You guys all know this will have far reaching consequences other than a few torrent sites going down right?
If this passes Youtube will cease to exist as you know it. It will be much too much work for them to filter new uploaded videos to make sure there is not any music clips, company logos, or other references that someone can close them down for. After awhile it will be too costly and too much work to maintain and police so Youtube may just go away forever.
Any site can be shut down for anything that someone thinks might have something on it related to a copyright of any kind. Someone could be sued for drawing a picture of the USS Enterprise and putting it on their site even. That is considered a copyright and illegal if the bill is passed.
You are guilty until proven innocent. Do you have the money for the lawyers to prove your innocence? Or is it easier to just shut your site down and not take the chance? If someone just doesn't like you they can claim you have copyrighted material and you will be shut down. If they find nothing then you can go back up but will it be worth the constant hassle?
On a forum such as this if someone has a picture as their avatar, or in their sig that someone somewhere has some rights to, the site can be shut down. It will make things a big chore to keep up with.
Make no mistake, this draconian bill will destroy the internet as you know it, and will effect much more than pirate sites.
In the US of A today what big corporations want, big corporations get. They own most of the law makers in Washington of both parties. Ever since the Citizens United ruling by the 5 right-wing corporatist justices that say "corporations are people and money is speech" politicians are beholden to corporate interests. If you as a politician go against the corporate powers that be , they will flood your opponent with advertizing cash to defeat you in the next election. This has already happened since the ruling. All this does is make any politician that wants to keep his job genuflect at the knees of corporate America. In this case the music and movie industry among others are driving this bill.
This is a BIG deal folks, even if you never will partcipate in any piracy of any kind.
---------- Post added at 11:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:07 PM ----------
The White House is against it isn't it?
It seems so if you look around, I found this statement:
"Is the SOPA bill dead? In the wake of criticisms released by the Obama administration Saturday, many observers predict the Stop Online Privacy Act and its sister act, the Protect IP Act (or PIPA), are dead on arrival."
But that doesn't meant we can relax. Corporate America is ruthless when it comes to getting what they want (which is why we give billions of dollars in corporate welfare to super rich Exxon just so they can rip us off). We need to keep up the pressure.
Just gonna say. People can protest all they want but Congress is pretty much hell bent on getting it passed. ... Riots will ensue untill the Supreme Court rules it unconstitutional on the basis that it restricts peoples freedoms on the internet.
The Supreme court? That is a laugh. Not THIS Supreme court. The Roberts Supreme court LOVES corporate fascist stuff like this (see:Citizen's United).
