It's probably gonna be just like poker sites are now. It takes a lot of man power for something like this. They will use a cost-benefit analysis. The big ones are gonna go for sure, but small ones will most likely be safe for now.

So they can already take down foreign sites, what is the purpose of this POS legislation again? See that each of the defendants is facing 50 years in prison for their "theft" and related charges, but apparently that is not good enough, Congress needs to cater to the blackmail artists moar, moar, moar, moar!

Riverman's terrible "unlawful" post made me think more about the ridiculously harsh penalties associated with IP infringement.

Why are they so harsh? Because people need to be deterred from infringement. Why do you need such harsh deterrence when there are plenty of much more serious crimes that we deter much less and typically result in little to no jail time? Because most people don't really consider IP "theft" to be that wrong or immoral. So instead of tailoring the laws to most people's sense of morality as should happen in a democracy, they punish this behavior ridiculously harshly to "teach" the masses that the masses are wrong and they are right.

Rape someone, go to jail for 5 years.
Write a song about your time in jail.
Someone pirates that song, goes to jail for 10 years.
Justice.

The megaupload guy is only getting 5 years for the copyright infringement part of his charges despite making over a hundred million from sharing billions of copyrighted files. Making up stuff like getting 10 years for downloading a song doesnt help the conversation.

That was a made up exageration, duh, but the fact you can hypothetically go to jail longer for sharing a Ke$ha album with a few hundred people than for a violent offense is pretty ridiculous.

Thats because both of those sentences are used in different ways. One is much more about deterrent than the other due to the inability to imprison everyone who shares Kesha.

But ridiculous punishments purely for the sake of deterent are unjust IMO.

I mean, we could start executing people for going 10 MPH over the speed limit if we wanted to, and I guarantee that would be a hell of a deterrent and speeding offenses would go way, way down, but very few people would be in support of such a law.

Why do we need so much deterrence? For example, how come we never see any "I saw my friend uploading a Kesha song, should I turn him in??????" OOT threads and if we did, that person would probably be laughed at/banned for trolling?

I'm so glad these dangerous, violent criminals are going to be locked up. They need to be kept away from the rest of society.

I'm quite glad Megavideo has been taken down. They were making money out of the hard work of other people. Complete f'cking thieves, charging people to watch episodes of the Simpsons that they had no hand in making. They make me sick.

^
Lol, have you seen Matt Groening recently? Fairly sure he can still afford to eat.

Soccer moms are fined/sent to jail for downloading mp3s. Meanwhile the ****s from Goldman Sachs get bonuses for ripping Americans a new one (and some of them are now working for the FED).

I don't object to filesharing per se. What Megavideo was doing was making money out of the hard work of others, selling videos they had no connection to and encouraging users to upload copyrighted material. If money is being made, then that money should go to the owners. The people behind Megavideo are ****ing thieves.

US government, comcast, and google join forces and merge into com-goog-ment and shut down all other ISPs. you can use your current computer but you have to use the special government operating system they send you on a cd in the mail.this is the only way you can legally use internet in the united states.you're constantly exposed to ads, forced to watch 2 minute video ad per 1 hour of browsing, and you can't get around this because its their software. pretty easy to justify when they'll be making billions and able to keep a better watch on all the crime on the internet since its all happening under their umbrella

Bahaha anonymous striking back big time.

http://gizmodo.com/5877679/anonymous...revenge-strike

Lamar "Mother****ing" Smith sets the record straight on the misinformation campaign against SOPA!

Why we need a law against online piracy - CNN special editorial.

Here are the FACTS as Lamar sees them, and these facts are irrefutable no matter how many ****ing degrees and computer engineers you have.

Big Edit:

That's right. Theft of intellectual property ~ distributing child pornography. I double dare ANYBODY to refute the verbal genius this guy is regurgitating.

jfc **** that guy. Total piece of ****.

Here's another bill from Lamar Smith.

Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act(H.R.1981)

http://www.slashgear.com/sopa-sponso...-247-20210264/

yeah came to post this, w t f.

"So don’t worry, your information will be “stored securely” so noone else can access it! But if they do access it, your ISP will give you “prompt notice” so you can change all your credit card numbers, hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband"

this **** is never gonna ****ing end. Might as well all just kill ourselves.

This bill is and was never avoidable.

You have to be aware about the three big pools of internet that developed.
About 50% of the internet's content is Chinese. They literally have their own stuff going on. Including piracy.
And even tho the numbers on the remaining two pools are dubious and educated guesses at best, the "illegal" part of the internet's content (~25-30%), mainly filesharing, is undeniable.

Obviously that sort of usually p2p traffic is a huge hit for several industries. Unlike ISPs though who very likely rightfully complain about their users p2p traffic consuming up to 80% of the total bandwidth, the calculations of the music/movie industry are ridiculously off.

However, for obvious reasons (megaupload // sweeping formulations in the bill ) this bill is really just a gate opener into being able to regulate a former grey area.
This will be a huge topic for the next couple of years all together.
The greed for power of some and mostly the fear they have to lose it will force many of us into accepting that our online privacy and mostly pockets will get raped again in the future.

It was just a slight question who will be greedy and corrupt enough to push for it. Guess we're not surprised about who showed first.

Im IT newb, what can be really done with those IP addresses? What information about people will they acquire? Can they figure out exactly which sites people visit at what times?

HERE is your solution. Things like this are what will make our current conversations about IP infringement obsolete. It's just a matter of when and how.

Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

The inevitable conclusion is this: Companies will perfect online distribution and marketing. Netflix, Spotify, Steam and others have been pioneers in this area. As shares of these companies go up, traditional studios will dip further. RIAA and MPAA will continue to try to legislate their way out of this mess, but it's impossible. The final straw will be them accepting their fate and sloppily entering the 21st century as best they can. By then, they will have lost their grip on the market, and all this will be behind us.

So grab a drink, sit back, and wait.