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Post by The Curmudgeon on Jan 18, 2012 12:34:04 GMT 2
At least, it is on Wikipedia. They're blacking out the entire website in protest to the SOPA and PIPA bills that have grown frighteningly real in the last couple of weeks. When I first heard about the proposal, I laughed it off in a "sounds bad, will never happen" kinda way. Now though..? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_PageIf you happen to come across this thread the day after the blackout and all is well in Wikiland, here is the original message that appeared on screen; Imagine a World
Without Free Knowledge
For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia. Learn more.Man, if this bill is enforced (and with the multi-million pound companies breathing down the necks of the people who approve these laws, it's certainly a possibility) the internet as we know it will cease to exist. Should something be done to combat online piracy? Absolutely. Is this the answer? Absolutely not. |
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Post by trashcanman on Jan 18, 2012 21:16:58 GMT 2
But here's the thing: this and much worse are the ONLY ways to combat online piracy. The only way to do it is a tight fucking leash on the content you love and a hyper-aggressive goon squad actively hunting people who post movie/tv clips or songs they don't own the rights to on Youtube and destroy the lives of anyone who uploads or downloads copyrighted content. This is simply how it is done. Either you are cool with this or you admit that piracy is as much of a paper tiger as blank tapes were and the wealthy are just going to have to eat shit and deal with it. This has clearly become an "us or them" issue. Either they look the other way while the poor are "stealing" insubstantial data from the rich or they legalize the rich stealing actual livelihood from the poor. My take on the topic can be summed up in one of the greatest opening lines of any song ever. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjNjJR9jUGoAnd for the record, what I just did there: technically piracy since I didn't get the record company's permission to post that. Do I give a fuck? No. Under SOPA, it will be a punishable crime. |
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Post by The Curmudgeon on Jan 19, 2012 12:03:37 GMT 2
Ha, that lyric kinda sums everything up perfectly.
If they are, in fact, going to employ "goons" to patrol the internet and clamp down on any unauthorized use of media, surely there's a more logical and, fuck, ethical way to do it?
Posting Youtube clips and images? Never going to hurt any sales of any brand, artist or studio. What I would actually accept is me not being able to type in the first words of an album and the first Google search being the free, illegal torrent of the record.
If we ARE to "police" the internet, then surely that shit needs to be sort of thing that we stamp out? Fans posting clips or images of songs, unless you're Prince, isn't wrong in the slightest. People ripping entire albums and movies simply because they can IS wrong, and is surely the main reason this entire bill was proposed in the first place.
Whether illegal downloads is a paper tiger or not, and that's an entirely different conversation, that NEEDS to be the first thing that the whole legal action is aimed at first and foremost. You posting that video to make a point will never harm an artist - hell, it can only promote them. Me going, "hmm, that's a good song, I'll go and illegally download Temple of the Dog's entire back catalogue onto my hard-drive" would.
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Post by trashcanman on Jan 19, 2012 21:19:19 GMT 2
But the people who wrote and are voting on those bills don't understand the difference. The economy is in the shitter, unemployment is going up and up, people don't have the disposable income they used to, and sales are down. Billionaire businessmen don't comprehend the concept of "can't afford" so they are obviously looking at other causes for why sales are plummeting other than people are broke or they are putting out shitty, shitty music/movies/whatever and people are sick of it. The internet is an easy mark for these people and they could give not a single fuck if the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater while they try to find ways to try and extort the money from us one way or another. And yeah, it's a douche move to pirate an album because you don't feel like paying for it, but in my experience, the people who do that had no intention of buying that album anyways as none of them seem to even have CD collections at all. They only want the music because it's so goddamn easy to get and it helps them fit in or whatever. Real fans almost always pay. The way it works for me is I may download a song or two or somebody might give me a burnt copy of something or let me rip an album to iTunes, and if I dig it I will usually end up buying albums from the artist and/or in the past I would typically review it to spread the word. A friend once emailed me a link to a rap song he found. I told him it was awesome, but I forgot the name of the artist. He sent me a copy of the album after he bought it and it was life-changingly awesome. I've bought one other album since, the rest are on my Amazon wishlist, and I've been pimping said artist to everyone I meet since. All from one youtube link. Without it, I'd simply have never known. To me, this is the power the internet has to find obscure artists and generate fans and therefore income. A few illegal album downloads from non-fans won't change the fact that people showing up at the shows and buying t-shirts and whatnot first heard about a given artist on the net because somebody was spreading an illegal youtube link around. The record companies can simply go fuck themselves.
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Post by trashcanman on Jan 20, 2012 0:32:55 GMT 2
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Post by The Curmudgeon on Jan 20, 2012 12:04:10 GMT 2
Yeah, those are all good points Trash. Don't get me wrong, the SOPA bill would do FAR more harm than good, and would cause a modern fixture of life (ie - the net) to simply cease to exist as we know it.
Your example of the power of the internet over discovering new music/movies etc is probably the nets greatest tool - information. And SOPA would have killed it stone dead.
So, wow, Obama comes through for once. I KNEW he was put in there for something.
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Quillford
Bad Witch
"You're Scheming On A Thing That's A Mirage. I'm Trying To Tell You Now, It's Sabotage!"
Posts: 238
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Post by Quillford on Jan 20, 2012 17:32:31 GMT 2
I have my stance on this. It is simply - SOPA is the right way to go in MOST ways. I think something does NEED to be done by the ever increasing amounts of Piracy on the internet for all three media mediums (Say that ten times - three times fast). Music, Films and indeed Games are all suffering - here at the FoS,we aren't not idiots who live in a cave - well maybe we do live in a cave (with a fortress in) but MAN we don't have our ears closed. We know the increasingly awful way music is transferred around at the minute is crippling all industries. I think SOPA would be good for this reason. Of course it's going make the entire industry shake at first but things will rise up when people realise they can't listen to music any more because things have changed or that new film they missed on the cinema they REALLY are going to have to wait and save for the DVD. The economy is in the shitter - but don't forget that somewhere in that large list of reasons why, piracy is there. You spend your way out of an economic crisis (as crazy as it sounds) - obviously make sure you have enough to live but if we can start paying for films then people will be even more annoyed when it turns out to be crap. The people who make shit films to extort us will be BEGGING for people to come and see their latest works because people just won't go see another film by X director who has done X amount of shit films. Because simply they won't waste their money on it.  I understand that people are worried about where does the censorship end but honestly lets look at everything. We are more loose on piracy in this generation than any other. It's like society took a massive laxative or something. The result - industries have been shat on. I remember ten years ago - I know, THAT long ago right? ¬.¬ Just at the start of the DVD heck 15 years ago even. Pirate VHS - that was like a HUGE thing. There were frequent raids on video dens, fines and really good policing on it. If your friend owned a pirate video - it was such a massive thing - they were either cool or a social outcast who people were afraid of. Nowadays nearly every household has seen or owns at least one pirate of some sort. Maybe that's because they didn't want to pay for it because they were unsure of what it would be like. Maybe it's because they couldn't find it on DVD (that's of course acceptable) but usually it's because there fuckin' leeches! Back then hardly anyone would touch it because there was like a 500 pound fine or something. Videos had adverts saying "If you know of anyone who is selling or distributing Pirate videos please call XXX XXX now. That shit was REAL. Now what do we have. A teenage girl who quiet obviously isn't real trying to download some not real film of a not real website who for some fuckin' reason has a moral dilemma about the film industry half way through and cancels it and fucks off from her not real pc to go and - who knows play with her friends in the sun. >.> I am sorry, but what a pile of WANK. Like shit would the youth of today do that. The opening lines is what ends it for me - "You wouldn’t steal a car" "You wouldn’t steal a handbag" "You wouldn’t steal a mobile phone" "You wouldn't steal a DVD". Do these people know anything? GOD! *Napoleon Dynamite Face* Of course anyone with balls this day who isn't a "insert medium here" fanatic is going to do all those things and WORSE. We need the Japanese to come in with their McDonalds adds for this kinda shit - scare the fuckers away from doing it. You wouldn't rape a cat? You wouldn't rape a mouse? Why Rape the industry? *cue creepy Ronald McPEDO smile there* Stay away from Piracy! That would have people talking - and about a hundred thousand complaints. But you see my point. I agree there has to be a limit on what people can do to censor this shit but I think there's a thousand ways to do it and people are afraid to try. I don't think youtube has to suffer to much. As long as it's sanctioned by the artist it's allowed to be up there. But I will point out - three years ago music videos were getting really tough to find on their. But now? Easy as piss. You can find the song - it's official video (uploaded unofficially) and the shagging karaoke version. I think this is the FIRST step in the right direction, as far as I am aware this bill at the moment is only focusing on stop the advertisement of piracy at the moment. It's not even about finding the fucker responsible. People need to start somewhere if we are to have decent films as a regular thing ('cause I can give you a thousand and one movies with a budget of way over a million that have been made in the last three years that I wouldn't vomit on or in fact ANYONE would vomit on there that bad) and TV shows that last more than a season. Artists that can live for more than ... an ... album. I like to buy an album but I only do it when I really like someone. I tap into youtube when it's "alright". Now I am preparing to get ripped to shreds as this thread has quite strong opinions. At this point I am cool with it haha - all I will say is remember where my heart was in this. |
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Quillford
Bad Witch
"You're Scheming On A Thing That's A Mirage. I'm Trying To Tell You Now, It's Sabotage!"
Posts: 238
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Post by Quillford on Jan 20, 2012 20:06:52 GMT 2
Upon further inspection, it break human rights laws and voids free speech. I feel that although I believe something has to happen - SOPA is dictator to a world of people who don't agree. There needs to be something that tackles it soon but sadly this piss stain isn't it.
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Post by trashcanman on Jan 20, 2012 21:56:12 GMT 2
Sorry, man, but you're dead wrong on nearly all counts. Also, it's not unironic that you may have just broken the law in that exact post. Do you know where that turtle image originated? Could it be from a copyrighted film, nature show, or album cover? Definitely could be. And you just stole it, you horrible person, you. Didn't you think of the poor starving millionaires when you so thoughtlessly destroyed their financial world just there? Now you owe them a million bucks and jailtime if you can't pay it. You're an honest fellow, I'm sure you'll turn yourself in. And do you own the rights to that video? Now you're a twice convicted felon. Welcome to the dark side, my friend. Mwa-ha-ha!  Everybody insists there is another solution that will work, but they are wrong, wrong, and wrong, which is exactly why none of the people who say that there is a solution actually HAVE a feasible solution. National debt in the trillions? Taxes going up? You want it fixed? Let's have the government spend billions more raiding people's homes and hacking into their computers searching for downloaded music and movies. Build more prisons or kick the petty murderers and rapists out of existing ones to make room for millions of digital thieves. Or is the solution to be once we spend all those billions tracking them down to just slap them on the wrist and say "naughty naughty!"? I'm telling you, there is no way. A 16 year old's friend shows him how to download free music on his non-tech savvy mother's PC. The SOPA police kick down the door and guess who gets charged even if they did nothing wrong and had no knowledge of the wrongdoing? The parent. This has actually happened (okay, the door probably wasn't kicked down, but you get the idea). The door that will be opened by enforcement of these kinds of bills is not one you want happening on your street, I promise you. How about they enforce antitrust laws instead? Disney, Ticketmaster, Apple, and dozens of other corporations have been brazenly breaking those laws for decades now. Why are we not holding them accountable for breaking the law and price gouging us (as in YOU and ME) to the tune of billions a year? Seriously, am I the only one who doesn't get their legal information from FOX News? Does the law only apply to those without lobbyists of their very own? Trust me, the deeper you go down this rabbit hole, the more disturbing it gets and the more preposterous this argument over file sharing gets. It's amazing to me that all it takes is a corny, overdramatic tv spot full of non-sequiturs, dim lighting, evil music, and hyperbole to convince anybody of anything with no thoughts to the logistics or the bigger picture. Dun Dun DUUUUUUUUUN!!!! Those motherfuckers have enough money to throw away financing tv campaigns while they suck us all dry, so they must be doing okay financially. I'm living paycheck to paycheck in a factory making the food that they eat, so they can take their rhetoric, wrap it in barbed wire, and go fuck themselves with it. |
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Quillford
Bad Witch
"You're Scheming On A Thing That's A Mirage. I'm Trying To Tell You Now, It's Sabotage!"
Posts: 238
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Post by Quillford on Jan 20, 2012 23:59:22 GMT 2
I WAS wrong. Hah. Good points Trashcanman
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Post by The Curmudgeon on Jan 21, 2012 4:30:37 GMT 2
Well, we can all rest easy in our beds (for now, at least). That SOPA bill?  |
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Post by trashcanman on Jan 21, 2012 22:17:45 GMT 2
Nice. Wonder how long until this argument comes back, though. I'm not really opposed to going after the folks who are uploading copyrighted music and whatnot for download on torrent sites and the like, but no fucking way can any net citizen abide that bill and it's implications for all of us and the language of the internet itself. Like it or not, I think hackers are always going to be a step ahead in the piracy game so if I were the entertainment industry, I'd be spending less time and money trying to buy off Congress with this insanity and more trying to turn this technology to my advantage and using it as the free advertising it can be and often is.
And now to celebrate this epic come from behind net victory:
Kick it, Lars
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