During the early 1900s many savvy companies and individuals in the USA copyrighted millions of old European books and works that had no copyrights and did the same with inventions and drugs that had already been released but not patented. It's interesting to see them now claiming that 'their' material is being stolen.

The true purpose of the proposed laws is to put in place methods of 'choking' any websites that do not conform to the new age controls. The copyright excuse is just the cover being used to hide the real reason. Internet Control.

The powers that run Europe and the USA realize that as the economies get worse they are going to have millions of people freaking out, rioting, organizing and will have a world full of revolution. Most of which will spread like wildfire via the Internet.

Control of access to the Internet is VITAL for their agenda.
The patriot act took away tons of 'physical' freedoms and it's working well for them. They can search your home and lock you up forever without having to explain why or let you see a lawyer - your digital freedoms will soon be gone too.
And lets face it there is NOTHING we can do to prevent it as we are too divided and won't act as one force until it's too late to do anything about it.

There's still OPEN, which, while significantly better than SOPA/PIPA, I still am not overly thrilled about certain aspects in it. If that doesn't pass, it probably won't be long before something else is proposed.


DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service, not Dedicated. It's a Denail of Service done by many nodes sending (usually malformed, as certain malformed requests can make a DoS easier due to underlying vulnerabilities in the web server) requests to a server overwhelming it. Innocent DDoSing is known as slashdotting, due to sometimes a slashdot article overwhelming request for the source, which may be a puny blog not used to getting even a hundred requests a day, much less thousands of requests a minute. Anon's DDoS is a volunteer botnet, anyone is welcomed do download the program and donate their computer to the cause, nothing about a botnet states that it must be unknown, all that is needed is a Command&Control Center (commonly an IRC server, but in recent times standard HTTP or even twitter have been used).

The more you know...

Don't worry we'll get revenge

A http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/01/pick-up-the-pitchforks-david-pogue-underestimates-hollywood/ about this SOPA/PIPA nonsense and what we all should keep in mind about the people that provide our entertainment.

Denial of service attacks arent always a bad thing, an IRC server called Dalnet was taken down due to a massive DOS attack, many user had got frustrated due to their lack of care that they took with their server, and the fact that they didnt bother enforcing their own rules, the server admins barely ever responded to serious breaches of their rules, many people complained directly to them, to get answers like its our server go away, i knew a person who helped set it up, i was an admin on thier channel on IRC, i had sent constant complaints because the server was hosting sites that were distributing child pormography, the sites were easily availlable and and even listed on their channel lists.

An attempt by myself to get this stopped, just ended up against a brick wall, then one day there was no Dalnet anymore it was keep down for months, they were informed why it was done, but they couldnt have cared only due to the fact that they no longer had control over what was once one of ircs biggest servers. And the people had spoken, it was something the Authorities should have dealt with.

Should there be controls on the internet, ive always said yes, because the same people who started Dalnet and not even bothering to police their own server, shouldnt be allowed to, megaupload, like youtube have a policy of if the copyright holder finds their content on their site they will take it down, and ive found many pages on both sites that say this page is unavailable due to the request of the copyright holder, now these people are being responsible, and removing material at request, i understand its difficult to police sites that large, although you should know that if your hosting a site that large that copyright material will end up there, and its naive to think it wouldnt, but at least they do follow their own rules.

Taking it down was again the US government flexing its muscles for the sake of the voice of a minority of US companies, this isnt about doing the right thing, its about control, and no suprise news corp is in favour of SOPA and PIPA, well strange that a company that used phone hacking to gain profit from the infrigement of the privacy acts, communications acts, oh and thats right it was only limited to a few individuals and nobody at the top knew about it.

A friend posted a link to this on FB.

http://www.slashgear.com/sopa-sponsor-has-another-internet-bill-that-records-you-247-20210264/

I [censored] hate your government America. Atleast keep the crazies contained to [censored] with your country only. You guys elect them after all.

All your senators can piss off trying to [censored] with things beyond your country.
Unless this only effects Americans, in which case I dont care, becuase you guys gave them power.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/404551_311867588857192_195909997119619_850969_575541751_n.jpg.

Best part, they'll still be voted in! Yay!

The revenge part is dumb, the best way to handle this is not by attacking U.S sites. That only furthers the need for action in the mind of many Americans.

Furthermore the revenge that is happening is similar to the taking down a poster the goverment put up. No actual damage is truly being done. Also, as long as nobody activly hacks into a secure goverment database then people will be allowed to do whatever they want in terms of "revenge" forthe time being. Any attempt to access a goverment database will be met with failure.
The thing is many people like to think hackers are what they are portrayed as in media: Crazy-smart and talented people who can rip down the walls of society if they so choose. They are not. The crazy-smart super talented people are working for the fat goverment paychecks.

The U.S goverment tore down the poster, blew up the wall and arrested the men who had the wall built. And the internet responds in the suspected way, and provides no actual threat. All the while hurting their public image.

Might i suggest a way of protest that does not make every average U.S citizen view you as cyber-terrorists?

I don't have much experience in reading House bills, so I might be a bit off, but most of that article is complete BS. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c112:2:./temp/%7Ec112efZiTX::

The only mention of financial transactions is here, where they change sentencing guidelines for people who buy child porm on the webz:


The only records ISPs would be required to keep is a log of every users IP adress


People rant and rave and curse about how ignorant the law-makers are about the internet, well the people who report and believe this kind of stuff are at least as ignorant, if not more so about what Congress is doing. I am all for keeping governments' involvement in the web to a minimum, but people need to educate themselves about the facts if they want to be a public face of the movement.

EDIT The phrase 18 months doesn't appear in the bill AT ALL. I wonder if he just made that up out of whole cloth or blantantly misunderstood something.

God I hate democracy.

No. They are either working for themselves, or for corporations.

https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html
Old, I know, but still...

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h112-1981

There are govermental hackers, but you have that too. The talent goes to the bigger paychecks.

Oh, they are. Don't confuse script kiddies with hackers. Go to a hacker convention and meet some real hackers and then dare to tell me they aren't incredibly talented... actually, tell me over the phone while you are there (that is, if you dare make a phone call while there)

Also fat gov't paychecks? That's almost an oxymoron (unless you are referring to conspiracy theory-like insidious underbelly government funded activities)

govt contractors make big money, that was what i meant by fat goverment pay checks.

I don't care about my IP, really. If the government wants someone's IP they can easily get it upon request, I don't see why they'd need IPs stored.

This concerns me, however.
They want to add that clause. "Unregistered six offenders"? Could that not easily be interpreted as anyone besides six offenders?

Edit: I finished reading through it. Here's what they define as a 'six offender'.
So if six offenders are required to become registered, then what exactly is an unregistered six offender? You can't be unregistered, apparently. Someone help me out here, am I missing something or is this as bad as it sounds?

It is hyperbole. The number's made up. It's based on an (incorrectly calculated and multiplied) guesstimate of international data. The best guess at the moment is that piracy "costs" the US $6 billion dollars, annually. That's nothing. Also, considering that not all, most or even many pirates would buy the product they pirate, the actual cost to the US is maybe $2-3 billion.

I'm not saying that makes piracy "right" or "good" (a nuanced discussion of piracy is beyond the TOU of this forum); I'm just pointing out the facts.

http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/why-a-democracy-needs-uninformed-people-38398/

There's also studies that show the more informed one is, the greater their propensity to reinforce already held beliefs. Not that this is always necessarily the case, but it's worth being aware of our own biases and from where we receive our information.

EDIT: Bethesda, why can I not properly make links anymore?

use [ url=yourlink]message[/url]

You need to type the text out, then highlight it, then click the Link button. I don't get why they changed it.

Would anyone mind commenting on the "unregistered six offender" question I posed before? Not sure if I'm missing something. It seems that they'd extend the United States Marshal Service's power so that they can 'investigate' whomever they want. Otherwise, they would be able to monitor a six offender who has not yet registered, which - since they're either sitting in jail or out on bail; ultimately they are going to prison - is pretty much useless, and I see no reason they'd add something like that.
Those are the two conclusions I've reached, am I just really stupid?

Edit: Reading the post again, it defines a six offender as someone who has already registered. It might just be semantics and all, but that sort of invalidates the second possibility I proposed.

It works the other way around as well. You can put in the link to a site, highlight it and start typing over it. The link will remain there, but it will only be the test you wrote there.


Ahem, On-topic: I bet SOPA will come back as something more 'catchy' like "STOP, Stop The Online Piracy!" :/

HALLT! Halt Alien Leech-Like Theft!

Looking through the legislation regarding the registry, it would seem that offenders are legally obliged to register, but since they update it themselves there is the possibility that one could fail to do so and therefore be unregistered at their current address/place of work/place of study/wherever else they're required to put in.

Still, anyone could be an unregistered six offender -- at some point you might have moved Rhode Island and stolen someone's identity. Therefore the only moral option is to investigate your every move to check you out, just in case .

So that's why I never understood why people have problems with links, that's how I've always done it even before the update.

American citizens, despite what they have been led to believe, do not give their "elected" officials power.

Voting is an illusion, it's not even real. It's something people in this country do and just assume that it matters. Rarely do people here ever stop and think, "What would happen if not a single US citizen voted."