issue.


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## KigRatel (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> Agreed. If we lived in a normal world where people actually had  rights, and interest groups wouldn't be allowed to f--k all of us over and up-front  with laws and practices like this, threads like this wouldn't be needed. That's the depressing part for me.



You misunderstand me. It's depressing because we're arguing about something that will, like most of these so-called censorship strategies, i'm sure, will end up having no real consequences for anyone and will be forgotten in a few weeks.



Randy-Darkshade said:


> It's not a stupid law. Granted they are  going about it the wrong way, but as I said earlier (which you  completely ignored to take your OWN thread off topic) if people didn't  pirate music, software and fuck knows what else so damn much there  wouldn't be a pirating issue to address and this law most likely  wouldn't have come into existence.
> 
> We only have ourselves to blame for being too tight fisted and not actually buying the products.
> 
> Like I said, artists hate when their artwork gets stolen, so why is  pirating any different? Pirating is theft and in this day and age a big  issue.



I think it's just ridiculous how many people refuse to pay for things because "you can get it for free". It's as if they don't care if it's illegal.


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Ok. Like I said on another thread, I'm not trying to completely ignore the victims of piracy (I usually consider them rich companies but whatever). Problem is that those people refuse any negotiation with users as well on their end, and their solution is outright destroying the internet (as proven by SOPA). Most of those companies will destroy anything that gets in their way regardless. The whole censorship madness was initially started by Hollywood, which everyone with common sense knows are a mafia. So even if more users "had common sense and shared less stuff", it would not change a lot.

If anyone wants a negotiation on a good way to deal with the problem, as well as good and non-harmful ideas, sure. But if they want to harass users or ban them from the internet, never.


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## Wulfe (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



KigRatel said:


> I think it's just ridiculous how many people refuse to pay for things because "you can get it for free". It's as if they don't care if it's illegal.



In terms of music : Far too many bands out there, I myself have close to 4000 songs and with most songs being 99 cents (I think). Thats a lot of money to spend on songs. If you TRULY like the band/artist you will buy their shit regardless just because you want them to continue to do what they do.

In terms of games: Waaaaay too many shitty games being released now. Games are getting shittier and shittier (and shorter) as time goes on, but the price keeps going up. Ill stick to torrenting my single player games and if I really like the game I might consider buying it (Especially if it has DLC...PITA to torrent updates for games)

In terms of movies: Same thing as games, minus the shorter thing. Movies for me are generally a one time deal, I just cant justify spending 15-20 bucks (Not sure if accurate...havent bought one for awhile) for a movie . There are seriously less than a dozen I care to re-watch out of the hundreds I have watched

In terms of programs: Cant speak for this really, I personally think a lot of the stuff is over priced (Photo-shop being 100+ I think?). I dont really think this part of pirating is an issue at all.

Greed is getting worse...All the people who make movies and music and various programs are making a SHIT ton of money still. Will another penny really matter to them? If it really does to them, then they arent doing it because they like to. They do it because they just want the money. Words cannot express my hatred for today's society. Fucking hate people...Money is all that seems to matter to anyone anymore. Im starting to hope the Mayans were right about dec 21st lol.

*end rant*


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Wulfe said:


> In terms of music : Far too many bands out there, I myself have close to 4000 songs and with most songs being 99 cents (I think). Thats a lot of money to spend on songs. If you TRULY like the band/artist you will buy their shit regardless just because you want them to continue to do what they do.
> 
> In terms of games: Waaaaay too many shitty games being released now. Games are getting shittier and shittier (and shorter) as time goes on, but the price keeps going up. Ill stick to torrenting my single player games and if I really like the game I might consider buying it (Especially if it has DLC...PITA to torrent updates for games)
> 
> ...



Really good points there. Well yeah, I admit I've never been one to be against piracy, and for the most part I support it. I'm talking about free distribution of media, not pirating things to re-sell them for money (that's very ugly and wrong). In short, I don't believe that sharing some bytes makes anyone a monster or a bad person.

Now I do believe that companies which need to make money to live need to be considered, and am not a fan of simply stealing stuff without any common sense. Most of the torrents I find however always encourage the user to buy it if they like it. And personally, it's a bit hard to imagine that this is destroying the entertainment industry... which went on for years and is still very rich the way things are now. Hollywood are billionaires... how on Earth can they complain they are suffering so badly?

This has always been a black to gray area I believe. But regardless of what people think of piracy (I try not to be closed minded on this debate), me and most users will not tolerate anyone being either harassed for what they do on the internet, and especially having their internet cut off. For instance, DRM is a concept which disgusts me... but if you wanna implement it in your works that's your business, and an ok way to deal with your problem. Other non-harmful ways could be tried too, if those people could imagine any alternative but destruction.

Anything that can be read by a computer can be copied however. That was always the case, always will be the case, and trying to destroy the internet to prevent it will never be tolerated nor even help the problem. Personally, what they are doing only makes me want to pirate things out of spite. Seriously... I don't even run StrongDC++ nightly like I used to (for performance reasons mind you), but this is making me want to get a database of all movies songs and games and share them like hell now.


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## Ikrit (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

>2012
>not using free open source programs


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Ikrit said:


> >2012
> >not using free open source programs



I'm a big open source fan, and try to use open source programs whenever possible. Most of the games I play at this day are, since I'm no longer into commercial ones with some exceptions. Same for programs... but I still listen to commercial music otherwise. Given many people stick with open source alternatives, it's even scarier to imagine they too might be affected by all this censorship madness at some point.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> Actually my point wasn't that a couple hundred grand isn't a ton of money, my point was however that if you sue a company for a couple hundred grand they can survive that financially.  However if you sue your average american a couple hundred grand their life is pretty much over.



That's an absolutely ridiculous idea. "People should be awarded damages based on how much they're worth."  So if say a doctor is personally not very rich in a private practice and I want to file a malpractice suit against them for something they did, theoretically, under your standards, I shouldn't be awarded the damages necessary that would cover undoing whatever he did to me because "oh well he'll be inconvienenced."  Thats not how these things work and if the company in question can realistically prove thousands of dollars of damages cause by someone, then they absolutely should go free that money. The question is now if they have effectively justified the figures they come up with, which we've both said we can't say with any certainty that they have. 



Wulfe said:


> In terms of music : Far too many bands out there, I myself have close to 4000 songs and with most songs being 99 cents (I think). Thats a lot of money to spend on songs. If you TRULY like the band/artist you will buy their shit regardless just because you want them to continue to do what they do.



Bands themselves make a majority of their money from public appearances, concerts, and merchandise. Again, the people hurt are the producers, technicians, and everyone else who would fall under the overheard of producing the studio album. 



> In terms of games: Waaaaay too many shitty games being released now. Games are getting shittier and shittier (and shorter) as time goes on, but the price keeps going up. Ill stick to torrenting my single player games and if I really like the game I might consider buying it (Especially if it has DLC...PITA to torrent updates for games)



This is all a matter of subjective opinion. I might let it slide if there was an objective way to determine a lower level of quality that the mass of people who play video games would agree exists. But since there exists no such objective stat, then this comes down to you sayin "but I dont waaaaaannnnnnnnaaaaa."



> In terms of movies: Same thing as games, minus the shorter thing. Movies for me are generally a one time deal, I just cant justify spending 15-20 bucks (Not sure if accurate...havent bought one for awhile) for a movie . There are seriously less than a dozen I care to re-watch out of the hundreds I have watched



Again, how does this justify not spending that 15 bucks for going to see the movie?  Because there's several things you're paying for when you see a movie: the ushers salaries, the janitors salaries, the experience of a large screen with surround sound or IMAX, etc. Do you believe people just work for free in the entertainment industry?



> In terms of programs: Cant speak for this really, I personally think a lot of the stuff is over priced (Photo-shop being 100+ I think?). I dont really think this part of pirating is an issue at all.



Were you there for the development of those programs?  Do you realize the man hours, the technological costs, and everything else that goes into creating a program like Photoshop, Final Cut, After Effects, Pro Tools, and so on?  No?  Then deal with it. Unlike with most things in your life, developing software hasn't been outsourced to another country where people work for peanuts if they're lucky. Men and women with mortgages, families, and their own want of entertainment work on these things, but oh because you think it's overpriced fuck them, amirite?  Because clearly its all about "me, me, me."



> Greed is getting worse...All the people who make movies and music and various programs are making a SHIT ton of money still. Will another penny really matter to them? If it really does to them, then they arent doing it because they like to. They do it because they just want the money. Words cannot express my hatred for today's society. Fucking hate people...Money is all that seems to matter to anyone anymore. Im starting to hope the Mayans were right about dec 21st lol.



"I want material things without paying for them, and they're the ones who are greedy."

Just the hypocrisy involved here is mind-numbing. Yes, because you acting selfish is totally justified by you're opinion that the faceless corporation is greedy. That same corporation that clearly doesn't have normal people working for them who rightfully deserve their money and credit for the work they do. 

Do me a favor, the next time you play a video game or watch a movie, stick through the credits and see how many people are involved in a given production. Then tell me that Sally Jones on the B Crew or Joe Smith working grip don't deserve their getting paid, because they're clearly fat cats trying to bleed you of your money by contributing to budget costs. 

But hey, they're faceless names to you, so who gives a fuck about their ability to make a living, right?  The only thing that matters is your ability to play, watch and listen to whatever you want without paying for it because "I deserve it."


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## Wulfe (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Not going to deny the fact I am a hypocrite. I do want shit for free, who doesnt? But corporations clearly dont give a flying fuck about "us" so why should I give a fuck about them? Just going to state that I have not torrented photoshop or any other of those costly programs just because I have no use for them and most likely never will. And about the movie thing, I hardly go to the theaters, not because its too much money. But because I simply have no interest in the films that come out. If a film catches my interest I will go pay the 15 bucks and see it, but I have only ever gone to the theater with someone. If Im not going with anyone I just wont go at all and wait for it to come out.

Another thing that makes no sense to me, bands release music(videos) and put them onto youtube, yes? Its not exactly rocket science to just copy the video and save it to your hard drive. I assume they are smart enough to realize this. They arent exactly encouraging pirating, but they arent helping the cause against it either. 

All that aside, are you defending this whole SOPA/ACTA shit? Or did you just want to rip into me? Honestly cant tell, if its the latter then thats okay lol


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

The majority of the shit that the entertainment industry tries to push isn't really worth paying much for I think. Just turn on the radio, tune to your local '(s)hit' station, and you'll hear what I mean.


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## Xenke (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Wulfe said:


> But corporations clearly dont give a flying fuck about "us" so why should I give a fuck about them?



I don't care an iota for you, can I steal your shit?


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## Elim Garak (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Not as bad as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Capabilities_Development_Programme
Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON is always watching, though internet generally doesn't move through satellites et al, only for the few satellites internet users, so we aren't in danger by that.
There's also people watching you regardless http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...g-online-dont-want-government-spying-you.html . http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepag...r-news-US-bars-friends-over-Twitter-joke.html 

I am sure some governments have programs with certain algorithms running against public twitter and facebook posts. You can do it manually even you want! http://www.kurrently.com/#search/CISPA


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Justice will not have been served until the entire RIAA has had its evil eyes plucked.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Wulfe said:


> Not going to deny the fact I am a hypocrite. I do want shit for free, who doesnt? But corporations clearly dont give a flying fuck about "us" so why should I give a fuck about them? Just going to state that I have not torrented photoshop or any other of those costly programs just because I have no use for them and most likely never will. And about the movie thing, I hardly go to the theaters, not because its too much money. But because I simply have no interest in the films that come out. If a film catches my interest I will go pay the 15 bucks and see it, but I have only ever gone to the theater with someone. If Im not going with anyone I just wont go at all and wait for it to come out.



So this is suddenly an us vs them thing?  I work in broadcasting. I've done work on documentaries, network shows and professional teams. So you because you don't like the faceless entity of the industry I suddenly don't deserve to be paid for the work I do?  That me and hundreds of others like me who put in 13 hour days or more, working nights, weekends, and holidays running around trying to push content out to the public, don't deserve any consideration because those of us making $30,000 a year if we're fortunate with very little job security in a fickle industry because of the faceless executive you think doesn't care about you. It's one thing to not spend your money on something you don't want to consume, but to say you don't want to spend money on something and then decide to torrent it because apparently you believe there are no actual people, like me, who work for these companies and you apparently feel you have a right to that content, then you're just as much of an asshole as any executive I could think of. The fact that you acknowledge you're no better then them and maintain what I'm guessing is a clear conscious about the whole thing further shows the inherent entitlement complex people have. That you hold no regard for other people except your selfish desire to be entertained without giving proper compensation for the content you receive. 

You try and downplay this by explaining that you don't use programs or see movies, but the fact that you've tried to justify why it'd be fine to pirate these things still speaks ill of you since it appears you're not trying to play devil's advocate but genuinely believe the things you say. 



> Another thing that makes no sense to me, bands release music(videos) and put them onto youtube, yes? Its not exactly rocket science to just copy the video and save it to your hard drive. I assume they are smart enough to realize this. They arent exactly encouraging pirating, but they arent helping the cause against it either.



They aren't concerned about people down loading the video. They almost always upload to Vevo which always plays ads before the videos. That tied in with the partnership they have with YouTube and the millions of individual views they receive allows them to make money. Where copyright infringement would become and issue would be when and if someone downloads that video and mirrors it to their site with ads enabled or attempts in some other way to repackage that music video into a separate production which doesn't fall under a news or expose genre. 



> All that aside, are you defending this whole SOPA/ACTA shit? Or did you just want to rip into me? Honestly cant tell, if its the latter then thats okay lol



I'm speaking towards the mentality of the habitual pirate, the guy who justifies why they don't give a company their dollar because they apparently hate them but still feel the need to illegally obtain their content and share it with other people. This has nothing to do with SOPA/PIPA.


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## Rilvor (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I'd like to take this time to point out that if you live in America, there is currently a station set up in a desert here in the USA with the purpose to collect every electronic message no matter what medium it is sent through for decrypting later.

There is no privacy folks, you're fooling yourself to think you'll ever have otherwise.

Edit: Term I'm curious since you seem to be well-informed and well-spoken here, what is your thoughts on people downloading very old content? Think 20-30+ years old.

To give an example, let's say you owned the complete Three Stooges collection on VHS once upon a time. But today you no longer possess that, what do you think if someone then downloads exactly what they had beforehand?


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Rilvor said:


> I'd like to take this time to point out that if you live in America, there is currently a station set up in a desert here in the USA with the purpose to collect every electronic message no matter what medium it is sent through for decrypting later.
> 
> There is no privacy folks, you're fooling yourself to think you'll ever have otherwise.
> ?


Our government takes all of its shadiest business out to the desert, doesn't it?
But at least that espionage is not controlled by the private sector.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Rilvor said:


> Edit: Term I'm curious since you seem to be well-informed and well-spoken here, what is your thoughts on people downloading very old content? Think 20-30+ years old.
> 
> To give an example, let's say you owned the complete Three Stooges collection on VHS once upon a time. But today you no longer possess that, what do you think if someone then downloads exactly what they had beforehand?



I can't remember if this was brought up during the Napster or Kazaa case, but the issue of someone downloading a copy of content they already owned was brought up legally, and I believe they found no issue with someone obtaining a copy of something theyve already paid for, so long as that copy is for personal use and not for copying/distribution. Now as you can tell by the cases I mentioned, this is based off of my memory from about six or seven years ago, so I might be wrong. 

Now I do remember bringing up an example of a movie you can view on You Tube right now called "The Naked City" which is a classic film noir flick from the 40s which I highly reccomend viewing. The film itself is a part of the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. Now if it were up to me films like this as well as the 574 others should be available for download for free on the Library of Congress' website for personal viewing as these films were deemed so important as to preserve them for future consumption and maintaining of a cultural history of America, including a couple of Three Stooges films. If a consumer wishes to own a copy they can certainly purchase it from someone who owns the copyright. But if the ferderal government has deemed these films so important that they need to be preserved, then the general public should be allowed to view them on some sort of streaming online service ala Netflix.


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Xenke said:


> I don't care an iota for you, can I steal your shit?



What I think he meant is that if companies attack us internet users the way they do, they can't expect us to suddenly become nicer toward them. And that's something I agree with. It's a practice I call "punching someone in the face while asking them to understand how bad things are for you". You either punch the person, or expect their understanding... doing both is a possible case of mental illness (and alas I seen people who still do it). The moment SOPA and ACTA were out, media companies declared a war of extermination on the internet.

At this point I feel justified to want the same for them. Personally, I want Hollywood (the head of SOPA and likely the biggest payer for this) to be erased off existence. Like you know... whole place to catch fire, meteor to hit, etc. If I had a better server and larger hard drive I'd probably pirate and share whatever I could from them and other companies, simply as part of this war they declared.



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> So this is suddenly an us vs them thing?   I work in broadcasting. I've done work on documentaries, network shows  and professional teams. So you because you don't like the faceless  entity of the industry I suddenly don't deserve to be paid for the work I  do?  That me and hundreds of others like me who put in 13 hour days or  more, working nights, weekends, and holidays running around trying to  push content out to the public, don't deserve any consideration because  those of us making $30,000 a year if we're fortunate with very little  job security in a fickle industry because of the faceless executive you  think doesn't care about you. It's one thing to not spend your money on  something you don't want to consume, but to say you don't want to spend  money on something and then decide to torrent it because apparently you  believe there are no actual people, like me, who work for these  companies and you apparently feel you have a right to that content, then  you're just as much of an asshole as any executive I could think of.  The fact that you acknowledge you're no better then them and maintain  what I'm guessing is a clear conscious about the whole thing further  shows the inherent entitlement complex people have. That you hold no  regard for other people except your selfish desire to be entertained  without giving proper compensation for the content you receive.
> 
> You try and downplay this by explaining that you don't use programs or  see movies, but the fact that you've tried to justify why it'd be fine  to pirate these things still speaks ill of you since it appears you're  not trying to play devil's advocate but genuinely believe the things you  say.
> 
> ...



I found your post interesting and wanted to give a reply of my own. First of all, although I believe in the idea that everything should be ok to share on the internet, I like it when people use common sense and limit. If a person who deserves money for what they do loses money due to something being copied, it's a case where I expect users to take notice and not be completely ignorant. If they still share, at least link to the artist's page and maybe even encourage donating to them instead. Most of the torrents I find ask people to buy the movie / album after they torrent it. Otherwise, like for anyone who does any work, I would never say you don't deserve money for what you do... that would be wrong. In my case I'm an open-source game developer, which means I spend my time working for free to create nice things for others from "my mom's basement" (I'm 23 and don't have a job yet, student here).

But at the same time, those of us who use the internet in a legit way don't deserve such harassment. And yes, harassment is the right word for some of us. I remember last winter after the SOPA scandal began... I was checking and refreshing posts and news articles, and my stomach was hurting wondering "what will happen to all those websites soon?". Bluntly, I don't believe I did anything wrong to deserve this. They don't understand that the internet isn't some place one polices like their back yard... some have their lives on it. So if they wish to outright destroy us, then let hell reign on both sides if so be it.

In other words, I try not to be closed minded on the matter of anti-piracy. Yeah sure... I download my favorite artist's albums and some 90's anime from Piratebay... and don't believe that makes me a monster. But if they wish to entirely take away what's ours (using the internet in a legit way) then we won't forgive and stand for it. If companies are upset with this, they must think of non-harmful and creative ways to discourage or stop it. DRM for instance is a thing that disgusts me... but it's something people have the right to use if they wish to slow down this process (it cannot be stopped because data can be copied, it's how things are with computers). This isn't fully to defend sharing either... the reason I'm upset is that I'm worried half of the internet might be gone because of censorship being abused the second it's implemented, and knowing the internet will no longer be free.

One more thing: If you work in the entertainment industry, and are among the people who understand this (that despite the pro / anti piracy side doing this to the internet is unacceptable), please try to explain it to other people who work there and maybe convince them to air something about this. Any help is needed to save the internet. Which is not all about piracy and people copying stuff, except a small part of it. Please help fight on this side.


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## Xenke (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> What I think he meant is that if companies attack us internet users the way they do, they can't expect us to suddenly become nicer toward them.



What internet users are they attacking aside from those that are stealing from them?

Conversely, if they do the opposite and become more lax on this issue, are people going start actually buying the products they were previously stealing? ...Pfffttt, HAHAHA, hell no. People pirate shit because they have no qualms with receiving good without actually paying for them, it has nothing to do with how the companies operate, or if they're 'nice' or not. It boils down to "I want this for free, so I'll take it".

The notion of 'justice' that so many pirates like to portray upon themselves is so laughably off-base that I honestly don't care what the hell ISPs do to them at this point. If you're going to keep enjoying services you refuse to pay for, you can shoulder some risk for it I'm sure.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Xenke said:


> What internet users are they attacking aside from those that are stealing from them?
> 
> Conversely, if they do the opposite and become more lax on this issue, are people going start actually buying the products they were previously stealing? ...Pfffttt, HAHAHA, hell no. People pirate shit because they have no qualms with receiving good without actually paying for them, it has nothing to do with how the companies operate, or if they're 'nice' or not. It boils down to "I want this for free, so I'll take it".
> 
> The notion of 'justice' that so many pirates like to portray upon themselves is so laughably off-base that I honestly don't care what the hell ISPs do to them at this point. If you're going to keep enjoying services you refuse to pay for, you can shoulder some risk for it I'm sure.



I used to DL free stuff but quit long ago. I don't even have any torrent or peer to peer software on here anymore.


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## Duality Jack (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Kit H. Ruppell said:


> Our government takes all of its shadiest business out to the desert, doesn't it?
> But at least that espionage is not controlled by the private sector.


Uhhh... Yeah keep your hopes up. More subcontracting goes on then you'd really like. Both where you live and where I live.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> That's an absolutely ridiculous idea. "People should be awarded damages based on how much they're worth."  So if say a doctor is personally not very rich in a private practice and I want to file a malpractice suit against them for something they did, theoretically, under your standards, I shouldn't be awarded the damages necessary that would cover undoing whatever he did to me because "oh well he'll be inconvienenced."  Thats not how these things work and if the company in question can realistically prove thousands of dollars of damages cause by someone, then they absolutely should go free that money. The question is now if they have effectively justified the figures they come up with, which we've both said we can't say with any certainty that they have.


No, I'm saying that people are NOT companies and companies are NOT people therefore under the law you should not treat them the same way.

Do companies have heartbeats?  Can they sexually reproduce?  No, they can not therefore people are not the same thing as people.
Can you legally sell people for money in the usa? No, you can not therefore people are not the same thing as companies.


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Xenke said:


> What internet users are they attacking aside from those that are stealing from them?
> 
> Conversely, if they do the opposite and become more lax on this issue,  are people going start actually buying the products they were previously  stealing? ...Pfffttt, HAHAHA, hell no. People pirate shit because they  have no qualms with receiving good without actually paying for them, it  has nothing to do with how the companies operate, or if they're 'nice'  or not. It boils down to "I want this for free, so I'll take it".
> 
> The notion of 'justice' that so many pirates like to portray upon  themselves is so laughably off-base that I honestly don't care what the  hell ISPs do to them at this point. If you're going to keep enjoying  services you refuse to pay for, you can shoulder some risk for it I'm  sure.



I think there are many who care for what is right and wrong as well. Like I said most torrents encourage people to buy the original work too. Also, excluding piracy done for money, why would anyone make websites to give people things for FREE rather than keeping pirated games and the like for themselves to sell? Those who give things away do it so others can enjoy them... sometimes people who can't pay for original stuff. Many put themselves at legal risk to do so. In this case however, I was also talking about pirating things out of spite. Which yes, this makes me want to do... especially with everything Hollywood-made.

As for who it affects, it will affect normal internet users. Do realize that the third-party group who monitors the internet doesn't even know all movies bands albums games and programs. Many will be people who don't even know how the internet works, what people create and what it's used for. Think of those receiving notices just for using bittorrent to download custom Linux distros, or open-source movie projects (yes there are some, the ones I know were made with Blender). There's also Creative Commons music and more. Who could expect the morons that will probably work there to even remotely understand such things?

Then obviously, torrents can also be used with anonymous network layers and proxies, so this won't even help the purpose because anyone with light skills can use TOR or a proxy. Torrent clients will probably come with this feature built-in and activated by default once this misery is passed. So again, this is just hitting on us normal users and making us afraid to use the internet, by using a wrong method that won't even work on the actual problem.

Oh, and about this third-party company doing the tracking: I don't remember who the hell among us told them they could do that. Who gave them the right to spy on our transfers at all? Why should someone I never met in  my life know what I'm downloading or not, and my IP address and data? Should I expect them to drink beer with an ISP and laugh at "what weird porn people are downloading" (legit or not)? Nope... still unacceptable, and the moment someone does this they should be in court.

FYI: There's a free open-source program called Wireshark, which lets you spy on what any user in the world is doing by IP address (and what they download and access). Yes, anyone can do this in practice. But even on their page, it's stated clearly that it's wrong and illegal, and that spying on people is not the purpose of the application. Spying without someone's consent is not allowed.


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## Elim Garak (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> I think there are many who care for what is right and wrong as well. Like I said most torrents encourage people to buy the original work too. Also, excluding piracy done for money, why would anyone make websites to give people things for FREE rather than keeping pirated games and the like for themselves to sell? Those who give things away do it so others can enjoy them... sometimes people who can't pay for original stuff. Many put themselves at legal risk to do so. In this case however, I was also talking about pirating things out of spite. Which yes, this makes me want to do... especially with everything Hollywood-made.
> 
> As for who it affects, it will affect normal internet users. Do realize that the third-party group who monitors the internet doesn't even know all movies bands albums games and programs. Many will be people who don't even know how the internet works, what people create and what it's used for. Think of those receiving notices just for using bittorrent to download custom Linux distros, or open-source movie projects (yes there are some, the ones I know were made with Blender). There's also Creative Commons music and more. Who could expect the morons that will probably work there to even remotely understand such things?
> 
> ...


So much stupid in this post.
They will work with a report system, as they have been doing it in a way, they seed a file like a movie, and see who connects to your client, basic honeypot. They see the IPs which they send to the owner of that ip, the ISP, which will send the warning to the user allocated to that IP or range of IPs and punish them.
They cannot disable bittorent since it is used as you say by Linux and other projects, also P2P systems exist in WoW updater, Star Trek Online downloader(and any other program that uses Pandoo media booster as a background downloader)

Torrents should not be used with Tor, too slow and its not optimized for this, would have a large negative impact on Tor. Torrents by proxy already exist, well rather they tend to use VPNs and seedboxes. These come at a price because it would be financially backbreaking to provide this to users for free since server usage and bandwidth tends to be expensive on a large scale.

The third parties will do as I said before, just make files a honeypot, they won't actually sift through all your mails, so nothing private comes out because this would probably violate privacy laws and the likes.

Also what the fuck, you don't even know what wireshark does, you can't monitor anything on the internet unless it passes through you. Wireshark allows you to see the connections between your pc(or if its installed on a pc between say your network and your ISP, it can see connections from anything behind your network connecting to the outside and things to connect to your network) and the outside networks.
Say if it its installed on your PC and you type www.google.com in firefox, you will see HTTP requests going out to 173.194.34.66(google). YOU CAN ONLY SEE CONNECTS ORIGINATING FROM YOU OR HAVING YOU AS A DESTINATION. This only has one exception, if you have a WiFi card that can handle monitoring mode it can also see the unencrypted wifi communications going around.

This all will not determine users from using the internet, it is at a point its pretty much essential from most people, resumÃ© needs to be sent in email, family needs you on facebook, friends need you on chat, news comes from online websites nowadays. 
Over here, taxes are done online as well. People don't really care much about internet privacy when it comes to the average user because they don't understand the dangers of it, they'll just go like OH YEAH IT GETS RID OF THE PEDO WEBSITES.

I am against censorship, just needed to point out the retarded in your post.


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## Duality Jack (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

SO to sum up some of your opinions:

I think its okay for someone to spend lots of work and money on something and not have the power to stop people from having it for free thus making my work less worth while? How is that different then shoplifting?


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Lead Jester said:


> SO to sum up some of your opinions:
> 
> I think its okay for someone to spend lots of work and money on something and not have the power to stop people from having it for free thus making my work less worth while? How is that different then shoplifting?



It isn't really any different. Theft imo is theft no matter how it's done. Back before digital media took hold and became as popular as it is now (fuck me I feel old now) I used to enjoy going to the store and actually BUYING a CD, take it home and shove in my CD player. I had quite a large collection of CD's back in 2007 but once I started keeping music on my computers I dumped them all.

I don't think offenders should be banned altogether from the net but perhaps banned from peer to peer sharing sites and other media sites.


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## Aden (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Lead Jester said:


> SO to sum up some of your opinions:
> 
> I think its okay for someone to spend lots of work and money on something and not have the power to stop people from having it for free thus making my work less worth while? How is that different then shoplifting?



Since you asked, technically, shoplifting deprives the shop of the original product, thus making it impossible for them to sell that instance of that product


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> No, I'm saying that people are NOT companies and companies are NOT people therefore under the law you should not treat them the same way.
> 
> Do companies have heartbeats?  Can they sexually reproduce?  No, they can not therefore people are not the same thing as people.
> Can you legally sell people for money in the usa? No, you can not therefore people are not the same thing as companies.



Actually, legally speaking, corporations are people.  You sure are ignorant, CannonFodder. ^_^


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## Namba (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Piracy is tearing the music industry to shreds.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Xenke said:


> Conversely, if they do the opposite and become more lax on this issue, are people going start actually buying the products they were previously stealing? ...Pfffttt, HAHAHA, hell no. People pirate shit because they have no qualms with receiving good without actually paying for them, it has nothing to do with how the companies operate, or if they're 'nice' or not. It boils down to "I want this for free, so I'll take it".
> 
> The notion of 'justice' that so many pirates like to portray upon themselves is so laughably off-base that I honestly don't care what the hell ISPs do to them at this point. If you're going to keep enjoying services you refuse to pay for, you can shoulder some risk for it I'm sure.



It's true.  I pirate the crap out of a lot of media but I make no moral justification for it.  It's free and it's a small offence against civil law, not even criminal.  So I download movies and TV shows.


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Elim Garak said:


> So much stupid in this post.
> They will work with a report system, as they have been doing it in a  way, they seed a file like a movie, and see who connects to your client,  basic honeypot. They see the IPs which they send to the owner of that  ip, the ISP, which will send the warning to the user allocated to that  IP or range of IPs and punish them.
> They cannot disable bittorent since it is used as you say by Linux and  other projects, also P2P systems exist in WoW updater, Star Trek Online  downloader(and any other program that uses Pandoo media booster as a  background downloader)
> 
> ...



I agree with some things. If (and only if) they will use torrent trackers (IP lists) to see who's downloading, then they don't see other information. However, it's hard to know whether it's the case.

As for Wireshark, I haven't used it a lot, but was certain what it does is being able to sniff the traffic of any IP address which you can look at and ping. Maybe I'm wrong, but I know other programs have this ability. Whatever you do you do by sending packets to a server... and a good program can catch those and re-interpret them. For a corporation like this it would be piece of cake.

Now normally, doing so is illegal. If you sniff someone then go to court saying they were downloading this and that, you are the one getting in trouble instead for spying on them. But if something like this will be accepted, if ISP's will also use this method (who knows, we don't trust them by nice words) and if they will be allowed behind the curtain to use the practice as part of this new initiative, things are really really bad.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Aden said:


> Since you asked, technically, shoplifting deprives the shop of the original product, thus making it impossible for them to sell that instance of that product



Ahh yes but pirating is a form of theft is it not? just like shoplifting is.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> As for Wireshark, I haven't used it a lot, but was certain what it does is being able to sniff the traffic of any IP address which you can look at and ping. Maybe I'm wrong, but I know other programs have this ability.



No, you really don't.  There is no magical software that can reach out on the net and see what any device on the internet is doing.


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Randy-Darkshade said:


> Ahh yes but pirating is a form of theft is it not? just like shoplifting is.



That's something I never fully agreed with, but partly. It's only  theft as we know it when you take something from someone to claim it for yourself. In the process, you obtain the object, while the other  side loses it. And usually, the other side losing the stolen item is  what makes it a crime. In this case it's copying; You obtain the  object, but the other side doesn't lose it. On the contrary, they willingly offer it. It's still wrong as a moral,  but way less dramatic.

Personally, if people who hotwired and  stole cars would leave a copy of the car behind as they escape with  it, I would see car theft as a less tragic thing too. Since you are not  taking it away from the owner... and if you had to buy the car instead  of stealing it in order to get it, you might have decided to not buy it  at all. Therefore there's no actual proof that someone lost anything (including money) unless you tap into the person's head to know if he  would have bought it from the car dealer were he not able to take a copy.

Considering  (for the sake of debate) that it was possible for a song to fit inside a 10 bits file. You could write 10 numbers consisting of 0 or 1 on a  piece of paper, and hand it to your classmate at school. Then when he  gets home, he opens notepad, writes the 0's and 1's, saves it as an mp3 file and opens the file as a  song, and listens to it. Where exactly was the criminal act committed,  and what was the "murder weapon"? Was writing a combination of numbers  and giving it to your friend the actual crime? Can any exact  consequences be known based on the act? Also, how can you prevent piracy then... by making it illegal to write on paper? Again, this is just me diving foolishly deep into the technical debate, but I hope you see my point.

That's what companies and anti-piracy people don't accept.  They call it outright theft, but don't realize that it's a gray area  with many ifs and buts the moment we talk about copying. Again, not to say it's fully ok... in my view it's a gray area both legally and morally.


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> No, you really don't.  There is no magical software that can reach out on the net and see what any device on the internet is doing.



Interesting. I'm a computer nerd, but if that's true it means I failed at being properly informed this time *beats self* I was pretty sure that any packet sent from one computer to another can be captured by anyone on the internet who knows their IP, using simple software. If not that's a good thing... my difficulty to sleep at night was increased with 0.1% when I heard about this


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> I'm a computer nerd



This is yet another blatently false statement that you have made.


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## Lukar (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Surprised I haven't seen this in any news lately.



Randy-Darkshade said:


> Also if you support such art then you have no morals.



Dude... It's _art_. Of _fictional creatures_. I don't particularly enjoy it, but all it is is art. It isn't hurting anybody. Offend, maybe, but hurt? No.


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## Duality Jack (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Wait did someone bring cub porn into this again?


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Lead Jester said:


> Wait did someone bring cub porn into this again?



To be honest, given how I feel like getting my mind off this internet censorship thing right now, I'm surprisingly not pissed at seeing this thread taken off-topic with that pointless debate again. Rather watch people who can't censor the whole internet argue than people who can, heh.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Why is 'censorship' in the title to this thread?  I don't see any acts of censorship in this at all...


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> That's something I never fully agreed with, but partly. It's only  theft as we know it when you take something from someone to claim it for yourself. In the process, you obtain the object, while the other  side loses it. And usually, the other side losing the stolen item is  what makes it a crime. In this case it's copying; You obtain the  object, but the other side doesn't lose it. On the contrary, they willingly offer it. It's still wrong as a moral,  but way less dramatic.



It doesn't matter if it's willingly offered or not, it doesn't give people the right to obtain it for free illegally. 



> Personally, if people who hotwired and  stole cars would leave a copy of the car behind as they escape with  it, I would see car theft as a less tragic thing too.



Flawed logic. If you had a copy of the car you want to steal why the fuck would you steal the car you already have a copy of? That wouldn't make sense. Correction, doesn't make sense.




> Since you are not  taking it away from the owner... and if you had to buy the car instead  of stealing it in order to get it, you might have decided to not buy it  at all. Therefore there's no actual proof that someone lost anything (including money) unless you tap into the person's head to know if he  would have bought it from the car dealer were he not able to take a copy.



What is the point in buying a product if you already obtained it for free? duh.



> Considering  (for the sake of debate) that it was possible for a song to fit inside a 10 bits file. You could write 10 numbers consisting of 0 or 1 on a  piece of paper, and hand it to your classmate at school. Then when he  gets home, he opens notepad, writes the 0's and 1's, saves it as an mp3 file and opens the file as a  song, and listens to it. Where exactly was the criminal act committed,  and what was the "murder weapon"? Was writing a combination of numbers  and giving it to your friend the actual crime? Can any exact  consequences be known based on the act? Also, how can you prevent piracy then... by making it illegal to write on paper? Again, this is just me diving foolishly deep into the technical debate, but I hope you see my point.



He copied the code and gave it to a friend for free. He COPIED the code. That is where the piracy act takes place, he copied the code and then distributed it. Which is what pirating is. People put up copies of songs, movies, software and distribute it freely which is against copyright. Years ago people did it with VHS tapes and sold them, then with DVD's and sold those. The difference online is that money doesn't usually exchange hands as it's free downloads. 



> That's what companies and anti-piracy people don't accept.  They call it outright theft, but don't realize that it's a gray area  with many ifs and buts the moment we talk about copying. Again, not to say it's fully ok... in my view it's a gray area both legally and morally.



It may not be theft but it does violate copyright laws because it's being redistributed illegally. Music, movies and even software will have written somewhere that it is for HOME use only and redistribution is illegal. This is what is trying to be stopped. 

So long as they don;t try to stop us like, transferring music from computer to an MP3 player or other device I don;t care.


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## Duality Jack (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> Why is 'censorship' in the title to this thread?  I don't see any acts of censorship in this at all...


Assumptions people would abuse the power bla bla without understanding the scandals that would happen if someone did. 


Also kids, fucking baby animals is wrong. don't fap to it!


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Lukar said:


> Surprised I haven't seen this in any news lately.
> 
> 
> 
> Dude... It's _art_. Of _fictional creatures_. I don't particularly enjoy it, but all it is is art. It isn't hurting anybody. Offend, maybe, but hurt? No.



Doesn't matter anyway, it's illegal in my country and illegal where the FA sites are hence why FA was forced to remove it. So Mircea's sig is kinda pointless because FA CAN'T reinstate it without breaking the law.


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## Duality Jack (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Randy-Darkshade said:


> Doesn't matter anyway, it's illegal in my country and illegal where the FA sites are hence why FA was forced to remove it. So Mircea's sig is kinda pointless because FA CAN'T reinstate it without breaking the law.


 Not to mention the trend of "sexual escalation" which has been proven to be a problem. Oddly enough "slippery slope" scenarios does apply to paedophilic materials. (one of those rare cases)


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## Aden (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Make a new thread if you really want to debate cub porn _again_, guys



Randy-Darkshade said:


> Ahh yes but pirating is a form of theft is it not? just like shoplifting is.



Nope. It's copyright infringement.



AshleyAshes said:


> It's true.  I pirate the crap out of a lot of media but I make no moral justification for it.  It's free and it's a small offence against civil law, not even criminal.  So I download movies and TV shows.



Here's what I've gathered about most pirates: they don't have the means and/or the will to acquire the content legally, even if pirating ceased to exist. Without pirating, the company receives no money and the pirate does not see the media. With pirating, the company receives no money and the pirate does see the media. It's obvious what the pirate chooses.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Aden said:


> Here's what I've gathered about most pirates: they don't have the means and/or the will to acquire the content legally, even if pirating ceased to exist. Without pirating, the company receives no money and the pirate does not see the media. With pirating, the company receives no money and the pirate does see the media. It's obvious what the pirate chooses.



Well, not entirely.  I think that there are people who get everything for free who would buy SOME stuff but don't cause they can get it for free.  At the same time I'll download a lot that I wouldn't buy if piracy just didn't exist.  When something costs you only bandwidth, it's easy to go 'Oh, I need this, and this, and ooo DVD rips of every show I loved when I was a kid.  The Real Ghostbusters complete DVDrip torrent, here I come! '  So I think piracy does lead to lost sales, but not even close to a 1:1 ratio for every pirated copy.


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## Mircea (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> Why is 'censorship' in the title to this thread?  I don't see any acts of censorship in this at all...



It's a plan to cut users off the internet, and possibly shut down websites. Though now that you mention it, maybe censorship isn't the best word. I tend to use that for everything related to attacking the internet.


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## Ikrit (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

cub porn

it's how pedos try to bend child porn laws


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> I found your post interesting and wanted to give a reply of my own. First of all, although I believe in the idea that everything should be ok to share on the internet, I like it when people use common sense and limit. If a person who deserves money for what they do loses money due to something being copied, it's a case where I expect users to take notice and not be completely ignorant. If they still share, at least link to the artist's page and maybe even encourage donating to them instead. Most of the torrents I find ask people to buy the movie / album after they torrent it. Otherwise, like for anyone who does any work, I would never say you don't deserve money for what you do... that would be wrong. In my case I'm an open-source game developer, which means I spend my time working for free to create nice things for others from "my mom's basement" (I'm 23 and don't have a job yet, student here).



Then again the the producers of said content didn't put out their movie/album/game for you for free so that after you've viewed said content that you could make the decision of whether it was worth your money.  This isn't a matter of donating, it's basic commerce.  You want a luxury item, you pay for it.  The only time I've ever seen a major producer release content for free while saying "pay if you want" is Radiohead, but that was a decision they made themselves with a self-released album that had no other party involved but themselves who would lose out, though the licensing of the music is still handled by Warner Chappell Music Publishing.  Free-to-play models notwithstanding.

This goes back to the same mentality I've been talking about which holds that "I deserve every piece of content in the world and if I feel like it I'll give them my money" which is absolutely ridiculous.



> But at the same time, those of us who use the internet in a legit way don't deserve such harassment. And yes, harassment is the right word for some of us. I remember last winter after the SOPA scandal began... I was checking and refreshing posts and news articles, and my stomach was hurting wondering "what will happen to all those websites soon?". Bluntly, I don't believe I did anything wrong to deserve this. They don't understand that the internet isn't some place one polices like their back yard... some have their lives on it. So if they wish to outright destroy us, then let hell reign on both sides if so be it.



What websites?  Instead of wondering maybe you should have read into what would have actually happened.  As we've seen, likely MegaUpload was going to get shutdown with the legislation, and rightfully so.  Nothing would happen to You Tube because it's actively doing everything in it's power to prevent people from making money by publishing copyrighted content that doesn't belong to them.  Sites like Vimeo are doing the same thing.  As for the "people whose lives are on the internet" I think they have more things to worry about than just being monitored for piracy.  Like leaving mom's basement.  :V

No one's destroying anyone and you certainly seem to have these delusions of grandeur about the entire thing.  Please, snap back to reality.



> In other words, I try not to be closed minded on the matter of anti-piracy. Yeah sure... I download my favorite artist's albums and some 90's anime from Piratebay... and don't believe that makes me a monster. But if they wish to entirely take away what's ours (using the internet in a legit way) then we won't forgive and stand for it. If companies are upset with this, they must think of non-harmful and creative ways to discourage or stop it. DRM for instance is a thing that disgusts me... but it's something people have the right to use if they wish to slow down this process (it cannot be stopped because data can be copied, it's how things are with computers). This isn't fully to defend sharing either... the reason I'm upset is that I'm worried half of the internet might be gone because of censorship being abused the second it's implemented, and knowing the internet will no longer be free.



The internet already isn't "free" as can clearly be seen any time you look at the news and you see a child pornography ring get busted up, or even now with how the UK is actively pursuing legal action against people who use racially charged derogatory words on Twitter.  The Internet believe it or not isn't the Wild West.  There are rules and laws which govern the activities therein.  Sharing content through piracy isn't using the internet in a "legit way" just as going to a movie theater, taping the movie with my camcorder and distributing physical copies isn't using my camera and computer in a "legit way".  Let me reitterate that companies are more concerned with people who sell their content or mass distribute it for free without their consent then the dude making stupid You Tube videos of My Little Pony, so long as that dude isn't enabling ads.



> One more thing: If you work in the entertainment industry, and are among the people who understand this (that despite the pro / anti piracy side doing this to the internet is unacceptable), please try to explain it to other people who work there and maybe convince them to air something about this. Any help is needed to save the internet. Which is not all about piracy and people copying stuff, except a small part of it. Please help fight on this side.



I'm not fighting for shit.  You want content on this?  Make it.  Because unless you're paying me I'm not going to produce anything about this topic, nor am I going to bother other people about it when I have my own responsibilities in my numerous jobs.  I wake my ass up 5 days a week before 6 AM to head to work and usually don't make it back home till after 7 PM or later depending on if I have another gig at night.  I got more shit on my plate than you could shake a stick at, the last thing I need to do is start making political speeches to people at the office about piracy legislation.



CannonFodder said:


> No, I'm saying that people are NOT companies and companies are NOT people therefore under the law you should not treat them the same way.
> 
> Do companies have heartbeats?  Can they sexually reproduce?  No, they can not therefore people are not the same thing as people.
> Can you legally sell people for money in the usa? No, you can not therefore people are not the same thing as companies.



According to the US Supreme Court companies share similar rights to the American people.  Said companies always maintained their rights to copyrights and licensing.  Assuming the company can provide facts to back up a number say in the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damages caused by someone, who are you to tell them they have no right to seek that money?

I don't know where your questions are coming from in the above quote, because many of them have absolutely nothing to do with the discussion.  This is all basic intellectual property law which has existed in this country since its formation.  Copyright holders have rights, CF, including the corporations who own their own, just as artists here have their rights for the work they produce.  If the company can reasonable prove whatever amount they're seeking in a case is backed up by facts as opposed to speculation, then they absolutely should be entitled to seek that money, just as you or I would be if a company took something we created and started mass distributing it without compensating us fairly.  This isn't a childish "fuck the corporations" thing, CF.  This is intellectual property rights.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> According to the US Supreme Court companies share similar rights to the American people.  Said companies always maintained their rights to copyrights and licensing.  Assuming the company can provide facts to back up a number say in the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damages caused by someone, who are you to tell them they have no right to seek that money?
> 
> I don't know where your questions are coming from in the above quote, because many of them have absolutely nothing to do with the discussion.  This is all basic intellectual property law which has existed in this country since its formation.  Copyright holders have rights, CF, including the corporations who own their own, just as artists here have their rights for the work they produce.  If the company can reasonable prove whatever amount they're seeking in a case is backed up by facts as opposed to speculation, then they absolutely should be entitled to seek that money, just as you or I would be if a company took something we created and started mass distributing it without compensating us fairly.  This isn't a childish "fuck the corporations" thing, CF.  This is intellectual property rights.


Stop trying to bring rights and morality into this.  Point to me one single post on here where I have argued about the morality or ethics or rights?

Under the law companies and people may share similar rights, but the whole notion that companies ARE people is just outright fucking stupid.

All I am saying is that companies are NOT people are therefore should not be treated the same, while yes the supreme court has ruled companies share similar rights the two are vastly different and therefore should not be treated the same under the law.

Human beings-
Tangible
animate
organic organism
sapient
has emotions
able to reproduce sexually
has a heartbeat
has internal organs

companies-
Intangible and is a conglomerate of means of production and sales through a unified organization(meaning the factory and means of production are tangible, however companies in of themselves are not)
innanimate
non-organic
not sapient
does not have emotions
unable to reproduce sexually
does not have a heartbeat
does not have internal organs


The irony of how you keep saying "have you even read what I'm saying" is that yes I do in fact keep reading what you are posting, BUT all I am arguing about is that law aspect of copyright infringement and not the morality or such and you keep responding to me as if I was touting forth my moral views on the subject on a billboard.

Before you respond, do you even know whether or not I think copyright infringement is okay or not okay morally?


But back on to the second part, yes copyright holders do hold the intellectual property.  However there is a massive difference between mass distribution of copyrighted works for profit and some joe downloading a movie.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



			
				CF said:
			
		

> The irony of how you keep saying "have you even read what I'm saying" is that yes I do in fact keep reading what you are posting, BUT all I am arguing about is that law aspect of copyright infringement and not the morality or such and you keep responding to me as if I was touting forth my moral views on the subject on a billboard.
> 
> Before you respond, do you even know whether or not I think copyright infringement is okay or not okay morally?
> 
> But back on to the second part, yes copyright holders do hold the intellectual property.  However there is a massive difference between mass distribution of copyrighted works for profit and some joe downloading a movie.



Well you pretty much are touting your morals here.  Because why else are you constantly trying to draw the comparisons between a biological living thing and a business establishment?  Should I start explaining how businesses work by comparing different departments to the human body to appease you?

Your entire argument seems to boil down to is the idea of "CORPORATIONS HAVE LOTS OF MONEY SO THEY SHOULDN'T GET TO SUE ANYBODY" which is a bullshit notion that a business should just allow itself to be wronged or that a court should take their case less seriously for the sole reason that they're a business.  That suddenly, the copyright holder's rights are somehow inversely proportional to how much money that company is making on its IP because they're able to monetize it and mass produce it themselves.  Your logic would dictate that someone robbing a Walmart is somehow less serious than someone robbing a mom and pop store because the Walmart could "handle the losses".

Sure, there's a difference between the dude who's downloading movies for personal use and the guy who's mass distributing pirated copies.  Problem is on sharing services like Limewire was and with most torrent communities, the stuff you download also gets seeded to other people.  You become part of the distribution ring, which ropes you into getting in more trouble than simply downloading a movie off the internet.  So no, while that guy may not be a Kim DotCom-type of person, he's still liable for the distribution of pirated content.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> Under the law companies and people may share similar rights, but the whole notion that companies ARE people is just outright fucking stupid.



CannonFodder, what if corporations were not legal persons?  How would you sign a contract with that corporation?  You couldn't.  You could maybe sign a contract with an individual at the corporation, but what if he quits?  Do you stop having your cable TV contract cause Steve, who you signed the contract with, left for a new job in Florida?  Or maybe Steve wouldn't be allowed to leave the company, due to the massive responsibility placed on him?  That doesn't work.

How would we hold corporations legally responsible for their actions or inactions if they wern't 'persons'?  We couldn't fine British Petrolium for *billions* if it wasn't a person.  And Steve?  Steve at BP doesn't have billions.

Really, I don't you comprehend (And maybe you arn't capable of comprehending) just how important it is to basic buisness for corporations to exist if they were not legally seen as persons.

And let's make this clear, I don't just mean 'the big evil megacorporations from Blade Runner', even little Mom & Pop stores are incorporated for the same reasons.

You're just ignorant to basic necessary functions of law and you eagerly make your judgements despite that ignorance.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> Well you pretty much are touting your morals here.  Because why else are you constantly trying to draw the comparisons between a biological living thing and a business establishment?  Should I start explaining how businesses work by comparing different departments to the human body to appease you?
> 
> Your entire argument seems to boil down to is the idea of "CORPORATIONS HAVE LOTS OF MONEY SO THEY SHOULDN'T GET TO SUE ANYBODY" which is a bullshit notion that a business should just allow itself to be wronged or that a court should take their case less seriously for the sole reason that they're a business.  That suddenly, the copyright holder's rights are somehow inversely proportional to how much money that company is making on its IP because they're able to monetize it and mass produce it themselves.  Your logic would dictate that someone robbing a Walmart is somehow less serious than someone robbing a mom and pop store because the Walmart could "handle the losses".
> 
> Sure, there's a difference between the dude who's downloading movies for personal use and the guy who's mass distributing pirated copies.  Problem is on sharing services like Limewire was and with most torrent communities, the stuff you download also gets seeded to other people.  You become part of the distribution ring, which ropes you into getting in more trouble than simply downloading a movie off the internet.  So no, while that guy may not be a Kim DotCom-type of person, he's still liable for the distribution of pirated content.


*warp factor 10 facedesk*

It's official you have not been paying attention to anything whatsoever I have posted.

I have not been touting my moral views anywhere about the subject, if I had to summarize what I have been arguing this whole time into once sentence it would be "companies are NOT people".  I have been hitting you over the head with this point up and down this thread going "this is my point" and yet it has yet to sink in.

My whole point is not about the morals of copyright infringement, it's not about rights, it's not about anything other than that people and companies are not the same thing therefore they should not be treated the same under the law.

Not everybody who disagrees with you is going "ermagod companies r t3h evil", not everyone who disagrees with you is hugboxing, not everyone who disagrees with you is touting "companies are taking our rights".  Some of us are in fact trying to debate with you, BUT you are instantly taking any post who disagrees with you as someone thinking "ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER!".

Term_the_schmuck: *Hypocrisy is magic*


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> It's official you have not been paying attention to anything whatsoever I have posted.
> 
> I have not been touting my moral views anywhere about the subject, if I had to summarize what I have been arguing this whole time into once sentence it would be "companies are NOT people".  I have been hitting you over the head with this point up and down this thread going "this is my point" and yet it has yet to sink in.



Maybe the reason why I'm not getting your point is because your point is so unbelievably misguided and stupid that I can't believe someone would actually try to make it.

What basis are you making the claim that corporations aren't to be treated as people?  You start listing off biological factors as if somehow those mean something.  You gotta give me something better than "WELL CORPORATIONS DON'T EAT CHEESEBURGERS LIKE I DO SO THEY AREN'T PEOPLE."  "People" in this case being a convenient way of saying "entity" or "party", which the corporation very much is, just as you are and mean a whole lot more in a legal case than the literal definition of "people".  



> My whole point is not about the morals of copyright infringement, it's not about rights, it's not about anything other than that people and companies are not the same thing therefore they should not be treated the same under the law.



And I'm saying this is a conclusion you made based on your moral outlook of what a corporation is.  You don't view corporations in the same light as the average Joe.  And if the only reason why you don't view them as such is because the corporation doesn't exist inside of a single physical human body, then I'm not sure it's worth debating with you to begin with because once again, you're trailing off into some batshit logic that makes sense to no one but you, which is part of the reason why every time you ask the question of the rest of the forum beginning with "does anyone besides me..." I answer back "It's just you."


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

CannonFodder, why are you attempting to apply a philosophical definition of 'person' into an area of legal definitions?  Then puffing out your chest and mocking those who continue the grown up conversation about law?  It's kinda stupid.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> "People" in this case being a convenient way of saying "entity" or "party", which the corporation very much is


And here is the problem with your point.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> And here is the problem with your point.



Why?  Does the corporation not exist?  Are they not Incorporated, an LLC, LLP, LLLP, DBA, PC, GP?  Because if they are, yes, they are a legal entity and are entitled to all the rights that come with that name by paying their taxes, filing quarterly earnings reports, and other expenses demanded of them by the state and/or federal government.

A corporation may not take a shit like you do CF, but they do pay their taxes.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> Why?  Does the corporation not exist?  Are they not Incorporated, an LLC, LLP, LLLP, DBA, PC, GP?  Because if they are, yes, they are a legal entity and are entitled to all the rights that come with that name by paying their taxes, filing quarterly earnings reports, and other expenses demanded of them by the state and/or federal government.
> 
> A corporation may not take a shit like you do CF, but they do pay their taxes.


Go back to biology 101 and relearn human anatomy.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> Why?  Does the corporation not exist?  Are they not Incorporated, an LLC, LLP, LLLP, DBA, PC, GP?  Because if they are, yes, they are a legal entity and are entitled to all the rights that come with that name by paying their taxes, filing quarterly earnings reports, and other expenses demanded of them by the state and/or federal government.
> 
> A corporation may not take a shit like you do CF, but they do pay their taxes.



The weird thing here is, since CannonFodder doesn't come up with anything other than a philosophical definition, I think CF's entire arguement is that they are simply not comfortable with the idea of corporations, governments or other things being legally defined as a form of person, and so it must be attacked...


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> Go back to biology 101 and relearn human anatomy.



Oh my, I do believe I broke CF.

Or maybe he's just not who we think he is.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> Oh my, I do believe I broke CF.


^Danth's law.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> Oh my, I do believe I broke CF.
> 
> Or maybe he's just not who we think he is.



I'm tellin' you, I think CF has aspergers or something and just won't admit to it.  It's the only way to explain their oddball weird ideas about all things humanity.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> I'm tellin' you, I think CF has aspergers or something and just won't admit to it.  It's the only way to explain their oddball weird ideas about all things humanity.


Huzzah! The Danth's law has been doubled.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> ^Danth's law.



^ Term's Law.


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## Corto (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

How about the "shut up and stop the personal insults" law.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> ^ Term's Law.


You do realize by doing that means having a debate with you is pointless, because no matter what you can claim victory regardless of what you post and therefore the debate is in reality a one sided argument.


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## Aden (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



AshleyAshes said:


> what if corporations were not legal persons?  How would you sign a contract with that corporation?  You couldn't. ... How would we hold corporations legally responsible for their actions or inactions if they wern't 'persons'?



It's not hard to define 'corporation' as a legal entity without it carrying all the other aspects of legally being a 'person'. Do we allow corporations to cast votes in the ballot box as well? If someone drives a corporation into the ground, has he committed murder?

It's not them being legal entities that's the problem; it's the 'corporations are people' terminologyâ€”and the dangerous potential for extrapolation that comes with itâ€”that I can't stand.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Aden said:


> It's not hard to define 'corporation' as a legal entity without it carrying all the other aspects of legally being a 'person'. Do we allow corporations to cast votes in the ballot box as well? If someone drives a corporation into the ground, has he committed murder?
> 
> It's not them being legal entities that's the problem; it's the 'corporations are people' terminologyâ€”and the dangerous downward spiral it brings with itâ€”that I can't stand.



Oh no, only legal natural persons can vote. ^_^

There's two legal subtypes of persons, legal natural persons are the fleshy kind that can vote.


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## Corto (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Hey you Americans have that too?


Yeah, corps are "persons". We call them "persona juridica", basically "legal person", as opposed to "natural persons" (actual people). They do not share all traits.

EDIT: And there's no dangerous spiral or slope or any other kind of moral debate about it. It's just a term. One that, for a lawyer, means something radically different than for most people.


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## Ikrit (Jun 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

ohboy! this dicking competition is the best one in a long time!


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



CannonFodder said:


> You do realize by doing that means having a debate with you is pointless, because no matter what you can claim victory regardless of what you post and therefore the debate is in reality a one sided argument.



Pretty much the same thing you're doing by claiming arbitrary laws derived from RPGs in order to feign some sort of cleverness or snarkiness to somehow place yourself above the people you're debating. 

Term's Law. 

Trust me CF, as I mentioned before it's useless to continue the conversation because you're hung up on treating entities as something which MUST be flesh and blood, which is not how the legal system works or has ever worked as so long as there have been all those types of businesses I've mentioned. Its some arbitrary hang up you apparently have to try and justify why those corporations claims should be diminished all because "think of the little guy" which apparently no one bothered to think about when they started pirating to begin with which brings us full circle.  I don't believe you have any concept of the legal ramifications of owning a business or of liability. If you did you wouldn't be trying to use biology to argue legal theory.


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## CannonFodder (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> Pretty much the same thing you're doing by claiming arbitrary laws derived from RPGs in order to feign some sort of cleverness or snarkiness to somehow place yourself above the people you're debating.
> 
> Term's Law.
> 
> Trust me CF, as I mentioned before it's useless to continue the conversation because you're hung up on treating entities as something which MUST be flesh and blood, which is not how the legal system works or has ever worked as so long as there have been all those types of businesses I've mentioned. Its some arbitrary hang up you apparently have to try and justify why those corporations claims should be diminished all because "think of the little guy" which apparently no one bothered to think about when they started pirating to begin with which brings us full circle.  I don't believe you have any concept of the legal ramifications of owning a business or of liability. If you did you wouldn't be trying to use biology to argue legal theory.


Do you really still not understand I'm not going "think of the little people", but rather I'm going "companies aren't people in a literal sense"?


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## Commiecomrade (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

These people are going to have to look through pages upon pages of furfag porn before they find MY illegal activities. :V

But seriously... Can't we use Tor or something? How about taking a laptop to a Wifi hotspot?


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## Elim Garak (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I would like to say this, I will pirate a game with massive amounts of dlc coming out, I will pirate music published by a major corporation knowing that no money from that sale will go to the artist themselves with keeping in mind that most of the artist money comes from public performances. I make exceptions for artists where I can buy from them almost directly with bandcamp(for an example I paid 10 dollars for symphony of Science albums even though you don't have to). I also buy indie or other games straight from the dev. I have each humble bundle with at least 10 dollars given to them.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 26, 2012)

*Term's merged post*



CannonFodder said:


> Do you really still not understand I'm not going "think of the little people", but rather I'm going "companies aren't people in a literal sense"?



If that's not your motive then why bring it up?  Because "companies aren't flesh and blood people" means about as much to the conversation as saying "you know Iceland isn't really all covered in ice."



Elim Garak said:


> I would like to say this, I will pirate a game with massive amounts of dlc coming out, I will pirate music published by a major corporation knowing that no money from that sale will go to the artist themselves with keeping in mind that most of the artist money comes from public performances. I make exceptions for artists where I can buy from them almost directly with bandcamp(for an example I paid 10 dollars for symphony of Science albums even though you don't have to). I also buy indie or other games straight from the dev. I have each humble bundle with at least 10 dollars given to them.



What's your justification?  Why is that developer who happens to put out DLC for their game suddenly not worthy of your dollar but you apparently still deserve to play their product?  Suddenly the men and women of Bethesda don't deserve to be compensated for their hard work on a game because they they put out expansion packs for Fallout?

Seems pretty arbitrary to me that "because DLC" is the only excuse someone has to pirate the fruit of someone else's hard-work, education, and man hours.


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## Mircea (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I have some good news everyone. It seems the project was delayed until past this July. There's no specific date as to when they wish to implement it, although evil corporations and ISP's are still hoping this year.

http://torrentfreak.com/us-six-strikes-anti-piracy-scheme-delayed-120518/

That likely means they are scared, and have taken notice people are revolted. This is our chance to react and give them a good scare. What I hope will happen is people establishing a date when they can go to their ISP and protest... maybe knock at their door and have a nice heated discussion (I don't wish to imagine a worse scenario *yet*).

If such happens the project will certainly be killed, and we would further send a message to those who wish to crush the internet so they understand once and for all we'll never accept it in any form. Including those who support CISPA, who they hopefully understand will also not pass for the sake of both sides and everyone else.

Also, corporations are indeed not people. The reason oppressive laws get pushed so much in the US is that rich corporations donate huge amounts of money so the world is shaped their way. There's a debate specifically on separating beings with rights from corporations (an amendment to the constitution) which I fully support. Unless we separate the two and stop passing laws over firms paying money to politicians, we WILL end up a dictatorship.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> I have some good news everyone. It seems the project was delayed until past this July. There's no specific date as to when they wish to implement it, although evil corporations and ISP's are still hoping this year.
> 
> http://torrentfreak.com/us-six-strikes-anti-piracy-scheme-delayed-120518/
> 
> ...



I don;t think this law is necessary. I mean I can find out my own search history without trying so just think how easy it is for law enforcement to find out what you've searched for and eventually find out what you've been DLing.



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> What's your justification?  Why is that  developer who happens to put out DLC for their game suddenly not worthy  of your dollar but you apparently still deserve to play their product?   Suddenly the men and women of Bethesda don't deserve to be compensated  for their hard work on a game because they they put out expansion packs  for Fallout?
> 
> Seems pretty arbitrary to me that "because DLC" is the only excuse  someone has to pirate the fruit of someone else's hard-work, education,  and man hours.



Because too Elim, ruining someone's hardwork is perfectly fine.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> That likely means they are scared, and have taken notice people are revolted. This is our chance to react and give them a good scare. What I hope will happen is people establishing a date when they can go to their ISP and protest... maybe knock at their door and have a nice heated discussion (I don't wish to imagine a worse scenario *yet*).



Wut?  How the hell did you come to that conclusion that they're "scared?" Because I just read that article and they hinted at the fact that ISPs are still trying to flesh out the logistics of the warning system. No where in that article does it say anything about companies being "scared" or that some sort of victory has been achieved. Are you that desperate to believe the righteousness of your side that you're going to take any news of a reasonable delay as some sort of direct result of the voice of the people?  C'mon now. And yes I'm sure they'll be really scared when you show up to their offices and get tossed out by security while rambling on about revolution should this measure be implemented. 



> If such happens the project will certainly be killed, and we would further send a message to those who wish to crush the internet so they understand once and for all we'll never accept it in any form. Including those who support CISPA, who they hopefully understand will also not pass for the sake of both sides and everyone else.



Why would it be killed?  Because really this is a much more optimal situation for the companies involved because it takes the federal government out of the equation and they are able to enforce themselves, which is part of the reason why things like the MPAA, ESRB, and others were created. ISPs forming their own program to help enforce copyright would not be contingent on votes or the worry of election to office. 



> Also, corporations are indeed not people. The reason oppressive laws get pushed so much in the US is that rich corporations donate huge amounts of money so the world is shaped their way. There's a debate specifically on separating beings with rights from corporations (an amendment to the constitution) which I fully support. Unless we separate the two and stop passing laws over firms paying money to politicians, we WILL end up a dictatorship.



How does a company giving money to a campaign suddenly lead to an immediate dictatorship?  Suddenly the checks and balances between the three branches of government no longer exist because Coke gave a million dollars to Obama's campaign?  Come off it man. 

And corporations still maintain their rights as the holders of intellectual property. They don't have to be flesh and blood people in order to protect their registered trademarks, IPs, and so on. And they absolutely maintain their rights to seek reasonable compensation when they are wronged by someone violating their copyright.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I'd just like to point out that corporations are ran by people. People who designed the stuff the corporations are trying to protect.


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## Mircea (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Term_the_Schmuck: Yes, we know you are among those who support crushing the internet for companies to be rich and happy... thank you. Hopefully you will have the same done to you someday, and we'll see if you like it when all your rights are taken away while others do what they want with your stuff. Also, I'm normally against generalizing... but it's sad to see that people who work in the entertainment industry are all the same. As long as something benefits you, even if it harms millions of other people, it's a good thing and must be defended. Yeah, you're all the same.

As for companies, the issue I seen discussed in a past article is that companies can give huge amounts of money to elections in order for laws to be passed. It was the founding principle of SOPA; Hollywood and other b-tards wanted it, so they paid millions if not billions to the government, senators, and what not so it would be passed. Otherwise a law like that would have probably not even been allowed into debate. The amendment I read addressed mainly that, and how both firms and rich individuals can give money for laws to be passed, which I don't think I need to even mention how wrong it is.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> Term_the_Schmuck: Yes, we know you are among those who support crushing the internet for companies to be rich and happy... thank you. Hopefully you will have the same done to you someday, and we'll see if you like it when all your rights are taken away while others do what they want with your stuff. Also, I'm normally against generalizing... but it's sad to see that people who work in the entertainment industry are all the same. As long as something benefits you, even if it harms millions of other people, it's a good thing and must be defended. Yeah, you're all the same.



Rights? Since when is it a right to break the law by violating copyright? Since when is a right to distribute someones work illegally and without their consent? I mean seriously? you're saying all these are fucking rights we have?  People in the entertainment business WORK for their money. Movies are not made in a fucking day ya know, they can take months, or even years to make. Do you not realize how much fucking work goes into producing the fucking media we enjoy today? You're seriously saying these people don't deserve the money they EARNED honestly? 

This isn't about supporting crushing the internet so corporations can remain rich, it's about protecting one's property. If people hadn't made pirating such a big fucking issue to start with corporations would not be trying to change the laws today. The only people to blame are those that decided to make a habit out of pirating stuff that is not theirs. If it was not for these piraters making pirating so common on the internet Hollywood, Universal and Viacom and many other businesses would not be creating SOPA/PIPA today. You only have yourselves/piraters to blame.



> As for companies, the issue I seen discussed in a past article is that companies can give huge amounts of money to elections in order for laws to be passed. It was the founding principle of SOPA; Hollywood and other b-tards wanted it, so they paid millions if not billions to the government, senators, and what not so it would be passed. Otherwise a law like that would have probably not even been allowed into debate. The amendment I read addressed mainly that, and how both firms and rich individuals can give money for laws to be passed, which I don't think I need to even mention how wrong it is.



everyone knows politics are full of corruption, this isn't anything knew nor does it surprise me.I love how you call big movie companies bastards for wanting to protect THEIR property. I'm not saying handing money to politicians under the table is the right way to go about getting the laws changed but still, I'd be wanting to protect my property too if I was a song writer, musician or movie producer...or even animator. 

I think some people are jealous because these people who run such companies are rich and they ain't.


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## Mircea (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Randy-Darkshade said:


> Rights? Since when is it a right to break the law by violating copyright? Since when is a right to distribute someones work illegally and without their consent? I mean seriously? you're saying all these are fucking rights we have?  People in the entertainment business WORK for their money. Movies are not made in a fucking day ya know, they can take months, or even years to make. Do you not realize how much fucking work goes into producing the fucking media we enjoy today? You're seriously saying these people don't deserve the money they EARNED honestly?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



This is not a head-on pro-piracy thing! My concern is that it will affect normal users too... both those who don't do anything illegal and those who "sin" by simply downloading a song or movie and seeding it in the process, and IMO don't deserve such shit for it either. Since someone asked a similar question on another forum, it's best I quote my reply from there:



> There are many reasons why this would harm both pirates and normal  users. First of all, I don't want to be spied on, especially if it's  sniffing my connection (or even otherwise). Once you can spy on people  the slightest in a legal way, the system will be abused to spy on even  more and eventually play the role of a private police. Second, any such  an initiative strikes and addresses the internet and its structures.  It's a step toward corporations and SOPA / ACTA supporters moving in on  us, and they would be encouraged to work on even greater censorship  plans. They need to understand the internet itself is free and cannot be  touched or restricted, and if there's a problem they need to deal with  it in other ways. I also don't want whole websites going down (or  friends I talk to disappearing) because someone downloaded a song from  their machine and network... and there are probably other huge issues  with this.
> 
> Also, among those pirates, there are also ok people who do nothing than  to download an album or movie every few months. They might have a job  online, emails they have to read, friends, and other things. If they  wanna attack pirates, by all means attack those who sell stuff for  money. But not nice users who just listen to a song or see a movie, or  share some stuff on DC++ or seed who knows what torrent.
> 
> Then as discussed here, encryption will make it easy to bypass this, and  in practice it will not do much at all. So why still bother and make us  afraid to use the internet, instead of trying to find gentle and ok  ways to deal with their problem of losing money from people sharing  stuff? Must every single idea of fighting piracy involve harassing  normal users or taking down websites?



As for the corporation thing... again, it's about being able to use money to get laws passed. Any law needs to be passed when / if the citizens of that country want it / approve of it ONLY. When laws can be passed in any way because of money, those laws are no longer there to do the right thing or protect the citizen. They are there because someone bought them. This makes the difference between a normal and free country, and a business country where freedom can be bought like potatoes from the bazaar.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> Term_the_Schmuck: Yes, we know you are among those who support crushing the internet for companies to be rich and happy... thank you. Hopefully you will have the same done to you someday, and we'll see if you like it when all your rights are taken away while others do what they want with your stuff. Also, I'm normally against generalizing... but it's sad to see that people who work in the entertainment industry are all the same. As long as something benefits you, even if it harms millions of other people, it's a good thing and must be defended. Yeah, you're all the same.



Yes because I work for a living clearly I'm a terrible person. :V

Youre hoping all my rights are taken away?  Oh you mean like what youre sayin about how a company deserves to have no rights and who gives a fuck how many men and women you hurt so long as you're able to get the content they worked on for free.  Oh but it's okay, because "I'm an open source developer living in my mom's basement and I know all about rights". All you basement dwellers sound alike to me. :V

Now how about you actually respond to my points against your unfounded claims of dictatorships and the apparent fright companies have of people like you?



> As for companies, the issue I seen discussed in a past article is that companies can give huge amounts of money to elections in order for laws to be passed. It was the founding principle of SOPA; Hollywood and other b-tards wanted it, so they paid millions if not billions to the government, senators, and what not so it would be passed. Otherwise a law like that would have probably not even been allowed into debate. The amendment I read addressed mainly that, and how both firms and rich individuals can give money for laws to be passed, which I don't think I need to even mention how wrong it is.



First don't use the term "b-tard" unless you're going spell it right in referring to te denizens of 4chan. 

Secondly, SOPA was brought up by a politician from Texas far removed from big Hollywood influence. His district sees no immediate benefit from Hollywood and unless there's money being exchanged under the table which you can't prove, the only thing anyone can say for certain is that the MPAA and others are merely supporters of the Bill who likely did lobby for the legislation just as there exists lobbies who fought against it. Now this is becoming an issue about lobbying and special interests which is entirely different from the matter of private companies policing themselves and the services they provide. 

Because as far as I've read, this policy has absolutely nothin to do with the government aside from the filing of copyright suits which deal with judges, not politicians.


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## Mircea (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> Yes because I work for a living clearly I'm a terrible person. :V
> 
> Youre hoping all my rights are taken away?  Oh you mean like what youre sayin about how a company deserves to have no rights and who gives a fuck how many men and women you hurt so long as you're able to get the content they worked on for free.  Oh but it's okay, because "I'm an open source developer living in my mom's basement and I know all about rights". All you basement dwellers sound alike to me. :V
> 
> Now how about you actually respond to my points against your unfounded claims of dictatorships and the apparent fright companies have of people like you?



And that's exactly what I'm talking about. You and those companies are doing to the whole internet what you believe the internet is doing to you. Everything you said here is what I legitly said about media companies already. Again, this is proof that media companies declared a war with internet users in my view.



> Youre hoping all my rights are taken away?



You are hoping my rights are taken away, by supporting attacks on the internet that could also affect non-pirates (or small downloads that everyone did in their life). That includes both this and SOPA / PIPA / ACTA. Also that new law which makes it illegal to sell a computer or mp3 player / iPod. Or another law against jailbreaking... which is making it illegal to install a custom operating system on a Playstation or Xbox *in your own home and for your own use* because Sony was pissed that day. Even to *post about it on the internet and explain how it could be done* (free speech anyone?). So... who's rights are taken away now?



> Oh you mean like what youre sayin about how a company deserves to have  no rights and who gives a fuck how many men and women you hurt so long  as you're able to get the content they worked on for free.



And companies believe we users have no rights when they try to get websites to be censored and users to be taken down. How many men and women we hurt by copying some stupid bytes over a cable? I can't imagine a large number at worst. Now, ever wondered how many men and women SOPA hurt last winter? In my case, how many days I spent posting articles and refreshing others to see what was happening, and how at some point I didn't even feel like eating thinking half of the internet was literally going to be erased (especially after google and wikipedia's blackouts when I realized stuff was really serious)?

Also, please don't twist my words. I never said that because I work for free it's automatically ok to download and steal everything in sight. I was just explaining that while some complain their works are being copied, others put as much effort into their works for the purpose of them being copied so others can enjoy them. And some of them have jobs that pay even less than producing media probably does... like selling stuff at the gas station. Both have rights of course... but not threatening another person's own. Again, this and initiatives like it don't threaten only pirates... they are practices that can be misunderstood and abused. Otherwise, I'm used to people considering us free developers and content creators leeches, who are worthless because we don't have a job (a few of us) when we contribute to the world for free in the same domains.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> And that's exactly what I'm talking about. You and those companies are doing to the whole internet what you believe the internet is doing to you. Everything you said here is what I legitly said about media companies already. Again, this is proof that media companies declared a war with internet users in my view.



Please explain to me how people who are not doing anything illegal can be affected by this.





> You are hoping my rights are taken away, by supporting attacks on the internet that could also affect non-pirates (or small downloads that everyone did in their life). That includes both this and SOPA / PIPA / ACTA. Also that new law which makes it illegal to sell a computer or mp3 player / iPod. Or another law against jailbreaking... which is making it illegal to install a custom operating system on a Playstation or Xbox *in your own home and for your own use* because Sony was pissed that day. Even to *post about it on the internet and explain how it could be done* (free speech anyone?). So... who's rights are taken away now?



What rights of yours are being taken away? It's not your RIGHT to download things illegally, so what rights of yours ARE being affected?





> And companies believe we users have no rights when they try to get websites to be censored and users to be taken down. How many men and women we hurt by copying some stupid bytes over a cable? I can't imagine a large number at worst. Now, ever wondered how many men and women SOPA hurt last winter? In my case, how many days I spent posting articles and refreshing others to see what was happening, and how at some point I didn't even feel like eating thinking half of the internet was literally going to be erased (especially after google and wikipedia's blackouts when I realized stuff was really serious)?



Stupid bytes eh? So the games you play are stupid? the movies you watch are stupid?  Just some stupid bytes that NO ONE obviously put effort into to fucking create for YOUR convenience, for YOUR entertainment and jerks like you think it's a RIGHT to copy that work and distribute it? fuck you.



> Also, please don't twist my words. I never said that because I work for free it's automatically ok to download and steal everything in sight.



Hah! You basically have said this throughout the thread though. You keep implying it's "our right" to download whatever the fuck we want regardless of content and who made it.



> I was just explaining that while some complain their works are being copied, others put as much effort into their works for the purpose of them being copied so others can enjoy them.



That's because they choose to create a software for people to use for free. This doesn't mean we have a right to download someones hardwork such as a movie or piece of music for free.I mean for fuck sake it's not like a single song cost's a lot these days. Albums don't really cost a lot, fuck me even DVD's don't cost much these days. 



> And some of them have jobs that pay even less than producing media probably does... like selling stuff at the gas station. Both have rights of course... but not threatening another person's own. Again, this and initiatives like it don't threaten only pirates... they are practices that can be misunderstood and abused. Otherwise, I'm used to people considering us free developers and content creators leeches, who are worthless because we don't have a job (a few of us) when we contribute to the world for free in the same domains.



The thing is, those that charge for software do it as it's how they make their living. Like you said yourself many of those who create free programs do it voluntarily and usually have a job to which earns their income.


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## Mircea (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I just explained how non-pirates can be affected a few posts above. I'm taking part at this debate for 2 days on multiple forums, and am sick of repeating the same things all over. If something is unclear, see my previous posts. If you believe this sort of thing is ok, and that it's just stopping piracy without hurting the whole internet, invading users privacy and more, that's your belief. You, Term and others have your own view and we clearly won't get to an understanding. I did what felt right and helped inform people of this. Last thing I feel like doing is getting into a direct argue with supporters of this whole craze over internet freedom.

Like I said, I remain against any practice that involves taking down or censoring websites, or harassing users in real life for something they do on the net. I suggest companies find any other methods to fix the problem. Every anti-piracy initiative is about censoring websites and penalizing users, simply because they can't block some data being transferred. This by itself turns into a risk to the global network if turned into a common practice. If it keeps going further, it will eventually become illegal to do anything some "powers that be" will dislike, because of how easy it will become to censor things and how tempting. Sorry, I seen power hungry governments and companies too well to know where it goes. And I will never support or stand for such things.

Oh, and a correction: I never said the movies and games themselves are stupid... once again my words are being twisted. I said that the whole process is transferring some stupid bytes over a cable. Which in my eyes could never qualify as outright theft. Objects are objects, information is information, there are different base principles behind how each works. Copying some things is of course immoral and illegal... but as I said 100 times I consider it a highly gray area which is often unclear in many ways.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> And that's exactly what I'm talking about. You and those companies are doing to the whole internet what you believe the internet is doing to you. Everything you said here is what I legitly said about media companies already. Again, this is proof that media companies declared a war with internet users in my view.



Again, Wut?  You're trying to turn this around on me?  You're acting in the same manner that you accuse these companies of and suddenly you're right and they're wrong?  Why?  "My rights are more important."  even though you never held the right to copy and distribute content which doesn't belong to you so the whole "rights" issue has absolutely nothin to do with the discussion. 



> You are hoping my rights are taken away, by supporting attacks on the internet that could also affect non-pirates (or small downloads that everyone did in their life). That includes both this and SOPA / PIPA / ACTA. Also that new law which makes it illegal to sell a computer or mp3 player / iPod. Or another law against jailbreaking... which is making it illegal to install a custom operating system on a Playstation or Xbox *in your own home and for your own use* because Sony was pissed that day. Even to *post about it on the internet and explain how it could be done* (free speech anyone?). So... who's rights are taken away now?



Please quote exactly where I said people aren't entitled to their rights. You'll have a hard time finding that quote because it doesn't exist. Youre twistin my arguments to where you're hearing what you want to hear and any reasoned argument or why a company deserves to protect it's IPs just as any artist on FA deserves to protect there's suddenly makes that person some sort of facsist. 

And as far as how this policy will effect the non-pirate, it will be extremely minimal considering THEY ARE GOING TO WARN YOU SIX TIMES BEFORE ANY ACTION IS TAKEN. If someone does something wrong without knowing then they have plenty of chances to make sure it doesn't happen again. You're acting like if someone gets caught downloading something once they're being sent to a gulag. You're exaggerating things just as CF always does.

I can't comment on some other random laws because A) I don't know what you're talking about, B) I can't confirm if you're just making things up and C) given how you're misrepresenting things in this thread using some baseless scare tactics which makes you look like an absolute fool, I can't believe any of those things you just brought up are worth any mention to begin with. 

This thread is about that six-strike policy, buddy. How about we stick to that issue instead of going off on laws which have no bearing on this policy?



> And companies believe we users have no rights when they try to get websites to be censored and users to be taken down. How many men and women we hurt by copying some stupid bytes over a cable? I can't imagine a large number at worst. Now, ever wondered how many men and women SOPA hurt last winter? In my case, how many days I spent posting articles and refreshing others to see what was happening, and how at some point I didn't even feel like eating thinking half of the internet was literally going to be erased (especially after google and wikipedia's blackouts when I realized stuff was really serious)?



Please, you're just embarrassing yourself now. 

"Based on my bullshit speculation companies want to become our overlords and the entire Internet which I base my whole worth on will be destroyed."  I hope havin no job hasn't kept you from getting enough tin foil for your hats. 

Let me tell you something, I live in the New York area. 11 years ago some assholes flew two planes into two of the tallest buildings in the world, killing thousands of people. And you know what, we got over it and realized that being paranoid over it happening again in the absence of a legit threat isnt with our time. Maybe you should calm the fuck down, go outside, meet a nice guy/girl and actually live your life instead of getting worked up on shit that won't fucking happen because it has nothing to do with what actually being discussed. 



> Also, please don't twist my words. I never said that because I work for free it's automatically ok to download and steal everything in sight. I was just explaining that while some complain their works are being copied, others put as much effort into their works for the purpose of them being copied so others can enjoy them. And some of them have jobs that pay even less than producing media probably does... like selling stuff at the gas station. Both have rights of course... but not threatening another person's own. Again, this and initiatives like it don't threaten only pirates... they are practices that can be misunderstood and abused. Otherwise, I'm used to people considering us free developers and content creators leeches, who are worthless because we don't have a job (a few of us) when we contribute to the world for free in the same domains.



Great, so some people do open source shit. Good for them. That doesn't give you the right to force other companies from getting compensated for their products because "iluvdoggiedong69" releases something for Gary's Mod.  And I'm pretty sure most people would be pissed if some guy took that mod and repackaged it to be sold, thus that person makes a profit off of someone else's work on a mod. Would you enjoy not seeing a cent of the money someone decides to make off of something you created?  Now assuming you sold copies of that program you created, would you honestly be satisfied to know that the work you did and planned on getting compensated on was mass distributed to people for free? 

Maybe you're not capable of answering that last question, because you clearly don't have a clue what its like to have to pay off a mortgage, car payments, bills, paying for groceries, taking care of dependents, etc. Youre still in the mindset of a guy living with his mom, not having anything bigger to worry about in his life aside from "will I be able to download movies for free" or something as ridiculous as cub porn.


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## Mircea (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Ok, your last post was an outright idiotic one Term. Your main purpose is to pick a fight with me, and find ways to explain why a horrible initiative isn't really that bad, probably because you're pissed you would get less money if this thing doesn't go in practice. You can calm down... passing this stupid initiative won't raise your salary. I explained what I think using clear points and detail, which you are either too stupid to see or don't wish to see... but please don't accuse me of not mentioning them. And with your angry dictator attitude, don't expect me to bother reading all your questions in detail and finding answers for them. There's a limit to the stupidities I can multitask over at once.

Along the things you accuse me of without using any judgement is that I said "others have no rights". Amazing, since just a post above I stated exactly the opposite in clear words. You and your fat greedy companies have rights as long as you don't take away ours (eg: the right to use the internet). Either directly or indirectly, through initiatives like this which pretend to be innocent. I already explained how this would affect normal users too. If someone who gives me the impression of being calm and lucid states otherwise (not your case or Randy's), I will try to do so *again*.

I'll answer your question however... so maybe others can read the answer since you refuse to see what I'm saying: If I made a mod and someone copied and sold it, yes I would feel bad. I wouldn't mind if the moderators of the website he's doing it on take him down either, and would especially want people to know what he is doing so they are aware I'm the original owner. But at the same time, I would never agree with the structure of the internet being put in danger to prevent it, and for tactics of censorship being used. If there wasn't any way to reason with the person or someone else who can solve the problem locally, I'd deal with it.

Also, if that's your vision of people who don't have jobs and still live with their parents, you disgust me good sir. You think people shouldn't have any concerns in their life but how to pay their bills? Well yeah, that's actually normal, since the world you live in is all about that. Companies, lots of money, etc. Of course having money to live and pay for everything is important (remember not to accuse me I said otherwise), but people who have a life do have some additional concerns too at the same time. You know... aren't brainless robots who only know how to screw others to make money, that sort of weird stuff.


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## Sar (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

If I had a Pound for every Internet Censorship thread this year...


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## CannonFodder (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Sarukai said:


> If I had a Pound for every Internet Censorship thread this year...


... you'd be as large as Gabe Newell.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> Ok, your last post was an outright idiotic one Term. Your main purpose is to pick a fight with me, and find ways to explain why a horrible initiative isn't really that bad, probably because you're pissed you would get less money if this thing doesn't go in practice. You can calm down... passing this stupid initiative won't raise your salary. I explained what I think using clear points and detail, which you are either too stupid to see or don't wish to see... but please don't accuse me of not mentioning them. And with your angry dictator attitude, don't expect me to bother reading all your questions in detail and finding answers for them. There's a limit to the stupidities I can multitask over at once.



Aren't we high and mighty all of a sudden?  Ask yourself this: why is this a "horrible initiative?" Because so far the only thing you've thrown out at us is "MAKING LAWS IS BAD" without actually discussing this initiative. Your paranoia is blinding you to actually thinking about this policy and instead you're blindly saying every initiative to curtail piracy is some sort of grave offense against humanity. Spare us. 



> Along the things you accuse me of without using any judgement is that I said "others have no rights". Amazing, since just a post above I stated exactly the opposite in clear words. You and your fat greedy companies have rights as long as you don't take away ours (eg: the right to use the internet). Either directly or indirectly, through initiatives like this which pretend to be innocent. I already explained how this would affect normal users too. If someone who gives me the impression of being calm and lucid states otherwise (not your case or Randy's), I will try to do so *again*.



Please tell me where this "right" to use te Internet is written down. And while you're at it, explain how this initiative supposedly is going to keep people from using the internet.  Because right now the only thing this initiative is doing is specifically targeting those people who engage in piracy and activities which threaten copyrights over the Internet.  Once again you're blowing the consequences here out of proportion as if someone were going to jail for jaywalking. What you're gettin with this initiative from what I've seen is comparable to our infraction system on this very forum. If you commit enough offenses here, you're temp banned. Likewise the same consequences appear to happen in this case where you will be required to attend a class on copyright infringement. As far as penalties go, these seem very light to me without blacklisting you from comin on FAF and bitching and moaning about the evil corporations. 



> I'll answer your question however... so maybe others can read the answer since you refuse to see what I'm saying: If I made a mod and someone copied and sold it, yes I would feel bad. I wouldn't mind if the moderators of the website he's doing it on take him down either, and would especially want people to know what he is doing so they are aware I'm the original owner. But at the same time, I would never agree with the structure of the internet being put in danger to prevent it, and for tactics of censorship being used. If there wasn't any way to reason with the person or someone else who can solve the problem locally, I'd deal with it.



And you're back I using the word censorship which isn't what this is. This is about people hosting content thy doesn't belong to them. People can view or consume the content in a legit means, so the content itself isn't being censored. In the case of MegaUpload, the site was seized because t was part of a larger operation which knowingly and willingly hosted copyrighted content. Please note the KNOWINGLY AND WILLINGY phrasing because that is key to what we are talking about with a site being seized by the US Government or would be subject to being shut down by some other means. 

And of course you'll deal with it. Because money isn't much of an issue for someone who isn't paying rent for example. :V



> Also, if that's your vision of people who don't have jobs and still live with their parents, you disgust me good sir. You think people shouldn't have any concerns in their life but how to pay their bills? Well yeah, that's actually normal, since the world you live in is all about that. Companies, lots of money, etc. Of course having money to live and pay for everything is important (remember not to accuse me I said otherwise), but people who have a life do have some additional concerns too at the same time. You know... aren't brainless robots who only know how to screw others to make money, that sort of weird stuff.



I figured as long as you were going to generalize people in the entertainment industry and people who run businesses as greedy fat cats, I might as well generalize you as the pizza faced selfish slob who has no concept about how businesses operate or any concept of the cost of producing the type of professional content you're so willingly downloading because at the end of the day, you're not actually concerned with any innocent person who may be hurt by an abuse of a policy, but moreso your own selfish desire to have content delivered to you without being inconvienenced to actually work for something to pay for the fruit of someone else's time, sweat, blood, talent, and education. 

The same mentality that can be seen by most commissioners over on FA.  I look forward to seeing you're next post saying "oh Term y u so mean u just like the mean corporations" because I turn your generalizing bullshit back on you. The only thing that's being confirmed is how absolutely dense you are over this whole thing.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> Along the things you accuse me of without using any judgement is that I said "others have no rights". Amazing, since just a post above I stated exactly the opposite in clear words. You and your fat greedy companies have rights as long as you don't take away ours (eg: the right to use the internet). Either directly or indirectly, through initiatives like this which pretend to be innocent. I already explained how this would affect normal users too. If someone who gives me the impression of being calm and lucid states otherwise (not your case or Randy's), I will try to do so *again*.



Everyone has a right to use the internet, however if someone is abusing it by doing illegal activities then they should have that right suspended or completely revoked depending on the severity of the case. I think, like Term said, people are worrying over nothing. Even if an innocent person did get caught up in it there would be such a media outburst that something would have to be done. Big corporations like to keep a clean reputation and are not likely going to do anything that would tarnish it as they rely on consumers like us. If ISP's and the big corporations start busting innocent people it will look bad on them and they will likely start loosing customers and no corporation wants a financial loss. 

They'd be more interested in targeting the big piraters anyway. Police target the drug dealers more over those who buy it from the dealer to use. Why? because you do more damage removing the source than removing the users. It's more likely that ISP's will target the frequent down loaders/distributors than the one offs or law abiding citizens. 

So, to be honest, I can't see the innocent one's being caught up in anything.



> I'll answer your question however... so maybe others can read the answer since you refuse to see what I'm saying: If I made a mod and someone copied and sold it, yes I would feel bad. I wouldn't mind if the moderators of the website he's doing it on take him down either, and would especially want people to know what he is doing so they are aware I'm the original owner. But at the same time, I would never agree with the structure of the internet being put in danger to prevent it, and for tactics of censorship being used. If there wasn't any way to reason with the person or someone else who can solve the problem locally, I'd deal with it.



It doesn't matter if someone is poor, middle class or super rich, at the end of the day they have a right to protect their creations. 



> Also, if that's your vision of people who don't have jobs and still live with their parents, you disgust me good sir. You think people shouldn't have any concerns in their life but how to pay their bills? Well yeah, that's actually normal, since the world you live in is all about that. Companies, lots of money, etc. Of course having money to live and pay for everything is important (remember not to accuse me I said otherwise), but people who have a life do have some additional concerns too at the same time. You know... aren't brainless robots who only know how to screw others to make money, that sort of weird stuff.



I'm sad to say I can agree with you completely on this. I'm also jobless and finding one in this shit hole is next to impossible. I do however think that a lot of people these days spend way to much time on the internet. 

Also, as a side note, it's not a right to use the internet, it's a privilage. Learn the difference before you start calling everything a "right"


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## Mircea (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Term: First of all, you started your post by accusing me of things I didn't do... again. I stated why it's horrible with clear points, so many times that it's not even funny. Saying I'm accusing without discussing the initiative is weird... I think you typed that out without even being conscious of what you were writing. No, not "every initiative to stop piracy is automatically horrible", just those that involve bringing down websites, disconnecting users off the internet, or bringing the police to a user's door. Something which again, I said previously. But because I have nothing better to do right now, I will sum what I said here many times again.

When I first heard about this, I understood that ISP's (or this third party group with their help) would have the right to spy on the traffic of their users, so they could what they are transferring. Which would have meant sniffing their packets and see every single bit of unencrypted data they are transferring, even private emails. Someone later stated that they might only be spying on torrent trackers, to see which IP is downloading what. Which is indeed 10 times less horrible, but still horrible IMO. First of all I'm automatically worried about how this could be abused and how it would advance.

Advance: Torrents are just one way of downloading... and even so can be encrypted easily. There will instantly be ways to download directly, download with a hidden IP, and for this purpose it will be like nothing happened. Therefore looking at some IP lists will not be of much help eventually, so  they'll either have to move further on or cancel this whole project (else they'll  be paying people to monitor nothing). Knowing companies, they'll prefer to do everything in their power to look at other types of downloads rather than retreat, so they'll keep punching us with legal initiatives until they will be allowed to spy all of our transfers. And at that point, they will be given the right to see everything we do, our private emails, what we talk with our boss at work, how many times we have cyber-sex, etc.

Abuse: Even if this group is spying on torrent trackers, they still see what each IP downloads. And, they can tell what that is to an ISP. That ISP can take any measures it wants, likely without having to respond in any legal way. And finding out a person's information based on IP address isn't all that hard either. So... what else could this be used for other than copyright? I believe a lot. Let's say some dude is torrenting a porn video which does not infringe copyright (gay porn, furry porn, something nasty, bla bla bla). He has to know that somewhere out there, a corporation is paid to look at him downloading that, who might be drinking soda in front of the screen and laughing at him. Also that his name and address can be easily found, especially if the ones doing the monitoring happen to have friends among your ISP and tells them about it, who can easily check what name and address that account is registered to. Now because that ISP can take any measures it sees fit and might be an asshole, he might invent copyright claims against you or punishing you for no stated reason, just to troll you because you downloaded some weird porn. He doesn't even need to make it obvious... if he's drunk that night he might simply cut your connection to that torrent temporarily for shits and giggles, without you finding out. That's probably where we get to using the word censorship.

Next we need to consider false negatives. Let's face it... the people monitoring might have no idea how the internet even works. While ISP's are good with networking, but not with knowing what a community usually does and what might be copyrighted or not. People make works they release under licenses like GPL, MIT, Creative Commons or Public Domain... which can be games, movies, music, and more. Before they take a decision, they need to know if what you are downloading is legal or not. And some of those people might not even know about free licenses and such (a few of them). So there's a high chance that when you download an ok movie or song or program, you might get the ISP at your door bitching and moaning, and have to go through a whole procedure of explaining him you did nothing wrong. The process might repeat several times. Some do have better things to do with their time.

Those are two main issues and concerns. Next one is that, any new initiative to control the internet will encourage companies and SOPA / PIPA / ACTA fanatics. They'll want more... so we might see a new wave of internet regulation initiatives shortly after this. Do realize that if such groups got to regulate the internet, hell WOULD break lose. eg: Free music / movies / software might get abusively restricted to further encourage buying their stuff instead. And ISP's can make it seem like a website goes down every few hours a day from technical reasons. Well theoretically they can already do this if they wanted, but this move would encourage it and make it easier. Obviously this would only happen in practice if the world really hits rock bottom... I'm simply explaining what those corporations would want and dream of IF they had the power to put their will in practice.

Lastly, from the list of things I can remember now, is the more controversial part: Whether some like it or not, there ARE nice and legit internet users who download a movie or song every few months, and seed it in the process, without practicing piracy on a large scale. Sure, I'm one of them... crucifixion anyone?  My point is that those people might be subject to harassment they might not deserve (not me, I have enough IP hiding skills if needed). Including the fear of being left without internet, which anyone can agree is a crucial thing for anyone at this day. I believe even people in top security prisons should have the right to be on the internet today. Sure, whether a user deserves a certain punishment or not can be debated... but considering false negatives and other possible issues I think this will make some people automatically afraid to download anything, both legit and otherwise.

I hope this time my points are clear for everyone to see. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go for a while and get my mind on something nicer. Maybe listen to some music to calm down, it helps a lot... oh wait I downloaded it some years ago, I have no right to


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> Term: First of all, you started your post by accusing me of things I didn't do... again. I stated why it's horrible with clear points, so many times that it's not even funny. Saying I'm accusing without discussing the initiative is weird... I think you typed that out without even being conscious of what you were writing. No, not "every initiative to stop piracy is automatically horrible", just those that involve bringing down websites, disconnecting users off the internet, or bringing the police to a user's door. Something which again, I said previously. But because I have nothing better to do right now, I will sum what I said here many times again.



If an internet user breaks the law then they should have the police knocking on their door and their internet privileges revoked. 



> When I first heard about this, I understood that ISP's (or this third party group with their help) would have the right to spy on the traffic of their users, so they could what they are transferring. Which would have meant sniffing their packets and see every single bit of unencrypted data they are transferring, even private emails. Someone later stated that they might only be spying on torrent trackers, to see which IP is downloading what. Which is indeed 10 times less horrible, but still horrible IMO. First of all I'm automatically worried about how this could be abused and how it would advance.



You mean like how piraters abuse the internet? anything can be abused, absolutely anything.



> Advance: Torrents are just one way of downloading... and even so can be encrypted easily. There will instantly be ways to download directly, download with a hidden IP, and for this purpose it will be like nothing happened. Therefore looking at some IP lists will not be of much help eventually, so  they'll either have to move further on or cancel this whole project (else they'll  be paying people to monitor nothing). Knowing companies, they'll prefer to do everything in their power to look at other types of downloads rather than retreat, so they'll keep punching us with legal initiatives until they will be allowed to spy all of our transfers. And at that point, they will be given the right to see everything we do, our private emails, what we talk with our boss at work, how many times we have cyber-sex, etc.



So basically, this concept scares you because you don;t want people to know what you do online, which tells me you have things to hide. If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about.



> Abuse: Even if this group is spying on torrent trackers, they still see what each IP downloads. And, they can tell what that is to an ISP. That ISP can take any measures it wants, likely without having to respond in any legal way. And finding out a person's information based on IP address isn't all that hard either. So... what else could this be used for other than copyright? I believe a lot. Let's say some dude is torrenting a porn video which does not infringe copyright (gay porn, furry porn, something nasty, bla bla bla). He has to know that somewhere out there, a corporation is paid to look at him downloading that, who might be drinking soda in front of the screen and laughing at him. Also that his name and address can be easily found, especially if the ones doing the monitoring happen to have friends among your ISP and tells them about it, who can easily check what name and address that account is registered to. Now because that ISP can take any measures it sees fit and might be an asshole, he might invent copyright claims against you or punishing you for no stated reason, just to troll you because you downloaded some weird porn. He doesn't even need to make it obvious... if he's drunk that night he might simply cut your connection to that torrent temporarily for shits and giggles, without you finding out. That's probably where we get to using the word censorship.



You really are looking too deep into this. You're worried about things that are as likely to happen as me fucking the pope.



> Next we need to consider false negatives. Let's face it... the people monitoring might have no idea how the internet even works.



w2hat? I fucking doubt they'd employ idiots who don't know how to use the internet. They'd employ people that do know what they are doing and are trained to look for certain things. They're not going to employ blind, one armed monkeys ya know.



> While ISP's are good with networking, but not with knowing what a community usually does and what might be copyrighted or not. People make works they release under licenses like GPL, MIT, Creative Commons or Public Domain... which can be games, movies, music, and more. Before they take a decision, they need to know if what you are downloading is legal or not. And some of those people might not even know about free licenses and such (a few of them). So there's a high chance that when you download an ok movie or song or program, you might get the ISP at your door bitching and moaning, and have to go through a whole procedure of explaining him you did nothing wrong. The process might repeat several times. *Some do have better things to do with their time*.



Which as I said in my last post, is another reason why they'd most likely target the big time pirates.


> *Lastly, from the list of things I can remember now, is the more controversial part: Whether some like it or not, there ARE nice and legit internet users who download a movie or song every few months,*



Well they are not legit then are they. If they seed a download so people can obtain it for free (such as the movie and music examples you gave) then it's classed as pirating. So please tell me how this makes a person "legit" in your book.



> and seed it in the process, without practicing piracy on a large scale. Sure, I'm one of them... crucifixion anyone?



Now we get to the real reason you don;t like this law. You're a pirater (by your own confession) and you don't want to be caught.



> My point is that those people might be subject to harassment they might not deserve (not me, I have enough IP hiding skills if needed).



I've already lost a lot of respect for you. You seem to think it's perfectly fine to pirate stuff that you do not have the right too purely because it comes from, in your words "big greedy corporations" This is the real fucking reason you don't like this law but you wont admit it.



> Including the fear of being left without internet,



Because you're scared of being caught pirating.



> which anyone can agree is a crucial thing for anyone at this day. I believe even people in top security prisons should have the right to be on the internet today. Sure, whether a user deserves a certain punishment or not can be debated... but considering false negatives and other possible issues I think this will make some people automatically afraid to download anything, both legit and otherwise.



Why would someone in prison even NEED the internet? they going to order bombs from Amazon or something? Prisoners are in prison as punishment, not for a vacation but that is entirely a different discussion. I'm not affraid to DL legit stuff. This is just some BS from you to cover up the fact you pirate stuff and don;t wanna loose that privilege. 

I hope this time my points are clear for everyone to see. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go for a while and get my mind on something nicer. Maybe listen to some music to calm down, it helps a lot... oh wait I downloaded it some years ago, I have no right to [/QUOTE]


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## Xenke (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> When I first heard about this, I understood that ISP's (or this third party group with their help) would have the right to spy on the traffic of their users, so they could what they are transferring. Which would have meant sniffing their packets and see every single bit of unencrypted data they are transferring, even private emails. Someone later stated that they might only be spying on torrent trackers, to see which IP is downloading what. Which is indeed 10 times less horrible, but still horrible IMO. First of all I'm automatically worried about how this could be abused and how it would advance.



What are you doing on the internet that has you so concerned about if your ISP is actively looking at what you're doing? The fact of the matter is they don't care if John Q Nobody is playing Neopets or sending an email to their professor or looking at naked women; these companies have a problem with people using their service to pirate media and that's what they're focusing on.



> Advance: Torrents are just one way of downloading... and even so can be encrypted easily. There will instantly be ways to download directly, download with a hidden IP, and for this purpose it will be like nothing happened. Therefore looking at some IP lists will not be of much help eventually, so  they'll either have to move further on or cancel this whole project (else they'll  be paying people to monitor nothing). Knowing companies, they'll prefer to do everything in their power to look at other types of downloads rather than retreat, so they'll keep punching us with legal initiatives until they will be allowed to spy all of our transfers. And at that point, they will be given the right to see everything we do, our private emails, what we talk with our boss at work, how many times we have cyber-sex, etc.



Paranoia is assuming the worst possible outcome without actually having any data to believe it'll come to fruition. Again, ISPs don't really care about any of the information that you're describing (unless the cyber-sex is with a child or something), and while they might search through it (if it even ever comes to this), the data they contain will be screened and quickly forgotten.



> Abuse: Even if this group is spying on torrent trackers, they still see what each IP downloads. And, they can tell what that is to an ISP. That ISP can take any measures it wants, likely without having to respond in any legal way. And finding out a person's information based on IP address isn't all that hard either. So... what else could this be used for other than copyright? I believe a lot. Let's say some dude is torrenting a porn video which does not infringe copyright (gay porn, furry porn, something nasty, bla bla bla). He has to know that somewhere out there, a corporation is paid to look at him downloading that, who might be drinking soda in front of the screen and laughing at him. Also that his name and address can be easily found, especially if the ones doing the monitoring happen to have friends among your ISP and tells them about it, who can easily check what name and address that account is registered to. Now because that ISP can take any measures it sees fit and might be an asshole, he might invent copyright claims against you or punishing you for no stated reason, just to troll you because you downloaded some weird porn. He doesn't even need to make it obvious... if he's drunk that night he might simply cut your connection to that torrent temporarily for shits and giggles, without you finding out. That's probably where we get to using the word censorship.



Haha, wow. Unlikely hypothetical situations are fun man.

Tell me, honestly, do you think someone would honestly risk their job to toy with someone downloading porn? You know, that job that pays them, so they can house and feed themselves?

You seem to forget that despite ISPs doing something you don't agree with, they still have internal standards, and you know, laws that prevent ISPs from disclosing "personally identifiable information".



> Next we need to consider false negatives. Let's face it... the people monitoring might have no idea how the internet even works. While ISP's are good with networking, but not with knowing what a community usually does and what might be copyrighted or not. People make works they release under licenses like GPL, MIT, Creative Commons or Public Domain... which can be games, movies, music, and more. Before they take a decision, they need to know if what you are downloading is legal or not. And some of those people might not even know about free licenses and such (a few of them). So there's a high chance that when you download an ok movie or song or program, you might get the ISP at your door bitching and moaning, and have to go through a whole procedure of explaining him you did nothing wrong. The process might repeat several times. Some do have better things to do with their time.



Call this a hunch, but I'm starting to get the feeling that you think that whoever will be monitoring this will be manually sorting through every incoming connection looking for piracy.

I can guarantee you that's not how it'll work.

They will probably target and monitor specific torrents, namely ones distributing content from big name publishers, and acting upon that. I highly doubt that they have an interest employing enough drones to sort through every P2P connection, much less every piece of data that passes through the ISP, as doing so is both ineffective and costly.



> Those are two main issues and concerns. Next one is that, any new initiative to control the internet will encourage companies and SOPA / PIPA / ACTA fanatics. They'll want more... so we might see a new wave of internet regulation initiatives shortly after this. Do realize that if such groups got to regulate the internet, hell WOULD break lose. eg: Free music / movies / software might get abusively restricted to further encourage buying their stuff instead. And ISP's can make it seem like a website goes down every few hours a day from technical reasons. Well theoretically they can already do this if they wanted, but this move would encourage it and make it easier. Obviously this would only happen in practice if the world really hits rock bottom... I'm simply explaining what those corporations would want and dream of IF they had the power to put their will in practice.



Slippery slope mentality? Don't even start.

Given that not _every_ ISP is signing on to this, if this ere to happen the ones that had opted out would not only receive added business, but the ones participating in these practices would literally kill themselves.



> Lastly, from the list of things I can remember now, is the more controversial part: Whether some like it or not, there ARE nice and legit internet users who download a movie or song every few months, and seed it in the process, without practicing piracy on a large scale. Sure, I'm one of them... crucifixion anyone?  My point is that those people might be subject to harassment they might not deserve (not me, I have enough IP hiding skills if needed).



"I only infringe copyright occasionally, I don't deserve to face consequences of this!"

lmao.



> Sure, whether a user deserves a certain punishment or not can be debated... but considering false negatives and other possible issues I think this will make some people automatically afraid to download anything, both legit and otherwise.



No... for most sane people I think it just makes them cautious about downloading stuff they don't have the rights to.



> I hope this time my points are clear for everyone to see. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go for a while and get my mind on something nicer. Maybe listen to some music to calm down, it helps a lot... oh wait I downloaded it some years ago, I have no right to



Your points were never unclear.

They're just crazy.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Randy-Darkshade said:


> If an internet user breaks the law then they should have the police knocking on their door and their internet privileges revoked.



For FUCKS SAKE, downloading pirated material isn't a crime.  I don't mean that in some philosophical kinda way either, I mean in a legal way.  In many places it is ILLEGAL, yes, but not a CRIME.  It is a matter of CIVIL law, not CRIMINAL law.

I can literally sit down next to a police officer, open my laptop and start downloading a pirated copy of something, tell the guy all about it and he can't interupt.  Civil law isn't his area, he doesn't have the authority to act.


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## Mircea (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

@ Randy-Darkshade: I believe your thinking is very simple and a bit naive on this. First of all, I have things to hide online. Not because they're illegal, but because I don't need the whole world to know everything I do and what I talk with people. Expecting someone to have nothing to hide is silly and really odd... the world isn't one big family like in the Coca-Cola Christmas commercials. I have private emails, chat logs with friends, and much more of legal nature.

Otherwise, I love how the moment I stated I occasionally download a song or film, the instant conclusion was "you're a pirate and that's why you hate this thing". That's simple thinking at its best. 0.1% of what I do online is downloading these things... which is just getting the albums of some bands I like and some old anime films older than 10 years (and Microsoft Windows xD). 99,9% is doing perfectly legit things... like browsing FA, playing and contributing to FOSS games and software, animating and modelling, occasionally drawing, being in MineCraft or Second Life, chatting with friends, and generally trying to do interesting techy stuff. You can be sure I'm much more worried over that 99.9% than the 0.1%. Also, I have more serious topics that make me ask myself if I'm a bad person or not in life, than listening to some songs for free. I find it a problem that anyone who downloads something copyrighted is qualified as a person who does that as a primary purpose, almost like other things they do on the internet are secondary, when it's by far the other way around.

Since some are invoking that my points are paranoid or crazy (which I don't contest about the first thing): Weren't you around when the SOPA craze started (for some reason this always pops back into discussion)? At first I thought I was paranoid back then... till I realized it's really bad and soon saw the largest websites of the world blacking out in protest. I don't remember for how many days that was the only thing I was looking at and worked on fighting, and there was more back then that I prefer not to mention. Soon after, I was in the street protesting against ACTA next to a few thousand people, at freezing cold temperatures. The protest was in all of Europe, and those who were there weren't either paranoid nor there to defend piracy. Then things calmed down, and now after about 3 months I hear about this shit and that the UK almost made it legal to spy on all emails and web traffic as well as phone calls. Yeah... I have no reasons to be paranoid  Just wondering what we deserve this shit for, apart from downloading a song and cracked Windows in our life (which was NOT the reason I was actually scared of these laws).


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## Xenke (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> Otherwise, I love how the moment I stated I occasionally download a song or film, the instant conclusion was "you're a pirate and that's why you hate this thing". That's simple thinking at its best. 0.1% of what I do online is downloading these things... which is just getting the albums of some bands I like and some old anime films older than 10 years (and Microsoft Windows xD). 99,9% is doing perfectly legit things... like browsing FA, playing and contributing to FOSS games and software, animating and modelling, occasionally drawing, being in MineCraft or Second Life, chatting with friends, and generally trying to do interesting techy stuff. You can be sure I'm much more worried over that 99.9% than the 0.1%. Also, I have more serious topics that make me ask myself if I'm a bad person or not in life, than listening to some songs for free. I find it a problem that anyone who downloads something copyrighted is qualified as a person who does that as a primary purpose, almost like other things they do on the internet are secondary, when it's by far the other way around.
> 
> Since some are invoking that my points are paranoid or crazy (which I don't contest about the first thing): Weren't you around when the SOPA craze started (for some reason this always pops back into discussion)? At first I thought I was paranoid back then... till I realized it's really bad and soon saw the largest websites of the world blacking out in protest. I don't remember for how many days that was the only thing I was looking at and worked on fighting, and there was more back then that I prefer not to mention. Soon after, I was in the street protesting against ACTA next to a few thousand people, at freezing cold temperatures. The protest was in all of Europe, and those who were there weren't either paranoid nor there to defend piracy. Then things calmed down, and now after about 3 months I hear about this shit and that the UK almost made it legal to spy on all emails and web traffic as well as phone calls. Yeah... I have no reasons to be paranoid  Just wondering what we deserve this shit for, apart from downloading a song and cracked Windows in our life (which was NOT the reason I was actually scared of these laws).



Well I'm done, you seem to completely disregard my points on what ISPs actually care about and the legal limitations placed on them that keep them from divulging any information that can actually identify you.


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## Mircea (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Xenke said:


> Well I'm done, you seem to completely disregard my points on what ISPs actually care about and the legal limitations placed on them that keep them from divulging any information that can actually identify you.



I have taken notice of this info, but after past events just find it hard to be trusting that it will stay that way. A lot of things are different than what's officially stated... but I did take notice it's not the same thing.


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## AshleyAshes (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Simple fact:  If there was actually a large amount of credible evidence that ISPs violated the privacy rights of it's customers, there would be class action law suits filed against these ISPs, with well trained lawyers eager to get their percentage of the settlement.

...And yet... Nuffin.  You think it happens 'alllllll the time' but no lawyers going 'There's a tonne of cash to be squeezed out of these privacy rights violating corporations. :3'?


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## Mircea (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

For now, I'm waiting to see what happens. There was good news since I started the thread, and hopefully nothing worrying will actually happen, whatever their main intentions are. Still glad this was discussed, although the whole thing gets tiring after a while.


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## KigRatel (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> For now, I'm waiting to see what happens. There was good news since I started the thread, and hopefully nothing worrying will actually happen, whatever their main intentions are. Still glad this was discussed, although the whole thing gets tiring after a while.



See, what'd I tell ya? No consequence whatsoever. This _always_ happens with these doomsaying threads.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> snip



My thinking might be simple to you because I'm not worrying about the if, buts and maybes that haven't happened yet. I'm just a "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it" kinda guy. 

As for cracked windows my XP disc is cracked but I didn't DL it myself. A friend gave it to me er....quite some time ago now. However when ever I have wanted a movie my first thoughts have been to go out and buy it instead of DL it. I don't have any file sharing software on here anymore.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Other people have commented for me, but I think I'll hit on some of the big points I see with the post that was directed at me.



Mircea said:


> Term: First of all, you started your post by accusing me of things I didn't do... again. I stated why it's horrible with clear points, so many times that it's not even funny. Saying I'm accusing without discussing the initiative is weird... I think you typed that out without even being conscious of what you were writing. No, not "every initiative to stop piracy is automatically horrible", just those that involve bringing down websites, disconnecting users off the internet, or bringing the police to a user's door. Something which again, I said previously. But because I have nothing better to do right now, I will sum what I said here many times again.



You're actively comparing this policy with SOPA, just as everyone did with CISPA when neither of these things is anything like SOPA. You're claiming that this policy is somehow "worse" than any of the legislative attempts before it because.....well we don't know.

Your OP lists that the government is significantly involved with this policy, which it isn't.  You're primary concern is some "abuse of power" which frankly isn't enough reason for something like this not to be implemented.  "Because abuses may happen" hasn't stopped FAF from hiring members on as mods, even when abuses of power have happened. If we didn't enact policies or laws for the sole reason of "possible abuse" absolutely nothing would get done, and the excuse can be universally used to downplay just about anything.  It's a lame cop-out unless it's backed with some hard evidence that abuse will most likely happen, which you can't prove but only speculate on.

Likewise as I've previously mentioned you're still misrepresenting the penalties associated with violating this policy.  As your CNet article points out, ISPs have said that their intention isn't to blacklist anyone from ever being able to access the internet, but to educate their users on what piracy and copyright infringement is.  If they are ignored, then their customers will have to start signing statements saying they won't continue their behavior.  If they still don't pay attention, well then it become unclear what will happen, though shutting off someone's internet isn't exactly the most ideal solution because the last thing an ISP would want is to lose a customer who is paying their monthly bills on-time.  Police aren't getting involved, stop trying to make this seem like it's some sort of sting operation where SWAT is going to come in and wreck yo' shit because you downloaded the new Taking Back Sunday album.



> When I first heard about this, I understood that ISP's (or this third party group with their help) would have the right to spy on the traffic of their users, so they could what they are transferring.



Which they already do to comply with law enforcement inquires as to what your online activity has been as long as they can produce a warrant.  You claim to be a computer nerd but you don't realize that damn near everything you do already can be tracked back to you?  And what interest do they have in seeking Joe Schmoe out who's done absolutely nothing wrong?  As Xenke mentioned, whether or not you believe it ISPs aren't going to hire on legions of people to spend 8 hours a day watching what you do online to build up a case against you.  Penn and Teller did a Bullshit! experiment on people doing surveillance work on people suspected of doing something wrong.  I won't spoil it for you, just skip to 4:20 in the video below:

[yt]SNtTBNmOW-A[/yt]



> ABUSE!!!!!11!!1



Again, your hypothetical sucks and the threat isn't exactly compelling.  Also, other internet users have ways to do the exact same thing to you for shits and giggles, and have done so to numerous people as can easily be seen by going on Encyclopedia Dramatica and looking up any number of lolcows.  Whereas a company would keep this information confidential and for internal use only, the average nerd can and likely will post up the embarrasing details of your online sex life/cub porn fascination for all the world to see including dox because "I did it 4 teh lulz".  I think I'd trust the company more.



> Next we need to consider false negatives. Let's face it... the people monitoring might have no idea how the internet even works. While ISP's are good with networking, but not with knowing what a community usually does and what might be copyrighted or not. People make works they release under licenses like GPL, MIT, Creative Commons or Public Domain... which can be games, movies, music, and more. Before they take a decision, they need to know if what you are downloading is legal or not. And some of those people might not even know about free licenses and such (a few of them). So there's a high chance that when you download an ok movie or song or program, you might get the ISP at your door bitching and moaning, and have to go through a whole procedure of explaining him you did nothing wrong. The process might repeat several times. Some do have better things to do with their time.



Your justifications are having more "but what ifs" than a typical furry thread theme.  Again, if we based all decision making solely on a "what if" then absolutely nothing would get done.  And your what if scenario doesn't even work in the same continuity.  I mean, you yourself were at one point trying to say that someone monitoring online interactions would be an expert, and now you're saying those same experts aren't experts.  Which is it?  Because this kind of cherry-picking logic doesn't fly in the real world when decisions need to be made. 



> Those are two main issues and concerns. Next one is that, any new initiative to control the internet will encourage companies and SOPA / PIPA / ACTA fanatics. They'll want more... so we might see a new wave of internet regulation initiatives shortly after this. Do realize that if such groups got to regulate the internet, hell WOULD break lose. eg: Free music / movies / software might get abusively restricted to further encourage buying their stuff instead. And ISP's can make it seem like a website goes down every few hours a day from technical reasons. Well theoretically they can already do this if they wanted, but this move would encourage it and make it easier. Obviously this would only happen in practice if the world really hits rock bottom... I'm simply explaining what those corporations would want and dream of IF they had the power to put their will in practice.



Slippery slope cop-out excuse with speculation on what companies want to do in order to confirm with your irrational paranoia of all things anti-piracy.



> Lastly, from the list of things I can remember now, is the more controversial part: Whether some like it or not, there ARE nice and legit internet users who download a movie or song every few months, and seed it in the process, without practicing piracy on a large scale. Sure, I'm one of them... crucifixion anyone?  My point is that those people might be subject to harassment they might not deserve (not me, I have enough IP hiding skills if needed). Including the fear of being left without internet, which anyone can agree is a crucial thing for anyone at this day. I believe even people in top security prisons should have the right to be on the internet today. Sure, whether a user deserves a certain punishment or not can be debated... but considering false negatives and other possible issues I think this will make some people automatically afraid to download anything, both legit and otherwise.



Even more bullshit logic.  Using your logic, it's perfectly socially acceptable for someone to cheat on their significant other just as long as they're a generally nice person who only does it once or twice a month.  Hey, it ain't against the law baby!  Don't judge me!

No, it's still not okay to do it "every once in a while."  What you're doing is still wrong and should this policy be enacted, then you'll be notified what you're doing is wrong multiple times before any real mitigating action will be taken, which as I've previously mentioned above does not and will not include locking someone out of the internet.

So in short, your fears are irrational, based solely on speculation with very little understanding of what the policy says or does.  And given that you've mentioned already that you skim my posts, probably because it'd just kill you to possibly be wrong about your fears, I can't imagine you bothered reading any of those articles past the headlines once your predetermined bias was confirmed.


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## Heliophobic (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Pachi-O said:


> Wanna team up and make a petition for one? :V
> 
> I wonder if Anonymous has seen this yet...



What are they gonna do? Blurt Fight Club references and wear nyan cat shirts?

Has Anon ever actually done anything... you know... important?


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## Aden (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Sollux said:


> Has Anon ever actually done anything... you know... important?



caturday.


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## Heliophobic (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Aden said:


> caturday.



Caturday's only fun on /co/.

obby


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## Namba (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Dafuq is catgut day?


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## Heliophobic (Jun 26, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Eyal Flurry said:


> Dafuq is catgut day?



That day of the week when 10 year olds giggle at lolcats and furfags say they have a reason to spam the internet with anthro cat porn.


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## Traven V (Jun 27, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

If this happens it's going to spark quite a revolution.


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## Neuron (Jun 27, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Dude, Mircea, you were talking about wanting to start a goddamn _riot_ over this shit in your FA journal, chill the fuck out, you're one step away from dismissing Term and anyone a bit skeptical as being DISINFO AGENTS to make your point. If anything, that kind of talk of going out in the streets and instigating shit is going to get you suspicious looks from an ISP and possibly law enforcement. 

You don't have any sources to back up your point and you're not sounding credible. Everyone is a lot more apt to listen to Term because his credibility in his field has been established and he's been telling you for about 10 posts now that it doesn't take a genius to figure out they don't want to risk jobs and money over bullying teh furries. 

Listen, I think we're all willing to agree that there is some manner of privacy that might be abused, but we're just not willing to accept your level of dramatic exaggeration and slippery slope. This is, however, an inevitability that many of us accepted as probably going to come to pass, the days of the internet wild west are over especially with the availability of streaming for so goddamn cheap.

Man, if I wanted to see this level of paranoid fear-mongering with no facts, I'd go to /tinfoil/. Just saying.


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## Namba (Jun 27, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Sollux said:


> That day of the week when 10 year olds giggle at lolcats and furfags say they have a reason to spam the internet with anthro cat porn.


Sounds fuckin awesome! :v


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## Mircea (Jun 27, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Sollux said:


> That day of the week when 10 year olds giggle at lolcats and furfags say they have a reason to spam the internet with anthro cat porn.



Sounds fun :3


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jun 27, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> Sounds fun :3




You accused me of simple closed minded thinking when you have more than once, ignored mine, Term's and many other users valid points. Term has even explained why ISP's wouldn't just outright ban users from the internet because then they would loose customers and money. And as you said yourself corporations "are greedy" and wouldn't want to risk loosing money unless their was no other option. 

As I have said before you, my friend are worrying about nothing like many others are.


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## Mircea (Jun 27, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Randy-Darkshade said:


> You accused me of simple closed minded thinking when you have more than once, ignored mine, Term's and many other users valid points. Term has even explained why ISP's wouldn't just outright ban users from the internet because then they would loose customers and money. And as you said yourself corporations "are greedy" and wouldn't want to risk loosing money unless their was no other option.
> 
> As I have said before you, my friend are worrying about nothing like many others are.



A reason I ignored you and Term was because (especially in his case) you seemed like you were taking it personally and getting pissed at me instead. Usually I stop paying attention or bothering much at that point. But I read your latest posts, and saw your points. Yes, ok, this isn't really as bad as I first thought it is when I posted the thread. Like I said I have reasons to be paranoid, and now I'm more clear on this given I read more info overall. Thanks for all the info.

On a separate note, I would like to inform everyone of something even more important. CISPA is going to expire soon and will be voted in the senate. Everyone who is against it is strongly advised to call their senators ASAP and ask them to not vote on it. I'm not going to give doomsday warnings about this (although I consider it far worse than the ISP initiative) nor feel like debating more about it now... so I'm just informing you in case you are against this and wish to prevent it while there's still time. Also, as usual, please spread the word and re-post about this so everyone knows (again if you're against it and have reasons to consider it bad).


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## Mircea (Jun 28, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Although I've been bringing a lot of "related news" to this thread since the initial discussion, I again received some shocking news from EFF by email (they're a serious source of information) about a potential revive of the actual SOPA / PIPA.

http://act.demandprogress.org/act/vs_hollywood/?referring_akid=.661516.qyUGJ6&source=typ-tw

It appears Hollywood is trying to shut down all cloud websites. Basically, it wishes to take down Youtube, Google Drive, and all cloud services out there, the same way Megaupload was removed. The article mentions them trying to circumvent congress so they can force their law through without a vote. What this means is most major websites which allow file storage would be gone... and we are back at SOPA as we know it.

This comes just a few days after I heard about the ISP initiative and an update on CISPA. Jesus Christ... has the world gone completely mad? Are those groups desperate beyond limit to shut down this internet? They now want sites like Youtube to disappear forever... who almost entirely addressed the issue of copyright material being uploaded. Is this even about copyright any more, or is that just a pretext?

Yeah, I agree... this is an outright war with the entertainment industry at this point. I don't feel like fueling the fire here so people can jump to their own conclusion... I just found the article and linked it. There will probably be more information soon, and if that's true likely another blackout. Feel free to re-post this post anywhere without asking.


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## thoron (Jun 28, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Mircea said:


> Although I've been bringing a lot of "related news" to this thread since the initial discussion, I again received some shocking news from EFF by email (they're a serious source of information) about a potential revive of the actual SOPA / PIPA.
> 
> http://act.demandprogress.org/act/vs_hollywood/?referring_akid=.661516.qyUGJ6&source=typ-tw
> 
> ...



This seems more like a petition to have the files of megauploads released back to thier owners. I'm not seeing any links to any sort of article or document that is actually stating that Hollywood is aiming to stut all these websites down. It only brings up megauploads.


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## Mircea (Jun 28, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



thoron said:


> This seems more like a petition to have the files of megauploads released back to thier owners. I'm not seeing any links to any sort of article or document that is actually stating that Hollywood is aiming to stut all these websites down. It only brings up megauploads.



Ah, ok. Good thing I didn't panic as much about this one as much. It seems like it's talking about a law because of what it says in the content and the first lines, and that the email about it was sent today.



> *Hollywood attorneys are trying to use the courts to circumvent Congress and implement a backdoor SOPA/PIPA scheme.
> 
> Fight Back: YOUR FILES ON Google, Dropbox, Facebook, Tumblr,  Instagram, YouTube, Flickr, etc. and even your emails are in jeopardy.*


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## Recel (Jun 28, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I actually didn't read the entire thread. It got too "emotional" and "heated". So I'll just drop my general opinion on this thing.

With every one of these laws, and every reaction to it was based around a worse case scenario. No, the government wont want to get their hands on every ones porn archives... Even if that would be their goal it would require an absurd amount of work to monitor all the people using the internet, witch makes it kind of not happen any time soon. Maybe they would nit pick a few people they "bump into". About closing sites, again, too much to monitor. The popular sites could be good targets, but even if they would shoot down one, another copycat would rise, and become popular again. So again it wouldn't be smart, because you would just put a lot of effort into an uphill battle while you are constantly pissing off people. Not something you want to have your name near, is it? So personally I'm not worried about loosing my internet. They could make it worse for me, but the effort they would have to place into it is too much to be a likely option.

With (almost) all of these bills, the main concern shouldn't be an extreme scenario, but instead the fact that governments (not just yours mind you) try to sneak laws past. Why? Because you can't have an opinion about a law you don't even know about. I sure wouldn't like to go to jail because a law that just popes into the book from one day to the other. Sure, again, most likely they would announce the law once it passed, witch makes it slightly better, but its still a way to stop people from reacting to a law.

So why try to stop laws that are getting smuggled in, instead of trying to stop the government from smuggling any law under your nose? I know it sounds crazy to actually protest against the source of the problem, how dare I even think of such foolishness! But maybe it would work if people would try.


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## Term_the_Schmuck (Jun 28, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

You probably should have read a bit more of the thread Recel. 

Because this isnt a bill and the government's not involved. This is a policy being unilaterally enacted across a couple of ISPs.


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## Recel (Jun 28, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Term_the_Schmuck said:


> You probably should have read a bit more of the thread Recel.
> 
> Because this isnt a bill and the government's not involved. This is a policy being unilaterally enacted across a couple of ISPs.



And I even read that... I wonder where I keep my brain at times like these. 

And that where can I get a new one instead of this defective one.


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## JoeX (Jul 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

So, AT&T isn't involved with this? Thank goodness I have AT&T, then.


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## ScaredToBreathe (Jul 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

Literally every time a new internet bill comes up, everyone does this.


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## Conker (Jul 24, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I asked my friend if he has torrented anything since this shit started. He said he had and his ISP never called him or bitched or anything.

So I'm not really sure if that's dependent on your ISP or what. I haven't torrented anything, but I've sort of stopped doing that anyhow now that I have a job  

The thing is, torrenting by itself isn't illegal, but I haven't read much of this thread and am kind of posting out of my ass here.


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## Neoi (Jul 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*

I'm glad I am not a US resident. I'd hate to be spied on.


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## Teal (Jul 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Neoi said:


> I'm glad I am not a US resident. I'd hate to be spied on.


 You think that they won't find a way to make it world-wide?
Hahahhaha that's funny. Very funny.


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## Gryphoneer (Jul 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Neoi said:


> I'm glad I am not a US resident. I'd hate to be spied on.


They spy out all of us with ECHELON for half a century.


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## Randy-Darkshade (Jul 25, 2012)

*Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju*



Neoi said:


> I'm glad I am not a US resident. I'd hate to be spied on.



You think that we are not spied on anyway? HA! 

ISP's know exactly what we are doing and when we do it.

Even pubs are spied on. the company that owns my favourite pub Knows when a pint is pulled every single time. Each pump is computerized which sends information back to the main HQ

So yeah, we get spied on anyway.


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