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old Re: Wtf is SOPA?

Doberman
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The thing with SOPA is that I truly doubt it would work. I can't believe that some places are trying to get this act through without seeing what damage it could cause.

user Z- has written
i also heard that they will have the power to block sites.. and when they do, its worlwide o.O or something.. lol.

It'll block off anything that has copyrighted material or anything deemed "bad" by the act. I don't know whether this will affect anything in Europe though.

old Re: Wtf is SOPA?

DannyDeth
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I just find it hilarious that American Congress thinks it rules the world.

I can bet you if this law had to be passed, servers in the USA would ROCKET down in popularity and European server-providers will get a couple thousand more customers over a period of hours.

old Re: Wtf is SOPA?

AliceShade
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That proposal has nothing to do with congress, per ce. Ones behind it are RIAA and MIAA. As such, common sense has nothing to do with it - it`s pure unadulterated bullshit.

Whole idea of copyrasty is flawed, and until that flaw is addressed, no sane laws will be proposed.

That flaw is, of course, the nature of loss piracy causes. Copyrasts claim that each pirated copy could be sold otherwise, if there was no piracy on the net. However, it`s a blatant lie. It assumes that every single person who downloads pirated stuff is in dire need of such, and will shell out money if deprived of any possibility to obtain a copy for free.

Obviously enough, it`s not so. A lot of people download pirated stuff exactly because it free. They wouldn`t care to go and buy it, if they had no option to just download it. And this is exactly where copyrastic thinking fails - they don`t realize that this situation will simply lead to sharp decline in publicity of their product.

Because of this inherent flaw in thinking, copyrasts concentrate their efforts on establishing harsher and stricter control over their content. In 90s, mere idea of company installing spyware on your computer as a part of software purchase was outlandish. Today? Hello, Steam.

Now, the effort was made to control not just the content, but the medium over which content is transmitted. What will happen if the law passes? Well, the effect would be the same as what happens in China. Internet censorship. Obviously enough, geeks and nerds will quickly find ways around that. Using obfuscation, darknets, encryption and proxy access, the rest of the world will be reached just as easy. The rest? Well, they will be largely unaffected. Except for being unable to see just about anything on the net, up to Wikipedia.

Who will really suffer from this? Most likely, the copyrasts. Law like this is too indiscriminate, too heavyhanded and stripped of nuance to actually work right - it will hit first and foremost all the advertisement venues on the net.

So, the conclusion? Copyrasts once again attempt to strangle themselves with legislative action, and it`s up to geeks to talk them out of idiocy. The real question is, is it worth it? Maybe the geeks should sit this one out and allow copyrasts to have their just desserts for once. Ought to be entertaining, at least.

old Re: Wtf is SOPA?

Doberman
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user Doberman has written
I don't know whether this will affect anything in Europe though.

I'll take back this quote.

This could affect European users depending on what websites they are. I use some websites which are based in the USA and it could shut them off.

It sucks really that there are people which aren't looking into this bill though, especially since this could destroy the internet for everybody. It won't just affect the USA but could affect nearly all countries.

I was reading a blog post put up on another website I used and he showed an article on how companies could use SOPA to get around a DMCA act.

old Re: Wtf is SOPA?

bezmolvie
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user Doberman has written
user Doberman has written
I don't know whether this will affect anything in Europe though.

I'll take back this quote.

This could affect European users depending on what websites they are. I use some websites which are based in the USA and it could shut them off.

It sucks really that there are people which aren't looking into this bill though, especially since this could destroy the internet for everybody. It won't just affect the USA but could affect nearly all countries.

I was reading a blog post put up on another website I used and he showed an article on how companies could use SOPA to get around a DMCA act.


Don't forget that the huge amount of DNS servers residing in America (Yes, North America. The US has the right to change all domains in North America, due to how they're allocated), the government can remove them from the list. Sure, you could just type in the IP of the site, and get a browser/telnet and use the host tag of the old site name, but who knows how to do that, and the IPs of all sites that might get shut down? Lots of people in sheer numbers, but so damn little of a proportion of all internet users.

old Re: Wtf is SOPA?

AliceShade
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Internet isn`t a static construct, you know.

Yes, sudden shutdown of USA servers would impact network greatly, but not irreversibly. Besides, I doubt that even with that legislation in place, sudden shutdown of many servers could happen in a single moment.

If it comes through, it would simply deprive USA of many internet services and cause temporary discomfort to the rest of world, followed by mass migration of all that`s matters to countries without such ridiculous laws in effect.

I`m pretty sure Indian server farms would see a sharp spike of activity... And most likely, a good deal of those will spring up in Russia as well. So, in short, USA is trying to shoot itself in the foot. But is that really news?

old Re: Wtf is SOPA?

bezmolvie
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user AliceShade has written
Internet isn`t a static construct, you know.

Yes, sudden shutdown of USA servers would impact network greatly, but not irreversibly. Besides, I doubt that even with that legislation in place, sudden shutdown of many servers could happen in a single moment.

If it comes through, it would simply deprive USA of many internet services and cause temporary discomfort to the rest of world, followed by mass migration of all that`s matters to countries without such ridiculous laws in effect.

I`m pretty sure Indian server farms would see a sharp spike of activity... And most likely, a good deal of those will spring up in Russia as well. So, in short, USA is trying to shoot itself in the foot. But is that really news?


I didn't say it was static, but it would hurt a lot of people - even if temporarily.

old Re: Wtf is SOPA?

AliceShade
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From one side, yes. It would make things uncomfortable for a while. From other, however, the rest of the world will recover and advance. US of A? It will be left behind.

While it`s certainly bad for USA, I can`t quite say it would be that bad for the rest of the world.

Who knows, maybe having such a big shift forced on internet will be enough of a restructure to make a wholesale switch to IPv6 a viable venture?

old Re: Wtf is SOPA?

DannyDeth
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user AliceShade has written
Who knows, maybe having such a big shift forced on internet will be enough of a restructure to make a wholesale switch to IPv6 a viable venture?

Not necessarily. IPv6 has already been implemented and simply because a country will be minorly cut off from the web will not induce a total IPv6 re-configuration. Infact, it may be less neccisary because of the fact that a good portion of the IPv4 hoggers are American.

old Re: Wtf is SOPA?

AliceShade
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Well, the whole point of V6 was to replace V4 at some point in the future, no? The only reason why it`s not the new standard yet is because reconfiguring everything to V6 would be hell of a job to coordinate and perform.

Now, given that a law like SOPA will cause a BIG shift and reconstruction, it seems like a good time to move to V6 as well. Because, yanno, nothing prompts the improvement like a necessity.
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