Say NO To Internet CENSORSHIP

[Tessera]

Say NO to Internet Censorship


Hi folks,

This week, Congress is debating whether to grant themselves the
power to turn off parts of the Internet. Fun sites you YouTube.
Informative sites like Wikipedia. Political sites like MoveOn.org.

If enacted, new laws would force Internet Service Providers to block
websites that any corporation suspects violates a copyright or suspects
doesn't monitor it's users' content close enough for copyrighted
materials. That means that any website, foreign or based in the U.S.,
could be wiped out on suspicion and made unavailable to everyone in the
world.

This week there will be a historic filibuster of the Internet Censorship
Act where the names of every person that signs a petition against Internet
censorship will be read. I have added my name. Please add yours too.

http://pol.moveon.org/nointernetcensorship/?r_by=33343-19594309-Qflnr4x&rc=pac_nointernetcensorship_letter.email.g0

Thanks!

- Tessera -
MoveOn.org

[Cylnar]

Signed. These fucks just don't know when to stop, do they?

[Tessera]

They're being bribed, that's why. Our legislators are nothing but a pack of corporate whores.

[Schu]

Thats no joke, and they haven't thought this through. The way this bill is written, corporate and government sites could be locked out as well.
Yeah I know that will never happen.

Anyway, signed as soon as I got the email.

[Tessera]

If these revolting corporate pigs get their way, then ultimately, the entire worldwide web will be reduced to being nothing more than a big, electronic Wal-Mart.

Everything else will be selectively wiped out... a little bit at a time. Ultimately, only the commercial sites will remain. You know it -- and I know it. No matter where you surf to on the web, every single site will be saying "Give us your money, if you wish to proceed."

It should come as no surprise that this latest attempt to usurp the internet is being "sponsored" (bribed) by Comcast, and the motion picture industry, and the music industry, and various other media moguls. They don't want us to entertain each other for free... they want us to pay THEM for every single bit of entertainment in our lives.

So say good bye to the free exchange of information. Even a small, non-profit web site like tessmage.com could be threatened by this pending legislation. EVERYTHING ON THE WEB THAT IS FREE WILL BE THREATENED. Oh it will start off seeming harmless enough, sure... but every single day, they'll keep ramping it up until eventually, the entire web will have been stolen right out from under our noses.

And of course, the media moguls have another goal in mind: to squash pirate web sites, such as The Pirate Bay and Demonoid. They have failed to shut down those sites in the past, due to the fact that different countries have different laws regarding copyrighted material (case in point: Sweden, where The Pirate Bay originated). So instead of wasting any more time and money trying to go after those web sites directly, these pigs have decided to take a far more extreme and preemptive approach... by forcing your ISP to BLOCK entire regions of the internet. Effectively preventing you from accessing all sorts of things on the web... not just illicit sites like The Pirate Bay.  

Eventually, they'll succeed in shutting down everything that THEY do not make a profit from. You can bet on it.

YouTube will most likely go down first. People love to share music videos on YouTube. It's the 21st century equivalent of having a block party and playing a bunch of music for all of your friends and neighbors. But according to the floundering music industry, they deserve to paid some money EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU PLAY A SONG. Even if you already bought the CD. Even if the song sucks.

Imagine if you bought a CD and then, you throw a big party at your house. And to entertain all of your guests, you play your CD's and everyone enjoys the music. Sounds like a typical party scene, right..? And now imagine that suddenly, the Media Police crash your party and demand that every single guest pay a fee, if they want to continue listening to the music. Why..? Well, because none of those people bought the CD... only you did. So then, why should your guests be entertained for free..? GIVE US YOUR MONEY, OR WE'LL CONFISCATE YOUR STEREO SYSTEM.

That sounds like an extreme analogy, huh..? But it isn't... because if you think about all of this shit for a few minutes, then you will realize that we are in fact dealing with that sort of greedy, parasitic and dictatorial mentality.

Wanna fight back even harder against this kind of corporate greed and bullying..? Then you might consider heading over to The Pirate Bay and downloading everything that you can get your hands on. Movies, music, games, software... everything in sight. Show these fuckers that the more they try to restrict our freedoms, the more we want to FIGHT BACK.

It is as simple as that.

[perez007usa]

Signed, sealed, and delivered.

[dr1tz]

http://demandprogress.org/ this is a site and group that I have singed up to help fight this kind of threat also.

[Schu]

Hey all. This thing is back, as many of us already know, and I thought I would post what I put up on another forum to get it back in the lime-light.

Hey rotNdude and Steam, thanks for giving us some latitude/leeway on a political subject, which is against the TOS.

I have been reading this thread and find some of whats been posted, to be interesting. Some of it however, I would say is kind of far reaching, and unlikely at this time, but as SOPA is written, is highly possible in the future.

Nay Sayers on these boards are seemingly forgetting the past, and naively believing that our political representatives are not going to abuse their power for the corporate interest. There are already laws in effect that can be used against online piracy, so why do they need such an open-ended and far reaching law?

Now the way I see it, if SOPA were to be enacted as law, it could interfere with all forms of free speech, especially the gaming industry, where quite often copyrighted material and links to said material are posted on their forums for whatever reason (screen shots, videos, even quotes can be considered copyrighted material).

If SOPA were to be enacted into law, those same gaming forums would most likely have to higher in house moderators to keep track of and delete questionable posts and copyrighted material as it's posted, in order to protect themselves from possible litigation or fines. Some may even go so far as to force us to submit posts before allowing them to be seen by other members of the community. Imagine posting a response to a thread you are interested in, and 24 hours later your post still hasn't been put up, or may never be put up. This happens quite often in forums that force submission before posting, now...with SOPA it would only get worse.

Now imagine the costs involved for running a forum if this bill were to pass into law under its current proposal. The costs of running a simple forum where you can only post a response or start a thread would sky-rocket, due to the developer having to higher moderators to make absolutely sure that the rules were enforced without exception, and could be held liable. Volunteer moderators would be a thing of the past. They can not be held liable because they do not work for the company, they are volunteers and not getting payed to do a job.

Even the modding community will suffer under SOPA as it is currently proposed. Us modders are constantly messing with and altering copyrighted material, sometimes with permission, but mostly not. Under SOPA, the legitimate websites that support and make our mods available to the public could be in violation and could be forcibly shut down. If a Publisher or developer doesn't like a particular mod, they can easily have it removed and possibly have the modder jailed, even though it is a popular mod and helping the game to sell. Could you imagine being fined, even jailed under copyright infringement when you were operating under the fair use act?

The “Stop Online Piracy Act” as written, is begging for political and corporate abuse.
With that said, who is going to have to pay for all of this? Us gamers...that's who. If not in accessibility then in actual cost of our games.

Now everything I have posted here can be considered hypothetical, but the way SOPA is currently written, could make it reality in a short time.

[perez007usa]

If this does happens, (and I hope it doesn't ) I would not buy any games, movies, etc. and tell them to stick this in their crawl.

[Shatteredhelix]

Signed, sealed, and delivered.

[perez007usa]

Wikipedia is on the movie with others about this:

  Wikipedia Will Go Dark On January 18 To Protest SOPA And PIPA
Chris Velazco

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/16/wikipedia-blackout/Comment
2
inShare107
Wikipedia Will Go Dark On January 18 To Protest SOPA And PIPA
Chris Velazco
posted 10 mins ago
2 Comments
Wikipedia_SOPA_Blackout_Design

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales wanted to send a “big message” to the U.S. government regarding the two heinous internet censorship bills currently being considered, and after a brief period of debate the world’s encyclopedia will soon do just that.

The Wikipedia founder announced on Twitter today that starting at midnight on Wednesday, January 18, the English language version of the world’s encyclopedia will go dark for 24 hours in protest of SOPA and PIPA. With their commitment confirmed, Wikipedia will be joining a slew of websites and companies that will suspend their operations for one day in an effort raise awareness around the two bills.

Meant to curb IP theft and piracy, the (imaginatively named) Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act have raised eyebrows recently due to their decidedly scorched-earth approach to handling suspected offenders. Websites found to offer pirated content, along with the services that they use, could be hidden from US internet users by being delisted on search engines and potentially on DNS servers themselves.

Rather than let users access Wikipedia’s vast stores of English-language information on the 18th, Wales mentioned that the Wikipedia landing page will instead be populated with a letter of protest and a call to action that urges readers to get involved with the issue. It doesn’t appear as though the new landing page has been finalized, but one of the community’s prototypes can be seen above.

The news comes after a lengthy debate as to the particulars of such a grand gesture — whether or not the site should participate at all, which versions of the site would be affected, and how exactly the blackout would go down were all on the table for the community to discuss. Ultimately, the consensus pointed to a full blackout as a the proper way to make their collective displeasure unknown. There’s no official word on how other parts of the site will handle the event, although Wales has mentioned that the German language version of the site will be displaying a banner in support.

Meanwhile, some of SOPA’s supporters are already reacting to the very public backlash against the bill. Ars Technica reports that Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) would be pulling his DNS-blocking provisions from the bill after having consulted with “industry groups across the country.” What’s more, the White House has responded to two petitions about SOPA and PIPA on the official White House blog stating that they will not “support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Wales notes on Twitter that while SOPA has been “crippled,” buts its counterpart in the Senate is still very much alive and very dangerous. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently popped up on Meet The Press claiming his continued support for PIPA even though it “could create some problems.”

Though the event is meant to raise public awareness over two critical pieces of legislation, Wales still took a moment to offer a bit of sage advice for students heading back to school:

[perez007usa]

As always some jackassed congressman wants control with this Pipi!.

[Schu]

No shit.

Now if everyone could get social networks like twitter and facebook on board, the word on these bills would really get out to the public.

[Tessera]

One of the organizations that I belong to (MoveOn.org) has already been mobilized on this issue. As have many other grassroots organizations.

But yes -- everyone needs to get off their asses and do their own small part to STRONGLY protest against this veiled attempt to control the internet in this country. GET INVOLVED.

I remember the days of the Cold War. I remember how Our Fearless Leaders used to rant and rave about how evil it was for the Soviets to control the mass media in their country, through intimidation and censorship.

And now look at what is happening: the Cold War is supposedly over, and the Amerikan (sic) government is starting to behave IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY.

Long-cherished freedoms are being replaced a little at a time... by propaganda, private ownership and dominance.

DEATH TO SOPA

[perez007usa]

Wikipedia to blackout all 3,847,673 English-language pages to protest PIPA
Digital TrendsBy Andrew Couts | Digital Trends


Wikipedia is going black on Wednesday, January 18, to help fight the contentious Protect IP Act (PIPA), which is set to go for a vote before the Senate on January 24. The move, first reported by Neal Mann, digital news editor at Sky News, was confirmed by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of the far-reaching online encyclopedia, on Twitter. Wales says the blackout was a “community decision.”

The blackout will only apply to English-language articles on Wikipedia — all 3,847,673 of them. It will run from 12am ET on Wednesday, through 11:59pm, says Wales, who estimates that as many as 100 million people will view the blocked protest pages.

Wales first proposed a blackout of the site in early December of last year, and asked the Wikipedia community for their input. According to a chart of the responses, created by hacker Shishir Bashyal, nearly 86.6 percent or respondents supported the move, while only 10.5 percent voice opposition to a Wikipedia blackout.

Wikipedia joins the likes of Reddit.com, BoingBoing.net, IHeartChaos.com, and the entire Cheezburger Network, among others, all of which will also be blacked out on Wednesday.

While now focused on PIPA, these planned blackouts were also originally intended to voice opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). This past weekend, however, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) told SOPA opponents in Congress that SOPA would not come up for a vote until consensus on the bill could be met. This follows a declaration from the White House that it would oppose any “legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet” — all of which SOPA and PIPA would do, according to critics of these bills.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends


 Can't congress keep their stinking paws off, of our freedoms.

[Tessera]

Do you folks realize that if SOPA were to become law, then in its strictest interpretation,
it could be used to shut down EVERY SINGLE MODDING SITE ON THE WEB..?

I am mentioning this to everyone because tessmage.com happens to be a game and mod
oriented web site. So this is definitely an additional concern for all of us to consider.

No more game mods. No more True Patch. Nor any other third-party game patch.

As I said... in SOPA's strictest interpretation, all of that could become a reality.

[perez007usa]

SOPA ‘shelved’ indefinitely, but Reddit’s Jan. 18 blackout is still on, as PIPA fight continues [Update: Wikipedia joins blackout]

January 16, 2012 By Andrew Couts


With a vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) delayed indefinitely due to political pressure, Reddit.com has confirmed with Digital Trends that it still plans to blackout the popular site on Wednesday, in protest of the equally-controversial Protect IP Act (PIPA)

This is a brief part of the article, here's the site; http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/sopa-shelved-indefinitely-but-reddits-jan-18-blackout-is-still-on-as-pipa-fight-continues/


Still those bastards still can't keep their hands off. No means no


 

[Schu]

Now mind you this only my personal opinion, but I think they put SOPA up for a vote as a distraction, so that they could sneak a vote for PIPA into law just like they did with the NDAA. That way with PIPA in affect they can rewrite SOPA to work with PIPA and totally screw us out of a free speech internet, without the majority of people realizing they did it.

Now the way I understand it (and I could be wrong), but it is against Federal law to introduce a bill/legislation to congress
without first introducing its contents to the people of the US and allowing them a vote when it concerns personal or
national freedoms according to the Constitution. All 3 of the previously mentioned bills are Constitutional amendments that
were never brought before the people first. The only time this can be superseded is when the country is under Martial law,
and I don't remember Martial law being enacted...do you?

We need to put a stop to these sneaky fucking bastards hiding legislation in the agenda so that they can get away with stealing our Constitutional rights
without first giving us a vote on whether we like it or not.