I have not been convinced SOPA is a bad thing. I read the bill and all the chicken little posts around the web and even asked someone to show me the basis of their fear. I have never received any response beyond the chicken little screams of terror.
I admit I may be missing something. I've explained my point of view from what I've read. All I hear in response ranges from the whole internet will crash down upon our heads to every site in existence today will be taken down and sued to everybody's going to die cause they can't get their Canadian medicine.
Such fantastic psychotic episodes only lead to my cynicism.
"The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for 10 pieces of music or movies within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.[4]"
The second paragraph of the stanfordlawreview.org link is pretty succinct:
"To begin with, the bills represent an unprecedented, legally sanctioned assault on the Internet’s critical technical infrastructure. Based upon nothing more than an application by a federal prosecutor alleging that a foreign website is “dedicated to infringing activities,” Protect IP authorizes courts to order all U.S. Internet service providers, domain name registries, domain name registrars, and operators of domain name servers—a category that includes hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, and the like—to take steps to prevent the offending site’s domain name from translating to the correct Internet protocol address. These orders can be issued even when the domains in question are located outside of the United States and registered in top-level domains (e.g., .fr, .de, or .jp) whose operators are themselves located outside the United States; indeed, some of the bills’ remedial provisions are directed solely at such domains."
This is really stupid. While purporting to clear things up, it's just bad mouthing the bill and taking quotes from others who are against it. It's similar to anything I've been sent.
I admit I may be missing something. I've explained my point of view from what I've read. All I hear in response ranges from the whole internet will crash down upon our heads to every site in existence today will be taken down and sued to everybody's going to die cause they can't get their Canadian medicine.
Such fantastic psychotic episodes only lead to my cynicism.