Fellow American Iwakuans.

  • Thread starter Fel of the Eternal Forest
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This line made me laugh. I mean how stupid do they think people are?

"Investigators said there was no connection between arrests in their two-year investigation and the political firestorm that erupted this week over a pending vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act..."
 
*Rushes to the nearest electronics-store to get all the extra hard-drives he can afford*

THEY'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!!!

I have to say it's a lot easier for musicians to be against the SOPA than it is for, say, film directors and authors - or at least understand why directors and authors would be worried about not getting payed for their hard work. (real)Musicians make most of their profit from touring and selling merchandise anyway, can't say the same for the directors and writers.

But we all know, this is all about the fat cats in the distribution industry and media companies.
 
Metta World Peace said:
But we all know, this is all about the fat cats in the distribution industry and media companies.
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Bingo. The record companies have never given a shit about the "little guy." There are actually very few artists who see a significant amount of money (read as: enough to live off of) from album sales. Some executives still don't think online distribution of music (via iTunes, Amazon, etc) is a good thing, and would prefer to stock hard copies in music stores. Remember those places? The ones that are closing all the time? Yeah.

Which all goes back to the fact that many leaders of corporations that have been around for decades are still living in the past. Blockbuster learned a hard lesson when they thought they could compete against NetFlix, and has since gone on to try their hand at competing against RedBox.

The wave of the future is here: Online distribution of entertainment. Wanna watch a movie? Netflix offers the ability to stream video on-demand (assuming a particular movie studio has authorized their works for that use, which some have). Wanna buy the latest album from your favorite musician? Midnight release parties can take place in your own home instead of at the local record shop which closed last year.

The pace of emerging technologies are rendering these corporations useless, because they've all maintained the same outdated business model, and they're scared to death of the internet. If you (not *YOU*, but *in general*) don't think the movie studios and record publishers are paying the government and their agencies to police the internet and file criminal charges against citizens of other countries, I have some beachfront property in Nebraska with an absolutely gorgeous view of the Iowan Sea to sell you.

In terms of the music industry, Courtney Love wrote about it back in 2000 in an article for Salon.com, which can be read here.
 
A friend of mine who's been keeping a close eye on this sent me this site: http://maddox.xmission.com/

To be honest, I'm kind of in agreement with the site. We are going to keep standing for leaders who do a terrible job of leading, and we're going to do it because we're too lazy to do anything about the status quo. I know I haven't been to Occupy in my area even though I'm unemployed because I'm busy being privileged and looking for a job. I know I would like to support independent artists over corporations, but it's all a hardship at the moment, and I know I'm pretty lazy in the face of hardship.

And another thing: http://elf.dreamwidth.org/484393.html

The power users of the Internet will roll their eyes and stay busy being smarter than our lawmakers. It's the mainstream that this is going to hurt. And since the mainstream is the one buying things, well, sucks to be you, big corporations that suddenly can't sell anything online because you took down all your web sites...
 
What Woody said. It isn't over.

I do, however, find it ironic that they took one of the most hated (by downloaders) sites down, the only thing funnier would be rapidshits.
 
Megaupload was at it's peak four years ago, and two years ago most downloaders realized it was easier to get servers in shitty third world countries.

I just think it is funny that people even use download sites; loads of viruses. If you think mcafee or Kaspersky is protecting you, you are dumb. Sandbox that shit son!

Even funnier when I was sued by some random porn company for downloading something to the effect of "big black butts 2". Especially since my entire career revolves around this type of work. I attempted to tell them that it was literally impossible for them to, in their words "reverse the encryption algorithms" of sixteen ip packets with one way encryption into a porn video that was 4.6 gigabytes, and even if they could, it only hit my external router and I know exactly how many complete wipes of a system is nessessary to make a system's information completely "irrecoverable" by federal standards.

After I told them I would have to report them using a foreign entity in an attempt to extort me to my employers, they dropped it.

For people who aren't complete bitches like me or don't know about computers, if you EVER[/I] get a subpoena, grab your logs, contact a lawyer that specializes in intellectual property rights/ Internet cases, and kill it fast. They will pretty much never press the issue if you get it dropped it fast.
 
More reasons for Acqua to emigrate to some country that's warmer than where she lives. Oh goody. I actually freaked out about it awhile back and emailed my friends about it. I was surprised that a couple hadn't heard about it beforehand. Stuff like this and NDAA have pretty much killed my interest in the presidential campaign for some reason.
 
Acquariana said:
More reasons for Acqua to emigrate to some country that's warmer than where she lives. Oh goody. I actually freaked out about it awhile back and emailed my friends about it. I was surprised that a couple hadn't heard about it beforehand. Stuff like this and NDAA have pretty much killed my interest in the presidential campaign for some reason.
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Apathy is the last thing that should happen as a result of all this. While it might not matter so much insofar as the presidential campaign is concerned (because, no matter who the Republican nominee is, we're still voting for the lesser of two evils. "The lesser" is subjective, and depends on who the nominee ends up being). However, one must remember that there are other elections taking place this year as well -- legislators and senators.

Learn who the people are who represent you, find out their stances on various issues and their voting records (both publicly available information), and vote for or against them with all this in mind. Too often these days do people vote with the letter that proceeds a candidate's name.

Apathy is dangerous.
 
Alan said:
Apathy is the last thing that should happen as a result of all this. While it might not matter so much insofar as the presidential campaign is concerned (because, no matter who the Republican nominee is, we're still voting for the lesser of two evils. "The lesser" is subjective, and depends on who the nominee ends up being). However, one must remember that there are other elections taking place this year as well -- legislators and senators.

Learn who the people are who represent you, find out their stances on various issues and their voting records (both publicly available information), and vote for or against them with all this in mind. Too often these days do people vote with the letter that proceeds a candidate's name.

Apathy is dangerous.
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It's not so much complete apathy as prioritizing one in my mind over the other. Those things scare me more, so I care more about them. While, yes, I have little interest in the 2012 election at the moment I do read stuff about it and watch stuff about it on tv because that's just how my family is. (It's just that none of it will stick in my head XD). Besides, the thing that makes this not really apply to me right now: I can't vote, because I'm only 16. The most I can do is try to inform myself (trying to influence voting people seems out of the question because I don't see how that would work out)
 
And now for something that "does" apply to foreigners... ACTA. Which has appearently been around before SOPA/PIPA. Haven't had time to go over the links, but I figured some here on Iwaku would be interested.


Youtube Explination

I know that we all talked about SOPA and PIPA and now ACTA. But recently a friend of mine pointed me out to something pretty important.

ACTA in it's final version. Is mearly a treaty designed to allow those that sign it to gain the power to monitor everyone's actions on the net. But only, if they can pass a bill that can allow internet censorship.

So on it's own ACTA can do nothing.

However, if a bill passes through the government and becomes law. ACTA can be enforced based upon the bill that becomes law.

So in otherwords. ACTA is only as powerful as the bill that pass through congress and becomes law.

And this also means that SOPA and PIPA were the US's attempt to put laws in place to enforce ACTA when(and if) the European Parliment activates it.

Here's a link that explains it all.
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/or8ag/ive_read_the_final_version_of_acta_heres_what_you/

More or less, internet copyright censorship battles are far from over. Since our governments will try to put bills on the table to pass so they can apply ACTA to it.
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ACTA's basically a knife at our back waiting for us to slip up even the slightest amount, after which the knife goes in and internet freedom and privacy bleeds out.
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ACTA has always scared me more than SOPA or PIPA. Always.

I should post more of the stuff I learn about here. Didn't think there was much of an interest until now.
 
My fellow CANADIANS; Bill C-11 (often cited as the Copyright Modernization Act), a Canadian bill, may be very dangerous. I'll post these links now, but I'm making our own topic when I get back from work today. This is important.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=5144516- Actual act, in it's written form. I swear I'm going to need a law degree one of these days.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/crp-prda.nsf/eng/h_rp01237.html -Background from government website

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/09/29/f-copyright-explainer.html - CBC News Article.

I'm off to work now so I don't have much time to elaborate. But I'll be putting together an article, some links, and other information later when I get back for anyone interested.

I promise I'll come back and re-format this information for easier use. I'm just heading off to work and felt obligated to put something out now.
 
I've actually called my senator over these bills. And I will do so every time these bills come up in congress.

Also, not to sound like a conspiracy theorist or anything. . . but all of this already tried to happen before a majority of the population was warned about it. Before SOPA & PIPA were even brought into congress. In fact some of you might already have encountered it and just do not remember the warning that came less than a decade ago. The video below was TECHNICALLY posted by me in insanity already. But that was for an entirely different purpose than what I'm using it for now. Plus I sincerely doubt any of you actually watched it ALL THE WAY THROUGH.



So please, watch this until the 4:50 mark and tell me if all of this stuff sounds a little TOO much like the bills you all hate.
 
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