So, as I'm sure many of you have heard; whether heard mentioned, researched, or any other mean of exposure, SOPA is upon us.

For those who don't know, the Stop Online Piracy Act is shortly going to be voted upon in Congress. What does this mean, you ask?

To put it in a nutshell, the "official" reasoning behind this bill is, simply, to "stop online piracy". But how would it go about this? In the bill's current form, this would essentially modify the existing law in one major way: If SOPA passes, internet sites are now fully liable and responsible for ANY Pirated (Copyrighted, Trademarked, etc.) material on their website. This changes the "safe-harbor" rule which stated that as long as the website was not actively encouraging the pirating, it would be the individual uploader who is responsible. The huge ramification of this is that the large corporations who own this copyrighted material would basically be allowed to remove an entire website it finds to be holding its material, without as much as due process.

What does this to you?

You know Youtube? Gone.

Facebook? Gone.

Tumblr? Gone.

The worst thing (as if it could get worse) is that this bill certainly seems to be the open gateway to these corporations censoring most of the internet. Recently, after Rapidshare was temporarily blocked by several countries worldwide, a number of well-known artists (I think Kanye West was inlcuded) made a song coming to its defense. Well, guess what? It was almost immediately taken down for: Copyright Infringement. "Well," you may be thinking, "if they made the song, how could that possibly be copyright infringement?" Exactly. This is isn't about "stopping online piracy", it's about "stopping online thought against our awesome products."

While I have presented a brief synapses here due to time constraints on my end, here are some other videos on the subject that probably do a much better job at this than what I did:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc&feature=g-all-lik&context=G2a1cb4fFAAAAAAAABAA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM

(Would like to post more, time constraints D:<)

With the day of reckoning approaching, remember to do your part and
SAVE
THE
INTERNET!

ok, I just archived this page. I've done my part of saving the interwebs.

I'm building a new interwebs..

in my basemant.



So I'm doing my part.

Meh. Only stuff I watch on youtube is music mostly. I should buy the CDs. This wont effect... other video sites will it ?

Eh it dosent matter, good luck censoring the internet.

Oh no, not this discussion again.

It's election season, and this bill is toxic. Ain't gunna happen. If it does, there will be a lot of people removed from office.

SOPA is a pretense to conquer and commercialize the internet in favor of a few committees representing a few companies.

Check this out, it will open your eyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc&feature=youtu.be

Same vid, bone.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

I can't wait to use the Andynet!

Really if they want to piss off 99% of every single human being that has ever been connected to the internet then I welcome them to try. We as a species tend to be overly nonchalant about things that are not happening to us but could happen later on. So even if this is not being protested enough you can bet everything will go nuts if they start acting upon this.

The internet is the only truly free media for expression. If the SOPA act gets passed then the people at congress are too old to realize that (no offense to technically adept old folk) or they simply desire to shut down peoples opinions and creativity where those two get expressed the most.

The /i/nsurgency had a plan to do this a few years ago. It involved a wireless private network using some new (then) piece of technology that links PC's together wirelessly. I'll see if I can dig it up.

EDIT: NVM, the forum it was being planned on has shut down.

Or... you know... you could just use Freenet... Or create a massive VPN... Or connect to a DNS server that doesn't obey SOPA (which would be every DNS server otuside the US)... or use a proxy... or about a million other things that would make SOPA technically infeasible without the NSA getting involved.

I'll be using DeSOPA for Firefox. It translates the DNS to IP, rendering DNS Blocking (SOPA) useless.

You might as well just use a DNS server hosted outside the US, it'd be more efficient. DeSOPA has some technical flaws when dealing with the modern Internet of CDNs and whatnot. CloudFlare CDN, for example, forbids direct IP connections to sites that use their network.

Edit: See here: http://173.245.60.114/ For those soles who don't trust me -- and I commend you in your distrust, that is the IP that http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/ resolves to -- at least for me, it may be different for you, but it'll always be a part of the cloudflare CDN, so you'll always get the direct IP connections blocked message (test it for yourself)

So for those of us outside USA, does that mean if a company decides that, say, youtube has infringed copyright that it will be blacklisted worldwide or just in 'merica?

When I heard about this bill, I told all my friends and parents about it. They did their part but unfortunately my friend Vegeta got a tad angry over this bill and at the politicians...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aJd922EOuk

Seeing as Youtube(Google) is USA based it will be blacklisted worldwide, dailymotion, hulu and other alternative video sites will probably be safe.

We should connect our networks, we shall be victorious in destroying the censor!!

Facebook gone, I always thought this would be good...
If it passes there will be no point in coming on the internet - I say let it pass and let the goverment see how much they fail at serving the people. They'd also be losing millions of ￡/$ too.

Thats like I said before if they move their HQ elsewhere outside the US they are not bound by SOPA and no harm will come to their sites, it may just now be visible in America but it will still exist.

It's probably already too late to stop it. Earlier this month, congress (may they burn in hell) passed the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA places domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the military and opens the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of anyone (meaning American citizens or people in other countries) so long as the government calls them terrorists. In other words, if you publicly oppose a government decision or policy, they can say "Ha! You're a terrorist, so we're gonna put you in a deep, dark hole a throw away the key. Bye."

SOPA is just the next step in turning the fictional world of the novel 1984 into reality.

Edit: typo

I would sarcasticly post abut conspiricy nuts but after reading this

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/11/parents-of-adolf-hitler-lose-custody-of-newborn/

I wouldnt trust your government at all.

Awww, I was gunna make a humorous reply to Andy's post that would've informed him and others of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUnet*, but then I read your post and saw you beat me to the punch . Well, sort of .

*I haven't really looked into the extent of GNUnet's uses, so I'm assuming it allows for -or plans to- some degree of browsing.

Exactly this - I'm not bothered at all about this scare. Firstly because I'm not from the US and secondly because I don't actually think it will ever happen.
Try as they might the Internet is far too advanced to be controlled and limited by anyone.
Not to mention the [censored]storm if it ever did change the internet...

Not complaining about banning Facebook though, please, be my guest.

I don't see the problem.