Sony drops support for SOPA.

Smokey --

You can count me as against SOPA. I would, however, like to offer some insight to Forum Members, many of whom may not understand why websites are rightfully concerned about being shut down if this lunacy is passed into law.

Most people think that SOPA (The Stop Online Piracy Act -- H.R. 3261) targets little people like you and me. We tend to believe what the creators of this dangerous bill WANT for us to believe: That it’s only about stopping the 15-year-old around the corner from downloading free (pirated) MegaDeath videos and music from sites such as YouTube.

Granted -- piracy is wrong. Copyright holders such as recording artists truly are entitled to being paid for their hard work. We think to ourselves, “I don’t do that piracy crap -- I buy all my stuff legally from iTunes and other legitimate retailers.” But SOPA doesn’t end there.

That’s only the tip of the SOPA iceberg. The problem is that most folks don’t recognize what’s beyond that tip. SOPA is a serious threat -- even to people who follow the law to the letter.

Why SOPA Should Concern You -- A Simple Explanation In Plain English

This is the best/simplest interpretation of “The Rest of the Story” that I have run across. Here’s a quoted excerpt:

“It’s a hot button issue that goes beyond just people fighting against piracy and preaching against censorship.”

"Essentially a website can get reported for containing copyright violations. It can be reported by anyone. Then the site can be blacklisted and forced to shut down.

“A big concern is that sites that are largely above board and fit the spirit of the law, will get summarily shut down because user posted content could violate the law and reactions to such content would be deemed not enough to satisfy the law by anyone who investigates the report.

“It’s also pretty common in government for red tape to slow up the process. So sites can be quickly shut down for violations not of their own making. The site owner could police the action but still be found in violation. Or an error could be made. And the site is still shut down caught up in a slow process to clear the site’s name and get it reactivated.

"Each hour that site is shut down it loses relevance on the internet. Drastically affecting the value and presence of the site.

"Since the law includes search engines and payment network providers as well as site owners, the effects of a site being shut down can be sweeping, killing business from e-commerce sales, ruining page ranking, Search Engine Optimization, and basic search engine functionality.”

http://www.hostmerchantservices.com/articles/stop-online-piracy-act/

I wonder if companies are losing a lot of customers because they support SOPA.

I am against it.

Smokey is very wise, and states it simply and very succinctly:

“If this bill passes, the government can basically shut down Revillution and other sites like our affiliates, sister sites and pretty much our entire network "just because".

I suspect that as the issue nears voting, more and more average Americans will become aware of its existence. Hopefully they’ll begin to realize that it’s about so much more than simply protecting copyrighted material.

What people in other countries need to know is that this lunacy will affect them, also.

SOPA isn’t only an issue for the citizens of the USA. It’s about regulating the Internet -- worldwide. Foreign websites will be just as vulnerable as USA sites will be. This concerns anyone who owns a website -- no matter what your Country’s laws allow.

The really scary thing is that SOPA gives the US Government the right/power to “protect” and enforce copyrighted material against all websites -- worldwide. Further, it gives copyright holders the ability to bring legal action against website owners, search engine companies and payment network providers.

Essentially it comes down to this: Any website -- including sites outside the US -- can get reported for containing copyright violations. It can be reported by anyone. Then the site can be blacklisted and forced to shut down. A huge concern is that law-abiding websites can be shut down if any user posts content that violates the law.

Thus, to keep Rev 'online' with this thing. We'd basically have to turn into nazi's here and run things extremely, EXTREMELY strictly, that means no posting of youtube videos or anything like that, something I am strongly against. If SOPA forces me to purchase my own in-house server and do all this extra un-necessary work to keep Revillution online, I'm going to be very very upset, and even then, they could still force me to shut the place down.

Precisely.

If Big Brother takes over, a private server ain’t a-gonna save anybody -- particularly sites such as this one, which promote Freedom of Speech.

And that greatly concerns the ENGINEERS of the Internet -- you know, those guys that designed and created the thing?

Published in The Washington Post on 12/15/11:

Engineers, however, have warned that the bills have been introduced without enough consideration of how laws would affect the Internet.

Vint Cerf of Google, domain name system software author Paul Vixie and Internet routing engineer Tony Li were among 83 high-profile engineers who signed an open letter to Congress in opposition to the House Stop Online Privacy Act and Senate Protect Intellectual Property Act.

“If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure,” the engineers wrote.

They also fear the bills would lead to censorship and put undue burden on Web sites.

Here’s the letter:

We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards and protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it. We're just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the Internet, has brought with it.

Last year, many of us wrote to you and your colleagues to warn about the proposed "COICA" copyright and censorship legislation. Today, we are writing again to reiterate our concerns about the SOPA and PIPA derivatives of last year's bill, that are under consideration in the House and Senate. In many respects, these proposals are worse than the one we were alarmed to read last year.

If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure. Regardless of recent amendments to SOPA, both bills will risk fragmenting the Internet's global domain name system (DNS) and have other capricious technical consequences. In exchange for this, such legislation would engender censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties' right and ability to communicate and express themselves online.

All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to restrict, but these bills are particularly egregious in that regard because they cause entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under these proposals. In fact, it seems that this has already begun to happen under the nascent DHS/ICE seizures program.

Censorship of Internet infrastructure will inevitably cause network errors and security problems. This is true in China, Iran and other countries that censor the network today; it will be just as true of American censorship. It is also true regardless of whether censorship is implemented via the DNS, proxies, firewalls, or any other method. Types of network errors and insecurity that we wrestle with today will become more widespread, and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government.

The current bills — SOPA explicitly and PIPA implicitly — also threaten engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S. government. When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of the network, and give authoritarian governments more power over what their citizens can read and publish.

The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US begins to use its central position in the network for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

Senators, Congressmen, we believe the Internet is too important and too valuable to be endangered in this way, and implore you to put these bills aside.
　
　
　
　
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/top-internet-engineers-warn-against-sopa/2011/12/15/gIQAGRV4vO_blog.html#pagebreak