The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and it's supporters.

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SOPA: Lawmakers backing away from online-piracy bills - The Washington Post


It looks like the uproar over Congress’s online-piracy bills is having a real impact. This weekend, the White House strongly hinted that it would oppose the current legislation. And key sponsors are edging away from the bills’ most controversial features.


(Lucy Nicholson - Reuters) Late on Friday night, the White House released a statement announcing that it “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” That’s a huge shift, and it came in response to a petition asking President Obama to veto the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, which would give content providers sweeping new tools to crack down on copyright infringement. True, the White House statement doesn’t oppose SOPA directly, but it’s a fairly clear condemnation of the flaws critics have pointed to in the bill. (See here for a basic rundown of what SOPA is, and why it’s generated so much controversy.)

It’s also a sign that momentum on online-piracy legislation is shifting dramatically. Just six months ago, these bills seemed all but inevitable. The Senate version of SOPA, the Protect IP Act, was being held up by one lonely senator, Ron Wyden, and most of the bill’s backers were confident of eventual passage. But critics and tech exports started pointing out that these bills could impinge on free speech and disrupt the workings of the Internet. Online communities like Tumblr and Reddit organized loud, boisterous, and often clever campaigns — the document-sharing site Scribd, for instance, made a billion pages vanish to protest the bill — and public opinion swung sharply. A Reddit campaign managed to persuade Paul Ryan to oppose the bill, for instance.

As a result, even the most ardent backers of the bill are now softening their support. Sen. Pat Leahy, a key sponsor of the Protect IP Act, has conceded that more study is needed for the provisions that would allow rogue sites to be delisted from the Domain Name Service (basically the Internet’s phone directory). Critics have warned that mucking with DNS could splinter the architecture of the Internet.

In the House, meanwhile, SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) has said he’d remove the DNS-blocking provisions from his bill outright, pending further review. And last week, six Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee also wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asking for more time to study the Protect IP Act. (It’s currently slated for consideration Jan. 24.)

Now, that doesn’t mean these bills, or their most controversial features, are dead and buried. Leahy, for one, was pretty clear that still supports passing a bill with DNS-blocking — he just thinks that feature should be studied carefully before it actually gets implemented. (As TechDirt’s Michael Masnick points out, that sounds like a compelling reason to slow down and reconsider before passing the bill, rather than enacting a provision that lawmakers don’t fully understand.)

Still, the momentum does seem to be shifting. Reddit and Wikipedia are planning to go dark this Wednesday in an attempt to raise awarenesss and put even more pressure on lawmakers. Right now, the main alternative to SOPA and Protect IP is a bill backed by Wyden and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) that would focus on curbing the flow of money to foreign sites dedicated to copyright infringement, but would be considerably narrower. You can read about the pros and cons of that bill here.

 

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SOPA and Protect IP are the "wrong solution to any problem we might believe it would solve" | The Daily Caller

Twin bills in the House and Senate purport to protect American copyright and trademark holders from foreign infringers, but in practice create an unprecedented system of censorship of the Internet in America. This wrong-headed approach is contained in Patrick Leahy’s Senate bill 98, the PROTECT IP Act, and its counterpart: Lamar Smith’s House resolution 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.

PROTECT IP has been held up in the Senate by the efforts of Oregon’s Ron Wyden, so the action for now has been in the House Judiciary committee’s SOPA hearings. SOPA would give Attorney General Eric Holder the Internet censorship powers he has desired for years, and was willing to use any excuse to take. First it was the Columbine massacre that was his excuse to support the government taking down Internet sites, but now it’s copyright that is the crisis of the moment. Whatever the reason, his solution is the same: restrict speech online.

In giving Holder this power, SOPA takes away our protection in the form of due process of law. Under SOPA, this or any future administration does not have to go to court and win at trial in order to confiscate our domains (our property), cancel all present and future internet advertising we do (our speech), and in fact cut off our businesses from the Internet (our livelihood).

Instead of actually proving anything in court, all the Attorney General has to do is send an email, then ask a judge for an injunction. According to Section 102, once he gets that injunction he then gets to issue orders to Service Providers, Internet Search Engines, Payment Network Providers, and Internet Advertising Agencies to wipe a business off of the Internet. Most notably, SOPA gives the Attorney General the power to order all ISPs in America to censor the global Domain Name System.

The power to take political control over DNS, a core Internet service, without trial and without notice beyond an email is bad enough. But this isn’t just about the censorship of things previously published. SOPA also prohibits its victims from running future advertisements as well, a prior restraint on speech.

SOPA has additional victims. The bill creates a boundless burden on Internet Service Providers in America. Any orders that the Attorney General makes on ISPs are presumed in court to be economically and technologically reasonable. If this is not the case, the burden of proof is on the ISP as an affirmative defense. Small firms risk going out of business if they lack the means to fight an unreasonable order.

When the short-lived Republic of Rhodesia imposed censorship of newspapers criticizing or embarrassing the state, the proliferation of white space in newspapers was itself an embarrassment of the regime. As a result, the government began adding more censorship rules, regulating the layout of newspapers to hide the effects of censorship.

Censorship begets censorship, and inherently defies oversight. SOPA is the wrong solution to any problem we might believe it would solve. To pass it would threaten the liberties and livelihoods of anyone who uses the Internet for business, politics, or pleasure.

Read more: SOPA and Protect IP are the "wrong solution to any problem we might believe it would solve" | The Daily Caller

 

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With SOPA on the ropes, opponents taking their campaign to the streets - GeekWire

The controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) suffered a pair of blows over the weekend, as the White House spoke out against the specifics of the bill and sponsors said they would strip the legislation of a provision requiring Internet Service Providers to use DNS to block access to overseas sites accused of piracy.

The news follows widespread objections to the proposed law from members of the technology community. Opponents say it goes too far by allowing the shutdown of sites accused of enabling copyright violations, which get an expanded definition under the bill.

Despite those developments, SOPA and the related Protect Intellectual Property Act remain alive, and opponents are still planning to black out their sites on Wednesday. In the Seattle region, events are also planned on Wednesday in downtown Seattle, South Lake Union and Bellevue to help raise public awareness and coordinate the opposition to the bill.

“Our goal will be to talk to people on the streets, educate them about the dangers of SOPA/PIPA, and then convince them to take out their cell phones and call their Senators and Representatives right there, on the sidewalk,” explains organizer Zac Cohn in a blog post.

The post continues, “Congress in the process of rushing through legislation which will not only severely damage the Internet as a marketplace and platform for entrepreneurship and open innovation, but will also seriously impact the ability of our Seattle tech community to continue to generate jobs, grow and flourish.”

Ben Huh of Cheezburger said a short time ago on Twitter that the popular network of comedy sites still plans a blackout on Wednesday to bring attention to SOPA and encourage its millions of readers to contact lawmakers about the issue. Huh explained his position in an interview last week with KING-TV, saying that the bill “has to be killed in its entire form.”

Wikipedia and Reddit are among other major sites planning Wednesday blackouts.

In their blog post, White House officials encouraged opponents and supporters of the bill to come up with alternative approaches.

“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet,” they wrote.

 

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Gaming Industry Spent $US190,000 Pushing For Senate Version Of SOPA | Kotaku Australia

Many gamers and video game companies can’t stand the Stop Online Piracy Act and its companion bill the Protect IP Act (PIPA). But the Entertainment Software Association, the lobbyists who stage E3 each year and defend gaming’s freedom of speech rights, thinks PIPA is a good idea.

And they’re paying to support the legislation.

Lobbying records for the second and third quarter of 2011 indicate that the ESA, which spends more than $US1 million lobbying politicians about video games every three months, paid two firms a combined $US190,000 to lobby about PIPA and other issues.

Supporters say the bills would fight online piracy. Critics say that the bills, if passed, would stifle free speech online and disrupt the workings of the Internet.

The ESA has used two firms to try to convince politicians how to shape the Protect IP Act. They paid the Smith-Free Group $60,000 between April 1 and June 30 for “discussions relating to online infringements of intellectual property” relating to the Protect IP Act as well as for lobbying for non PIPA/SOPA causes. The same group was paid $US50,000 in the summer for a similar array of causes, which also included education, energy and tax policy as it related to the gaming industry.

The ESA paid the Franklin Square Group $US40,000 in the (northern) spring and another $US40,000 in the (northern) summer to lobby for a batch of causes including the immigration of highly skilled workers and for PIPA.

The filings don’t indiciate what position the ESA’s people took on PIPA, but the gaming group has made it clear in recent weeks that they support the legislation. The records also don’t take into account any lobbying about PIPA or SOPA that was done in the winter. Those records should be filed in the coming days.

I contacted the ESA for comment about their lobbying efforts, but they did not respond by the writing of this post. If they do, I’ll add it here.

 

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THIS IS A BIG ONE

Why Is NBCUniversal Threatening To Report Commenters They Disagree With To Their Employers? | Techdirt

This one is a little bizarre. David Seaman, a contributor to Business Insider, claims that he lost his contributor status at the site following a dispute he had with an NBCUniversal employee, Anthony Quintano, concerning NBC's coverage of both SOPA/PIPA and NDAA. The details are a bit complex, but I've emailed with David a few times. It appears he posted some comments on NBC Universal's Google+ page, complaining about their lack of coverage on both issues:

The comment seems perfectly reasonable, but NBCUniversal deleted it, and later claimed that it was spam:

t's pretty difficult to see how that's spam, and David said so:

Following this, Quintano told David that he had contacted Business Insider to complain about David's statements.

This is the part that seems the most troubling. Why would NBCUniversal employees decide that contacting someone else's employer, because they don't like his comments, makes any sense at all. That's just outright bullying.

Either way, David then alerted his editor at Business Insider, who said:

I think it might be best if we revoked your account for now. We've drastically cut back on our contributors recently and while we really appreciate your posts there have been far too many of these types of contentious issues lately.

Now, there are all sorts of ways to look at this, and I'd almost be more inclined to question how Business Insider handled this, rather than NBCUniversal. The second one of your writers gets into a little bit of controversy, you cut them loose? Way to look out for your writers, BI.

So I'm not sure I buy the story that NBCUniversal is the reason Seaman is no longer a contributor to BI, but it is a fact that Quintano directly threatened to contact Business Insider to complain about David's statements. It's downright slimy for NBCUniversal employees to threaten people to contact their employers because NBCUniversal doesn't agree with their statements online. Disagree, fine. Hell, I don't even have a huge problem if NBCUniversal wants to be anti-internet and block comments it doesn't like (as it was doing here). But to then threaten to impact someone's livelihood because you don't like their comments? That's just bullying.

 

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CloudFlare Builds ‘Stop Censorship’ App, Lets Sites Easily “Black Out” Against SOPA | TechCrunch

Whatever position you may take on SOPA, or on whether or not sites should black out against SOPA (Yes it has come to this), the issue has reached a boiling point today with sites like Wikipedia and Reddit pledging to blackout on Wednesday in order to further raise awareness of the measure’s pitfalls.

Because SOPA and PIPA threaten the existence of sites that link to copyright infringing content (like Twitter, Wikipedia, Facebook and every other site on the Internet) the bills — which are currently stalled in Congress — have sparked a massive online backlash.

In addition to Reddit, Wikipedia and Icanhazcheezburger, Web security startup CloudFlare has thrown its large hat into the anti-SOPA ring, with the “CloudFlare Stop Censorship” app — which essentially solves investor Fred Wilson’s problem of not knowing exactly how to black out. As of 4pm PST, anyone who uses CloudFlare can download the app with one click from the CloudFlare App Marketplace (and those who don’t can grab the code from Github here).

“We thought it was an effective way to reach a mass audience and raise awareness about the dangers of a law like SOPA/PIPA,” CloudFlare founder Matthew Prince told me, “We see more than 25 billion page views per month for more than 400 million unique visitors. To give you some sense, that’s more page views than Amazon.com, Twitter, Wikipedia, Zynga, and AOL — combined. 400 million uniques is about 25% of the Internet’s entire population.”

Prince spent most of the weekend making sure that everything was in working order and that use of the app wouldn’t affect site search ranking.

Prince plans to keep the app available for the next month or so until the threat of SOPA has passed, he tells me, “I’m a recovering lawyer and still teach Internet & Technology law, so this is a subject I’ve been following closely and understand the real risks of. I’m pretty excited we’re helping make it easy for sites that want to participate in Wednesday’s blackout to do so.”

 

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SOPA Threatens American Innovation - Forbes

Internet theft is a problem. Stealing another person’s ideas, creations and inventions deprives authors, artists and entrepreneurs proper credit and compensation. That leaves them with little incentive to continue their contributions. This is terrible for innovation, economic growth and prosperity. So is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
Does Piracy Cause Economic Harm? How To Think About Economic Frontiers E.D. Kain E.D. Kain Contributor
The White House Comes Out Against SOPA Paul Tassi Paul Tassi Contributor
Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act. Jesper Andersen Jesper Andersen Contributor
Online Piracy Bills Rely on Ignorance, Fiction -- Not Facts, Understanding and Reality Ed Black Ed Black Contributor

Drawn up by U.S. lawmakers angry at “rogue” websites that post content such as movies, music, books and articles without permission, it is a bill that would stop copyright infringement and, thereby, the millions that are lost to piracy. This is important, as Michigan Congressman John Conyers notes. “Millions of American jobs hang in the balance, and our efforts to protect America’s intellectual property are critical to our economy’s long-term success.” Trouble is, SOPA doesn’t do that.

The act would allow the government to go after and block websites and search engines that post or link protected content without permission. How it defines protected content is the problem. It is eager to take down foreign sites, particularly in China, that blatantly and continually violate intellectual property rights. In doing so, however, it would affect legitimate and law-abiding start-up sites like Twitter, Birchbox, Etsy, Foursquare and Pinterest that curate content from different sources. Under SOPA that’s a no.

More importantly, under growing unemployment and financial problems in America it’s insane. Twitter and other tech start-ups have been a source of much-needed job creation, growth and capital flows. The venture capital these ventures have raised bolsters an otherwise stagnant economy. The United States as well as the global economy needs to encourage their creations. By threatening to sue or shut them down, SOPA only threatens to drive them and their investments overseas. Venture capitalists have said that they would stop funding digital media start-ups if SOPA becomes law.

All these negative consequences and SOPA won’t solve the actual problem of intellectual property theft.

Entrepreneurs in the developing world are faced with insurmountable obstacles that get in the way of operating their enterprises. Good governance eludes Afghan telecom operator Roshan. A weak rule of law has made it difficult for Cambodia-based Rin Seyha to sue a copycat that stole intellectual property from his energy enterprise SME Renewables. Censorship inconveniences Jack Ma and Pony Ma, the Chinese entrepreneurs behind the incredibly profitable web portals Alibaba and Tencents. None of these obstacles is enough to stop any of them. Entrepreneurs in the developing world find ways around the roadblocks, which is the only things SOPA would be.

American filmmakers, musicians, authors and inventors should not have to stand by as their work is stolen by foreign infringers. They deserve a law that protects them and allows the open and free exchange of ideas upon which they stand. Indeed all of us do. Good laws protect all people. SOPA does not. That’s especially important as we honor Martin Luther King Jr. today. In his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail he asked how one determines whether a law is just or unjust? Considering our nation’s position on race he wrote:

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

Exactly.

 

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SOPA Author Lamar Smith Is a Copyright Violator | Geekosystem

SOPA‘s intent isn’t what makes it bad. Trying to protect copyrighted content is a good thing, it’s just that when that pursuit goes so far as to slaughter Fair Use and threaten to forever change the Internet — in a bad, bad way — it’s not worth the fallout. What better way to illustrate SOPA’s overzealous approach than to start showing how practically everyone would be in violation, people like Lamar Smith, for example, SOPA’s author. We told you about the anti-SOPA petition that could have taken down Whitehouse.gov under SOPA, and congressman Lamar’s website is a similar situation.

Jamie Lee Curtis Taete of VICE, while checking to make sure Smith’s website was SOPA-clean, uncovered that Smith was actually guilty of copyright infringment for his use of a background photo. As you can see in the image above, there’s a landscape peeking out from behind the main body of the site, and as it turns out, Smith never got any permission to use the picture. Taete was able to track down the picture’s photographer, DJ Schulte, who confirmed that no one had ever asked him for permission.

To make matters worse, the picture is under the Creative Commons license. This means that anyone can go ahead and use that picture for things just so long as it’s not commercial and the user credits Schulte. You can probably see where this is going. But the picture is licensed for free use anyway, right? Maybe just ask for attribution? What’s the big deal? Well, under SOPA, it’s a huge deal. That is SOPA’s primary failing, that common, insignificant mistakes can be blown out into DNS blocking for various flimsy reasons ranging from laziness to malicious intent. Under SOPA, Lamar Smith for Congress would be in some pretty hot water and just asking to be blocked.

While the anti-SOPA petition illustrated that languge in SOPA about linking was a death sentence to user-generated content, this illustrates how easy it is to just make a little mistake and get reamed for it. Smith’s office hasn’t made any comment on the whole situation yet, but it should be interesting to see him try and double-talk his way out of it considering how loudly and unilaterally he’s lambasted SOPA-detractors for overreacting. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and that foot is soon to be in Congressman Smith’s mouth.

 

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The Lies Of NBCUniversal's Rick Cotton About SOPA/PIPA | Techdirt

Chris Hayes, over on MSNBC, decided to be the first to seriously break the mainstream cable news' boycott over SOPA/PIPA with a big debate on the bill -- mainly between NBCUniversal's top lawyer, Rick Cotton, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Chris's opening discussion is quite good, and suggests he's certainly sympathetic to all of us who are vehemently opposed to the bill. You can watch it below:
Alexis does an excellent job in the brief time he's given to speak (though Cotton gets probably four times the amount of time to speak), but what I wanted to focus on, are the lies of Rick Cotton, because it's simply despicable. He flat-out lies about the bills -- and, even worse -- does so in a manner that implies that it's everyone else who's lying about the bills. He kicks it off by insisting that the bills only apply to sites that are "wholesale devoted to theft." That's simply not true. He actually uses the word "wholesale" maybe two dozen times (at least). The text of PIPA -- the key bill at this point -- says that a site is considered "dedicated to infringing activities" if it "has no significant use other than engaging in, enabling, or facilitating" infringement. That does not mean that the site is "wholesale devoted to theft." Under this definition, of course, a site like a YouTube (if it were based on a foreign domain) would be questionable, given that it has no significant use other than enabling infringement. That doesn't mean that it's always used to infringe, but it's main use absolutely enables or facilitates infringement. Cotton may want to believe the language says otherwise, but it does not.

Second, Cotton gets pretty angry about the "disinformation" around the bills, and insists that the bills "would not effect a single site in the United States." This is false. As we've explained repeatedly, while the targets of the legislation are sites with foreign domain names, the entire remedies section is about US sites -- meaning that they will have significant compliance costs, and potential liability under these laws. Furthermore, the anti-circumvention provisions of the bill are not limited to just foreign sites. Alexis pushed back on the anti-circumvention point, and Cotton claimed that Alexis was "simply wrong." But he's not. Cotton is "simply wrong" here again. Cotton claims that we should debate what's in the bill, and he should try reading the bill. In fact, Alexis has said that Cotton admitted after they were off the air that he was correct that the anti-circumvention provisions were not limited to just foreign sites. But that doesn't do any good for those who saw the segment but don't know the specifics.

Next, he claims it's totally wrong that a small amount of "legitimate activity would be threatened by this legislation." To be fair, Cotton and his buddies already got the power to take down tons of "legitimate activity" with the last copyright expansion bill they passed a few years ago, the ProIP bill. Either way, he's still wrong. Tons of legitimate content can and will be put at risk under these bills. We've already seen that companies -- including NBCUniversal -- have wrongly declared publicly that certain sites are "rogue" sites, despite the fact that they have tons of legitimate content. If you believe that Cotton and NBCUniversal will suddenly get better at finding sites that really only deal in infringement going forward, you haven't paid much attention over the last decade or so. Under existing law, we're already seeing legitimate websites taken down, and legitimate speech infringed upon. Hell, even the one prominent legal scholar who agrees with Cotton, Floyd Abrams, has admitted that protected speech would be censored under the bill.

Next, Cotton claims that the internet is "lawless" and that this whole thing is really a policy debate about how we finally put laws on the internet. This is, to put it mildly, insane. As Alexis points out in response, there are tons of laws that apply to the internet, and directly apply and are used every day to deal with infringing activity. To pretend otherwise is ridiculous. In fact, as Alexis notes, the DMCA is regularly abused by copyright holders to go way beyond what the law is supposed to allow.

Towards the end, Cotton claims that when a court in the Netherlands ordered The Pirate Bay blocked in that country, traffic to the site dropped by 80%. That's a flat out lie. I mean, ridiculously false. First off, considering that the legal fight over that has continued for years, and the court only ordered ISPs in the Netherlands to actually block The Pirate Bay... five days ago -- and gave them 10 days to comply -- I'm curious as to how he knows how much impact such a court order has had (er... will have) on traffic to The Pirate Bay. Separately, in every other place that has ordered such a block, traffic to TPB has actually gone up, not down, because the court order to block tends to give the site more attention. Just to make sure, I asked someone in the Netherlands if TPB was blocked for them, and he sent me the following screenshot showing that it's totally accessible (though, they're warning about the new ruling!). Either way, Cotton was flat out, 100%, totally lying about these "stats" from the Netherlands. No such block has occurred.
All in all, this is the same duplicity that we've been seeing from SOPA/PIPA supporters for the last few months. They attack those of us with facts on our side as spreading disinformation, but when you look at the details you realize that it is, in fact, they who are flat out "wholesale" lying. Rick Cotton should be ashamed, and NBCUniversal should admit to its errors. Chris Hayes promises to cover the topic in more detail again in the future, and he should challenge Cotton on the multiple false statements he made.

 

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Tim O'Reilly on SOPA: it protects the wrong people - Boing Boing

In an interview with GigaOm's Coleen Taylor, publisher Tim O'Reilly explains what's so wrong about SOPA:

I talked with Nancy Pelosi about SOPA the other day, and she said that the experience with piracy is different for people in the movie industry. Maybe — I’m not a movie producer. But I do know that right now the entire content industry is facing massive systemic changes, and to claim that declining sales are because of piracy is so over the top. Any company that is providing great content online in a way that’s easy to use with a fair price has a booming business right now. The people who don’t are trying to fight that future.

So here we have this legislation, with all of these possible harms, to solve a problem that only exists in the minds of people who are afraid of the future. Why should the government be intervening on behalf of the people who aren’t getting with the program?

 

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Minecraft developer says “No sane person can be for SOPA” | VentureBeat

Markus Persson, creator of the breakout hit indie game Minecraft, has announced that minecraft.net and mojang.com will be taken down on Jan 18th, in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act. Speaking on Twitter, Persson said “Decided. We’ll silently take down minecraft.net and mojang.com on the 18th in protest of SOPA.”

Persson acknowledges that a lot of Minecraft’s success has been due to players posting screenshots and making videos of their Minecraft creations. The SOPA bill is seen by many as a direct threat to such activities. SOPA is intended to help curb internet piracy and protect copyright holders, but critics have said that the bill is over-reaching, and will be largely ineffective in the areas it is looking to target. Net Coalition, a trade association that includes Google, Amazon.com, eBay and Wikipedia, warns that SOPA will dramatically change the internet as we know it.

Speaking to PC Gamer yesterday, on behalf of Mojhang, Persson said, “No sane person can be for SOPA. I don’t know if we’re sane, but we are strongly, uncompromisingly against SOPA, and any similar laws. Sacrificing freedom of speech for the benefit of corporate profit is abominable and disgusting.”

Despite selling over 4M copies of Minecraft, Persson is no stranger to the issue of internet piracy, that SOPA is partly intended to combat. He re-iterated his thoughts on piracy yesterday via Twitter, sparked by a request for a free copy of Minecraft. The initial tweet read “Hi notch, look, I really like the game but lack the money to buy it. I thought I might at least ask for a free account before piracy”. Persson, aka @Notch, replied, “Just pirate it. If you still like it when you can afford it in the future, buy it then. Also don’t forget to feel bad.”

Persson elaborated on his comment later, saying,”Well, I don’t exactly “approve” [of piracy], but I think it’s a minor offense in the scale of things. Jaywalking level. Littering.”

When asked whether he cared about piracy putting Mojhang out of business, Persson responded, “There are enough honest people out there who can afford the game. I’ll just focus on them.”

Justification for Persson’s relaxed approach to piracy perhaps came in a tweet that said, “I originally pirated Minecraft, but loved it so much I had to buy it. Been a major fan ever since.” To which Persson replied, “Thank you very much!! So converting pirates can actually work? Awesome!”

Persson’s SOPA stance comes in a week largely dominated by talk of the controversial bill. Other gaming industry voices have been expressing their disapproval of SOPA, including Major League Gaming, Riot Games and Epic Games, and gamers have been urged to write to Congress by Democratic Representative, and League of Legends player, Jared Polis.

Persson’s decision follows community news sharing site Reddit’s move to shut down on Jan 18 in protest against the SOPA bill.

You can keep on top of the SOPA story by following VentureBeat’s ongoing SOPA coverage.

 

[Synthaholic]

Holy shit, nitroz! This is the War & Peace thread, it's so long. Quit cut & pasting and spamming, and discuss the issue, please. Nobody is going to read long Senate/House bills. That's why they are written that way.

I posted this thread the other day in the Computer subforum:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/computers/203474-sopa-opera.html

 

[nitroz]

Holy shit, nitroz! This is the War & Peace thread, it's so long. Quit cut & pasting and spamming, and discuss the issue, please. Nobody is going to read long Senate/House bills. That's why they are written that way.

I posted this thread the other day in the Computer subforum:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/computers/203474-sopa-opera.html

In short: The SOPA and PIPA bills are in result in Hollywood's and others failure to innovate.
It's not our fault that we have a FREE economy.

And those who support SOPA speak with their actions.
A big supporter/congress said "You don't matter".

And Rupert Murdoch attacked the White House for opposing the bill. Rupert is the same asswipe who hacked cell phones of thousands to extort information illegally and use that for his own intentions, making revenue from it.

So it's okay if he does highly illegal stuff multiple times, but it's not okay if you browse the internet. Because you are preventing scumbags like him from making $$$.

 

[Truthseeker420]

Movie Studios Caught Pirating Movies

The same copyright barons pushing SOPA, the awful internet, are enormous hypocrites, TorrentFreak reports. They want the law as a means of stopping online piracy—but maybe they should start with their own employees.

A Russian BitTorrent tracking firm traced pirated movies and television show downloads back to IP addresses from Sony, Fox, and NBC—as TF points out, "these are the same companies who want to disconnect people from the Internet after they've been caught sharing copyrighted material."

This shouldn't surprise anyone. When studios push fascist copyright law, they're speaking on behalf of their shareholders, not the thousands of people they employ. Those people are ordinary people, who, yes, sometimes pirate albums, movies, shows, and games, like millions of other ordinary people around the world. But the hypocrisy is more than superficial. We shouldn't ever let companies that can't control their own miscreant employees shape federal legislation for all of us.

Music and Movie companies are the biggest pirates. All movies and song are stole bits and pieces of history.

 

[nitroz]

I swear that the backers of SOPA are the most ignorant people out there..

Haha: The MPAA thinks SOPA blackouts are gimmicks

A statement has been issued by Senator Chris Dodd about SOPA, and it’s a doozy. In the statement Dodd, who coincidentally acts as the Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), says that the Stop Online Piracy Act blackout protests are ‘gimmicks’ that hurt real efforts to combat piracy.

Dodd begins by talking about the various ‘technology business interests’ that are protesting SOPA using blackouts and other means. You can read this as being addressed to Wikipedia, Google and others that are taking a very public stance against SOPA.

“Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.

I love how Dodd goes after the ‘problem’ being real and damaging, not the half-baked and very dangerous SOPA itself. Dodd then goes on to call these companies ‘irresponsible’ for choosing to use their own resources and services to draw users’ attention to the issue. Going further, he calls it an ‘abuse of power’:

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

Then Dodd spins the blackouts and other protests as efforts that are designed to ‘punish’ elected officials for ‘working…to protect American jobs from foreign criminals’. The language is almost comically inflammatory and twisted.

A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals.

Then Dodd says that the White House and Congress should call on the companies to stop the protests.

It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.”

The sheer lack of self awareness on display here is staggering. Dodd, for his part, has been a long time defender of SOPA and has even taken a lenient stance when it comes to the rampant censoring of the Internet by China.

Now I want every website to go dark tomorrow, not just Wikipedia.

 

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MPAA's Chris Dodd takes aim at SOPA strike - latimes.com

Hollywood's chief lobbyist lashed out at tech companies for mounting Tuesday night's planned online blackout to protest proposed anti-piracy legislation that has pitted Southern California movie and music distributors against Silicon Valley Internet corporations.

Motion Picture Assn. of America Chief Executive Chris Dodd, the former Senator from Connecticut, accused technology companies such as Google, Mozilla and Wikipedia of resorting to stunts.

As part of the largest online strike in history, thousands of websites planned to black out their pages or shut down completely starting Tuesday night to protest anti-piracy bills they feel would limit freedom of speech and saddle legitimate websites with onerous legal costs.

But Dodd called the blackout a "dangerous gimmick."

"It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and who use their services,'' Dodd said in a statement. "It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today."

Meanwhile, NetCoalition, a group of leading Internet and technology companies, announced that it launched a radio advertising campaign highlighting the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

"We want to let people know that these bills will harm American jobs and our economy by stifling innovation and chilling investment in one of the few industries growing and hiring,'' said Markham Erickson, executive director of NetCoalition.

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjfyJsZLhsI&feature=player_embedded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XM4Hh2_GaQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZrQnPJ5Uw4

 

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SOPA Blackout represents Web’s “political coming of age” | The Technology Chronicles | an SFGate.com blog

In an unprecedented display of Internet force on Wednesday, thousands of websites went dark or self-censored to protest twin antipiracy measures pending in Congress.

The so called SOPA Blackout represented a culmination of months of intensifying outcry over the bills, echoed and amplified by social media, blogs and tech publications, that came to draw more and more popular sites into the official day of protest: Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Wired, Reddit, Boing Boing, Reporters Without Borders, Pressthink, Greenpeace, McSweeney’s and many more.

Their actions and the frenzy of media coverage in the build up raised mainstream awareness of what, until recent days, had been a wonky set of proposals only lightly covered outside tech circles. Congressional phone lines were reportedly flooded on Wednesday, in what could begin the final unraveling of the already troubled measures.

The stated goal of the Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act, is to confront the sale and distribution of pirated movies, drugs, music and consumer goods by rogue overseas sites. The widespread concern is that the methods for doing so threaten critical legal protections that foster online innovation while undermining due process and free speech.

On Wednesday, a number of Republican backers of the bills came to agree the approach was flawed, even if the goal was sound. Senators Marco Rubio of Florida, John Cornyn of Texas and Orrin Hatch of Utah all withdrew support, following in the footsteps of several House colleagues in recent days. The Obama administration came out strongly against the proposals over the weekend.

Some observers say the day of protest may come to represent a fundamental shift in the legislative landscape, a flexing of a new found and untraditional source of political power in the Internet sector.

“It’s having a big impact on the workaday politics on the hill,” said Peter Leyden, co-founder of Torchline.com, who has advised democrats including President Barack Obama’s campaign on the use of social media tools. “I think the Web is politically coming of age. We’re seeing a line being crossed and I don’t think it will be the same from now on.”

Arguably, the sites were driven to take the extreme and unusual step.

Supporters of the bill, including the media, pharmaceutical and fashion industries, had drastically outspent the Internet industry in lobbying for the measures, pulling the traditional lever of corporate politicking. Moreover, the tech perspective on the matter has been flagrantly suppressed throughout the public hearings so far.

In November, the House Judiciary Committee set up a mockery of an open debate by stacking the witness deck, with five in favor taking on one against.

But if the tech industry has stumbled upon a new source of political strength that it can leverage again, it does raise certain questions.

What’s to stop Facebook from switching on its megaphone to help convince some 800 million users that any new privacy regulation will spoil all the fun on the social network? What’s to stop Google from telling millions of surfers that all those bothersome antitrust inquiries are going to positively wreck the search engine?

Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, dismissed the concerns. He said the protests only engendered broader support because the anti-censorship message bubbled up through grassroots efforts and resonated with Internet users encountering the participating sites.

(Note: The Center for Internet and Society participated in the blackout.)

“The reason everyone was so excited is that this is a piece of legislation that’s only good for a tiny handful of corporations and it’s really bad for the rest of us,” Falzone said.

For that same reason, the supporters of SOPA and PIPA won’t be able to leverage their own considerable reach — through TV, movies, books and magazines — to enlist the support of their audience.

“You have to capture the hearts and minds and an open, free, vital and vibrant Web is really what energizes people,” Leyden said. “The idea of worrying about the profits of some media company isn’t going to turn people on.”

None of which is to say that the battle is over. Legislators have indicated they’ll continue to work on revisions and have already scheduled future debates on the bills in question.

Meanwhile, alternatives have come forth, like the tech industry-backed (and media industry-rejected) Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act.

And even if none of these pass, SOPA and PIPA supporters will continue to push for new legislative tools to address the very real problem of online piracy.

The solution is to come up with a solution, stressed prominent angel investor Ron Conway in a speech before about 150 protesters at a rally near San Francisco’s City Hall on Wednesday. He called on the media industry of Southern California and tech sector of Nothern California to work together on the issue in good faith.

“Why don’t we find a way to innovate a solution to the piracy issue?” he said. “Let’s do what we’ve always done before: solve problems with technology, not against technology.”

 

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Millions sign Google's anti-SOPA petition | Digital Media - CNET News

And, if clicked on, it leads users to a "End Piracy, Not Liberty" petition that asks people to sign-on to protest the two anti-piracy laws to be voted on by Senate and Congress.

"Millions of Americans oppose SOPA and PIPA because these bills would censor the Internet and slow economic growth in the U.S.," the petition reads. "Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late."

Over the course of the day, millions of people signed onto Google's petition. "The last number we released was at 4:30pm ET," said Google spokesperson Christine Chen. "At that point we were at 4.5 million signatories and counting."

This search-giant is showing that it is in lock step with hundreds of other individuals, groups, and Web sites that either sent out their own petitions, wrote letters to the U.S. government, or went black today in protest of the anti-piracy laws. Among Google's allies are Facebook, AOL, Wikipedia, Amazon, Twitter, and Firefox.

"Fighting online piracy is important," Google wrote on the petition. "The most effective way to shut down pirate websites is through targeted legislation that cuts off their funding. There's no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs."

There are signs that the SOPA and PIPA protests are working. A whole host of senators and members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have announced that they will either vote against or vote to amend the bills. Earlier today, Republican Sens. Roy Blunt from Missouri, John Boozman from Arkansas, and Orrin Hatch from Utah all said they were withdrawing co-sponsorship from the Protect IP Act.

 

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SOPA: Congressman Ben Quayle No Longer a Fan After Internet Goes on Strike - Phoenix News - Valley Fever

As you may know, the Internet is "on strike" today. Well, not the entire Internet -- just Wikipedia. Several other big-name, high-traffic websites -- including Google and Craigslist -- have "blacked out" their websites today in protest of a bill currently making its way through Congress that they say would lead to censorship of online content, and could force many of the companies to shut down.

One sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is Congressman Ben Quayle...er, was Congressman Ben Quayle.

Quayle is one of several sponsors who bailed on his support of the bill yesterday -- as protests of the legislation spread across the series of tubes that are deceased Senator Ted Stevens' Interwebs.

Quayle spokesman Zach Howell tells New Times the congressman still supports the goal of the bill -- to crack down on foreign websites trafficking things like pirated movies, music, etc. -- but, as it's currently written, could create unintended problems.

"Congressman Quayle strongly believes that something must be done to combat rogue websites that steal American intellectual property," Howell says in an email. "This is a serious matter that costs businesses billions of dollars and destroys American jobs. However, Representative Quayle believes that as the bill currently stands, it could have unintended consequences that need to be addressed before moving forward and these concerns led him to withdraw his name as a co-sponsor."

Additionally, Nebraska Congressman Lee Terry, who also sponsored the bill, yanked his support yesterday, too.

A similar bill that's currently in the Senate lost the support of Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who noted on his Facebook page that he's "heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government's power to impact the Internet."

For more info on the bill, just Wikipedia it (it's probably not a coincidence, but Wikipedia's SOPA page has not been blacked out. Check it out here).