SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)

Jeanwah

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

obama said he would not sign either of these bills if passed.

he has pissed off hollywood with this decision and they have said that they are cutting off funding his re-election bid, but the googles, yahoos, and tech companies will more than make up for that funding that hollywood is going to withold....

this was a smart move by obama. who are the hollywood studio heads going to suppport next election?? a republican???

SOPA isn't just about movies though. And besides, NO legislation will stop piracy! There will always be ways to get around secure intellectual property, sadly. I can't help but think it all has to do with the publisher and who's hands are involved.

catefrances

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

...
this was a smart move by obama. who are the hollywood studio heads going to suppport next election?? a republican???

two words:

rupert murdoch.

Jason P

catefrances wrote:

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

...
this was a smart move by obama. who are the hollywood studio heads going to suppport next election?? a republican???

two words:

rupert murdoch.

:think: ..... :shh:

gimmesometruth27

catefrances wrote:

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

...
this was a smart move by obama. who are the hollywood studio heads going to suppport next election?? a republican???

two words:

rupert murdoch.

i'm sorry, but the liberals in hollywood would not support murdoch or anything associated with him.

Jeanwah

Yeah Baby!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16655272

Sopa and Pipa bills postponed in US Congress

The US Congress has halted debate on two contested anti-online piracy bills.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delayed a vote on the Protect IP Act (Pipa) scheduled for Tuesday.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith then said his panel would not consider the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) until a compromise was reached.

The decisions follow protests by online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and thousands of other websites, which went "dark" in protest for 24 hours earlier this week.

"In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday's vote on the PROTECT IP Act," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said in a statement on Friday.

Mr Smith, a Texas Republican in the House of Representatives, said in a statement: "I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy.

"It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products."

'Censoring the web'

Of about 40 co-sponsors for the Pipa bill, a handful withdrew their support on Wednesday, as thousands of websites participated in a co-ordinated online protest.

Floods of emails and phone calls to congressmen followed the online protests, prompting some lawmakers to withdraw their support for the measures.

More than seven million people signed a petition on Google saying that passage of the legislation would result in censoring the web and impose a regulatory burden on businesses.

Both bills focus on responding to online piracy, specifically illegal copies of films and other media.

The bills would also outlaw sites from containing information about how to access blocked sites.

The Motion Picture Association of America, a key supporter of the legislation, has campaigned strongly against the violation of copyright laws.

But on Thursday evening their website was targeted by a hacking group known as Anonymous.
Celebrity backing

Anonymous also claimed credit for blocking access to the US Department of Justice and FBI websites, by launching a so-called "denial-of-service" attach that bombards their websites with traffic.

The move was being seen as a retaliation after the Department of Justice shut down a major file-sharing website, Megaupload.

The firm's co-founders have been charged with violating existing anti-piracy laws.

Four Megaupload employees were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand, at the request of US authorities.

Police seized cash, valuable cars and a short-barrelled shotgun from the residence of the website's German founder, Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz.

Their Hong Kong-based site had around 150 million users and 50 million daily hits.

It has received celebrity endorsements from artists such as Alicia Keys and Kanye West, making it one of the internet's most high profile file-sharing platforms.

satansbed

this is a really interesting article on why sopa didn't pass

Lobbying
Washington SOPA Opera: Lobbying Power Shifts from Hollywood to Silicon Valley
By Michael Crowley | @CrowleyTIME | January 20, 2012 | 147
inShare20

Hollywood loves a good yarn about pirates on the high seas. Piracy online? Not so much. Every day, people around the world effectively steal countless movies, songs and other copyrighted content through websites offering illegal downloads. The big movie and music studios have fought this thievery for years, with some success. They hounded Napster out of business. Their high-profile (if unpopular) lawsuits against music downloaders–remorselessly targeting people of all age groups–produced a clear deterrent effect. Major websites like YouTube are quick to take down copyrighted content when asked. But the music and movie industries have struggled to combat overseas-based pirate sites that are mostly beyond the reach of U.S. law. So they have turned to Congress for help, and rallied support for two measures: the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Both would create new legal powers to give American companies–including TIME’s parent company, Time Warner, which supports this legislation–the ability to fight back against these foreign “rogue” sites.

(MORE: How Effective Were the Website Blackout SOPA Protests?)

The problem is that Silicon Valley hates Internet regulation. And its dot-com business leaders, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google chairman Eric Schmidt, particularly hate these bills. They liken provisions that would block links to pirate website from Google search results to the online censorship of Beijing and Tehran. They say a measure that would force advertisers to cut off their payments to pirate sites is open to abuse and misapplication, and could drive innocent web companies out of business. And they accuse Hollywood of exaggerating the economic harm it’s suffering. In the new print issue, I’ve done a fuller rundown of the arguments the two sides are making about the merits of passing SOPA, PIPA or some variation of the two, which all-access subscribers can read here.

What I didn’t have space to get into is the remarkable political and lobbying story behind this policy standoff. Just a few weeks ago, it looked as though Hollywood was going to get most of what it wanted without much fuss. But the dot-coms came back from the holidays with a vengeance, and have stopped the bills in their tracks for now. In part this is a story about the lobbying clout of a well-established industry meeting the new Washington power of an upstart, but extremely wealthy, rival. Google may only have opened a Washington lobbying office five years ago, but it is catching up fast to a game the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry of America have been playing for decades. (Although it appears that the MPAA may be playing right now with one arm tied behind its back, thanks to lobbying rules that restrain its new chairman, former Senator Chris Dodd. See this amusing account for more.)

(MORE: Ten Prominent Sites That Went Dark Over SOPA and PIPA)

Silicon Valley also has a weapon that is perhaps even more powerful: the ability to shape public opinion in a hurry. Yesterday’s blackout by Wikipedia and related protests by countless other sites drove this issue into the consciousness of millions of Americans who have never picked up a copy of Roll Call in their lives, and wouldn’t otherwise have known or cared about the SOPA fight. Now it looks like a burst of public outrage–Google says that 4.5 million people signed an anti-SOPA petition yesterday–has members of Congress running scared. Whether the studios can regain the political momentum in this fight should reveal just how much, when it comes to the Washington influence game, the balance of power has shifted from Hollywood to Silicon Valley.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2012/01/20/wa ... z1k43xDEBm

by the way lobbying isn't a bad thing

Jeanwah

satansbed wrote:

by the way lobbying isn't a bad thing

Lobbying should be outlawed. If it was, this country could possibly get back on track.