Thread: What are your thoughts on SOPA?

Hi,

So what are your thoughts on SOPA?

Please read this and weigh in with your thoughts?

Stop Online Piracy Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This will definitely change the internet if passed.

Sami

SOPA sucks but the protests seem to have some effect: PIPA and SOPA Co-Sponsors Abandon Bills

Hi,

I hope it is more then just a stall.

Sami

Forget the small stuff like SOPA and PIPA.

Thought SOPA Was Bad, Just Wait Until You Meet ACTA

The USA, among a heck of a lot of countries, signed into this!!

In the end it all comes down to power and control. I think something needs to be done to control counterfeiting, but each of these laws appears to grant powers way beyond simple law enforcement. Any law that bypasses normal due process would and should make any people in a free country cringe.

Hope that's really promising.

Here is one more. It looks like these types of assaults will never end.

Is TPP Worse Than SOPA, PIPA & ACTA? | WebProNews

In the Netherlands, a judge ruled that a certain private organisation can order sites to be blocked by ISPs. 'The Pirate Bay' is the first one to be blocked however all ISP are going to appeal the ruling.

Dutch court orders companies to block Pirate Bay - Yahoo! News

My thoughts are that it can only be good for TV shows (for example) to reach as wide an audience as possible due to the word of mouth/mouse viral recommendations that they will get to boost popularity of the shows and traffic to their websites.

In countries where the shows are not available on the TV or via cable, it is a good thing that people can download them to watch IMO. It also helps the expat. community stay sane.

Another factor is that the downloads may be only available months after the movie is released in cinemas, or the TV show was aired. If you are very keen to watch a movie, then nothing beats the cinema experience. And also, it is nice to own a hard copy of a DVD/Blu Ray with the box and sleeve etc. But for casual viewing, why not download random movies to watch that you would never see otherwise?

Rather than being restrictive, the media providers should work on ways to encourage us to pay for enhancements I think, such as membership clubs, special events, personal communication channels with the stars etc.

For software, I think that the payment model should focus on support (so businesses would pay), and online services such as data feeds e.g. stock prices. Most software should be free since there are only a handful of must-have apps. that are already available in abundance for free now.

And we should revert back to the shareware era models of software licensing. And, do away with all the policy pages on sites, and have a simple link that contains like a bar code that links to all the generic licenses and policies that apply to usage of your site. Kind of like an enhanced Creative Commons link.

This could be in the form of a visual symbol, coded with colors and graphic elements that can be interpreted by simply looking at it by a knowledgeable person, or interpreted by a machine via scanning the image. Like a modern day version of the copyright symbol, but this one symbol would contain all of the legal parameterization applicable to your site. It could be generated from say a 32 bit integer that is formed from your responses to questions on the legaleze generator.org site.