"Ugh- you just got politics all over my recreational gaming!" Yeah, I apologize, and mods, if you wish, feel free to delete this. But I for one don't want to see MacScene fined/censored/killed because someone in some media industry waves a pirate flag over us. Are SOPA and PROTECT IP really as bad as popularized? I'm more and more believing so, but I encourage you to do your own research. At very least, they're going to make for some big changes that anyone in the tech sphere ought to be aware of.



If you have or form an opinion, don't just assume you're in the majority and it will all shake out the way you want. Take 5 minutes to stuff your congresspeeps' (secretary's) inbox with a quick, unambiguous "Please vote ___ on ___ because ___" so when they reconvene and actually revise/vote, they'll know more than the lobbyists' side of the story.

writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments

I wouldn't delete this. This is something I've been following closely. And yes, I do wonder what it would mean for our site. Especially for how protective Nintendo has been in the past, and I worry that even hosting a JPG of a cover of a game would be enough to send a notice to takedown the site. Or if they try to classify emulators as a tool in breaking copyright, and taking down the site for that.

Well artwork comes under fair consumption. Nintendo as an example use box art, wallpapers and other material to not only promote their games but also make it available to the public for their own use.

Emulators themselves are mostly untouchable but where they could be hit is if a court deems that the creators of an emulator were using it to actively encourage others to pirate games.

The scary bit is that, according to some theories and short of reading every page of each bill, someone posting an infringing link on a site could be cause for shutting down the site. The MegaUpload incident cited in the video also caught my attention- it looks like the song is back now, but when a publisher can request a takedown of media they haven't even been given rights to, that does not bode well...

If this bill were passed before, instead of just the song being taken down, the whole site could have been...

Could have been, yes. The most common response anyone trying to push awareness is likely to get (for instance, I'm visiting my parents for the holidays, and they hadn't heard anything about it before, and were highly skeptical, as was I when I first saw friends posting on facebook) is "well, that sounds extreme, I doubt it would come to that," and they do have a point. I doubt Big Government would use the bunker buster on every surface soft-target, and every internet landmark. I'm not sure that's a reason to give them a bunker-buster, though. They probably ~wouldn't~ take down all of youtube, since it would cause too much backlash. But hundreds of school/church/community websites? Quite possibly. Moderately-established webforums playing host to intelligent, active independent producers/consumers with a limited undercurrent of off-the-books content trading? Almost certainly.

Getting all crazy-liberal-socialist-activist in people's face probably isn't going to sway them, but if you want to cut straight to the facts,
H.R. 3261, also known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOPA
www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/show
www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/text


S. 968, also known as the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PROTECT IP)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act
www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show
www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/text

Out of curiosity, any plans for Emuscene to participate in the blackout this Wednesday?

I had not considered it. If there is enough support for the blackout, I'm all for raising awareness.

I highly suggest we do. I'm pretty afraid if this does pass, then just the number of hosted images of videogames we have on this site would take us down.

sopablackout.org/

If you go to that website it offers up a javascript clickthrough page that says how the website is blacked out.

Although SOPA is squashed, Protect IP is still in the works. I'm for a day blackout..

menace690 wrote:


Where is there indication that SOPA is squashed? Nothing's squashed until it's shot down in Congress. A link to such info would make my day and I'd ...well, I'd be happy for the first time this year.

oversight.house.gov/index.php?option=com...2:releasesstatements

The official White House position appears to be no support of the current bills in their current forms, but we do need to do something about piracy. - wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#/!/response/combating-online-piracy-while-protecting-open-and-innovative-internet

As of the PBS News Hour tonight, it sounds like congress is shifting their attention to PROTECT-IP/PIPA, with some clauses related to DNS takedowns and targeting of U.S. domains cut from the bill. This is a substantially better position than we used to be in, but I'm not sure I'll trust the bill's contents until it is rewritten in the light of day rather than proposed by the media industry for a voice-vote out-of-session. Even without the worst clauses, and even requiring a court order for doing things like bumping sites off search engine results, my sense is that there have yet to be revisions in clauses which would make websites responsible for policing all user content in order to avoid being policed themselves. That would potentially mean that yes, if mods here didn't actively pull all content that someone could interpret as infringing (site content and forum content), and the gaming industry got a court on their side in saying that the core purpose of this site was to promote piracy-related activities, it could still be slashed pretty hard.

I would not object if the site goes black tomorrow. I don't suspect that it would have far-reaching consequences, but it would be a show of concern and solidarity.

Edit: and in case you aren't yet scared, or are mollified by the assurances that sites can police themselves and only those affiliated with non-US domains will be targeted, consider:
GMail is a service. Google operates international domains, and is thus a valid target for enforcement. If GMail polices all of its users' activity for signs of piracy in accordance with the law allowing them to indemnify themselves from legal action, that means... any and all privacy policies you have go out the window under that nice "unless required by law" clause, and Google gets to read all your mail and delete or report anything questionable.
A pirate ring operating offshore but using exclusively cheap US hosting is (at least according to the PBS interview) immune to PIPA because they have a US domain.

I agree with the blackout.

You have spoken, we shall do our part. Enjoy the blackout.

Heh. I can still use wikipedia too. I just have to hit CMD-. (period) just as the first image on the page loads. I'll get all the text, and if I let the page load to the blackout page and reload it, all the images are there and I can hit CMD-. and stop the blackout, but still get the pictures.

GG.

Disable JavaScript, and Wikipedia works just fine.

Wikipedia told people themselves how to get around it. It wasn't some big secret. It was so people who would have no idea what SOPA/PIPA were get some awareness of the problem. If you knew how to disabled javascript, or how to get around it, then you are likely not unaware of the problem these bills will cause.

I can't believe how fucking stupid ppl are: twitter.com/herpderpedia
a lot of them asking why wikipedia is down, they don't seem to be able to read at all which makes me wonder what the heck they want with wikipedia.
others seem unable to use other pages than wikipedia to do their research

They don't know how to write for themselves… They need Wikipedia to Command-C from…