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SOPA; Everyone is Affected by This
Topic Started: Jan 19 2012, 01:31 AM (1,010 Views)
Dragoknighte
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Alright, I'll keep this simple since the video pretty much sums everything up. SOPA must be stopped. NOW. Here are a few sites to help the cause.

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
Stop American Censorship
http://tinyurl.com/techdirtsopa
http://reddit.com/r/sopa
http://www.americancensorship.org
http://tinyurl.com/universalcensors
http://tinyurl.com/writetocongress
http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet
http://t.co/vIhyPU9z
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/sopa-vote-delayed/

Spread the news as far as possible. We need as much help as we can get.

Edit:added more links
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Carolina
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5'4" concentrated sass
The fact that this is even being considered makes me feel sick. Should this pass, artists like myself would find it nigh impossible to spread their work in the way they can now. This internet censorship also violates First Amendment rights, that is, more specifically, freedom of speech.

I would like to reference Henry David Thoreau in this case, a writer and political activist jailed for his refusal to pay taxes that would support slavery and the Spanish-American War. In his papers titled "On Civil Disobedience," he makes two points that I feel are very relevant.

""There are thousands who are in opinion opposed...but who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing." This means, you can't wait for anyone else to do it, stand up for yourself. Along the same lines: "They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret."

He begins the paper saying that the government is best that governs least. The point of the paper is declaring the line where the people must put their foot down. Many writers, philosophers, and political activists have warned against restricting rights. Acts like SOPA and PIPA restrict rights. This is America, a country that takes pride in its civil liberties. Stand up and protest internet censorship. Promote the right to be free in what you say, express, believe, and post.

...that's my rant. As an artist I feel particularly strongly about censorship, as expression is very important to me. TL;DR: bitch to your representatives and stamp out PIPA and SOPA.

oh, and also, I thought this was a good tie-in, if you're a Harry Potter fan.

SOPA is to the internet as Umbridge is to Hogwarts.
"How about 'progress for progress's sake must be discouraged'? How about 'pruning wherever we find practices that ought to be prohibited'?...It means the Ministry's interfering at Hogwarts."
-Hermione Granger, OOTP
Edited by Carolina, Jan 19 2012, 01:42 AM.
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POOHEAD189
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Well written Nikki. I agree.
I watched the whole video, and I am in support for rebelling 8)
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Jay
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Resident Nen User
While I may not have taken part in the blackout that some sites were doing, I was in full support of it. And reading on Wikipedia's page about the blackout, I came across some quotes. This one is the last one on the page:

Boston Herald
 
within hours of the online protest, political supporters of the bill... began dropping like flies, thus proving how very powerful these cyber-bullies can be.


You miss it?

Quote:
 
proving how very powerful these cyber-bullies can be.


Quote:
 
powerful these cyber-bullies can be.


Quote:
 
cyber-bullies


You... You DARE call people who want a free internet cyber-bullies?! RRG! I HATE this SOPA business with all my might! In fact, I'm not even calling it SOPA anymore. I'm calling it soup! Some people are just idiots that can't see that soup will do more harm than good.

(sopa is soup in Spanish, I've heard, so that is what it is going to be, soup.)
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POOHEAD189
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Those soup dicks! Calling us Cyber Bullies is about as accurate as this picture.
Spoiler: click to toggle
Edited by POOHEAD189, Jan 19 2012, 07:41 AM.
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Carolina
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5'4" concentrated sass
Look!

Posted Image

Your voice DOES matter; look what we did!
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Lusoric
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I am Groot.
I am scared o what might happen if this does pass but i doubt that it will. The internet is a powerful tool/weapon/device that can accomplish amazing things.
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Volksgeist
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Both SOPA and PIPA have been dropped from voting by Congress for now thanks to yesterday's protest! Here is the e-mail I got from a Tiffany Cheng:

Quote:
 
Hi everyone!

A big hurrah to you!!!!! We’ve won for now -- SOPA and PIPA were dropped by Congress today -- the votes we’ve been scrambling to mobilize against have been cancelled.

The largest online protest in history has fundamentally changed the game. You were heard.

On January 18th, 13 million of us took the time to tell Congress to protect free speech rights on the internet. Hundreds of millions, maybe a billion, people all around the world saw what we did on Wednesday. See the amazing numbers here and tell everyone what you did.

This was unprecedented. Your activism may have changed the way people fight for the public interest and basic rights forever.


The MPAA (the lobby for big movie studios which created these terrible bills) was shocked and seemingly humbled. “‘This was a whole new different game all of a sudden,’ MPAA Chairman and former Senator Chris Dodd told the New York Times. ‘[PIPA and SOPA were] considered by many to be a slam dunk.’”

“'This is altogether a new effect,' Mr. Dodd said, comparing the online movement to the Arab Spring. He could not remember seeing 'an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically' in the last four decades, he added."

Tweet with us, shout on the internet with us, let's celebrate: Round of applause to the 13 million people who stood up - #PIPA and #SOPA are tabled 4 now. #13millionapplause



We're indebted to everyone who helped in the beginning of this movement -- you, and all the sites that went out on a limb to protest in November -- Boing Boing and Mozilla Foundation (and thank you Tumblr, 4chan)! And the grassroots groups -- Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Demand Progress, CDT, and many more.

#SOPA and #PIPA will likely return in some form. But when they do, we'll be ready. Can you make a donation to Fight for the Future, to help us keep this fire going?



We changed the game this fall, and we're not gonna stop. $8, $20, every little bit helps.

13 million strong,

Tiffiniy, Holmes, Joshua, Phil, CJ, Donny, Douglas, Nicholas, Dean, David S. and Moore... Fight for the Future!


P.S. China's internet censorship system reminds us why the fight for democratic principles is so important:

In the New Yorker: "Fittingly, perhaps, the discussion has unfolded on Weibo, the Twitter-like micro-blogging site that has a team of censors on staff to trim posts with sensitive political content. That is the arrangement that opponents of the bill have suggested would be required of American sites if they are compelled to police their users’ content for copyright violations. On Weibo, joking about SOPA’s similarities to Chinese censorship was sensitive enough that some posts on the subject were almost certainly deleted (though it can be hard to know).
...
After Chinese Web users got over the strangeness of hearing Americans debate the merits of screening the Web for objectionable content, they marvelled at the American response. Commentator Liu Qingyan wrote:

‘We should learn something from the way these American Internet companies protested against SOPA and PIPA. A free and democratic society depends on every one of us caring about politics and fighting for our rights. We will not achieve it by avoiding talk about politics.’"

#######
(press release is here: https://fightfortheftr.wordpress.com/press-releases/)
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stsenna
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La Matriarche
I just saw that news on the site of a newspaper we have over here. It shows that the internet is too invaluable to risk losing at the end of the day.
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Dragoknighte
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I believe this requires a very special song to be sung by yours truly.
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Raze1138
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Proud Hoser
Good riddance. SOPA/PIPA would have utterly destroyed the Internet. It would have made it possible for the US to shut down even foreign sites, and would make sites like RR a FELONY OFFENSE! It is one of the reasons that the only current US presidential hopeful I support, is Ron Paul.
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Lusoric
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I am Groot.
SOPA/PIPA

They thought that they could stop us but little do they know that...

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Damon
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Ancient Bartender
But what next? The issue of piracy still exists, and they'll try and put something else out to combat it. Will it be an intelligent, delicate, precision, legislation? probably friggin' not.
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jimjams14
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If they try something else stupid the internet will just have to stand up for itself again.
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POOHEAD189
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Well, ACTA just got passed, which is a global SOPA. It seems like SOPA was just a ruse to get our attention away from the true evil.
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