Posted on 01/19/2012 6:45:49 AM PST by transducer
The Google logo has been blacked out today. Wikipedia, reddit, Mozilla and Twitpic are all blocking access to content. Even Star Trek icon George Takei has blocked his site. The moves are displays of cyber-protest against the heavy-handed and ill-conceived Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
From a political and public relations standpoint, this has already been a complete and utter failure for Hollywood and their formerly formidable lobbying arm, the Motion Picture Association of America. Former Sen. Chris Dodd became the new CEO of the MPAA after he realized he would never be re-elected in his home state of Connecticut due to his personal scandals with Countrywide Mortgage and his involvement in the mortgage collapse at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So naturally, Hollywood hired the failed Senator as their man in Washington. Dodd has been the chief architect of SOPA, which was written with about as much subtlety and constitutional protocol as his equally disastrous Dodd-Frank banking law.
The merits of SOPA and the overall issue of online piracy is a worthy topic, and it can be argued that the federal government should have some hand in policing and enforcing piracy on behalf of private industries and artists who rely on royalties as a major part of their profit structure. These details can and should be debated here and in Washington DC. What is striking about today's Internet blackout and the over-the-top reaction to it from Dodd is that this arrogant, befuddled and inept former Senator has finally figured out a way to unite the left and the right to focus their passion against a common enemy: Hollywood....
Face it, Hollywood: America is telling you to take a leap, and take your failure of a lobbyist with you.
(Excerpt) Read more at bighollywood.breitbart.com ...
SOPA SUCKS
But I cant help but wonder what percentage of the opposition was for the danger to websites and what was the number for those that just hope to keep it easy to pirate content.
Those that just want to make sure they can do that stuff are going to be disappointed when they just edit a few lines and pass it almost like it is now.
Congress is technologically tone-deaf, but they can work legalese like a bastard.
These laws would have little impact on the technically sophisticated, but would impact dumb teenagers and other casual users.
As for the fear it would take down FR, who knows? But since many people here are technically sophistcated, we would just reappear in a more secret and secure part of the internet.
Lucky he’s not in jail after his financial shenanigans.
Proof that bribes and kick backs pay off.
Did anyone catch that Chris Dodd was a lobbyist for this? This is and was a very bad idea.
When I saw Chris Dodd was a lobbyist for I knew right away it is and was a very bad idea.
So.....let’s see if I got this straight. The Lefties aren’t upset so much over the anti-piracy legislation as they are about the unfounded fantasy that anything short of every freedom of expression under the sun would suggest they have no other means of expression, communication or information gathering. And, by extension, the big, bad United States government is out to abolish anything artistic, cultural and educational in their quest to make automatons out of us all.
Not to mention we’re all inching closer to belting out “March of the Volunteers” at baseball games simply due to the government enforcing the proprietary rights of the entertainment industry. How the government gets accused of being in the Dark Ages (while adapting to technological advancements and the threats that are imposed upon us all as a result) is beyond me.
The Native Americans did just fine with smoke signals. The animal kingdom does as much with less.
Aren’t these eggheads supposed to be the all-knowing book readers and bra burners who think the rest of the world is populated by knuckle-dragging grunts who can’t string a sentence together?
Personally, with the crap that seeps from Hollywood and the detritus that pervades the wire, I wish they WOULD start censoring - if only for the improvement of programming quality.
The internet is worse. I’m so sick of having to stay on top of all the anti-virus software and control features on my PC, because the net has become an uninhibited jungle full of cretins who love their right to view all and see all while doing their abject best to spoil the whole enterprise for the rest of us.
“Hack The Planet” is their credo and every damned one of them are opposed to the latest that the House will vote on because - God forbid - they may have to exercise self-control for a moment of their lives, and actually pay for something.
This is proof that the current laws already in place are adequate enough.
Feds Shut Down File-Sharing Site One Day After Web Protest
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2835125/posts
You are for government regulating the Internet so then you are against liberty and freedom.
I can't believe there are people that would give such power to EPA like unelected government, liberal, thugs to censor the Internet. That is tyranny. Why do you trust government bureaucrats to decide what is appropriate on the Internet?
Just one example of government idiocy. They said the EPA would save our environment. Instead the EPA thugs are shutting down factories and power plants because of a lie called global warming. who elected these thugs?
And it's easier for them to censor the Internet by getting Google or an ISP to ban a site. This SOPA would censor and kill the Internet, period.
You are for government regulating the Internet so then you are against liberty and freedom.
I can't believe there are people that would give such power to EPA like unelected government, liberal, thugs to censor the Internet. That is tyranny. Why do you trust government bureaucrats to decide what is appropriate on the Internet?
Just one example of government idiocy. They said the EPA would save our environment. Instead the EPA thugs are shutting down factories and power plants because of a lie called global warming. who elected these thugs?
And it's easier for them to censor the Internet by getting Google or an ISP to ban a site. This SOPA would censor and kill the Internet, period.
No government bureaucrat will tell me what I can post on the Internet. That is against freedom of speech , that is against freedom.
There’s only one person on this planet I trust and that would be me. My own common sense precludes someone else’s idea of what constitutes knowledge or information. I know what I need to know and I refuse to spend a second of my time worrying about some abstract “threat” coming my way because pirates have been dealt a hindrance to their free reign of thievery.
I love the assumption you make regarding my supposed support of governmental regulation of the internet. But not as much as the quantum leap you took in declaring me against liberty and freedom.
See, this is a perfect example of over-reacting to the written word of someone you do not know. Knee-jerk reactions are for the young, unintuitive or the corrupt, and you adequately missed the sublime sarcasm of my comments.
I give readers the benefit of respect by not explaining beforehand which sentences are my factual beliefs or those of which are dry wit. But I stand by my observation that this hulabaloo is much ado about nothing - another example of government action being assigned all sorts of subliminal and ulterior motives by people who aren’t part of the decision-making loop. Just because one doesn’t have proof of something doesn’t mean that irresponsible accusations should abound.
If history has proven that ulterior motives and conspiracies CAN occur, there is also no reason to expect them to at every instance of regulation.
Regulation is a tool to protect property owners, and whether any of us like it or agree with it or not, it’s here to stay because of miscreants who feel they have an obligatory right to complete and utter freedom. It is they who are in the drivers seat - not the government.
If what we’ve become as a species is one that sits around debating everything and then deciding that inaction is the best policy because of our imagined fears - then we have no future. Progress comes in fits and spurts and I can guarantee you every time something is changed to protect someone other than ourselves, there will be someone somewhere who feels the sky is falling.
This is simply an act to protect the property of those who author the very art that many are afraid of losing to censorship.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
So you support SOPA ? That seems like what it is.
Yeah all of us left and right are wrong only you are right.Not.
< The rest of this post is banned by SOPA >
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