internet censorship: SOPA is bad law

[Yammer Dan]

We can live without the internet can't we??(Can't make it 24 hrs without this site) Or is that against the law now??

 

Better stock up the food supply in my corner. Might be a mild winter but looks like its going to be a looooong one!!!

[RandyR]

here's a detailed discussion of SOPA by Rick Carnes last Sunday on the Nashville Radio WLAC Music Row Show. Rick Carnes is the president of the Song Writers Guild of America and a Nashville song writer.

 

Rick contradicts a lot of the negative statements made here and on the internet about SOPA ie: not what is written into the law and in fact specifically prohibited by the law.

 

 

http://www.themusicrowshow.com/TheMusicRowShow.com/TMRS-Podcasts/Entries/2012/1/22_Rick_Carnes.html

[Guest tx2sturgis]

here's a detailed discussion of SOPA by Rick Carnes last Sunday on the Nashville Radio WLAC Music Row Show. Rick Carnes is the president of the Song Writers Guild of America and a Nashville song writer.

 

Rick contradicts a lot of the negative statements made here and on the internet about SOPA ie: not what is written into the law and in fact specifically prohibited by the law.

 

 

 

There are certainly opposing viewpoints. At one point in the audio feed, Rick Carnes admits that one of his songs sung by Reba McIntire paid for his house.

 

Yep, if I made obscene amounts of royalty money from 2 days (or 2 hours) of work, I might be inclined to want to protect that line of work also. Duh.

 

I find it interesting that he seems to be opposed to Google filtering out the results that he wanted, but thinks it will be ok for the US government to block search results that other Americans might want to see.

 

What he does not address well, is the fact that not only were 'rogue websites' targeted, but also every upstream pathway, up to and including YOUR ISP. They are all required to block the websites, and the ones that link to them.

 

Thousands of websites could have been targeted that simply had links to 'rogue websites'.

 

So if I post a link like this: "www.piratebay.com" then guess what? Venturerider.org is now a target for the courts. There was in the last few hours a thread here asking where a user could download free music. Ooopps!

 

So, that kind of broad power of censorship was the primary reason that so many Americans stood up against this bill. BTW, the international anti-piracy laws work well as is. MegaUpload and its rich owners have been apprehended in New Zealand, after US FBI agents raided his house there. The exising laws worked.

 

I was glad to see SOPA shelved. But it's by no means dead.

 

We will just have to wait to see what happens.

 

 

In the meantime, in reply I give you a recent Tech News Today dealing with SOPA, from January 18th.

 

http://twit.cachefly.net/video/tnt/tnt0418/tnt0418_h264b_640x368_256.mp4

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 30, 2012 by tx2sturgis

[RandyR]

I question whether or not international piracy laws work in all cases. New Zealand yes, but the old Soviet block, Africa, and much of Asia, they don't work very well, if at all.

 

Per what Rick Carnes said, SOPA could not be used against this web forum for including a random/unusual link to piratebay, only against pirate bay AFTER getting a court order showing that it specifically was the SOURCE of pirated material outside the USA (where other legal means exist already).

 

Google is a great one to talk about what's right and not right. They were just fined $500 million dollars for knowingly advertising illegal products. Lots of money in the free internet business it would appear.

 

Also concerning Google's sense of presenting unbiased information. If one wanted to read what the SOPA said, as opposed to what someone on Facebook or some other socialmedia web page had to say about SOPA, you had to wade thru hundreds of web links to find the actual law itself. This thread was probably rated higher on Google's search engine than the actual law itself. How's that for making sure people using the internet find facts rather than bs?

 

I'll take a look at your web link from Tech Link.

 

Here's a link to the SOPA proposed law (that appears dead for now). http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.3261:

Edited January 30, 2012 by RandyR
added SOPA link