SOPA

[Tiel]

Please stop it! Before it's too late.
Here's a list of companies that do or do not support the Stop Online Piracy Act, so now you know who to boycot If you didn't already.

Opponents:
Disqus
AOL
eBay
Facebook
foursquare
Google
GrooveShark
Kickstarter
Mozilla
PayPal
Wikipedia
Reddit
Square
The Huffington Post
Craigslist
LinkedIn
OpenDNS
Tumblr
Twitter
Yahoo
Zynga

Defectors (these changed their minds (too late)):
Business Software Alliance (Includes Apple, Adobe Systems, Intel and more)
Go Daddy

Supporters:
ABC
BMI
CBS
Comcast/NBCUniversal
Disney Publishing Worldwide, Inc.
EMI Music Publishing
Entertainment Software Association
ESPN
Major League Baseball
Marvel Entertainment, LLC
MasterCard Worldwide
Motion Picture Association of America
National Cable & Telecommunications Association
National Football League
News Corporation
Random House
Scholastic, Inc.
Sony/ATV Music Publishing
Sony Music Entertainment
Time Warner
Universal Music
Universal Music Publishing Group
Viacom
Visa Inc.
Warner Music Group
Entertainment Software Association (Includes Nintendo, Microsoft Corporation, Electronic Arts, Sony Computer Entertainment, NVIDIA and more)

How about this analogy: I wouldn't steal a car, but if my friend could burn me a copy, I'd take it.

Piracy is NOT theft. It's a sign of people being fed up with ridiculous marketing schemes, ridiculous prices and bad ways of distributing software and media.

A couple of web companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and many more will go on strike (switch their services OFF completely) for a short period of time to show the entertainment industry they are serious and should not be messed with.
This dictatorship attempt from the corrupt system has to end. Congressmen are being bribed to support SOPA, even when they have no clue whatsoever what it is or how the Internet works. It's pathetic.

Nice song on the matter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w6GtwOvnWM

[Dust]

GoDaddy didn't deffect. They just stopped promoting it openly, they still are on the SOPA side. (And I heard that through some backroom deal they got assured that all the "confiscated" domains would be transferred to them...)

[MindyMcfly]

The digital economy act in the UK was pushed though by a minister who was on holiday with David Geffen owneer of Geffen Records and partner in Dreamworks.

Its all back handers by the Film and Record industry to censor the internet, im sorry they are losing money but seriously peeing off the world by trying to censor the internet is a very wrong move!

If you tell people not to do something the more they will do it, stop this now!

[MindyMcfly]

Looks like another old man trying to annoy the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_S._Smith

[Tiel]

Looks like another old man trying to annoy the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_S._Smith

Then again, he is pro-marijuana legalization

SOPA won't work anyway. There will be some sort of "hack the planet" movement that creates workarounds for the DNS seizings. Working prototypes have already been discussed There will be demand for more open DNS servers, maybe even an encrypted anonymous DNS protocol.
The internet will go underground again, more and more illegal and encrypted networks will show up and it will not stop anyone from downloading their precious movies. All actions taken against piracy cost more than it benefits them. One day... we'll win.
The people that actually use the internet will always be smarter than the congressmen who make the rules. "We" will always be a step ahead.
I look forward to this next step of this Cat&Mouse® game!

[MindyMcfly]

I couldnt agree more, it will just create an "under-net", bit like the old "Adult" dialers back in the 56k times.

They shut down Napster, Kazzaa, ed2k etc and still films and music can be found.

The only times Ive used piracy if for stupidly priced software, 3d Max and Aftereffects being my guilty pleasures. No way I could afford the thousand dollar price tags, but if it were cheaper I would've bought it.

The only games Ive played pirate are the Call of Dutys, £40 for 5hrs of content is a rip off so they deserve it to be fair.

[Tiel]

I haven't bought a single movie or cd and I have like 5 games. Selfish of me, I know. I just don't wanna spend money when I need it so badly...
There's only a few games that I played a lot which I haven't bought. Transport Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon for example I didn't buy Unreal Tournament and played it a lot, but I did buy UT3 out of solidarity, which I didn't play.
I listen to web-radio for music, so never did anything illegal there. Don't have any mp3's either.
I enjoy going to the cinema and I do it when the movie is worth watching. Movies I really support, like James Bond and Star Trek I will always go see, even if they get 1 star in a review.
It's all very expensive with my single income, I'm saving up like crazy for something simple like a 2nd hand car. I do intend to buy more in the future, but I refuse to buy anything with DRM, non skippable trailers or content, delayed release dates or other stuff that gets in the way, making it less pleasant to own than something pirated.
And I seriously couldn't care less about a nice box so it looks nice in my cupboard.

Something I don't understand is why they don't broadcast tv-shows online, semi-live via some torrent-stream kinda network, including commercials (that can even be personalized according to your geographical location). I'd watch that. Many would. The only downside is that for many non-US viewers there would be a lack of subtitles on premiere day. Still, many won't mind. They should work with the community instead of against.
Now I either have to pirate something, or wait a year for it to come on Dutch TV. If at all. The industry seriously doesn't get the demand. All they think is that money comes from stuff they offer.

[MindyMcfly]

Take the rebellion against DRM as a good example, hackers love to take down the big guys.

Razor 1911 are classic for this, providing a patches for the games Microsoft said would only work on Vista, to make them playable on XP

You should look at the test cases in the UK where companies tried to us IP addresses as evidence people downloaded, it didnt work.

[Tiel]

With encryption and anonymity becoming more and more mainstream, they'll never catch us! Muhahahaha.
Ip addresses are so 1990.. a 4 byte number doesn't mean anything anymore.

You can probably get IE9 to work in XP as well, just needs some tricks. Doesn't mean it would work as well though, Microsoft does have its reasons (besides tricking you into upgrading) that developing for older systems isn't worth the effort.
The best example is DirectX development. It just won't work on older OS architectures anymore. Not even Razor 1911 can do that! And games are closely linked to DirectX, although using an older version will usually simply give you less effects.

[MindyMcfly]

Just read an artical in Games™ stating that Activision said MW3 made £831million during its first weeked on sale in the UK!

I so hope this stupid bill back fires.



http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/0 ... -case.html

Funny one about the UK lawer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACS:Law

[Dust]

If you think SOPA was bad, read this:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... k-site.ars

Those morons ship an innocent person to the united states, a country that recently abandoned all pretenses and scrapped due process for foreigners.

[MindyMcfly]

Lets hope a hacker group have some fun with the idiot judge.

I agree most of these legal decisions are being made by people who are so shuttered to the internet and the bigger picture. It seems they just want to make a name for themselves and are pushed into "making examples" of people.

Waste of tax payers money, try catching some real criminals!

[Ixora]

Seems the English Wikipedia version will have a 24h blackout (at least the US version) to raise awareness for this issue:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Eng ... A_blackout

[MindyMcfly]

Time to go shopping

http://www.amazon.co.uk/V-For-Vendetta- ... 961&sr=8-1

[Dust]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... -power.ars
Ha!