SOPA: Internet Piracy Bill Criticized as Internet Censorship

Pirating movies has been easy to do ever since the companies started releasing them on VHS for anyone who knew how to do it, and it wasn’t difficult to figure out. The question is: why are they so concerned about it now?

You might want to say that it’s the result of the internet making it more accessible, but that’s not even close to being true. It takes longer to download a movie than it did to copy from VHS to VHS. Even now, people can copy movies easily from DVD to their computers in minutes with the right program.

The reality of it was that the companies who made movies were not content with the money they were making off theater ticket sales, so they began releasing movies for home sales. Despite the fact that, even now, they still make loads of money from home sales, they’re still not satisfied with what they’re getting. It’s about greed, plain and simple.

The only difference between now and then is that corporate money is more prevalent in politics today than it ever has been.

Um, I don’t think it’s the Piracy that is the issue, I think it’s the Crap Hollywood is putting out in place of actual scripting and dialogue and oh yeah, acting.

I thought the Republicans were for less intrusive government. I guess I’m wrong. They are only for whatever their corporate masters want.

This is about Congress and their Corporate Masters becoming more nervous about what their constituents are learning and sharing about them and their illegal activities, crimes against humanity and their desire to control everything. We need to face the fact that our elected officials are the lowest representation of a human being and should be arrested for treason. Just look up and smell the chem-trails and you will see that they don’t care about any-ones well being, or any-ones pockets except their own. This is about their desire to control peoples ability to access alternative media also, and that my friends is the police state you now occupy.

I for one support this act…it’s appalling. Truly appalling how much filth is on the internet today…I for one wouldn’t want my daughter being exposed to trash like that

thi isnt about anything more than people comitting acts that are illegal and debilitate the economy. it doesnt matter wether or not it’s in the united states in a majority, it’s that it’s there and they want it to stop. they also dont have the power or authority to reach into other countries to stop people that do this, thats why if someone kills someone they flee the country, they cant be caught in other countries.
and who ever thinks they are protecting their children with this is an idiot. did you even go to school as a child? did you have friends? because internet and t.v. is not where they get this stuff it’s from adults and other kids. dont blame the internet because you think your child having knowledge is a problem, when all they really are is more aware. america is a stuck up country that has more freedom (for now) but is so uptight about all the other crap in the world that they cant actually control.
JOHN, i appluad your wise words.

The more laws, the more criminals.

“I for one wouldn’t want my daughter being exposed to trash like that”

That’s why you’re supposed to monitor your kid’s activities on the internet. Take responsibility for your own kids, and stop handing the job of raising your children to television and the internet. Neither of them were created to be babysitters because you can’t be bothered to be involved in your own children’s lives.

If the bill is passed, more people will be going to jail for illegal actions, which means our taxes will increse, which means our pocket money for helping the economy will decrease, which means our national debt will increase!

This is crazy why not focus time and money into something other then what can not be helped. The issue with pirate movies is mostly not an american thing so many of these movies come from overseas doing that will do nothing and there are hackers that will easily find another way to get around them. We should’t be focusing out TIME AND MONEY on issues that aren’t this important right now.This issues that take more then the censorship to fix and it take more planing and time to do because there are so many bugs with the bill, its nonsense lets focus on something way more important like lowering the unemployment rate. Our congress never fails to amaze me straight nonsense .

If Congress passes this it will be just another prime example of what morons we have operating our government.

Where is Obama when you need him!?!?!?! I thought he liked the internet!

I’m really very curious and concerned as to whether this passed… I should hope not. It is well thought out and gives way to much power to those select few. Not like the multibillion industry of movies really needs anymore money.

I have a feeling that if it does, Anonymous will go into full on destruction mode. “We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.” With a motto like that, and an already open threat existing, they will explode all over that bill and anyone who votes yes.

Now, I am in no way saying that I want this bill to pass, because it is going about it the wrong way. Not even sure there is a right way. However, I am against piracy. If something I made was getting passed around for free without my o.k. I would be pretty upset too. Yes, the movie makers do get a lot of money, but they spend a boat load making the movies too. The Immortals production budget alone was $75 million and after 2 weeks being in front they reach break even. It is only after the first few weeks that they really begin to make money and funny enough, that is when people usually forget about that movie and go on to the next big thing.

Anyways, as I said before, in the end while I don’t agree with piracy I also don’t agree with this particular act either. I just find it funny to call it unconstitutional to protect your property (although I do realize that the way this act works would be unconstitutional.)

Anyways I am sure I will get yelled at in the comments by someone who wants everything for free and I won’t be responding to them. So have a good one everyone. :D

@BRETT GLASS: You’re a moron. You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about. Plus, Google hasn’t always owned YT. As for Evangelist… We’ll see how you feel when you’re favorite religious sites are shut down. Be a parent, and learn to raise your kids.

OK this is where i think there going about this all wrong!!!!!!! Personally everyone knows stealing is wrong. I mean you wouldn’t steal from ur families or best friends. So why steal at all. Ok I believe that i should buy the movies and music albums I download. And i have downloaded a lot over the years. When u r broke and want to watch a good movie or listen to that new Drake CD that came out u kno? But It is stealing. And i kno that! And sometimes it does get to me. Cause i kno people trying to make it in the music business. Ok so to get to my point. Attack the problem at the source! FILE FORMATS THAT ARE PROTECTED! (.avi .mp4 .mkv .DivX .flv) MAKE THE OLDER FORMATS ILLEGAL IF THERE NOT PROTECTED. Meaning if you own the CD or DVD and u want to put it to ur computer it will only allow u to use it for that computer. This should make downloading a difficult if the files can’t be play! And say the many media players like iTunes will only play Protected, Thats another way . And make the people who make the programs to convert them to files make it where it protects them so they can only be used for that computer and any ipod or players u want to put it own. Like when u download from iTunes. And then if they found a website hosting a program download that doesn’t add the protection or a media player that plays unprotected. Shut it down or watever you have to do. Thats wat i think they should do! Which in the long run i think my theory will lower the price to go the theaters to watch a new movie. Even tho in the long run the rich will get rich. Ok did anyone understand where i’m coming from??

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More laws only to keep “honest” people honest ….

The big corporations are trying to keep this quiet as to sweep this under the rug so to speak. If one thinks the Occupy Wallstreet is something just wait until there is no more You Tube. I will be there. I am so sick and tired of losing my rights as a American every year. Hollywood is crying because they don’t make enough money. Hey Hollywood why don’t YOU make something good for a change? Todays music sucks also!!!!

Let’s see, here. A bill that allows the government and Hollywood to shut down any website, regardless of its hosted location, if they detect so much as a few lyrics or a portion of copywrited material on said site. I saw this movie, and its results. Let’s see, 1984, V for Vendetta, and Equilibrium all come to mind. Using a cannon like this bill to kill a mosquito when Hollywood is still making money hand over fist is ridiculous, and will only serve to drive a bigger wedge between the American people and the government that is doing this.

I’m very curious. How much is the industry suffering exactly? Didn’t movies like Avatar make country-fixing amounts of money?

What will happen if this gets implemented and thoroughly enforced :

Americans will buy VPN access to places abroad. It’s already a booming industry and easily accessible. Get an IP outside the US , connect to it through a vpn server which you access over a secure ssl connection.

I can list dozens of companies that sell this kind of product (I won’t , I don’t want this site to get banned because of me ROFL)

So , the workarounds to this bill already exist!

The effect for businesses : They will all relocate abroad , and the only booming business will be the VPN connections outside.

Next step , Ban outside VPN server ip’s one by one ? That’s on par with cutting all the cables that go out of or into the united states.

I for one am not worried about this bill . I am laughing my ass off looking at how american big industry are cutting the ground from under their feet. The little guy , in the end -taking a transitional periodinto account – has nothing to fear , every American has the right to set up shop everywhere .

More cynical , but not as down as everyone else I guess..

The congress wants to censor the internet with the same technology as China and Iran. Communism is slowly sliding in to American society. If it was only to stop piracy find, but since it will affect are freedom of speech, and choice by censoring what we post on social media websites, websites we create, and websites we like visiting. The Government is again trying to tell the American people what they can say and where they can go. This is especially concerning for those who are Christian and Jewish, because since this is done in China which is an anti-God communist nation and could very well attack sites that preach and teach the gospel. They have already been trying to remove God from this nation by censoring what written in the history books, whats taught in school and on television, and they could very well try to do it on the web but I pray it doesn’t happen.

You people aren’t even seeing the big picture…. you’re standing too close to the window… step back a few paces… there you go. See? It’s not about the movies at all. It’s about controlling the last free source of information in the world. This is how they get their foot in the door legitimately to push through legislation to begin the procedures necessary to regulate our access to the internet completely. You don’t just shut down the whole thing downy, or the people will revolt. You do it in steps.
When I was young, we didn’t need to wear a seat belt, and we could ride a bike without a godd**ned helmet on. Not only could you smoke in a bar… hell, you could smoke in a McDonald’s. If we’d have lost all the freedoms they’ve taken away from us in my lifetime alone in one week, people would have lost their minds and taken back the country. But they did it slowly and here we are with the intended result. We’re like frogs in pots of water. Turn up the heat fast, and we jump…. but turn it up slowly, and we’ll sit there until we’re cooked. Trust me people, this is how they intend to turn on the oven. . . and I’ve seen it coming for years.

Do you think passing some stupid, flawed bill into law will stop piracy. You’re wrong. When they put the new twenty dollar bills into circulation they did it because it was said to be impossible to counterfeit. Well guess what, not a month after they did it, their were counterfeits all in circulation. My point: criminals will do what ever it is in their power to break the law REGARDLESS OF WHAT NEW LAWS THE GOVERNMENT PASSES. And yes, it may be true that Hollywood is taking a couple hits to the internet financially speaking, but come the frick on, like Hollywood and everyone in it’s circle isn’t rich e-fricking-nough already. What about the little people? What about the fact that the internet has become the beacon of truth for people like me? You want to censor it because some millionaire director doesn’t feel like he’s making enough. It’s selfish, and by all standards unconstitutional. The Government’s already done it’s damnedest to censor everything from movies, to tv, to books. Leave the internet alone. It’s the one place on earth where individualism and expression is still really allowed.

I watch movies that the library lones out, So Dummywood make nothing off of me…

So you want us all to move over to the TOR network, ok. Then you will have no control of what we do.

I for one am among the 95% who think this is bull crap. Hollywood is still making massive amounts of money now adays, even if people are pirating videos. Just look at Avatar; it’s one of the highest ranking movies in the world for intake, and it was made within these past 3 years. Did people pirate it? Yes. Did it affect the money the companies made? No, it didn’t. Not as much as it could have.

My point? These companies are becoming whinier and whinier. Really, it’s sickening to see what greed has done to them. I mean, jeez, if you watch a TV movie you can still record it with a VHS and start selling the copies.

What comes next after this? No watching music videos on YouTube? Having to pay money to do a web search? Really, MPAA, get a life. This is the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” not “Land of everything must be bought and home of the Hitlers in the government”.

Man…. Felt good to get that off of my chest.

I understand that sharing copyrighted material with other people is wrong and it shouldn’t happen, but you have several problems with this act:

Anyone with a little bit of computer knowledge can figure out how to bypass being detected by using foreign companies that provides VPN’s or Proxies service to customers, where the laws are relaxed in that country, or they can use someone’s unprotected network (if they don’t already know how to hack it). So in essence, with this act, you are making everyone with a wireless network responsible for managing their home network. This is not practical. Not everyone knows how to do this and even the best in the business can’t 100% secure their servers.

Secondly, the amount of money it would take to find the criminal, which would be more likely a kid would be in the millions. Who would be paying for all this to tell the kid to stop? We would of course!!!

Third, you would also have ISP’s having to ban their customers even though they have no idea whether the kid next door to their customers was responsible or not. Imagine how it would affect their business which would impact their employees, from potential layoffs, and investors. Granted my third example might be a stretch, but I only mention it because it could occur.

I think our tax paying dollars would be more useful going somewhere else. If the music, software, and movie industries have a problem with it let them deal with it as they have in the past. After all, its their copyrighted material they shouldn’t let the American people foot the bill on protecting their investments.

You are wrong. The bill says that you (or the offending website) will be informed to remove the content first, long before it goes to court. If you refuse to comply with removing content that YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS TO BE USING — that’s when your site will be blocked. I am 100% in favor of this bill — because I despise thieves!

>>>>You guys are all talking about big business…that’s not the whole story either. How many of you have reposted that cute pic of a kitten holding on to a stick titled “hang in there”? Or reposted yesterday’s cartoon strip in your blog, quoted a part of a news article, or a poem? That by law is a copyright violation. Posted a chance encounter with a sports star? That also could be covered in this Bill. All it would take is a pro photographer to be standing near you take a pic close to what you took, and claim copyright, as he is selling that close pic. The bill says all a copyright holder has to do is allege a violation and ISP’s must block and act. So you could find your blog or facebook page blocked because of some pic you may actually own, but someone else claims is theirs.]

if this is passed i feel bad for all those who invested in stocks such as google.

This bill goes way deeper then what is seen from the murky surface. True this bill is wrong on so many levels that any rational person would at the least be aware that our freedoms as Americans would be severely impacted. And that would be a negative in case common since didn’t let you know. Internet piracy is not the real problem. That is just a by product of a system that has been set up to work off of greed. Someone please tell me why they are surprised. They created the problem and are now punishing us for having fed off the BS. True this is just a small part of what SOPA is using as a leg to stand on but if we are to pick apart just one of the BS legs it stands on it does do some good. Bottom line is that big business once again is setting in motion or at least backing a government manipulated money making scam. I get it. You worked hard to produce a product and you would like to get paid for it. Guess what we as a people don’t see it that way. We are tired of paying for some BS that we so mind numbly give into. I will hold the artist accountable. Why? Because they have the voice the power to tell the entertainment industry no we make music for the people not for you not for your pocket book not for your big fancy house and 80,000 dollar car… Oh but wait I forgot lol They aren’t artist they are just puppets.

You know what on second thought maybe it should pass so that all the BS that we buy into, listen and fall head over heals for would disappear. Maybe this would re ignite our love for knowledge and depth of self instead of this crazy obsetion with “the star”.

Tell everyone you know how horrible an idea SOPA is! and remember the power is in the PEOPLE of america. If congress passes this bill then be ready to fight it. Protest for your rights and don’t let them pass it. We can stop it, as long as were united. And as far as stopping piracy thats just plain BS, they just want to be able to upkeep the rich and excess lifestyle that they’ve grown accustomed to. Most americans dont make million and millions of dollars. These guys need a reality check. Why don’t you get used to making a normal salary like MOST OF AMERICA its not that bad. -~

This makes me sad, how slow it is taking people to realize all the rights that they have lost in the last ten years. This bill is only a drop in the bucket of all the civil liberties that have been taken away already in the interests of “National Security”. The terrorists won, truely.

As much as I admittedly download music and the like, I must agree that it should be stopped. but not like this. Total violation of rights.

How come we don’t hear about this on the morning, afternoon and nightly news for weeks like we do about some of the other crap (Sanduski)(qute kittens) (hardship stories) (latest utube sensation) (celebraty marrages). Wake up america your screwed and so are our CHILDREN.Like our polatitions say “it’s all about the children”. On Thursday, December 1, the traitors in the Senate advanced the plot to destroy America by passing into law the controversial National Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 93-7. The Senate gave the U.S. military the dictatorial power to “to indefinitely detain an American citizen with no charge, no trial and no oversight whatsoever.”

The passage of the NDAA bill and similar legislation shows that the treacherous Senate wants most of the troops to leave Iraq and Afghanistan so they can be used to occupy America as it goes into an engineered economic collapse.

So move over Iraqis and Afghans, Americans will now replace you as the most deadly insurgents and terrorists on the planet. Sounds crazy? Well, America and the world is being held hostage by criminal banksters on Wall Street and psychopathic state terrorists in Washington

The very idea of this bill is astounding. Aren’t there more pressing issues that require attention, rather than censoring the Internet and everything that is great about it? There is no way this will ever pass. It’s just not possible.

Love her or hate, Lady GaGa said on british telly ‘like, how much money do they need?’ this coming from a relatively new artist who employs ALOT of people. They will not make any more money even if this bill succeeds – there are many films ive watched online that i would NEVER go see or rent. Greed….

Shut Em’ Down

The U.S. Congress is strictly a gathering of pervs, crooks and hired graftees. If the USA adopted a ONE-TERM policy for ALL of its legislators and judges most of these CONTROL issues would fade away and the world in general would see a rebirth of financial prosperity and creativity.

everyone is missing the point. the responsibility over protecting movie from being copied is in the studios hands and only them. no one should be responsible for doing their job of protecting their privet products, especially not the goverment. its their movies, its their songs, why should anyone else need to watch over it? why should there be a law to protect them and do their job for them? if the studios cant protect their products good enaugh, its their problem, nobody elses. you cant blame anyone for copying a movie when they can, its only the studio’s fault for not protecting it enaugh, its nobody elses business. especially no business of the law.

I think it’s stupid. Maybe if movies were cheaper people wouldn’t have to pirate them. It’s ridiculous to have to pay 25 + just on a new release. What? Are all these directors and actors and all the others involved really going to make a scene? They have so much money, yet they’re still hungry for more. And closing down sites? Wow. I have to pay for internet, I refuse to also pay for access to websites, especially if they were free to begin with.

“America Land of the free” hahaha yeah right were right behind ya China here we come communism

Why censor the guys pointing the finger of where to go. I underarmed about the revenue thing but censoring major search engines or websites that show where pricacy. Only why don’t we pay people to censor the site that lieutenant the things that hurt our revenue. One site that can be taking out is rarbg.com. say you take out Google then people go to blogs. Take blogs out then people will find another solution to get free crap. Why censor when you can regulate.

I’m amazed at how many people are opening there eyes to what the government is secretly doing, as more people wake up we might one day be able to say no to our governments.
WE DONT WANT A NEW WORLD ORDER, we want our countries back, im afraid the government will do something extreme though like release a virus or start a war with iran.